Keywords

8.1 Introduction

On April 28, 1970, a special Soviet government plane landed in Warsaw, bringing Lê Duẩn, First Secretary of the Vietnamese Workers’ Party on a sudden semi-official visit. Usually, such trips were planned and confirmed at least several months ahead. In this unusual case, the North Vietnamese leader arrived just a few days after his request was delivered to the Poles. What was even more peculiar was that the visit was initially supposed to be strictly for leisure, but at the last minute, the Vietnamese announced that it would instead be a working visit, although they still wanted to avoid the pomp and ceremony associated with an official visit by a head of state. Such visits by high-ranking officials of fraternal socialist nations were a feature of the Cold War. Symbolically, such visits were public confirmation of the close and friendly relations between fraternal members of the Socialist bloc. And practically, they were an opportunity to exchange intelligence and to work out the sometimes-thorny details of economic and political cooperation. As a result, Lê Duẩn’s visit represents an opportunity to explore the “actually existing Socialist bloc interactions” of the Cold War.

In the official communist narrative, Polish support for North Vietnam was constant and indisputable, and the Vietnamese struggle against “American imperialist aggression” enjoyed the widespread support of the entire Polish society and party authorities. However, the reality of Warsaw-Hanoi relations was complex. Aid for Vietnam, while dutifully sent from Poland, was a growing burden for the Polish economy. On the political level, Warsaw dreaded the possibility of a localized war spilling from Vietnam and turning into a global conflict. Poles also walked a fine line trying to keep proper relations with the United States, deeming loans and technology from Washington essential for their economic development. As a result, in the 1960s Poles tried several times to bring the warring parties to the negotiating table and to reduce the volume of aid sent to Vietnam. Thus, the rushed organization of Lê Duẩn’s trip, its evolving agenda over the course of his stay in Poland, and its ultimately ambiguous outcomes were all symptomatic of the complexity of Polish-Vietnamese relations from that period.

In this chapter, based on party and diplomatic documents from Polish archives, I provide a brief outline of top-level meetings between Vietnamese-Polish communist leadership since 1965. The focus, however, is on the meeting between Gomułka and Lê Duẩn that took place on 5 May during the latter’s 1970 visit. Lê Duẩn arrived in Warsaw just days before the start of the US incursion into Cambodia. The expansion of the war forced the Vietnamese leader to cut short his stay in Poland, and heavily influenced Lê Duẩn’s meeting with his Polish counterpart, Władysław Gomułka. This chapter summarizes the main points made by both leaders during their three-hour conversation, such as the communist evaluation of the ongoing events in Indochina, American policy, Vietnamese requests for additional Polish support, and the Sino-Soviet split. I pay particular attention to the communist verbal fencing between Gomułka and Lê Duẩn, which reveals that Polish-Vietnamese relations were not as straightforward, i.e., cordial and friendly, as they might appear from the other parts of the transcript.

Both before and during the war against the United States, the aid provided by the Warsaw Pact countries was not comparable to the aid provided by the People’s Republic of China and the USSR. This was due to a combination of factors, such as political arrangements made in Moscow and Beijing, but also the great geographical distance and the poor state of the economies of European communist countries, which was the most obvious factor in the willingness or unwillingness to support a distant brotherly country in Asia. In a way this is also reflected in the literature on the subject: while China’s and the USSR’s policy toward Vietnam both before and during the war against the United States has been the subject of several books in recent decades, by authors such as Gaiduk (2003), Li (2020) and Zhai (2000), the topic of the DRV’s relations with smaller European communist countries is still not researched both in depth and in the broad sense. The few scholars from those countries who deal with the topic, usually write about very specific subjects, like Grossheim (2014), who published about East German “Stasi” support for the Vietnamese security apparatus, Szőke (2010), who wrote about Hungarian diplomatic efforts during the Second Indochina War, or Kudrna (2010) who published about Czechoslovak members of the French Foreign Legion fighting in Indochina. Those and other scholars have produced small pieces of knowledge that are slowly filling the wide gaps in the big picture of Vietnamese-European communist relations and the aid provided by the Warsaw Pact countries for Hanoi during its war struggle. I hope this article will offer another such piece, expanding our knowledge on the subject and bringing light to the otherwise unknown topic for English-speaking scholars.

This article was prepared thanks to the archival research done as part of research project 2018/29/N/HS3/02920 funded by the National Science Center, Poland. The transcript of the 1970 Gomułka—Lê Duẩn meeting, along with transcripts of two other top-level Polish-Vietnamese meetings from 1968 to 1969, were translated and are available online in the Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Archive in Lubbock, Texas.

