As noted earlier in this paper, Khrushchev's venture in summit diplomacy during the winter of 1959-1960 could not have occurred a t a worse time for North Vietnam. Having decided
by May 1959 ta prepare for a new phase of violent revolution, , the DRV was poise'din December ready to launch a frontal attack on "US imperialism" in South Vietnam. This obvious incompati-
bility between Soviet and North Vietnamese foreign policy objectives came to a head at the Warsaw Pact meeting of February 1960
According t o accounts of this conference, the Soviet Union, backed by East European regimes, argued the necessity of a "soft" approach to the West in order to solve the upper- most problem confronting the bloc, that of Germany. On the other hand, Communist China, supported by North Vietnam and
North Korea, maintained that a "hard q1 uncompromising line was essential in resisting American imperialism, the "main enemy,
through-out the world.
Confirmation of these reports appeared in a surprisingly candid Hoc Tap party editorial on the results of the Warsaw Conference.Parroting the Chinese Communist line so closely that it was reproduced in Peiping's party newspaper, the editorial attacked the false belief "that the imperialist wolf has become a lamb;" warned that US imperialism would "continue to initiate local wars;" and, in a thinly-veiled criticism
of Khrushchev's strategic assumptions, called for ''correctly estimating the new advantages of the world situation ...and forging ahead to obtain new advantages which are profitable
to peace and socialism."
In April Peiping launched a public attack on the theoreti- cal rationale of Khrushchev's foreign policy by reviving Len- inist dictaonthe inevitability of war, the intrinsically aggressive nature of imperialism and the need for direct revolu- tionary action to promote international Communism. When Premier Chou En-lai visited Hanoi the following month, the DRV enthu- siastically endorsed this militant strategic prescription.
After the publication of a commundque stressing the two govern-
ments' "completely identical views.. .on all current major international questions, '' the Chinese leader hailed the agreement as of "great significance in further strengthening mutual aid and cooperation between our two countries and close coordiation between them in international affairs. Close coordina- tion was in fact evidenced in early June at the World Federa- tion of Trade Unions Conference in Peiping when the North Vietnamese delegate strongly supported the dissident faction headed by Communist China and called for a resolution which would "mahe clear" that the "working class" did "not harbor any illusions about the nature of imperialism.
However, two developments i n mid-1960 were to persuade North Vietnam of the wisdom of a more neutral course in the Sino-Soviet dispute on international Communist strategy. The first was the Bucharest Conference in late June which revealed to other bloc-parties for the first time the fundamental character and disruptive effect of the Sino-Soviet conflict. According to reliable reports, khrushchev utilized this occasion to accuse the Chinese party of "disloyalty and in- sincerity, of employing "Trotskyite methods,” and of pursuing a "bellicose foreign policy." The Chinese countercharges were equally bitter , including the allegation that Khrushchev had been guilty of "revisionism and right opportunism" and had Created-the Chinese "an enemies. ''
In a response revealing
grave apprehension over the growing rift in Sino-Soviet relations and a consequent desire to remain neutral, North Vietnam issued a studiously noncommittal editorial on the Bucharest meeting and took the unprecedented step of reprinting without comment the widely divergent Russian and Chinese party editorials on the conference.