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Phạm, Văn Đồng (Pham Van Dong)

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February 26, 1971	From the Journal of M.G. Podol’sky, 'Record of a Conversation with R. Berthold, Counsellor of the GDR Embassy in Hanoi, 18 February 1971' A Soviet official in Vietnam recounts a meeting with an East German diplomat. The two sides discussed the nuclear threats from the United States in the Vietnam War, as well as relations with China.
1969	Ahmad Hamrush, 'An Egyptian in Vietnam, Korea, and China' (Excerpts) The author of the Arabic-language book from which these excerpts are derived from is Ahmad Hamrush (1921-2011). Involved in the Free Officers’ coup of July 23, 1952, Hamrush left the army in 1955, but stayed a regime insider. He became a historian who wrote a multi-volume history of the coup, among other books; he edited several journals including the army’s al-Tahrir and the famous political magazine Rose al-Yusuf; he was Secretary General of the Egyptian Committee for Afro-Asian Solidarity in the 1960s; and he was a travel writer, as this book shows. It recounts a journey in 1968 to the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, and North Vietnam. Although in the 1950s and deep into the 1960s, African decolonization struggles had attracted much attention in the Arab world and perhaps especially in Arab North Africa, Asia was a key concern, too—in the 1960s especially Vietnam. This was of course not exceptional. As books like Quinn Slobodian’s Foreign Front: Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany (2012) have shown, Vietnam as a cause—and some Vietnamese as actors—helped midwife the German student movement in the 1960s. (In Germany, the shah’s Iran and Iranian activists mattered greatly, too, however.) To take two more examples, Vietnam as a mode and model of reference mattered to anti-Soviet Lebanese leftists in the 1960s, as Laure Guirguis’ “La référence au Vietnam et l’émergence des gauches radicales au Liban, 1962-1975” (2018) has shown, and Iranians—leftists and others—followed developments in Vietnam closely, as Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet has noted in “The Anti-Aryan Moment: Decolonization, Diplomacy, and Race in Late Pahlavi Iran” (2021). What distinguishes this text is its timing. Hamrush reflects on a journey he made soon after the Six-Day War of June 1967. That month Israel inflicted a humiliating defeat on Arab armies, including Egypt’s, the most powerful Arab state. This drastically amplified concerns some already had had about President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s (1918-1970) regime and triggered much self-critique in books like Al-naqd al-dhati ba‘da al-hazima (1968; in 2021 translated as Self-Criticism after the Defeat) by the Syrian Marxist political thinker Sadiq Jalal al-‘Azm (1934-2016).
June 27, 1966	Excerpt from a Conversation between Zhou Enlai and Albanian Party Leaders, 27 June 1966 Zhou Enlai, Enver Hoxha, and Mehmet Shehu have a detailed conversation about high-level purges in the Chinese Communist Party. Zhou also discusses China's difficult relations with North Korea and the Vietnam War.
July 5, 1961	Record of a Conversation between N. S. Khrushchev and Chen Yi, Deputy Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China Chen asks Khrushchev to go over the pressing international issues and he presents the USSR's stances on the situation in Laos, South Korea, and Cuba. Khrushchev also raises problems in GDR and difficulties in negotiations with Western powers with regards to the German question. Khrushchev also mentions Soviet plans to launch a spaceship and resume nuclear testing. The two leaders also discuss the challenges of agricultural development.
November 30, 1965	Transcript of Conversation between Zhou Enlai and Jean Chauvel Premier Zhou and a representative from the French foreign ministry, Jean Chauvel, talk about the Vietnam War. Zhou voices China's support for Vietnamese people's requests for U.S. troops to withdraw from Vietnam and not interfere in Vietnamese internal issues. Zhou says that the U.S. has not comply to Vietnam's request and has on the contrary expanded the war. Chauvel agrees with Zhou that the final decision about the Vietnamese War should be made by Vietnamese people. Chauvel says that the priority should be to stop the current war and calls for a ceasefire to solve the issue. Zhou cites the U.S. expansion of troops and continued involvement in Vietnam as the cause of heightened tension in Vietnam War.
April 2, 1965	Transcript of Conversation between Zhou Enlai and Muhammad Ayub Khan Conversation between Zhou Enlai and Pakistan President Muhammad Ayub Khan regarding the Vietnam War. Zhou says that China firmly supports Vietnamese people's war against the U.S. Zhou also states that if the U.S. forces or expands the war to China, then China will resist to the end. China will not actively start a war with the U.S. but it is prepared in the case war happens.
October 20, 1963	Transcript of Conversation between Zhou Enlai and Buddhist Association Representatives at the Asian Buddhist Conference Zhou Enlai talks with representatives from several Buddhist Associations in Asia. They discuss the percentage of their population that practices Buddhism. Zhou criticizes President of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, for oppressing Buddhist religious leaders and followers. The representatives and Zhou emphasize strengthening friendly exchanges among Buddhist circles in various countries.
December 19, 1967	[Mao Zedong's] Congratulatory Telegram to Chairman Nguyễn Hữu Thọ on the Seventh Anniversary of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam Mao congratulates Nguyễn Hữu Thọ for the success of the National Liberation Front. He voices a firm conviction that the Vietnamese people will eventually drive the Americans from their country and affirms Chinese support for their struggle.
August 29, 1963	Statement [from Mao Zedong] Opposing [the Combined Efforts] of the United States and Ngô Đình Diệm to Subjugate and Massacre the People of Southern Vietnam Mao echoes a recent statement from Ho Chi Minh, opposing American imperialist aggression in South Vietnam. He urges revolutionaries around to support South Vietnamese [communists] in their struggle against the Americans and Ngo Dinh Diem. (Note: Originally published in the People's Daily on August 30, 1963.)
August 3, 1965	Conversation from [Mao Zedong's] Audience with the French Minister of [Cultural] Affairs, [Georges André] Malraux Mao and Malraux discuss a variety of topics, ranging from the Chinese revolution to American aggression in Vietnam and Soviet revisionism.