8.2 Before the “American War”

The establishment of a proper state after the 1954 Geneva Conference poised a set of new challenges for Vietnamese communists, completely different from their guerilla war against the French. Governing a country proved to be even more challenging than leading a war against the French, especially in a country so devastated by war as North Vietnam. In January 1955, Ho Chi Minh addressed those challenges at a meeting with ambassadors from European socialist countries, asking them to provide urgent assistance to his fledgling state. This somehow improvised aid later developed into more stable support, provided by European communist countries to the newest member of their camp.

The Polish People’s Republic was present in Vietnam since 1954 as a member of the International Commission for Supervision and Control (ICSC) in Indochina (along with India and Canada). The work in ICSC added another dimension to Polish-Vietnamese relations and meant that Poland, at least on a diplomatic level, was much more engaged in Indochina than other Eastern Bloc countries (Słowiak 2021). The relations between Poland and Vietnam were not, however, free of tension. In particular, the events of 1956: the coming to power of Władysław Gomułka, and his Polish Road to Socialism, led to a cooling of bilateral relations for several years.

Comrade Wiesław (Gomułka’s widely used nom de guerre from World War II) survived Stalin’s pre-war purge of the Communist Party of Poland as he was jailed at the time in a Polish prison. During World War II, Gomułka helped to rebuild the communist party in German-occupied Poland, and after the war, he held several top party and governmental positions. He was however seen as a rival by the Stalinist faction in the newly created Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP), and as a result, he was sacked from all positions, expelled from the party, and finally imprisoned in 1951. Why Gomułka survived remains a matter of debate, but he was released from prison finally in 1954. In 1956 he returned to the top, being elected by the PUWP Central Committee for the post of First Secretary during the events that went down in history as Polish October, after tense negotiations with the Soviet Politburo which flew to Warsaw as Red Army troops were marching on Polish capital.

The circumstances of Gomułka’s return to power and his consistent emphasis on the “Polish Road to Socialism,” which included an agreement with the Catholic Church, cessation of collectivization of Polish agriculture, and enthusiastic acceptance of Khrushchev’s Secret Speech, made Hanoi deeply suspicious of the new Polish leadership. This mistrust was reinforced by the events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and unrest in Vietnam in the aftermath of the excesses of land reform and the Party’s eventual clampdown on more liberal parts of society. In the internal Vietnamese propaganda, the events of the Polish October and Hungarian Revolution were perceived as anticommunist counterrevolution and subsequent policies of Gomułka as dangerous deviations from the proper communist path (Słowiak 2022).

Polish-Vietnamese relations were normalized only with the start of the new decade, both because Gomulka halted liberalization policies in Poland and turned to a more dogmatic, communist line, but also because Hanoi, gearing up for the confrontation with Saigon, recognized that it was imperative to obtain support from whoever it could, even as it continued to look with distrust on certain aspects of the Polish communist system. However, due to the great distance, Poland’s own potential, and economic woes, actual material support was not very significant, especially since Warsaw was keen to keep the trade balance between both countries as equal as possible. This changed drastically after the American escalation in March 1965. Poland also hosted Vietnamese students, but until the escalation of hostilities in Vietnam in 1965, those were not received in high numbers.

8.3 The War Starts

Large-scale aerial bombing of North Vietnam and the American decision to put boots on the ground in Vietnam in March 1965 were not left unanswered by Moscow, and consequently, the whole Eastern Bloc. The Kremlin was motivated to provide significant support to Hanoi not only as a response to American actions but also because of its growing competition with Beijing about which country was the real leader of the communist bloc and vanguard of the world revolution. As a result, the two communist superpowers were in open rivalry with each other in Vietnam, a fact that was eagerly exploited by Hanoi to obtain more and more aid.

Where Moscow pointed, her European satellites followed, and soon a stream of economic and military aid flowed to Vietnam. While support provided by individual countries like Poland or Czechoslovakia might seem negligible when compared to that provided by the USSR and China, when put together, smaller communist countries delivered a significant volume of materiel and money. For example, between 1965 and 1970, Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary provided the Democratic Republic of Vietnam with loans amounting to 300 million rubles, almost half of the amount provided in the same period by the USSR (AMSZ 1). In regard to weapons shipments, in 1970 the same countries, without Romania, provided military aid worth 43% of what the USSR sent to DRV (51.5 and 120 million rubles respectively), although it should be noted that Moscow drastically reduced the number of weapon shipments in that year, compared to 1969 (from 360 to 120 million rubles) (AMSZ 2). It still was a considerable amount, and therefore it was not surprising that the communist leadership in Hanoi devoted considerable effort to maintaining and increasing the aid provided by its European allies.

