Following World War II, events both inside and outside Vietnam had a decisive impact on which road the country would take toward independence and sovereignty. In 1940, the Japanese army occupied Indochina and forced the French to rule the colony with them until 1945. But the fascist alliance between Vichy France and the Japanese army gave the Indochinese Communist Party, led by Ho Chi Minh, the opportunity to organize an underground movement, the Viet Minh League for the Independence of Vietnam, to fight both the Japanese and the French. The Viet Minh and the Communist Party captured the mantle of nationalism for their anticolonial struggle, and in the August Revolution of 1945, they established the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. As a result, Marxism-Leninism emerged as the prevailing paradigm both for waging war against two Western powers and for Vietnam’s political-economic system. In 1954, the Viet Minh emerged victorious against French colonialism at Dien Bien Phu, thereby solidifying the state of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. But another system emerged to compete with the Communist version: a southern republic initially established in 1955 under Ngo Dinh Diem, who fostered a philosophy of personalism that was based on both the ideas of the conservative French Catholic thinker Emmanuel Mounier and Confucian precepts and that was adamantly anti-Communist and strongly supported by the Western powers.
The Indochinese Communist Party was dominated culturally by the ideas of Truong Chinh, who announced the party’s cultural policy in 1943, arguing against art for art’s sake, in reaction to the freewheeling literary flights of fancy and personal liberation in the 1930s, and instead for art in the service of society and politics. For military purposes, Vo Nguyen Giap adapted historical East Asian and Vietnamese precepts to modern military strategies and tactics, which he used during the wars against both the French (1945–1954) and the United States (1960–1975), including taking advantage of local conditions and strengths against a militarily superior enemy. The Tet Offensive (1968), the climax of the war against the Americans, also harked back to premodern Vietnamese military strategies, while the Communists also demonstrated their ability to adapt to new American battlefield tactics and their relentless aerial bombardments.
Vietnamese Communism has never been monolithic. As early as 1956, an influential group of critics in the army and the party maintained that intellectual freedom would strengthen the party rather than weaken it. Moreover, these voices supported a brief flowering of artistic and literary expression in the humanities and letters movement in 1956, when writers were permitted to publish without party censorship. Their wings were quickly clipped, however, and it was not until after 1986 that this mode of thinking was allowed to return to public discussion. In the south, under the republican regimes, literary expression was freer but marked by a sense of existential doom. Although most northern poets and novelists adhered to the party’s cultural line, a fresh poetic voice occasionally was able to capture the wistfulness and sadness of a young soldier about to go to war.
Both the north and the south sought ways to cope with social conflicts and achieve social integration. In the north, the Communists pushed for the equality of women as well as for ethnic diversity within one nation. In the more culturally heterogeneous south, the large and economically powerful Chinese community was forced to adopt Vietnamese citizenship under Ngo Dinh Diem in his attempt to integrate them into the collectivity. By 1954, about 500,000 Catholics had moved south, providing the political base for Ngo Dinh Diem’s regime. Buddhism as a social force emerged in southern Vietnam in partial response to the regime’s religious policies but also to the political crisis that enveloped the regime in the early 1960s. Some elements in the Catholic community added their voices of discontent as well. The new governments of both the north and the south recognized the need to institute new land regimes, just as the Le (fifteenth century) and the Nguyen (nineteenth century) dynasties had before them. The north instituted land reform in 1955 in order to eliminate the landlord class and distribute land to peasant farms (all of which were collectivized shortly thereafter). The south, confronted with absentee landlordism, eventually enacted its own land reform program in 1970, when the war was almost over. By that time, however, the Communist National Liberation Front (NLF) in the south already had redistributed land to the peasants in the areas under its control.
Following the end of the American war in 1975, with the victory of the Communists and the reunification of Vietnam in 1976, the north tried, unsuccessfully, to impose its system of collectivized agriculture and central planning on the south. But the south had fundamentally changed, and now its peasantry preferred owning their farms and marketing their own goods. In fact, the south became the economic model and engine for the reforms enacted in 1986 to lift Vietnam out of its economic crisis. These reforms transformed the command-economy system into a market-based system and are known as Doi Moi (Renovation). This new period in Vietnam’s history adopted and amplified several trends that had emerged earlier. Economically, Vietnam accepted the market economy as the basis of its system, encouraging local capitalists, just as the Tonkin Free School had urged in the early twentieth century.1 Another land reform was instituted in 1988, this time a return to individual- and peasant-based ownership, as had existed before agricultural collectivization. But the attendant problems of village “bullies,” which had plagued peasants in Vietnam’s dynastic past, resurfaced when taxes and fees were piled onto the peasant proprietors who had just gained title to their land after decollectivization.
In foreign policy, Vietnam moved away from its exclusive identification and reliance on the Communist bloc to an open-trade policy with the capitalist world’s economy, as it had done during colonial times. Some writers even openly questioned the horrendous losses of two wars and, by implication, whether the sacrifices had been worth it.
Culturally, literary expression in Vietnam became freer, and the ghosts of 1956 resurfaced as it once again became possible, to some degree, to challenge the political and cultural orthodoxy. The reputations of the free spirits and romanticists of the 1930s were reexamined and judged to be part of the national patrimony. Even the works of some of the southern republic’s poets and novelists began to appear under the imprint of state-controlled publishing houses.
Confucianism, too, was reexamined as part of the “Asian values” debate and was found to offer useful counsel for moral, educational, and economic development purposes. At the same time, Vietnam under Doi Moi underwent a notable revival of religious practice, as Marxism-Leninism no longer provided the ideological framework for everyday life. Buddhism, as well as the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao, Catholicism and Protestantism, and especially folk religious practices all have experienced a resurgence of believers flocking to the many shrines, pagodas, temples, and churches dotting the landscape of modern Vietnam. The diversity of beliefs and mingling of ethnicities that had been characteristic of most of Vietnam’s history seemed to be reappearing.
During the twentieth century, Vietnam underwent a series of astonishing transformations while finding its way into the modern age. By the early twenty-first century, Vietnam was catching up economically with its more prosperous neighbors. Independent statehood, the most pressing concern of the early modernist scholars, had been resolved. But other issues—such as the most appropriate economic system, democratic rights versus state control, the rights of the individual versus those of the community, and Western culture versus Eastern values—continued to stir heated debates. The very boundaries of “Vietnam,” however, had expanded, with the Vietnamese communities residing abroad (up to 4 million in Europe and the United States) actively engaging with their former homeland in economic and financial affairs, cultural, social, and religious activities, and even political discourse.
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DUONG RIVER (1948)
In this haunting and elegiac poem, the poet Hoang Cam evokes the toll of warfare on the land and people of Vietnam. Written at the start of the first resistance war, “On the Other Side of the Duong River” came to symbolize for many Vietnamese what was at stake in their struggle for independence from the French. Hoang Cam (1922–2010) said that the words came to him in the middle of the night, the searing images flooding his mind as he struggled to write them down. The Duong River flows northwest of the Red River, and an expanse of villages along its banks was the site of a scorched earth policy by French troops searching for Viet Minh guerrillas. Hoang Cam’s village was among those destroyed.
My love, no need to be so sad
Long ago it was smooth with white sand
I will take you to the Duong River
A gleaming stream
Leaning along the length of the resistance
The Duong River flows
Green, green cane fields and banks of mulberry
Corn and sweet potatoes shimmering emerald
Such longing standing on this side of the river
As painful as losing a hand
On the other side of the Duong River
Our country fragrant with rice
The freshly drawn pigs and chickens of Dong Ho paintings2
The colors of our nation glowing on diep paper
Our country, from that horrifying day
When the enemy arrived in fiery brutality
Our fields were scorched
Our homes were burned
A group of rabid dogs,
Blood red tongues dragging
Down the deep lanes and to the end of the wild banks
The family of pigs
Is separated
The mice wedding was in the midst of the joyful celebration3
Now all scattered to where?
