ABSTRACT
The end of the First Indochina War in 1954 entrenched the bipolarity that had, since 1950, defined the global Cold War environment. Chinese, Soviet, and DRV cooperation temporarily overshadowed historical and doctrinal differences, which would first divide China from the Soviet Union and later provoke open hostility between Hanoi and Beijing. Although the Sino-Soviet alliance in Asia failed to outlast the 1950s, it reached an apogee at Geneva in 1954, when three communist governments achieved a formidable tactical unity. After Nikita Khrushchev visited China in October 1954, the Soviets increased their aid to China by over a hundred times and pledged to help the PRC develop atomic weapons. 1