Poland’s aid to Vietnam took a variety of forms. Before the war it was mostly loans for the purchase of Polish goods, equipment, and industrial plants, hosting Vietnamese students in Poland, and sending Polish specialists to help with their know-how in building and operating various industrial plants. For example, in the first quarter of 1961, eighty-five Polish specialists were present in Vietnam who carried out the following tasks: construction and commissioning of a sugar refinery, modernization of power plants, operation of boiler rooms, and geophysical surveys (AAN 1). Poland also planned to fund and build a large hospital in Vinh in the early 1960s; however, the project suffered from numerous bureaucratic setbacks and delays, and was abandoned completed after the start of the air campaign by the United States. During the war, the half-finished complex was bombed, and Poles returned to complete this hospital only after the end of hostilities in the 1970s.

Negotiating the terms of European communist support and cultivating the good relations on which it depended required frequent trips of various technical and military delegations that negotiated details of military, economic and humanitarian support, but also visits by high-ranking political leaders who made sure that the stream of aid for Vietnam would not dry up.

In the Polish case, Warsaw was visited regularly by Lê Thanh Nghị, a Politburo member of the Vietnamese Workers’ Party and deputy prime minister in charge of industry. He visited Poland for the first time in 1961 as a member of a delegation led by prime minister Phạm Văn Đồng. After the escalation of the war in the 1960s, his trips to Warsaw became more frequent, and he met with the Polish communist leadership practically every year. According to Polish archival files, Lê Thanh Nghị visited Poland in January and October 1966, June 1968, and October 1969. His absence in Poland in 1967 can be explained by the visit of a Polish delegation to Hanoi, headed by PUWP Politburo member and Central Committee secretary Zenon Kliszko, that met with Lê Duẩn and other Vietnamese leaders in June of that year. Poland also received at least two official delegations from the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam.

Reading through the minutes of those meetings, it is striking how the Vietnamese were always very careful about cultivating proper relations with their hosts and underlining their admiration and gratitude for Polish support, both as members of the International Commission for Supervision and Control in Vietnam, and as allies and providers of aid. Vietnamese diligence can be explained by several factors. Poland was the largest Soviet satellite in Europe; Polish ships carried materiel not only from Poland but also Czechoslovakia; and last but not least, even if the ICSC was becoming more and more irrelevant with each passing year, it still carried some weight in international relations and remained one of the many fronts in the diplomatic war Hanoi was waging against the United States.

Furthermore, the Vietnamese were aware of Polish fears that conflict in Vietnam would turn into a world war, with potentially catastrophic results for Poland. While that possibility receded somewhat after the United States engaged in a land war in South Vietnam but limited itself in North Vietnam and in regard to China, the Hanoi leadership understood that this fear still lingered in the minds of their Polish counterparts. Driven by this anxiety, but also Polish state interests toward Western World, Poles tried several times to broker a direct meeting or negotiations between the warring sides, with the most well-known example being the top-secret diplomatic maneuvers in 1966 known as Operation Marigold and described in depth by James Hershberg (2012).

Finally, Poland was deeply entrenched in the peaceful coexistence camp of the USSR and backed Moscow in its rivalry with Beijing. Since China was an indispensable ally of Hanoi, especially in the early period of American intervention, this made political talks on the subject between the Poles and the Vietnamese a delicate matter.

The Vietnamese however had several advantages, or we could say, tools, at their disposal in the talks with the Poles. Obviously, they could (and did) raise the issue of fraternal communist solidarity in the face of American aggression. This was treated very seriously by Gomułka, who, while being a pragmatist, was at the same time a devout old-school communist. That meant that while he wasn’t happy about the conflict dragging on, he perceived it as his unavoidable obligation to deliver aid to a fellow communist country fighting against external assault.

Vietnamese amplified this argument by invoking parallels in the two nations’ past. And there were plenty of them: subjugation and long occupation by a foreign power, attempted cultural domination by the occupier, numerous uprisings, and finally, a seemingly uneven fight against a stronger enemy culminating in regaining independence—all of those resonated strongly with Poles, who recalled vividly similar pictures from their own past. These sentiments were in fact also exploited by Polish communists in their internal propaganda about the war in Vietnam. Polish communist propaganda put special emphasis on parallels between the traumatic experience of German conquest and occupation during World War II, still vividly remembered in Polish society, and the American way of waging the war in Vietnam. In popular books describing Vietnam War, tiger cages were compared to Gestapo torture chambers, American bombings of North Vietnam to German terror bombings in 1939, and pacification of the Vietnamese countryside which involved resettlement of the population and demolition of villages to similar operations performed by Germans in occupied Poland.