To whoever is going to the other side of the Duong River
Let me send along a piece of black silk
For hundreds of years
the dream of peace is fleeting
Festivals and celebrations
On the Thien Thai Mountain
In the But Thap temple
In the middle of the Lang Tai District
To whom do I send this silk?
The pagoda bells toll faintly but where are you
The young girls with lips stained with betel juice
The white-haired old men
The children rustling in their brown pants
Where have they gone? Where are they now?
To whoever is going to the other side of the Duong River
Please remember the lotus faces
The young market women with their black-lacquered teeth
Smiles as bright as a sunny autumn
The jostling crowd at the Ho market, the Sui market
At Bai Tram, people were like threads weaving, blocking all paths
The women spinners
Selling their colored silks
And those artisan fabric dyers
Who came from Dong Tinh, Hue Cau
Where have they gone? Where are they now?
On the other side of the Duong River
A wizened old woman carried her wares for sale
A few pieces of dried betel nut
A few jars of pink dyes
A few sheaves of paper damped with morning dew
Suddenly the devils with blue eyes glaring
Raised their boots crushing the flimsy stalls
Speaking in foreign tongues they robbed and looted
Dispersing the poor market session
Banyan leaves falling before the hut
Slivers of blood staining the wintry evening
Not yet having sold anything even worth a piaster
The old woman once again picked up her wares
Uneven steps alongside the bamboo hedge
A white crane flies swiftly
Skimming across the Duong River, where to?
The old mother, hungry and sad
Slippery road, cold rain, a head full of gray hair
On the other side of the Duong River
We have young children
Fighting each other daily for a bowl of corn soup
Huddling together at night under the bed to evade bullets
Surrounding themselves with winnowing baskets
As if a warm nest
In the sleep of the innocents, gunfire sounds like lightning
Incoherent dreams
Awake with a start
The specter of the enemy torments the lips of the young
Our rage will not subside
This land will note their crimes
Night falls upon the Duong River
—Child, who are you? Where do you come from?
A flimsy bamboo screen slightly opens
—Do come into these four walls, my child
The flickering light shows a mother’s love
Her face brightens like a rising moon
In grief, her white hair is whispering instead
Stories that never could be told
The night sinks deeper than the Duong River
Our soldiers have returned from across the river
You, my son, are on the move
The enemy camp trembles in the morning fog
Knives are flashing in the middle of the market
Clubs are rounded up at the end of the village
The ripening golden field, enemy losing spirit
They can’t eat
They can’t sleep
They can’t stand firm
They are losing their minds
Turning restlessly as if on fire
Yet our fields are still overflowing
With the lovely light of the spring
The wind carries near voices singing
Farmers fight, soldiers till the fields
A grandmother sings her grandchild a lullaby in the afternoon
The summer sun burns, the hammock swings sadly
“… Your father died in battle long ago
The older you grow, the deeper the hatred for the enemy”
Once, the sound of you cutting the grass
The cold wind blew, the misty rain fell
“My body is tainted by the enemy
My anger is forever and of one with this land …”
My love, stop your singing! My soul aches
Mother, stop your crying! My heart is in sorrow
The field is perfectly still
Let me go kill the enemy
Take revenge by their blood
Take their guns firmly in my hands
Each night is a festival
Birds sing and flowers smile in my heart
Because the sun will soon rise
The horizon is already glowing
The Duong River keeps flowing
Let it take straight out to sea
All the shattered enemy posts
All the tears
All the shadows
All life’s sorrows
When I make it to the other side of the Duong River
I will look for you again, my love
In a carmine chemise
With a pink silk sash
You are going on a national pilgrimage
Your enchanting smile will brighten the youthful hearts of thousands
[Hoang Cam, Ben kia song Duong, 29–34; trans. Kim N. B. Ninh]
Under intense military pressure from the United States, Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) used a historic formula in his appeal to the nation to stand firm and resist foreign aggression. Dated July 17, 1966, at the height of the U.S. escalation of the war, this appeal was issued when the United States was carpet bombing North Vietnam and had sent 400,000 troops to South Vietnam. President Lyndon B. Johnson had announced his intention to do whatever was necessary to bring North Vietnam to its knees. In this appeal, Ho Chi Minh insists that he and his fellow compatriots will achieve final victory, no matter what the cost, because “nothing is more precious than independence and freedom.”
Compatriots and fighters throughout the country!
The barbarous U.S. imperialists have unleashed a war of aggression in an attempt to conquer our country, but they are sustaining big defeats. They have rushed an expeditionary corps of about 300,000 men into the southern part of our country. They have fostered a puppet administration and a mercenary army as instruments of their aggressive policy. They have resorted to extremely savage means of warfare—toxic chemicals, napalm bombs, and a “burn all, kill all, destroy all” policy. By committing such crimes, they hope to subdue our southern compatriots.
But under the resolute and firm leadership of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, the South Vietnamese armed forces and people, closely united and fighting heroically, have scored splendid victories and are determined to struggle until [they have achieved] complete victory in order to liberate the south, defend the north, and proceed toward national reunification.
The U.S. aggressors have brazenly launched air attacks on the north of our country in an attempt to get out of the quagmire in the south and to compel us to “negotiate” with them on their terms.
But North Vietnam will not falter. Our army and people have redoubled their efforts in emulation [campaigns] to produce [goods and materials] and to fight heroically. So far, we have downed more than 1,200 enemy aircraft. We are determined to defeat the enemy’s war of destruction and, at the same time, to extend all-out support to our kinfolk in the south.
Of late, the frenzied U.S. aggressors have taken a very serious step in the escalation of the war by launching air attacks on the suburbs of Hanoi and Haiphong. That was an act of desperation comparable to the death throes of a mortally wounded wild beast.
Johnson and his clique should realize this: they may bring in 500,000 troops, a million, or even more troops to step up their war of aggression in South Vietnam. They may use thousands of aircraft for intensified attacks against North Vietnam. But never will they be able to break the iron will of the heroic Vietnamese people in their determination to fight for national salvation against U.S. aggression. The more truculent they grow, the more serious their crimes will become. The war may last ten, twenty years, or more. Hanoi, Haiphong, and other cities and enterprises may be destroyed, but the Vietnamese people will not be intimidated! Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom. Once victory is won, our people will rebuild their country and make it even more prosperous and beautiful.
It is common knowledge that each time they are about to step up their criminal war, the U.S. aggressors always resort to a “peace talks” swindle in an attempt to fool world opinion and blame Vietnam for its unwillingness to enter into “peace negotiations”!
President Johnson: answer these questions publicly before the American people and the peoples of the world. Who sabotaged the Geneva Agreements, which guarantee the sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity of Vietnam? Have Vietnamese troops invaded the United States and massacred Americans? Isn’t it the U.S. government that has sent U.S. troops to invade Vietnam and massacre the Vietnamese people?
Let the United States end its war of aggression in Vietnam and withdraw from this country all American and satellite troops, and peace will be restored immediately. The stand taken by Vietnam is clear: it is the four points of the Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the five points of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam.4 There is no other alternative.
The Vietnamese people cherish peace, genuine peace, peace in independence and freedom, not sham peace, not “American” peace.
To safeguard the independence of our fatherland, to fulfill our duties to all peoples struggling against U.S. imperialism, our people and army, united as one and not fearful of sacrifices and hardships, will resolutely fight on until they gain complete victory. In the past, we defeated the Japanese fascists and the French colonialists in much more difficult circumstances. Now that conditions at home and abroad are more favorable, our people’s struggle against U.S. aggression, for national salvation, will all the more certainly end in complete victory.
Dear compatriots and fighters, our cause is just; our people are united from north to south; we have a tradition of undaunted struggle, and great sympathy and support of the fraternal socialist countries and progressive peoples all over the world. We shall win! At this new juncture, we are one in our determination to endure all hardships and sacrifices and to accomplish the glorious historic task of our people: to defeat the U.S. aggressors.
