A View from the Other Side: Russia, China, and the Vietnam War

While the typical American view of the Cold War is skewed by shortcomings and incompleteness, the actual struggle was immensely more complicated. A simplistic communist versus capitalist view naively brushes aside relations amongst the communist superpowers of the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union. Additionally, a major point of contention between Russia and China was the war in Vietnam and who would win the allegiance of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). This bitter split, in the seemingly united communist bloc, would shape the Cold War tremendously. The following thesis examines the Cold War through a lens that is not readily accessible to most Americans, through the use of numerous primary and secondary sources