This propaganda work was actually made easier by the abundance of photos and film reels produced by the American media that provided visual context and “proof” of communist claims. The results of this propaganda campaign are hard to gauge since communist authorities were not conducting any real opinion surveys, but they had to have some resonance—in the archival files, there is information about grassroots social fundraisers and medical personnel volunteering to go to Vietnam (AAN 2).

And lastly, Polish participation in the International Commission for Supervision and Control, while in many ways beneficial to Poland, also tied Polish international prestige to the situation in Indochina. This was used both by Hanoi and Washington to put pressure on Warsaw. For example, in a letter sent to Marian Spychalski (Polish Chairman of the Council of State) on April 7, 1970, President Richard Nixon wrote that “as a signatory to the 1962 Geneva Accords and a member of the International Commission for Supervision and Control, your government, bears a special responsibility with regard to the Laos issue” (AAN 3). In turn, North Vietnamese, despite the declining relevance of the Commission, consistently emphasized the significance of the work of Poles in the ICSC and also their deep gratitude for these efforts. This was, of course, not only a genuine expression of appreciation or flattery, but also a way of pressuring Poles to remain engaged in Vietnam.

8.4 Gomułka—Lê Thanh Nghị Meetings

Lê Thanh Nghị’s talks with Władysław Gomułka reveal certain patterns which would reemerge in the meeting with Lê Duẩn in 1970. The meetings always started with Lê Thanh Nghị relaying regards and appreciation from Vietnamese top leaders, party, and nation to his hosts for their steadfast support. Then he presented the Vietnamese perspective on current developments in Indochina. It is worth noting that the timing of the visits was not accidental—in 1966 they related to the expansion of the war in the South, in 1968 with the aftermath of the Tet Offensive, and in 1969 with the death of Hồ Chí Minh.

After the presentation of the Vietnamese perspective, Gomułka replied in kind to the regards and thanks delivered by his guest, assuring him of Polish admiration for the Vietnamese people and unwavering support for their struggle. After that, he usually moved to comments and presented the Polish perspective, which usually included a somewhat broader outlook, for example, an evaluation of events in the Middle East or Europe. This was followed by a conversation on specific topics, such as the assessment of the current American policy and objectives in Indochina, Polish assistance, China’s position, etc.

As already mentioned, the Vietnamese side was always very careful to stress their appreciation of Polish help, for example always remembering to point out Polish work in the ICSC, even at a time when the international commission no longer played any meaningful role. Lê Thanh Nghị usually also highlighted the successes of Poland’s growth under Gomułka’s leadership. This was always downplayed by the Polish leader, who pointed to numerous difficulties and challenges in the development of the national economy. Such reaction was not only simple, more or less genuine modesty (Gomułka was known for his frugal lifestyle); Comrade Wiesław was aware that behind every compliment about Polish economic growth lurked a potential request for additional aid to Vietnam. And since the Polish economy struggled with its own serious problems in the 1960s, Gomułka was torn between his loyalty toward fellow communists fighting against imperialistic aggression and the fact that providing support hampered the development of his own country. For example, to fulfill their obligations to Vietnam, from around 1968, Poles were forced to direct the ongoing production of their armaments plants to Vietnam, after depleting existing stocks of weapons and ammunition. This meant serious delays in the modernization and replenishing of their own armed forces (AMSZ 2).

Providing his own opinions and evaluations, Gomułka always stressed that Poles had no desire to influence or force decisions taken by their guests, and underlined that “comrades probably know their own situation better” as he spelled it during a meeting with Lê Thanh Nghị in 1969 (VNCA 1). However, the Polish side usually perceived the Vietnamese depiction of the situation in Vietnam as too optimistic, especially since the Polish presence on both sides of the 17th Parallel (the location of the Demilitarized Zone dividing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from the Republic of Vietnam) allowed Warsaw to independently verify Hanoi’s claims about the supposed victories in the South and losses inflicted on the American and Saigon forces. This is worth emphasising, because despite their claims of honesty, even at these top-level meetings, the Vietnamese presented a mix of truth and outright propaganda. For example, at a meeting in January 1966, in the reality of the rapid increase of US forces and the escalation of fighting in the South, Lê Thanh Nghị opened his statement with “above all, I would like to inform you about the victories achieved recently by the Liberation Army in South Vietnam” (AAN 4). As already mentioned, Poles had their own sources of information, but usually did not openly challenge the propaganda claims of their guests. In one rare instance in 1969, Gomułka disputed the absurdly high number of American losses provided by his interlocutor, to which Lê Thanh Nghị defended his statement, claiming that he meant all casualties combined (killed, wounded, missing) and that the numbers came from “secret US data that we were able to obtain” (VNCA 1).

