ABSTRACT
Hanoi's initial policy on the Sino-Soviet dispute was to minimize its importance publicly while working behind the scenes to heal the breach. This remains official policy, although today there is no distinguishable difference between the Hanoi and Moscow characterizations of the rift. Since pragmatism ruled, it probably did not matter much what anyone in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam actually thought about the Sino-Soviet dispute. At first, the gestures of mediation were informal, consisting of public and private suggestions put forward by Ho Chi Minh and other Democratic Republic of Vietnam officials while visiting Moscow and Beijing. It appears that by the mid 1960s the Democratic Republic of Vietnam leaders had concluded that, for their purposes, the dispute had become permanent,6 and it was then that they began to shift from mediation to exploitation. This independent posture was seen by many outsiders as the product of a Politburo-level doctrinal dispute between pro-Chinese and pro-Soviet elements.
