The publication of A. S. Zaitsev "Remembering Vietnam" (RFK-Image Publishing House, Moscow, 2010) successfully complements the series of publications that appeared last year dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between our country and Vietnam. It so happened that for more than half a century, since entering the Vietnamese department of the Institute of Oriental Languages at Moscow State University in 1956, the fate of its author, Candidate of Economic Sciences, retired Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, was connected with Vietnam. The book is based on the author's personal impressions of three long business trips to Vietnam in the period 1961-1969 and subsequent short trips to this country in the 80s. "Two years of work," recalls A. S. Zaitsev, " after graduating from the Institute in the office of the Adviser on Economic Issues at the Embassy of the USSR in the DRV gave me a wide opportunity not only to study the economy of Vietnam in more depth and get a concrete idea of the scale of reconstruction, reconstruction and construction of industrial and other facilities carried out with the material and technical assistance of our country. Constantly observing the progress of construction, being present at the commissioning of such facilities as the 1st stage of the Wangbi thermal power plant, the Lamthao superphosphate plant, the Tintuk mining and processing plant, the Langkam and Wangzan mines, I was able to get acquainted with the country, visit many of its remote corners." The author describes his work in Hanoi in 1966-1969 during the undeclared US air war against the DRV in the essay "War through the eyes of a young diplomat". As well as about meetings in that wartime period with cosmonaut G. Titov, artist I. Glazunov, writer Yu. Semyonov, the war correspondent of Pravda Alexey Vasiliev, and many others with whom Vietnam brought him together. In the essay "The Unique Mikhstep", the author recalls the years of co ... Read more