Arming the free world : the origins of the United States Military assistance program, 1945-1949

The Third Indochina Conflict

Vietnam and China, 1938-1954

Soviet Policy in the Far East, 1944-1951.

Earlier historical studies often suggested that the Soviet leader Iosif Stalin, distrustful as he was of Ho Chi Minh's policies and attributing little importance to Vietnam, remained unwilling to r...

The "Sole Legal Government of Vietnam": The Bao Dai Factor and Soviet Attitudes toward Vietnam, 1947–1950

Editor’s Note: The academic literature on the end of the Cold War has focused predominantly on the Cold War in Europe. Few studies have appeared of Soviet policy toward Asia in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Sergey Radchenko’s book Unwanted Visionaries partly redresses this imbalance by offering a detailed account of how the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried but ultimately failed to restructure Soviet relations with Asian countries. Radchenko contends that even if the USSR had not disintegrated, Gorbachev’s efforts in Asia would have encountered formidable obstacles. The Cold War ended in Europe in 1989 but continued to shape Soviet ties with China, Japan, North Korea, India, and other countries. To understand why Gorbachev’s efforts in Asia proved of no avail, we asked two prominent experts on the Cold War in Asia to offer their appraisals of Radchenko’s book. Their commentaries are followed by Radchenko’s reply.

Balázs Szalontai

Papers

The "Sole Legal Government of Vietnam": The Bao Dai Factor and Soviet Attitudes toward Vietnam, 1947–1950

The USSR, Asia, and the End of the Cold War: Perspectives on Unwanted Visionaries