Over the course of meetings, Gomułka also expressed his worry about the apparent disregard of the Hanoi leadership for their own losses, both casualties in the South, and those inflicted by the bombing of North Vietnam. Long-lasting destruction inflicted on Poland and its population during the Second World War shaped Gomułka’s opinions on the matter. In an ironic twist, in one Polish report sent back to Warsaw, the Vietnamese dismissed the danger posed by the American bombing, citing Polish experience: “So what if they bomb our cities, from which the population was evacuated. The capital cities of Warsaw and Pyongyang were completely razed and they were rebuilt even more beautiful” (AAN 5). Being aware of such sentiments, the Polish leader cautioned his guests that they should put serious effort into preserving both their civilian population and military manpower:

The substance of the nation is the most valuable thing. It takes many years to rebuild it. We know this from our own experience which shapes our attitude and our policy. We know what it means to lose qualified cadres, scientists, and intelligentsia. This shows later in the future and creates a worse position compared to those nations that have lost fewer people. I’m talking about it because you said military victory is decisive. This is right, but you always have to calculate how much it costs and how much you have to pay for it (VNCA 1).

Poles also thought that their Vietnamese counterparts underestimated American resolve and the seriousness of Washington’s involvement in Vietnam:

In our opinion, however, neither military spending, although it is large, or considerable loss of life do not constitute a decisive factor that would force the United States to stop the war, to withdraw from Vietnam, and to accept a solution based on the ten-point program. (…) That is why these twenty-thirty billion dollars are not such a burden for the United States which will break them down and force them to make concessions, lose their prestige, and surrender. They can bear such burdens for many years, and permanently introduce them into their budget expenditure… The prestige of the United States is at stake. Total withdrawal would be a capitulation. This is not even about the loss of Vietnam itself, but about the matter of the US prestige, which is already torn quite a bit (VNCA 1).

One topic that was always a sensitive and a complicated subject for both sides, was the role of China in the Vietnam War and in the whole communist camp. Beijing was the most important ally of Hanoi in the first half of the 1960s, and even when the USSR started to surpass it as the main supplier of military hardware, China remained influential, providing economic and military aid, anti-aircraft and engineering troops for protection of the northern parts of DRV, and an ideological position far more in line with the DRV’s war against the Americans than the peaceful coexistence promoted by the USSR. While the fact of Chinese support for Hanoi was well known even during the conflict, the real scale of Beijing’s effort has only recently been revealed by scholarship about its support—political, economic (Zhai 2000), and especially military (Li 2020).

In contrast, the People’s Republic of Poland was firmly entrenched in the Soviet camp. It depended on Moscow’s protection of its western border with Germany, sincerely advocated the easing of international tensions, and looked with anxiety at Beijing’s belligerent rhetoric and confrontational attitude both outside and inside of the communist camp. In Polish-Vietnamese talks, the subject of China came up in 1966, but both sides, understanding their differences on the topic, did not push for in-depth discussion.

The Tet Offensive in 1968, despite being a military disaster for the communist side, turned out to be a political and propaganda victory for Hanoi. However, this success came with a price and a new set of risks. As Pierre Asselin convincingly argues, the North Vietnamese agreement to start peace talks in 1968 never meant they actually wanted to negotiate a peace agreement in Paris at that point (Asselin 2018). For Hanoi, those talks were only another diplomatic front that was supposed to corner the United States and at the same time please Moscow, which has been trying to persuade the Vietnamese to resolve the conflict diplomatically for a long time (Gaiduk 1996).

However, it turned out that this charade also carried considerable risks. Beijing vehemently opposed any kind of diplomatic solution and saw the Vietnamese decision to open negotiations as a clear sign that Hanoi was leaning into Moscow-style defeatism. Mao’s suspicions were not alleviated by Vietnamese assurances that the Paris talks were only a deception to put the United States in a disadvantageous international position, and in 1969–1970 Beijing reduced the volume of aid and pulled out from the North Vietnam the bulk of the Chinese anti-air and engineering troops.

On the other hand, inconclusive, drawn-out negotiations were also testing the patience of Hanoi’s allies from the Eastern Bloc, where most countries, Poland included, were eagerly waiting for a negotiated end to the war. With each passing month, their patience—and willingness to contribute to the Vietnamese war effort—was wearing thinner, especially when it became more and more obvious that the lack of results in Paris could not be blamed solely on Washington.