On behalf of the Vietnamese people, I take this opportunity to express [my] heartfelt thanks to the peoples of the socialist countries and progressive peoples in the world, including the American people, for their heartfelt support and assistance. In the face of the U.S. imperialists’ new criminal schemes, I am firmly confident that the peoples and governments of the fraternal socialist countries and the peace-loving and justice-loving countries in the world will support and help the Vietnamese people still more vigorously until [they achieve] total victory in their struggle against U.S. aggression, for national salvation.
The Vietnamese people will surely win!
The U.S. aggressors will surely be defeated!
Long live a peaceful, reunified, independent, democratic, and prosperous Vietnam!
Compatriots and fighters throughout the country, march valiantly forward!
[Ho Chi Minh, “Appeal to Compatriots and Fighters
Throughout the Country,” 307–10]
THE WAR OF LIBERATION (1955 AND 1959)
During Vietnam’s first resistance war against the French (1945–1954), General Vo Nguyen Giap (b. 1911) drew on historical East Asian military precepts, including those of the eighteenth-century Tay Son, in order to overcome an enemy that was superior in arms and had international support. First among these principles was to rely on guerrilla warfare, including mobilizing the masses and preparing for a protracted struggle. Second was to assess and use to advantage the political dimensions of a confrontation against foreign forces, combining politics with military factors. To Vo Nguyen Giap, the Viet Minh were fighting a war of national liberation and for social justice against imperialism and the French-supported Vietnamese landlords who denied the landless peasantry the means to live on. Third, Vietnamese military planners outlined the strategic stages at the beginning of the French war from a defensive posture, to equilibrium or stalemate, and then to a counteroffensive when the Viet Minh would be able to seize the strategic initiative. By 1950, with help from the Chinese Communists, who had succeeded in their own revolution in 1949, General Vo Nguyen Giap and his Viet Minh troops had moved beyond the guerrilla stage to become a regular army. In 1954, they defeated the French at the historic battle of Dien Bien Phu. Giap’s retrospective analysis of the French war comes from two articles, the first written in 1955 and the second in 1959.
From the military point of view, the Vietnamese people’s war of liberation proved that an insufficiently equipped people’s army, but an army fighting for a just cause, can, with appropriate strategy and tactics, combine the conditions needed to conquer a modern army of aggressive imperialism.
The enemy of the Vietnamese nation was aggressive imperialists, who had to be overthrown. But the latter, having long since joined up with the feudal landlords, the anti-imperialist struggle could definitely not be separated from antifeudal action…. [I]n a backward colonial country like ours where the peasants make up the majority of the population, a people’s war is essentially a peasants’ war under the leadership of the working class. Consequently, a general mobilization of the whole people is neither more nor less than the mobilization of the rural masses. The problem of land is of decisive importance. Based on a thorough analysis, the Vietnamese people’s war of liberation was essentially a people’s national democratic revolution carried out under armed force, and it had a twofold fundamental task: the overthrow of imperialism and the defeat of the feudal landlord class, with the anti-imperialist struggle as the primary task.
A backward colonial country that had just emerged to proclaim its independence and install the people’s power, Vietnam had only recently acquired armed forces; these forces were equipped with very mediocre arms and had no combat experience. In contrast, its enemy was an imperialist power that had retained a fairly considerable economic and military potential despite the recent German occupation and, furthermore, benefited from the active support of the United States. The balance of forces decidedly showed up our weaknesses against the enemy’s power. The Vietnamese people’s war of liberation therefore had to be a hard and protracted war in order to succeed in creating the conditions for victory. All the conceptions born of impatience and aimed at obtaining speedy victory could only be gross errors. It was necessary to grasp firmly the strategy of a long-term resistance. To encourage the will to be self-supporting in order to maintain and gradually augment our forces while nibbling at and progressively destroying those of the enemy, it was necessary to accumulate thousands of small victories to turn them into a great success, thus gradually altering the balance of forces in transforming our weakness into power and achieving final victory.
At an early stage, our party was able to discern the characteristics of this war: a people’s war and a protracted war, and it was by proceeding from these premises that, during the hostilities and in particularly difficult conditions, the party solved all the problems of the resistance. This judicious leadership by the party brought us to victory….
[A protracted war] generally entails several phases: in principle, starting from a stage of contention, it goes through a period of equilibrium before arriving at a general counteroffensive. In effect, the way in which [a protracted war] is carried out can be subtle or complex, depending on the particular conditions obtaining on both sides during the course of operations. Only a long-term war could enable us to make maximum use of our political trump cards, to overcome our material handicaps, and to transform our weaknesses into strengths. To maintain and increase our forces was the principle to which we adhered, contenting ourselves with attacking when success was certain, refusing to give battle when likely to incur losses or to engage in hazardous actions. We had to apply the slogan “build up our strength during the actual course of fighting.”
The forms of fighting had to be adapted completely in order to raise the fighting spirit to the maximum and rely on the heroism of our troops to overcome the enemy’s material superiority. In the main, especially at the outset of the war, we had recourse to guerrilla fighting. In the Vietnamese theater of operations, this method brought great victories. It could be used in the mountains as well as in the delta; it could be waged with good or mediocre material and even without arms; and it enabled us eventually to equip ourselves at the cost of the enemy. Wherever the [French] Expeditionary Corps came, the entire population took part in the fighting; every commune had its fortified village, and every district had its regional troops fighting under the command of the local branches of the party and the people’s administration, in liaison with the regular forces in order to wear down and annihilate the enemy forces.
Thereafter, with the development of our forces, guerrilla warfare changed into mobile warfare—a form of mobile warfare still strongly characterized by guerrilla warfare—which later became the essential form of operations on the main front, the northern front. While developing guerrilla warfare and emphasizing mobile warfare, our people’s army steadily grew and passed from the stage of combat involving a section or company to fairly large-scale campaigns bringing several divisions into action. Gradually, its equipment improved, mainly by the seizure of arms from the enemy—the matériel of the French and American imperialists….
In building rural bases and reinforcing the rear lines to encourage the resistance, the party’s agrarian policy played a determining role, in which lay the anti-feudal task of the revolution. In a colony where the national question is essentially the peasant question, the consolidation of the resistance forces was possible only by resolving the agrarian problem.
The August Revolution overthrew the feudal state. The reduction of land rents and interest rates as decreed by people’s power gave the peasants their first material advantages. Land monopolized by the imperialists and the traitors was confiscated and shared. Communist land and rice fields were more equitably distributed. Beginning in 1953, because they deemed it necessary to complete [these] antifeudal tasks, the party decided to undertake agrarian reform even during the war of resistance. Despite the errors that marred its achievement, this was the correct and successive action to take. It resulted in real material advantages for the peasants and brought to the army and the people new enthusiasm for the war of resistance….
The Vietnamese peoples’ war of liberation revealed the importance of building resistance bases in the countryside and [the importance of] close and indissoluble relationships between the anti-imperialist revolution and the antifeudal revolution….
Guerrilla war is the war of the broad masses of an economically backward country against a powerfully equipped and well-trained army of aggression. Is the enemy strong? One avoids him. Is he weak? One attacks him. To his modern armament, one opposes a boundless heroism to vanquish by either harassing or combining military operations with political and economic action; there is no fixed line of demarcation, the front being wherever the enemy is found.
In order to destroy his manpower, troops are concentrated to realize an overwhelming superiority over the enemy where he is sufficiently exposed, [using] initiative, flexibility, rapidity, surprise, sudden attack, and retreat. As long as the strategic balance of forces remains disadvantageous, [we must] resolutely muster our troops to obtain absolute superiority in combat in a given place and at a given time, to exhaust the enemy forces little by little by small victories and, at the same time, to maintain and increase ours. In these concrete conditions, it is absolutely necessary not to lose sight of the main objective of the fighting, that is, the destruction of the enemy’s manpower. Therefore, losses must be avoided even at the cost of losing ground, in order to recover, later on, the occupied territories and completely liberate the country.
