North Vietnam in the Sino-Soviet Dispute, 1962-64

As the dispute between the Soviet Union and Communist China has grown more acrimonious, and as the Vietnam crisis itself has deepened, the position of North Vietnam between the two Communist giants has become an issue of major world concern.' In the development of the dispute from 1956 to 1961, North Vietnam maintained a neutral position. She issued no statement on de-Stalinization,2 welcomed Khrushchev's peace policy toward the West in 1959-60,3 supported the 1960 Moscow Declaration,4 secured economic aid for her First Five-Year Plan (1961-65) from both Peking and Moscow in 1961,5 and kept silent on the Albanian issue at the Twenty-Second Congress of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union).6 The dispute did not grow into an open rift until after the Soviet Twenty-Second Congress, and North Vietnam did not become seriously involved until early 1962.