Two additional events from 1969 put Hanoi in an even more precarious position. First was the short but fierce border conflict between the USSR and China in March, which threatened to divert the world’s attention away from Vietnam and ignite a full-scale conflict between the two main sponsors of the DRV. The second was the death of Hồ Chí Minh in September. Although sidelined from actual power by Lê Duẩn since 1964, the Vietnamese President was still a potent symbol of the Vietnamese struggle, especially abroad. His passing dealt a severe blow to the DRV’s cause and the loss of a formidable diplomatic tool, particularly in regard to communist and Third World countries.

Considering all the above, it is no wonder that North Vietnamese, Lê Duẩn included, had to put much more effort into maintaining relations with their allies. After Moscow decided to slash military aid for North Vietnam in 1970, alarm bells rang in Hanoi, since the Vietnamese Politburo was painfully aware that any reduction of USSR aid most likely meant that other Eastern Bloc countries would soon follow suit. This seems to be the main reason behind the sudden and unexpected arrival of Lê Duẩn in Warsaw in April 1970.

8.5 Lê Duẩn’s Visit to Warsaw

The Vietnamese Workers’ Party First Secretary was on an official visit in Moscow, when, on April 25th, the Polish embassy in Hanoi was informed that Lê Duẩn would like to come to Poland on the 27th or 28th of April for a short vacation. The Vietnamese asked for discretion, which was interpreted by the Foreign Department of PUWP as a sign that the visit would have an unofficial character (AAN 6). The Polish leadership customarily invited Vietnamese leaders to visit Poland for the purpose of leisure, but this was a courtesy offer the Vietnamese rarely took up, especially on such short notice.

Still, preliminary plans of the visit were quickly drawn up: they envisaged a short stay in Warsaw and then sending Lê Duẩn and his entourage to a state-owned recreational complex in Łańsk, and a draft list was compiled of people who would welcome Lê Duẩn at the airport and take part in a possible meeting with Władysław Gomułka. A telegram from the Vietnamese embassy in Moscow followed the same day, in which Lê Duẩn transmitted thanks for the invitation. He informed his hosts that he and a delegation of fifteen would most likely arrive on the 28th and stay for ten days (AAN 7).

Then the events took a curious turn: on the 27th of April, a day before Lê Duẩn’s scheduled arrival, the Polish embassy in Moscow was suddenly informed by the Vietnamese that while the visit would remain unofficial, nevertheless it was “not for leisure but to discuss with our leadership the issues they are interested in” (AAN 8). Lê Duẩn also asked for a chance to visit several industrial and agricultural facilities. Considering the late notification and the sudden change of the purpose of the visit, it seems that the Vietnamese hoped to catch the Polish leadership off guard and to discuss several important subjects before their hosts would have the time to prepare themselves substantively to counter possible Vietnamese arguments.

If the Vietnamese had intended to surprise the Poles, it probably had little effect. Warsaw apparently anticipated the expansion of Vietnamese demands from prior top-level conversations and planned the visit accordingly. The meeting with Gomułka was scheduled to take place on 5 May, after several days of Lê Duẩn touring various industrial and agricultural plants and meeting with Vietnamese students in Poland. In addition, in the meantime, the American invasion of Cambodia started, which forced Lê Duẩn to cut his visit short and probably disrupted his focus on European affairs. The meeting between the two leaders took place in the headquarters of the Central Committee of PUWP in Warsaw and lasted almost three hours. It was also attended by Zenon Kliszko, a politburo member and Gomułka’s right-hand man, and Józef Czesak, head of the Foreign Department of the PUWP. They discussed four main topics: the situation in Cambodia, the United States, China, and Polish support for Vietnam.

The meeting started with Gomułka’s request for an explanation of the situation in Cambodia. Lê Duẩn claimed that they were more surprised by the Lon Nol coup against Prince Norodom Sihanouk in March than the American invasion itself, which they anticipated for some time. The Vietnamese leader assured his hosts that South Vietnamese and American thrusts were directed in the wrong places, that they made a mistake and attacked empty regions. He then claimed that the Vietnamese will “open the gate, we will let them through, and then we will attack” (VNCA 1). Lê Duẩn furthermore claimed that the extension of the war to Cambodia was only another American blunder, that they had suffered a string of defeats in this war and that this was another mistake that would turn into another disaster. This is a similar line that Lê Thanh Nghị presented to Gomułka at the beginning of the war and during their meetings in 1968 and 1969. Although it is understandable that the Vietnamese wanted to sell the optimistic vision of their struggle, it is still a bit surprising how dishonest sometimes they were toward their own allies, especially on such a high level as during meeting with a fellow first secretary. Gomułka did not challenge Lê Duẩn’s evaluation of the whole war and the ongoing Cambodian incursion, but from his follow-up questions, we can sense that he wasn’t 100% convinced by the vision presented by his interlocutor. Gomułka asked several more detailed questions, which indicated his deeper insight into the subject, but yet concluded on the topic of Cambodia with the remark “I thank comrade Lê Duẩn very much for such interesting information. We were not well-versed on how things are developing in Cambodia” (VNCA 1). Given that the Poles were getting their information through the ICSC in Saigon and also had their own embassy in Phnom Penh, Gomułka was most likely as “well-versed” on the topic as it was possible at the time.