In the war of liberation in Vietnam, guerrilla activities spread to all the regions temporarily occupied by the enemy. Each inhabitant was a soldier, each village a fortress, each party cell and each village administrative committee a staff. The people as a whole took part in the armed struggle, fighting in small groups according to the principles of guerrilla warfare, but always in pursuit of the one and same line, and the same instructions, those of the Central Committee of the party and the government.
At variance with numerous other countries that have waged revolutionary wars, in the first years of its struggle, Vietnam did not and could not engage in pitched battles. It had to be content with guerrilla warfare. At the cost of thousands of difficulties and countless sacrifices, this guerrilla war progressively developed into a form of mobile war that daily increased in scale. While retaining certain characteristics of a guerrilla war, it involved regular campaigns with greater attacks on fortified positions. Starting from small operations with the strength of a platoon or a company to annihilate a few men or a group of enemy soldiers, our army later graduated to more important combats with a battalion or regiment to cut into pieces one or several enemy companies, finally reaching greater campaigns that brought into play many regiments, and then many divisions, ending at Dien Bien Phu where the French Expeditionary Corps lost sixteen thousand men from its crack units. It was this process of development that enabled our army to move forward steadily on the road to victory….
If the enemy attacked the regions where our troops were stationed, we would give battle. Should he ferret about in the large zones where there were no regular formations, the people would stay his advance with rudimentary weapons: sticks, spears, scimitars, bows, flintlocks. From the first days, there appeared three types of armed forces: paramilitary organizations or guerrilla units, regional troops, and regular units. In their organization, these formations were the expression of the general mobilization of the people in arms. They cooperated closely with one another to annihilate the enemy.
Peasants, workers, and intellectuals crowded into the ranks of the revolution’s armed forces. From the first moment, leading cadres of the party and the state apparatus became officers. The greatest problem to be solved was equipment. Nowhere in Vietnam was there a factory manufacturing war matériel. For nearly a century, the possession and use of arms were strictly forbidden by the colonial administration. Importation was impossible, as our neighboring countries were hostile to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The source of supply could only be the battlefront: take the matériel from the enemy and turn it against him. While carrying on the aggression against Vietnam, the French Expeditionary Corps fulfilled another task: it became, unwittingly, the supplier of the Vietnam People’s Army with French, even U.S., arms. Despite their enormous efforts, the arms factories set up later with makeshift means were far from being able to meet all our needs. A great part of our military materials came from war booty.
As I have stressed, the Vietnam People’s Army at first could bring into combat only small units like platoons or companies. The regular forces were, at any given time, compelled to split up into companies operating separately to promote the extension of guerrilla activities, while the mobile battalions were maintained for more important actions. After each victorious combat, the people’s armed forces marked a new step forward.
Tempered in combat and stimulated by victories, the guerrilla formations created the conditions for the regional troops to grow. And in turn, the latter promoted the development of the regular forces. By following this heroic path bristling with difficulties, our People’s Army grew for nine successive years [1945–1954], determined to win at all costs. It became an army of hundreds of thousands strong, forming regiments and divisions and progressively standardizing its organization and equipment. This force, ever more politically conscious and better trained militarily, succeeded in fighting and defeating the 500,000 men of the French Expeditionary Corps, who were equipped and supplied by the United States….
Our army is a people’s army because it defends the fundamental interests of the people, especially those of the toilers, workers, and peasants. The great majority [of the army] is made up of selected fighters of peasant and worker origin, and intellectuals faithful to the cause of the revolution. It is the true army of the people, of toilers, the army of workers and peasants, led by the party of the working class. Throughout the war of national liberation, its aims of struggle were the very ones followed by the party and people: independence of the nation and land for the tillers. Since the return of peace, its mission as a tool of proletarian dictatorship is to defend the socialist revolution and socialist building in the north, to support the political struggle for the peaceful reunification of the country, and to contribute to the strengthening of peace in Indochina and Southeast Asia.
In the first of the ten points of his Oath of Honor, the fighter of the Vietnam People’s Army swears “to sacrifice himself unreservedly for the fatherland; to fight for the cause of national independence, democracy, and socialism under the leadership of the Vietnam Workers’ Party and of the government of the Democratic Republic; to build a peaceful, reunified, independent, democratic, and prosperous Vietnam; and to contribute to the strengthening of peace in Southeast Asia and the world.”
This is precisely what makes the Vietnam People’s Army a true child of the people. In return, the people give it unsparing affection and support. Therein lies the inexhaustible source of its power….
The Vietnam People’s Army was created by the party, which ceaselessly trains and educates it. It has always been and will always be under the leadership of the party which, alone, has made it into a revolutionary army, a true people’s army. Since its creation and during its development, this leadership by the party has been made concrete in its organization. The army has always had its political commissars. In the units, the military and political chiefs assume their responsibilities under the leadership of the party committee at the corresponding echelon.
The People’s Army is the instrument of the party and of the revolutionary state for the accomplishment, in armed form, of the tasks of the revolution. Profound awareness of the aims of the party, boundless loyalty to the cause of the nation and the working class, and a spirit of unreserved sacrifice are fundamental questions for the army, and questions of principle. Therefore, the political work in its ranks is of the first importance. It is the soul of the army. In instilling Marxist-Leninist ideology into the army, it aims at raising the army’s political consciousness and ideological level, at strengthening the class position of its cadres and soldiers. During the liberation war, this work suffused the army with the policy of protracted resistance and the imperative necessity for the people and army to rely on their own strength to overcome difficulties. It instilled into the army the profound significance of mass mobilization in order to reduce rents and to [fundamentally] reform agriculture, which had a decisive effect on the troops’ morale. In the new stage entered since the restoration of peace, political work centers on the line of [the political position] socialist revolution in the north and the struggle for the reunification of the country….
The Vietnam People’s Army is always concerned about establishing and maintaining good relations between officers and men as well as among the officers themselves. Originating from the working strata, officers and men also serve the people’s interests and unstintingly devote themselves to the cause of the nation and the working class. Of course, each of them has particular responsibilities. But their comradeship is based on political equality and fraternity of class. The officer likes his men; he not only must guide them in their work and studies but also must take an interest in their life and consider their desires and initiatives. The soldier must respect his superiors and correctly carry out all their orders. An officer of the People’s Army must set a good example from all points of view: to show himself to be resolute and brave, to ensure discipline and internal democracy, and to know how to achieve perfect unity among his men. He must behave like a chief, a leader, vis-à-vis the masses in his unit. The basis of these relations between soldiers and officers, like those between officers or between soldiers, is solidarity in the fight and the mutual affection of brother-in-arms, love at the same time pure and sublime, tested and forged in the battle, in the struggle for the defense of the fatherland and the people.
The Vietnam People’s Army practices strict discipline, similar to a wide internal democracy. According to the second item of its Oath of Honor, “The fighter must rigorously carry out the orders of his superiors and throw himself body and soul into the immediate and strict fulfillment of the tasks entrusted to him.” Could we say that guerrilla warfare does not require severe discipline? Of course not. It is true that it asks the commander and leader to allow each unit or each region a certain margin of initiative in order to undertake every positive action that it might think would be opportune. But a centralized leadership and a unified command at a given degree always have proved necessary. He who speaks of the army speaks of strict discipline.
Such discipline does not contradict the internal democracy of our troops. In cells, in executive committees of the party at various levels, as well as in plenary meetings of the fighting units, the application of principles of democratic centralism is the rule. The facts have proved that the more democracy is respected within the units, the more unified they will be, the more disciplined they will be, and the more orders will be carried out. The combativeness of the army thereby will be all the greater….
