The Vietnamese fought for decades to free themselves from the colonial rule of the French, the Japanese, and later the US. They didn't need the USSR to convince them to do so, although the aid provided was certainly a good thing.
It's deeply ironic (or betrays your complete ignorance) to call the North "puppets" when they had wide support throughout Vietnam, unlike the Western-backed South government. The US prevented a democratic election of the entire country in 1956 because they knew that the communists would win it. Eisenhower estimated that Ho Chi Minh had 80% support.
I don't know what that comment above said, but it sounds like American brainworms.
Motherfucker, Ngo Dinh Diem outlawed Buddhism in a country that was over 70% Buddhist at the time and made Catholicism (that came from foreign colonizers) the state religion. But yeah, sure, it was the North who didn't have people's support.
I read about it in the Pentagon Papers, but even pro-Western sources and NATOpedia agree on this. The DRV signed a treaty with French-controlled "State of Vietnam" at Geneva in 1954 that provided for free nationwide elections and the unification of Vietnam in 1956. Ngo Dinh Diem came to power in the South via a rigged election (universally recognized as such) in 1955 with US backing, swapping out the French for the US as colonial masters and backing out of South Vietnam's obligations for elections and unification in 1956. This was because the US didn't want to allow Vietnam to become socialist via democratic means.
Revisionist. I distinctly remember the Soviets sending Kirov airships and apocalypse tanks to Vietnam. Who can forget the last American building getting captured because a singular Soviet engineer walked into the building and turned it red???