Читать книгу Voices from the Vietnam War - Xiaobing Li - Страница 20

Russian Missile Officers

in Vietnam

I was panicked and didn't know what to do in Kyiv, the capital city of Ukraine, after we were told that “Major T.” could not be interviewed at that time. Anthony Song, my contact person and Russian translator, was not.1 After several telephone calls, Anthony told me that Major T. had agreed to come to see us the next morning. “It's not me,” the major explained when we met at our hotel. “My superior got to take a look at the list of your questions. He didn't want me to get into any trouble.” Loyal and active in the local veteran chapter, Major T. also asked me to let him remain anonymous and have no picture in the book.2

The Soviet Union officially denied any direct involvement in the Vietnam War. Since its collapse in 1991, Russia and other former Soviet republics like Ukraine and Kazakhstan have maintained the same position. The Russian government has concealed the participation of the former Soviet Union's military in the war.3 Soviet official records on the Vietnam War are closed to the public and scholars. Most Russian veterans do not want to talk about their experiences in Vietnam, and I now know why. In 2007, Moscow published a book on the Soviet involvement in the Vietnam War. With official permission, for the first time, twenty-nine veterans provided their personal stories of the Soviet war experience in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973.4

After the Moscow-Hanoi agreement in February 1965, the Soviet Union began sending its SAM missile troops, air-defense radar units, launch site technicians, training instructors, pilots, aircraft maintenance personnel, and logistics officers to North Vietnam. The total number of Soviet troops in Vietnam, however, is still inconclusive due to a lack of accurate sources. Russian archives provide few details about their military operations in Vietnam since the defense documents remain closed to the public and scholars.5 Some Russian historians still use Western sources for their research on this topic.6 The Chinese sources base their figures on the number of Russian officers and soldiers who traveled from the Soviet Union to Vietnam by railway through China. Their statistics show that about 3,500 Soviet military personnel entered Vietnam in the spring of 1965. The total increased to 4,100 in 1967.7 This number does not include the Russians who traveled to Vietnam by air. U.S. intelligence believed that 1,500 to 2,500 Soviet military personnel were in Vietnam in September 1965, including 150 pilots and 300 technicians engaged in communication and other support activities.8

Major T.

Training Instructor, SAM Missile Training Center, North Vietnam, Russian Armed Forces (Soviet Union)

I was born in Ukraine, the former Soviet Union, in 1944. My father was an engineer at an aircraft manufacture company in our hometown. After my middle school in 1959, instead of going to high school, I enrolled in a local aviation mechanic school, something like vo-tech or a professional school in your country. With a strong interest in machinery and aviation technology, I did a good job on my grades during the three-year studies. I was also recruited by the party branch in the school and became a Communist Party member in the last year of my school. Having graduated from mechanic school in 1962, I found out that the military service offered a better opportunity than other jobs available in aviation industry at that time.