[Adapted and reformatted from Vo Nguyen Giap, “War of Liberation,” 95, 92–96, and “People’s War,” 105–6, 108–13]
TET, THE YEAR OF THE MONKEY, 1968 (1988)
In his review of the Tet Offensive of 1968, written twenty years after the military action, General Tran Van Tra (1918–1996) claimed that the Communist side had won a strategic victory over the U.S. and ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) forces, which created a turning point in the war leading to the Communist victory in 1975. Although the Communist forces incurred enormous losses and failed to drive out the United States, Tran Van Tra argued that the Tet Offensive had shaken the “aggressive will [of the United States] to its foundation” and thus had been as much a military as a psychological success. As in Vo Nguyen Giap’s writings, Tran Van Tra based his analysis on the political and military balance of forces and the intangible factors of “morale” and “will” when weaker forces confront far stronger forces on the battlefield. The Communist strategy during the American war, however, included an important urban component that would prove decisive during Tet in 1968 and the final campaign in 1975. Tran Van Tra was the commander of the People’s Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam from 1963 to 1975 and the deputy commander of the Ho Chi Minh Campaign, which culminated in the Communist victory in the south in 1975. General Tran Van Tra’s text recalls Nguyen Huu Chinh’s advice to the Tay Son leader, Nguyen Hue, that according to the principles of warfare, timing is the most important factor; the second is position; and the third is opportunity.
A great success of Tet Mau Than,5 which many viewed as a miracle, was that the secrecy of our goal and actions was maintained until the very baptism by fire; this greatly surprised the enemy. A book on military history published by the general staff of the puppet army with the endorsement of its chief, General Cao Van Vien, conceded, “An obvious fact was that the plan for the general offensive/general uprising had been kept secret until the attack broke out throughout the country.”6 So we and the enemy agreed on that score. The fact is that in war, secrecy and surprise are guarantees for victories, strategic, tactical, and operational alike. It is important, however, to understand these factors. Many will see secrecy as merely a requirement for the timing of an attack. That is not incorrect. But this was only one of the secrets of Tet Mau Than. In fact, if the timing of an attack is the only secret in a military campaign, its usefulness will soon be exhausted.
The most important secret was our method of attack, strategically, tactically, and operationally. This factor made Tet Mau Than famous around the world and caught the enemy completely off guard, making both the Pentagon and the White House unable to anticipate our next moves. Suddenly, within twenty-four hours, all the most secure areas in the enemy’s rear—including cities, provincial capitals, and towns, which before the lunar New Year’s Eve still appeared a world away from the war—came under simultaneous attack. The most important points—from the office of the general staff of the puppet army to the headquarters of the Capital City Military Zone, from the puppet regime’s presidential palace to the U.S. embassy compound—all fell under fierce assault. An AFP [Agence-France Presse] dispatch on February 3 reported, “This is probably the largest battle in the war. The whole of Vietnam is under fire, from Khe Sanh to Ca Mau.”7
The war positions of both sides were reversed: in no time, the rear was turned into the front, and the latter into the former. Crack units, which had been sent to the “enemy’s base areas” to “search and destroy,” all were immediately recalled to “their own strongholds” to rescue the nerve center, to try to check and counterattack the enemy, and then to “clear and hold” until the very day they were forced to pull out of the war. An Agence-France Presse dispatch pointed out, “U.S. power has lost its prestige. The mightiest army in the world has been driven onto the defensive over the whole territory. At times, it has been overwhelmed.”8
This obviously was the result of our unique fighting method in the revolutionary war. It combined armed uprisings, that is, attacks from within, with military assaults from without and simultaneous uprisings in all places. It also combined attacks of all forms, by units of all types and sizes, by either individuals or small or large army units that were joined together with different means of organization and provided with different levels of equipment. It was also the result of diverse efforts to integrate the actions of the revolutionary masses—in both the urban and rural areas—with the activities of the armed forces in combined offensives and uprisings. Some observers assert that in our 1968 campaign, there was only a general offensive and not an uprising. This is a denial of the truth and is wrong. In fact, we had planned and made every effort to carry out a general offensive/general uprising. But our general offensive was not up to the level that would enable a general uprising to take place. And without this indispensable condition during wartime, an uprising could not materialize. However, this does not mean that there were no uprisings in various places and at various times. It was impossible to stage the types of attacks we carried out during the 1968 campaign without mass uprisings. Our method of attack was truly unique for any war, past and present. Our strength was born of a combined military and political effort, both at home and abroad.
Besides the timing and method of attack, the large scale, high intensity, and strength of our attacks were another surprise. They took place throughout the south. Extremely savage battles were fought for more than half a year. This was beyond the enemy’s expectations. It had never anticipated such strong determination, persistence, resourcefulness, and strength from an enemy that it tended to dismiss. In his review of the combat year of 1967, which was made public on January 27, 1968, U.S. Field Commander General William Westmoreland said, “Interdiction of the enemy’s logistics train in Laos and North Vietnam by our indispensable air efforts has imposed significant difficulties on him. In many areas the enemy has been driven away from the population centers; in others, he has been compelled to disperse and evade contact, thus nullifying much of his potential…. Enemy bases, with sparse exception, are no longer safe havens.”9 The general staff of the puppet army also commented, “Strategists and tacticians say that the Viet Cong can stage large attacks only from starting bases in border areas. But such attacks will meet with failure. Regarding the hinterland, military experts estimate that the enemy can launch attacks only with the engagement of battalion-sized units to attract attention. But even so, the attacks will not last long if the enemy does not want to be destroyed.”10
As Tet Mau Than was unfolding, however, the attacks “took the U.S. command and the U.S. public by surprise, and their strength, length, and intensity prolonged this shock.” And “for the President, the shock and disappointment were especially serious.”11 In its book Vietnam—The Decisive Hour, the AFP commented, “The American General John Chaisson of the U.S. Command [under Westmoreland] said that the Viet Cong offensive on Tuesday was a ‘big surprise’ for the U.S. command. ‘Our intelligence services did not inform us that the offensive would be as widespread and as massive as it was…. The most serious mistake of our intelligence services, without doubt, was that they did not believe that the Viet Cong could mobilize such a large number of personnel and unleash such fierce attacks in such close coordination and high intensity.’”12 For the two years before Tet Mau Than, the United States always said that “the enemy’s morale had been shaken.”13 Such confidence was belied by the secrecy and surprise of Tet Mau Than. This was impossible for the enemy to understand. And even when events had completely unfolded, their surprise continued.
Tet Mau Than was a period of extremely intense fighting in both the cities and their outlying areas. The repeated and sustained attacks and counterattacks caused more losses to both sides than in any previous period of the war. According to enemy statistics, which were presumably lower than the actual figures, in February and March alone, U.S. forces suffered 24,013 casualties14 and lost 552 aircraft and a large number of warehouses and war matériel. The puppet army had been weakened by casualties and desertions during the attacks, according to a report by Westmoreland. We also sustained the biggest losses in our military and political forces, especially high-ranking and local cadres who, as demonstrated throughout our war and revolution, were always those who marched ahead of the masses at the most critical times and in the most dangerous places. These losses, both in troop strength and matériel, caused us untold difficulties in coping with the enemy’s frenzied counterattacks and rapid pacification activities in 1969/1970 when the Vietnamization policy was put in place. In fact, we had great trouble resupplying our forces in time, whereas the U.S. and Saigon reinforcements were huge and swift. The enemy took advantage of this period to mount continuous attacks, pushing us away from the cities and driving our regular army to the border areas. We also lost control of many rural areas, where our bases in the villages were severely disrupted. With this momentum, the enemy thought that it could push on and destroy us completely by widening the war to Laos to cut off the Truong Son trail [Ho Chi Minh Trail] at Route 9 in southern Laos, overthrowing [Prince Norodom] Sihanouk to expand the war to Cambodia to seal off our transit route from the Sihanoukville port and, at the same time, dragging the peace talks in Paris to a dead end. It was thus an extremely difficult situation in which we seemed to be on the decline. Not a few people, who judged things by their appearances, jumped to the conclusion that Tet Mau Than had been a failure. Even a number of cadres of various ranks, who were faced with the enemy’s intense counterattacks and its pacification operations and Phoenix program15 on the battlefield after Tet Mau Than, were not aware of the extent of our victory and doubted the explanations from the higher command. Only in times like these could we see clearly the firmness and consistency of our leaders at all levels and how they helped change the course of each battle and the whole war. However, even when the revolutionary forces had regained their strength and moved forward in 1971/1972, to the signing of the Paris Agreement, and even after our total victory in 1975, some people still harbored naïve thoughts that
• We failed militarily but won politically during the 1968 general offensive/general uprising.
