Book excerpt: Despite hundreds of studies and analyses of the Vietnam War, we still have scant knowledge of deliberations and actions on the other side of the lines - in North Vietnam, China, and the Soviet Union. In this pioneering book, a Russian historian with exclusive access to newly opened Soviet archives on the war offers a compelling account of the Kremlin's role in Vietnam. His eye-opening study will force a rethinking of many Western assumptions. Privy to formerly secret documents in archives that were only briefly opened to scholars, Mr. Gaiduk focuses on the trends and motives that influenced the Kremlin's decision-making process. He analyzes the USSR's position on Vietnam in light of its complex relations with the Communist world and the West. His carefully documented account is also based on research in U.S. archives that permits him a full understanding of exchanges between Washington and Moscow. The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War carries the story from the Johnson administration's involvement in 1964 through the Nixon and Kissinger years to the signing of the Paris peace agreement in January 1973.