Not Peace but Victory: Hanoi and the Exploitation of Western Protest ActivistsPerry JohanssonThis article discusses the recruitment of the Swedish writer Sara Lidman to support the propaganda and diplomatic efforts of the Communist regimes in China and North Vietnam during the war against the United States. Her visit to North Vietnam in 1965 was arranged and closely supervised by Chinese and North Vietnamese officials. Before the trip, Lidman was vetted to determine how sympathetic she was and to find out how politically useful she might be. Working in close cooperation with Vietnamese Communist officials, Lidman became the most prominent and popular voice of the antiwar movement in Sweden. This antiwar protest movement helped inspire the Swedish government to voice strong opposition to the war. The article seeks to explain why Lidman became so supportive of Hanoi's militaristic political program. In a close reading of her texts and prolific correspondence with officials in Hanoi and Beijing, the article shows that Lidman undertook this laborious unpaid work for Hanoi out of feelings of white guilt and based on radical Orientalist fantasies about the Vietnamese Other. It also shows how skillfully the North Vietnamese played on Lidman's insecurities and desire to please them in order to promote their propaganda narrative.Connecting Communist Insurgencies in China and Vietnam: Chinese Border Operations and the Making of a Cold War Alliance, 1945–1949Shu QuanzhiThis article examines the emergence of Chinese Communist military operations against Chinese Nationalist forces along the Sino-Vietnamese border and the interactions with Vietnamese Communist operations against French forces from 1945 to 1949. The Chinese Communists treated northern Vietnam as a key part of their strategy, and the Vietnamese Communists for their part repeatedly adjusted their policies to prepare for the Communist victory in China. The article thus provides a much clearer explanation of why the Communist parties of China and Vietnam could become allies in 1950. Communist insurgencies in southern China and northern Vietnam had been intertwined as one inseparable whole in the late 1940s, which fundamentally contributed to their alliance in 1950.Through the Lens of the Marxist-Leninist Dispute: East German Policy toward North Vietnam on the Eve of the U.S. War in Indochina (1960–1965)Steven Crawford GrundyThis article draws on unknown and recently declassified archival materials to examine the origins of the Vietnam War from the perspective of the Communist-ruled German Democratic Republic (GDR). The East German leader Walter Ulbricht and other high-ranking GDR officials believed that North Vietnam's policy was being affected mainly by the split between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (PRC) that had flared into the open by 1960. Before 1960 the struggle on the Indochinese peninsula was widely seen as a Cold War battleground, in which victory for one side was equal to defeat for the other. The division of Germany, Korea, and Vietnam were neuralgic points within a global, existential struggle. But the PRC's ideological challenge to Soviet hegemony, its abandonment of what the GDR regarded as fundamental Marxist-Leninist principles, and its efforts to lure other Communist states to its side against the USSR compelled the East German regime to reassess its foreign policy. East German leaders became convinced that the Sino-Soviet split was driving Hanoi's decision-making and having a pernicious impact on the conflict in Indochina.The Cold War and the Soviet KGB's Same-Sex Entrapment Operations in the 1950s and 1960s: The Perpetrator in FocusIrina RolduginaThis article explores a little-known practice of the Cold War: the use of same-sex entrapment by the Soviet State Security Committee (KGB) against male foreign visitors—diplomats, tourists, academics—to the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. Drawing on recently declassified sources from Great Britain and the United States, this article reveals how the KGB routinely targeted Western men—particularly scholars—visiting the USSR, exploiting their vulnerability to same-sex entrapment, sometimes through coercive or even violent means. Once compromised, these individuals were pressured into cooperating with Soviet intelligence agencies. Scholars specializing in Slavic studies were of particular interest because the KGB believed they could serve as sources of influence and information and would be teaching students who in the future might serve in positions across various branches of government. The article also shows how deeply the KGB was following domestic homosexual circles, using the threat of imprisonment—then a reality for homosexual men across all fifteen Soviet republics—as a powerful tool of blackmail and control.Handling Communist Captives: U.S. Military Authorities and the Treatment of Enemy Prisoners of War during the Korean WarJean-Michel TurcotteThis article examines how the U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC) treated North Korean and Chinese prisoners of war (POWs) during the Korean War (1950–1953). The UNC had to handle some 150,000 enemy POWs held in South Korean camps during the conflict. Even though the United States had not yet ratified the 1949 Geneva Conventions, U.S. military personnel were supposed to comply with the rules for treatment of POWs. However, the threat of Communism as seen by U.S. military authorities had a significant influence on POW policies. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the only neutral agent authorized in Korea, witnessed coercive techniques in POW camps and tracked how the UNC sharpened its treatment of “Communist prisoners of war.” This article, based on U.S. and ICRC archives, examines how the U.S. military's efforts to extract usable intelligence from enemy POWs helped to shape interrogation policies. When meeting with ICRC officials, U.S. Army commanders drew on their intelligence findings to justify their treatment of prisoners. UNC captivity policies were developed and applied in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and cooperation with the ICRC, but were also geared toward gaining urgent intelligence, understanding enemy objectives, and countering Communist ideology.Alger Hiss and Soviet Espionage Operations: A Failed Quest to Rewrite HistoryJohn Earl HaynesThis essay provides a critical assessment of a recently published book by the journalist Jeff Kisseloff, who sets out to provide a new history of Alger Hiss's conviction on perjury charges in 1950. The statute of limitations for espionage had expired by 1950, but the perjury conviction (which was reaffirmed by every court that considered an appeal) was tantamount to saying that Hiss had been a Soviet spy in the 1930s and 1940s. Kisseloff vehemently disagrees with that verdict, and he intends his book to provide an exoneration of Hiss. He fails in this quest, having produced a gravely flawed book. Especially notable is Kisseloff's failure to deal adequately with formerly top-secret Soviet intelligence documents regarding Hiss that are now available. These documents, especially twenty Soviet intelligence documents released in 2009, unambiguously identify Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy. Rather than confront this incriminating evidence, Kisseloff largely ignores it.
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