• The U.S. puppet forces won militarily but were defeated psychologically, and that led to their political defeat.
Some people even believed the American hawks’ smug arguments that we had won in Washington but not on the battlefield. This meant that Washington was forced to withdraw because of its internal conflicts and psychological panic and not because of an impossible Vietnamese victory over an overwhelmingly rich and strong United States. What an example of blind xenophobia! How could one accept the argument that we were crushed on the battlefield, beaten to rags and tatters, and then all of a sudden handed a psychological and political victory by an enemy—the chieftain of all imperialist forces—which was paralyzed by its own frustration and internal splits and which graciously bestowed this glorious victory on us? In fact, there is never an easy “political” victory won by the grace of Heaven or through an enemy’s mercy without first having to shed blood and scatter bones on the battlefield, especially in a big war like ours.
Let us take a closer look at the enemy in order to understand ourselves better. On February 12, General Westmoreland, a man of constant optimism who always fed the U.S. president rosy reports about the war, hastily reported to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense that “as of February 11, 1968, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) reports that attacks have taken place on 34 provincial capitals, 64 district towns and the autonomous cities.”16 General Westmoreland also said that the enemy was able to accomplish that while “committing only 20 to 25 percent of his North Vietnamese forces … as gap fillers where Viet Cong strength was apparently not adequate to carry out his initial thrust on the cities and towns.”17 The United States shifted its strategy from “search and destroy” to “clear and hold,” from escalating the war to deescalating it, from halting the air war over the North to sitting down at the peace talks. This was not the result of psychological or political pressure, or due to moments of frustration on the part of experienced and seasoned U.S. leaders. By the end of February, back from Saigon where he was sent on an inspection of the battlefield and discussions with Westmoreland, General Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reported his findings to the president and proposed that the war be widened with an additional 206,756 troops, to be sent during the last six months of 1968. This would bring the strength of the U.S. force in Vietnam to its peak of 731,756 troops. The president asked Clark Clifford, his new secretary of defense, to form a group of senior advisers to study U.S. policy. This group became embroiled in intense debates with the military. The Pentagon study showed that the debates were intense and lasted for three weeks. The memorandum prepared by the Clifford group proposed to do “‘a little bit more of the same’ to stabilize the military situation, plus a level of mobilization in order to be prepared to meet any further deterioration in the ground situation.”18 President Johnson, however, was forced to seek a new strategy and a new road to peace.
In their reports of the events in February and March 1968, Pentagon analysts concluded that the Tet General Offensive had finally forced President Johnson to accept the advice of his civilian advisers and the intelligence community that he had persisted too long in “seeking a military victory.” The analysts wrote,
In March of 1968, the choice had become clear-cut. The price for military victory had increased vastly and there was no assurance that it will not grow again in the future. There were also strong indications that large and growing elements of the American public had begun to believe that the costs had already reached unacceptable levels and would strongly protest a large increase in that cost.
The political reality that faced President Johnson was that “more of the same” in South Vietnam, with an increased commitment of American lives and money and its consequent impact on the country, accompanied by no guarantee of military victory in the near future, had become unacceptable to these elements of the American public. The optimistic military reports of the progress in the war no longer rang true after the shock of the Tet offensive. Thus the president’s decision to seek a new strategy and a new road to peace….19
The change in U.S. strategy in South Vietnam, the halt in its air war against the north, and its agreement to sit down for peace talks were in fact decided in March 1968, that is, after the first phase of Tet Mau Than. But only after a period of fierce combat on the battlefield, after the second phase of our assaults on Saigon and the third phase of our attacks in the countryside and not until November did the United States declare a complete halt to the air war and accept the National Liberation Front as a party to the peace talks in Paris. This is quite understandable. In any war—especially one as big as the one in Vietnam—the outcome of the fighting on the battlefield is the decisive factor for all developments on the political and diplomatic fronts. Military success determines the extent of political success. One never suffers a military defeat yet wins political victory, nor are diplomatic skills at peace talks independent from the fighting on the battlefield. The end of 1968 and the beginning of 1969 saw the start of the peace talks in Paris, but from 1969 through 1970, the enemy thought that it would win on the battlefield and therefore dragged on the talks, ultimately bringing them to a dead end. But in 1971, the situation on the battlefield again turned in our favor, and in 1972 the U.S. puppet forces suffered heavy defeats in the south. Then the United States lost the battle of “Dien Bien Phu in the air”20 over Hanoi and Haiphong. Only then were they forced to sign the Paris Agreement. The agreement provided for a cease-fire and the establishment of a tripartite coalition government. But since the enemy still harbored the stubborn illusion that its “Vietnamization of the war” could succeed, it continued the war in an attempt to scrap the agreement so that Nguyen Van Thieu could rule the south under U.S. control. Therefore, we were compelled to mount the Ho Chi Minh campaign—the spring 1975 general offensive/general uprising—in order to achieve total victory.
To evaluate any period of history or an enormous event like Tet Mau Than, it is very important that our assessment be based on its concrete and clear-cut results. We cannot be superficial or let ourselves be misled by prejudices.
The general offensive and uprising of Tet Mau Than—as it was then called, although the general uprising was not a success—matched the conditions at the time. Even though the general uprising did not take place and power was not turned over to the people, Tet Mau Than was still a great victory, creating the most important strategic turning point of the war, eventually leading us to total victory.
Tet Mau Than in fact shook the enemy’s aggressive will to its foundation and put an end to the U.S. dream of achieving “victory” by escalating the war; it awakened the United States to the fact that might, resources, and money have their limits; and it highlighted the conclusion that the United States was not strong enough to force another nation—even a smaller and weaker one—to kneel down and surrender that nation’s desire for independence and freedom.
It also forced the United States to take other actions; shift its strategy from an offensive “search and destroy” to a defensive “clear and hold”; gradually deescalate the war; adopt the “Vietnamization of the war”; cut back its commitment and gradually bring its troops home to consolidate the U.S. military might that had declined to a dangerously low level; prop up its severely weakened economy; and heal the seriously polarized American body politic.
The United States was forced to drop its conquering club and sit down for peace talks, not only with the socialist north, now a feared and respected opponent, but also with the National Liberation Front as one of the four sides in the negotiations, since the latter had proved itself a force of real power on behalf of the people of southern Vietnam and a negotiator of real value. The United States also had to halt completely and unconditionally the air war over the north in order for the talks to begin.
Tet Mau Than “shifted our revolutionary war onto a new stage, that of decisive victory.” Earlier, Uncle Ho and the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee had decided that since we were not able to defeat both the United States and the puppet forces at the same time, we first had to drive out the United States and then do away with the puppets to complete our victory. “Knowing both oneself and others” is a trait of the wise and the brave. Tet Mau Than forced the United States to deescalate and gradually extract itself from the war through the “Vietnamization” process. This created favorable conditions for our successes in the spring of 1975 that eventually led us to total victory in the historic Ho Chi Minh campaign. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that had it not been for Tet Mau Than, “April 30” would not have occurred. In fact, Tet Mau Than opened a new strategic stage, which concluded on April 30, 1975.
