Relations between Russia and Vietnam have a nearly sixty-year history. Having emerged at the initial stage of the Cold War [Ognetov, 2004, p. 69-83; Konoreva, 2008, p. 84-89], they went through several stages in their development. At the first stage (January 1950 - July 1954), the USSR recognized the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) formed in 1945, but ignored the State of Vietnam created in 1949 by the French. Soviet representatives repeatedly opposed the UN membership of the State of Vietnam, as well as neighboring Cambodia and Laos [for more details, see Selivanov, 2006, pp. 92-100].
Based on materials from the collections of the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (WUA of the Russian Federation) and the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), we tried to reconstruct the main events related to the opening of the first embassy of the DRV in Moscow.
In the Russian literature, one can find the statement that " Moscow until 1954 practically did not have... There are no connections with Hanoi, Hue (the imperial capital of Vietnam), or Saigon - an important economic center in the south of the Indochina Peninsula - the capital of Cochin China" (Ilinsky, 2005, p.17).
Indeed, in January 1950, the USSR declared the very fact of recognizing the DRV, without taking into account the negative reaction of France in this matter. In addition, the official capital of the DRV, Hanoi, was under the control of French troops, and due to this circumstance, it was not possible to open a Soviet diplomatic mission there. At that time, it was possible to talk about the recognition of the "government in exile", especially since since October 1949, some of the state institutions of the DRV, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, were located on the territory of the PRC, in Shanghai.
The status of the future representative office was not immediately determined. This issue was discussed on January 30, 1950 (simultaneously with the qu ...
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