Not so Honest Relations: Top-Level Polish-Vietnamese Contacts 1965–1970

At the beginning of May 1970, the First Secretary of the Vietnamese Workers’ Party, Lê Duẩn, met in Warsaw with his Polish counterpart, Władysław Gomułka. During the meeting, numerous topics were discussed, including the American invasion of Cambodia, which had begun only a few days earlier. The meeting did not take place in a vacuum; it had been preceded by several visits to Warsaw by Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Lê Thanh Nghị and was chiefly centered on Polish support for embattled North Vietnam. Gomułka’s meeting with Lê Duẩn and previous visits by Lê Thanh Nghị serve as an interesting case study that reveals the dynamics between smaller communist states, hidden from the outside world. While they showed outward unity and mutual support, there was a much more complex, and sometimes tense, relationship.