The reason for staging the general offensive/general uprising to transfer all power into the hands of the people in 1968, at a time when the United States maintained a half million troops and even had plans to further escalate the war to seek victory, clearly was not in line with Uncle Ho’s correct and astute strategic guidance, which was “First, drive out the U.S., then topple the puppets.” We were not able to carry out both segments of the general offensive/general uprising simultaneously. Our inability was determined by the reality of the balance of forces at the time. But we did stage a campaign with victories that forced the United States to pull out, beginning in 1969, and paved the way for the puppet regime’s fall in 1975. In other words, even though we had set too lofty and unrealistic a goal, in response to the Party Political Bureau’s appeal, our armed forces and people made extraordinary efforts, endured all kinds of hardship and sacrifice, courageously overcoming all trials and difficulties, and, as a result, won a decisive victory that created a strategic turning point and paved the way for the next stage of the war: total victory. In that way, our people and armed forces were following the guiding line of Uncle Ho and our party. It was they, the masses, who made history.
Based on the preceding analysis of Tet Mau Than, we now can conclude that the offensive was a tremendous victory, that it ushered us into a decisive phase of our road to victory in the extremely fierce thirty-year war of our heroic people. But we paid a high price. Tens of thousands of our best cadres and combatants laid down their lives, as did tens of thousands of our fellow countrymen and compatriots in towns and villages. Without such sacrifices, however, would such a glorious victory have been possible? The blood shed by our fallen heroes, both combatants and civilians, during Tet Mau Than was of absolute value and worthy of the magnitude of the victory and will forever be held in gratitude by their children for generations to come. Their sacrifice was valuable not only to Tet Mau Than itself but also to the entire final stage of the war. It played a decisive role in our total victory on April 30. Whereas in 1968 we fought to drive out the United States, that is, the main enemy, in 1975 we pushed on with the Ho Chi Minh campaign and toppled the now-abandoned puppet regime, the other enemy. Tet Mau Than therefore gave us the key to total victory in the war. The Simultaneous Uprisings in Spring 1960, the “Drive America Out” Campaign in Spring 1968, and the “Total Victory” Campaign in Spring 1975 were the three strategic milestones of the war and the three most beautiful springs in the twenty-one years of the Vietnamese people’s heroic, fierce, and gloriously triumphant struggle against the United States. They were beacons for national salvation under the leadership of the vanguard party of the working class.
There is another major question about Tet Mau Than that I wish to raise only as a topic of discussion in this essay and it calls for further in-depth research before it can be fully understood. The question is, Why didn’t victory come to those who had the overwhelming force in battle, and what was the secret of our success and victory?
At that time, our infantry in all the south was less than 300,000 strong, while the U.S., puppet, and allied forces numbered more than 1.2 million. The ratio was nearly one to five. On top of that, our infantry was supported by just a few lightly armed units, such as engineering, artillery, signal, and transport. Meanwhile, the enemy was backed by a wide variety of armament, had absolute superiority in firepower and mobility and in tanks and other armored vehicles, and wielded total control of the air, sea, inland waterways, land routes, and dense population centers. That is not to mention U.S. forces in the Seventh Fleet and at bases in Japan, as well as contingents from the Philippines and Thailand, which also participated in the war. Nonetheless, we still held the initiative on the battlefield, both strategically and tactically. We also held the initiative in opening attacks while the U.S. puppet forces counterattacked only on the defensive. The attackers were numerically weaker, but their will overwhelmed the morale of the numerically superior defenders. The fact that we won and the enemy lost was due to the genius of our military leadership, the superiority of our revolutionary military art, and the combined result of all our splendidly victorious engagements throughout the battle zone, including encounters in which whole units laid down their lives. Certain people must have seen those battles as defeats and could see only the dark side of death. But in our eyes, these fallen heroes had won. They gave their lives so that life could go on, and it was precisely for that reason that they plunged forward at the enemy with all their hearts and minds. Some units went into battle from which not a single soldier returned. They can be compared with those patriotic soldiers who used their own bodies to seal up the enemy’s firing holes so that their comrades could move forward, who charged into the enemy lines, setting off grenades in their hands, who carried bombs and charged at enemy tanks. They were just like those Soviet pilots who flew their planes into the enemy’s during their great war of national defense in World War II. The only difference, if there was any, was between individual heroism, on the one hand, and collective heroism, on the other. If we look at things from the perspective of a typical conventional war, in which the balance of forces between the two sides decides victory or defeat, we will be left without an answer to this question. Or else we would think it was all a miracle. The general offensive/general uprising of Tet Mau Than was an outstanding example of a revolutionary war combined with armed insurrection. It followed the rule of offensive-cum-uprising and uprising-cum-offensive. It was brought about by the combination of military and political struggle, a merging of proselytization, armed force, and the forces of the revolutionary masses, as well as the progressive people around the world—including those in the enemy countries. The military units in this type of revolutionary war were in fact a strong organization of the revolutionary masses and were only one of the forces of the revolutionary masses. The party-led revolutionary masses also had other forces at their disposal, such as the village militia, the political struggle units (including the long-haired army and the popular forces for multifaceted struggle in urban areas),21 the proselytization of enemy troops, and those engaged in espionage and sabotage activities within the enemy’s ranks. So, it is incorrect to assess the balance of forces based on only the alignment of military forces. Ours was a just war against foreign aggression and a traitorous puppet regime, against brutality and injustice, for national independence and freedom, and for human dignity. The war was thus in tune with the conscience of our time. Our aggregate forces were therefore stronger than those of the enemy, and the difference could hardly be determined by arithmetic calculation. Those who would refute the importance of mass uprisings and insurrections would find themselves thinking according to stereotypes, which is alien to our revolution and to warfare. Lenin, the brilliant leader of the world revolutionary movement, once said,
There are no miracles in nature or history, but every abrupt turn in history, and this applies to every revolution, presents such a wealth of content, unfolds such unexpected and specific forms of struggle and alignment of forces of the contestants, that to the lay mind there is much that must appear miraculous.22
Tet Mau Than was exactly like that.
[Adapted from Tran Van Tra, “Tet,” 54–65]
POLITICAL TRANSITIONS AND POLITICS
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (1945)
Ho Chi Minh is possibly more closely identified with this text than with any other. Written in August 1945 during the tumultuous “revolutionary” uprisings that led to the seizure of power by the Viet Minh Communists, Ho Chi Minh read this declaration on September 2, 1945, when he proclaimed the independence of Vietnam from the Japanese and the French. Ho Chi Minh’s public appearance before an immense crowd in Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi was the first he made after years abroad and on the run from French authorities. Previously known as Nguyen Ai Quoc (Nguyen the Patriot), he henceforth publicly adopted the name Ho Chi Minh (Minh [bright/intent or will]), which was the name he used as the first president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. While organizing the Viet Minh movement in the mountainous region north of Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh had helped American Office of Strategic Services (OSS; precursor of the CIA) agents searching for downed U.S. pilots. A member of the mission gave him a copy of the Declaration of Independence, together with the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, on which he modeled this text. As with other texts and ideas borrowed from outsiders by Vietnamese rulers, Ho Chi Minh’s text reflects an openness to external influences and contacts.
“All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means that all the people on earth are equal from birth, all the people have a right to live and to be happy and free.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen made in 1791 during the French Revolution also states: “All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights.”
These are undeniable truths.
Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of liberty, equality, and fraternity, have violated our fatherland and oppressed our fellow citizens. They have acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice.
In the field of politics, they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty.
They have enforced inhuman laws; they have set up three different political regimes in the north, the center, and the south of Vietnam in order to wreck our national unity and prevent our people from being united.
They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly massacred our patriots; they have drowned our uprisings in rivers of blood.
They have fettered public opinion; they have practiced obscurantism against our people.
To weaken our race, they have forced us to use opium and alcohol.
