This paper aims to analyze the historical significance of Ho Chi Minh's first visit to Moscow in February 1950 as the President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, especially some factors that motivated him to make a dangerous and long journey to Moscow via Beijing and the content of his dialogue with Stalin, utilizing the recently released archival sources related to Stalin in Russia.
Originally Ho Chi Minh's visit to the USSR was planned to deal with the following matters: 1) the political and military situation in Vietnam and the perspective on the future of the Vietnamese revolution, including the Indochinese Communist Party's (ICP) role there; 2) Soviet support for the ICP and the DRV; and 3) the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and the DRV. During his stay in Beijing at the end of January 1950, however, the third matter was withdrawn because the USSR officially recognized the DRV on 30 January 1950. With the help and arrangement of Liu Shaoqi, Ho Chi Minh departed for Moscow by train on 3 February. He was supposed to have arrived in Moscow on 13 February at the earliest. In Moscow, Ho had talks with Stalin on the above-mentioned matters, presumably accompanied by Mao Zedong, who had also stayed there since December 1949 for the Sino-Soviet treaty negotiations.
In the talks with Ho Chi Minh in Moscow, Stalin basically agreed with Ho's revolutionary strategy and the results gained by his forces, but at the same time demanded the agricultural revolution be implemented, emphasizing the class struggle between peasants and landlords. So why did Stalin refer to the agricultural revolution, the contents of which were completely incompatible with the policy of building a broad national united front adopted by the ICP at that time? On this matter we must note Stalin's own comments (February 1951) to the draft platform of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI). In fact it was a joint document prepared by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the representatives dispatched from the PKI to Beijing in October 1950. Interestingly Stalin's comments show his disagreement to the formation of "the broadest united front" or the guerrilla warfare strategy pursued by the national liberation army based in the rural areas in Indonesia, most of which clearly originated from Maoist revolutionary strategy. It seems that Stalin never agreed to apply Maoist revolutionary strategy to other communist parties in Asia although he made much of the CCP leaders like Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi or Zhou Enlai, and allowed them to support other countries like the DRV or North Korea politically and materially.
On the other hand, after returning to the Viet Bac liberated zone by the beginning of April 1950, Ho Chi Minh was to take a series of actions to realize Stalin's order, including military liberation of the Sino-Vietnamese border area and the "land reform", i.e. the DRV's version of an agricultural revolution, with the help of the Chinese Military Advisory Group.