Both sides differed in their evaluation of the US. Lê Duẩn presented the opinion that the war in Vietnam was only a first step in the global American attack on the whole socialist world, that “planned to shatter the gains of socialism in North Vietnam and to attack socialist China,” which was prevented only by the heroic defiance of the DRV. Lê Duẩn was adamant in his opinion that Americans were suffering only defeats in Vietnam, and that they were not able to sustain the costly war, while North Vietnam was able to keep fighting for the next four-five years or longer, and that this would not interfere with its development. The Vietnamese first secretary also restated the assertion that annual conscription rates for the PAVN far exceeded the casualties they were suffering in the struggle to liberate the South. Lê Duẩn claimed annual casualties at the 50–60,000 level, while in North Vietnam they conscripted 150,000 men each year, and as such, Vietnamese casualties were not a problem. We can only imagine how such an argument was received by Gomułka, who rarely missed an opportunity to caution the Vietnamese against the needless loss of life, as was already pointed out above.

Gomułka was much more cautious in his estimate of both US potential and will, and cautioned that Nixon still had almost two years to try and force a military solution of the conflict before the presidential election might push him to seek a diplomatic solution. Even though he admitted that in the context of Cambodia, “Americans were wrong in all of their calculations,” he warned that this would not force the US to pull out, but only to consider other options. Gomułka also cautioned against overestimating the role of elections in the United States, pointing out that Nixon had de facto continued the policies of previous presidents. In his opinion, the United States had invested too much prestige to be able to afford an outright failure in Vietnam, and as such Lê Duẩn should consider other strategies for ending the conflict. Gomułka also cautioned his counterpart that airstrikes on North Vietnam could resume at any time. For Gomulka, Nixon had decided to expand the war to Cambodia simply because he had the military capacity and because he felt that the divided socialist camp was no longer a threat. This assertion led naturally to a discussion of China.

The Poles laid the blame for the lack of unity of the socialist camp solely on Beijing. Gomułka was clearly emotional about the issue, recalling that “we even took initiatives, comrade Kliszko was in Beijing, but we were met only with insults.” While the souring of Vietnamese relations with the PRC in 1968 meant that Lê Duẩn seemed more receptive to the Polish position, nevertheless he refused to condemn China openly. He agreed that the lack of a united front between the PRC and USSR benefited the United States and that there was a group in Beijing motivated by an “anti-Soviet spirit” that sought to prevent a consensus between the two Socialist nations. Both first secretaries agreed that the Chinese stance on the Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968 was wrong and that the decision made by Moscow and its allies was the right one. Clearly frustrated, Gomułka declared at one point: “Just as your victories in Vietnam are our victories in Europe, our defeats in Europe are your defeats in Vietnam. Do Chinese comrades not understand this?” Still, both sides of the conversation tried to find some glimmers of hope in the recent May Day celebrations in Beijing, during which the critique of Poland and the USSR was supposedly much milder than in previous years.

Lê Duẩn knew about Polish intentions to reduce the amount of aid sent to Vietnam, and it is safe to say that one of the main reasons behind his sudden visit to Warsaw was an effort to prevent this from happening. After Gomułka asked if Lê Duẩn had any questions, the first secretary complained about various economic difficulties in North Vietnam and bluntly asked the Poles to design, construct and operate a coal mine in Vietnam. However, he soon found himself on the defensive. The Poles had clearly anticipated such a request, and Gomułka quickly cornered his interlocutor with a series of technical questions and advice provided on the spot. Gomułka was clearly prepared for this subject to appear and determined to deflect any definitive commitment, suggesting for example, that Hanoi should seize the opportunity of investment by Japan mentioned during the talk. In the end, the topic of coal mines was dropped without any commitment from the Polish side.

Lê Duẩn’s other requests for aid, veiled behind praise for various Polish achievements such as the reconstruction of Warsaw after the city’s destruction during World War II were not any more successful. Gomułka countered Lê Duẩn’s compliments with showcase modesty, denying Poland deserved such extravagant praise and underlining the various challenges and difficulties still to be overcome.

