Moscow–Hanoi–Tirana Relations in the Context of the Split in the "Socialist Camp"

Declassified documents from Russian archives and official Vietnamese and Albanian materials and memoirs permit consideration of the under-studied topic of relations between the Soviet Union and the ruling Communist regimes in Albania and Vietnam and of Albanian–Vietnamese bilateral relations in the context of the two countries' relations with the USSR and with the People's Republic of China. The split in the international Communist movement from the late 1940s onward meant that, in the early 1960s, the Chinese Communist leadership set out to create a counterweight to Moscow composed of "the true Marxist-Leninist parties". Hanoi and Tirana had to define their places in this Sino–Soviet confrontation. Hanoi maintained normal relations with both Moscow and Tirana until the end of the 1980s, despite the severing of all bilateral ties between the Soviet Union and Albania in the early 1960s.