Clearly, Lê Duẩn’s meeting with Gomulka had not gone how he hoped for. His personal, albeit hidden frustration, manifested itself during his closing statements. While profusely thanking his host for material and moral support, the Vietnamese leader at one point described that, among many things he saw during his short time in Poland, was also “how independently [Polish] peasants work.” This seemingly innocuous remark was actually a jab at his host. Gomulka’s decision to halt the collectivization of agriculture and the resulting independence of Polish peasants was perceived as a dangerous deviation from communist norms in other “fraternal countries” by many communist leaders. Lê Duẩn’s veiled criticism was recognized and clearly annoyed his host, and Gomulka dismissed the remark as a “subject specific to us… We have our own policy, adapted to our conditions and capabilities” (VNCA 1). Communist fraternity, it would seem, only went so far.

The verbal sparring of the two leaders reflected the underlying political and economic realities of relations between the two countries. Despite Lê Duẩn’s personal appeals, Polish officials proceeded with plans to reduce their aid budget to Vietnam for 1971. While this ultimately did not happen—Polish aid remained on the level of the previous year—that was driven by the decision by the USSR to increase its own support to North Vietnam, making any reduction by its Eastern Bloc allies impossible.

8.6 Conclusion

In the end, the reduction of aid provided by the Poles, so feared by the Vietnamese, did not happen. However, this was not the result of Lê Duẩn’s clearly unsatisfactory talks with Gomułka. Nor was it the effect of Gomułka’s ousting from power after the 1970 Polish protest in December of that year. It simply turned out that the USSR instead of reducing, actually increased the aid provided to Hanoi in 1971, and all Moscow’s European satellites had to follow suit, or at least not reduce the earlier amount, as was the Polish case.

Yet even if Lê Duẩn’s visit was unsuccessful, in combination with earlier visits by Lê Thanh Nghị it is still an interesting case study of the way Hanoi managed its relations with other members of the communist bloc. As it turns out, even a theoretically close and trusted ally like Poland was not really treated with much trust. While some of this mistrust can be explained both by the Vietnamese experience of being exploited by external powers and additional lingering suspicion of Poles dating back to 1956, it is still surprising that even in the very top-level meetings Vietnamese often served their partners sometimes blatantly obvious propaganda. This tactic makes even less sense if we consider that Poles, being present in Vietnam below the 17th Parallel, had the means to verify many of Hanoi’s claims.

Despite that, based on archival material, it seems that the North Vietnamese used propaganda (or to be more precise: victory propaganda) against all of their allies, Poland included, just as much as they employed it against the rest of the world. Most likely Hanoi was afraid that showing any sign of weakness or setback would be used against it, i.e., used by its allies as leverage to force the Vietnamese to accept a diplomatic solution and robbing them of the fruits of their struggle. In effect, Hanoi had to maintain the narrative about both constant sacrifice (to ask for aid or for an increase of it) and a stream of victories (to prove the aid is working and as such, is still needed). Historical similarities with Poles were from this perspective a very useful tool to exploit, alongside communist fraternity.

For their part, Poles were in a sort of trap. While they felt genuine sympathy for the Vietnamese struggle, at the same time the drawn-out conflict was a problem for them, hurting Poland economically and politically while providing very limited benefits. But their “fraternal duty” of supporting fellow communist countries and the scale of this support depended more on decisions taken in Moscow, than by Poles themselves.

In the end, the Vietnamese knew that Poles could not challenge their propaganda claims (at least openly) because that would go against the whole communist narrative about the Vietnam War, and as a cog in the machine of the Warsaw Pact, Warsaw could not do that. At the same time, the Poles accepted that they would have to send aid to Vietnam as long as the Kremlin deemed so necessary, but that did not stop them from searching for ways to reduce the burden, like trying to arrange for peace negotiations between the warring sides.

Internal differences in communist ideology added an extra layer to those relations. Socialist countries differed from each other, just like there were no two identical democracies in the West. Still, for the outside world, the Eastern Bloc usually tried to present an image of unity and harmony, despite sometimes serious differences that actually influenced their real relations. In the case of Poland and North Vietnam, Gomułka’s “deviations from the proper line,” like individual farmers, were not forgotten even a decade later, as we can see from the jab Lê Duẩn took at his host in 1970. On the other hand, Poles were not exactly enthusiasts of Vietnamese war communism, especially their apparent disregard for the loss of human life, and their close ideological ties with Beijing. However, in the end, despite all those differences, and probably with a fake or forced smile from time to time, Warsaw and Hanoi cooperated with each other.