In the field of economics, they have sucked us dry, driven our people to destitution, and devastated our land.
They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests, and our natural resources. They have monopolized the issuing of banknotes as well as the export trade.
They have invented numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced our people, especially our peasantry, to a state of extreme poverty.
They have made it impossible for our national bourgeoisie to prosper; they have mercilessly exploited our workers.
In the autumn of 1940, when the Japanese fascists invaded Indochina to establish new bases in their fight against the Allies, the French imperialists went down on bended knee and handed over our country to them.
Thus, from that date on, our people were subjected to the double yoke of the French and the Japanese. Their sufferings and miseries increased. The result was that from the end of last year to the beginning of this year [1945], from Quang Tri Province to the north of Vietnam, more than 2 million of our fellow citizens died from starvation.
On March 9 of this year, the French troops were disarmed by the Japanese. The French colonialists either fled or surrendered, showing not only that they were incapable of “protecting” us but also that in the span of five years, they had twice sold our country to the Japanese.
On several occasions before March 9, the Viet Minh League urged the French to ally with it against the Japanese. Instead of agreeing to this proposal, the French colonialists intensified their terrorist activities against the Viet Minh. After their defeat and before fleeing, they massacred a great number of our political prisoners detained at Yen Bay and Cao Bang.
Despite all this, our compatriots have always shown a tolerant and humane attitude toward the French. Even after the Japanese action of March 1945, the Viet Minh League helped many Frenchmen cross the frontier, rescued others from Japanese jails, and protected French lives and property.
In fact, from the autumn of 1940, our country had ceased to be a French colony and had become a Japanese possession.
After the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies, our entire people rose to regain our national sovereignty and to found the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
The truth is that we have wrested our independence from the Japanese and not from the French.
The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, the Bao Dai emperor has abdicated. Our people have broken the chains that for nearly a century had fettered them and have won independence for Vietnam. At the same time, our people have overthrown the centuries-old monarchic regime and established a democratic republican regime.
We, the Provisional Government of the new Vietnam, representing all the Vietnamese people, hereby declare that from now on we will break off all relations of a colonial character with France; we will cancel all the treaties signed by France on behalf of Vietnam; and we will abolish all privileges held by the French in our country.
The entire Vietnamese nation is of one mind in our determination to fight all the wicked schemes by the French colonialists to reconquer our country.
We are convinced that the Allies, which at the Tehran and San Francisco conferences23 upheld the principle of equality among nations, cannot fail to recognize the right of the Vietnamese people to independence.
A people who have courageously opposed French enslavement for more than eighty years, a people who have resolutely sided with the Allies against the fascists during these last years, such a people must be free, such a people must be independent.
For these reasons, we, the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, solemnly make this declaration to the world:
Vietnam has the right to enjoy freedom and independence—and in fact has become a free and independent country. The entire Vietnamese nation and people are determined to mobilize all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their freedom and independence.
[Adapted from Ho Chi Minh, “Declaration of Independence,” 53–56]
ON THE PROMULGATION OF THE CONSTITUTION (1956)
Ngo Dinh Diem (1901–1963), president of the Republic of Vietnam from 1956 to 1963, was a proponent of a strong nationalist government marked by Confucian and Catholic elements. Like Pham Quynh,24 Ngo Dinh Diem advocated the creation of an educated elite imbued with a high sense of discipline and civic responsibility. Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu created the philosophy of Personalism as the regime’s official ideology, combining elements of Emmanuel Mounier’s Catholic modernism, Neo-Confucianism, and liberal democracy. Relying on the support of northern Catholics who had fled to the south following the 1954 Geneva Agreements, as well as the economic, diplomatic, and military assistance of the United States, Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu inaugurated the Republic of Vietnam in 1955. After his election as the republic’s first president, Ngo Dinh Diem expounded the tenets of Personalism in the following address given on October 26, 1956.
My dear compatriots,
On this solemn occasion when in fellowship we worship our heroes with the joy of a great hope, we celebrate the anniversary of the Proclamation of the Republic and the Promulgation of the Constitution. I should like to invite you to look back on the past in order to measure the road covered and thus to prepare the way for the future. For the democracy that we want to build must be a heroic and continuous effort and not a closed and impassive system.
By virtue of the mandate that the nation has vested in me with the referendum of October 23, 1955, I was given the mission to assume the functions of the chief of state and to organize a democratic regime.25 As soon as the results of the referendum were known, I proclaimed the republic in the declaration of October 26, 1955, and took the title of president. Organized according to the provisions of the ordinance of February 23, 1956, the general elections of March 4, 1956, designated the deputies to the National Constituent Assembly.
After six months of intensive work, the National Assembly put together the constitution that I have just had the high honor to promulgate.
While other Asian countries needed several years to organize a republican regime, Vietnam, in a much more critical situation, took only one year to lay the foundations for democratic institutions. The pace with which we have organized democracy in our country demonstrates at the same time the determination of our people and the heroic character of our destiny. It also indicates what is left to us to achieve in order to perfect the historical mission that has devolved upon our generation.
The text of the constitution does not create democracy. Democracy develops only when the spirit and the will of the people enjoy favorable conditions. Democracy as a moral regime develops only if the viewpoint of collective interest is constantly expanding in the people and in the government.
In the past century, the political situation in our country has contradicted common sense and has led to a decline in the spirit of justice. Now we must reestablish a spirit of loving the public good, respecting and honoring the nation, and [practicing] the virtue of honesty in official dealings[.] We must forge again a spirit of sacrifice [and] mental discipline, a spirit of responsibility and decency in social relations, [in order to] foster respect for one’s fellow man and respect for oneself.
Put differently, we must uphold the traditional principles of thanh and tin. Thanh is sincerity with regard to both wisdom and virtue; it is the acceptance of all our duties with regards to the Creator, with regard to the fatherland, with regard to one’s fellow man, and with regard to oneself. Tin is the courage and honesty to carry out our duties without shrinking from them, even though we may encounter difficulties. Every person must accept his duties with respect to everyone else and must carry out those duties. [This] will create in our society feelings of trust and confidence, which are the necessary conditions in which democracy can sprout and flourish.
In fact, if the sense of civic duty derives its supreme justification from the ethical principles of the respect for the human person and for the common good, it nonetheless thrives only in a political, administrative, and economic climate that is alive and congenial. In addition to the institutions that allow him to take part in the direction of public affairs and draw the attention of his leaders to his legitimate grievances, the citizen must be able to rely on just laws, on an equitable apportionment of social duties, on a courteous and effective administration, and on the impartiality of the courts.
Even in a healthy environment, the sense of civic responsibility must be nourished further by a careful education in which the molding of character, the sense of personal responsibility and discipline, honesty and devotion to work and to public service must be the constant object, in the school as in the family, in political and social organizations, as at all echelons of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government.
My dear compatriots, democracy exists only where a concrete democratic experience exists. In short, democratic life is the putting into practice, by all citizens and all the custodians of public power, the most perfect loyalty and a mutual confidence that is thus total and justified.
It is in this sense that we should endeavor to complete the laws and to apply the constitution.
It is in this sense that we will work effectively for the unification of the country. For it is only with a regime that elevates loyalty and confidence as supreme civic values that we will [be able to] unify our ravaged fatherland.
It is in this sense that a moment ago I took the oath before the Almighty and before the people.
For therein is the import of the human person, the true meaning of progress.
May the Almighty forever protect Vietnam!
[Ngo Dinh Diem, Major Policy Speeches, 18–20; Miller,
“Grand Designs,” 225]
NO OTHER ROAD TO TAKE (1965)
In her memoir, No Other Road to Take, Nguyen Thi Dinh (1920–1992) relates the events that led to the resumption of fighting in southern Vietnam and then to the official founding of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam on December 20, 1960. As a former Viet Minh leader in the south, she and other cadres were under orders from the Vietnam Workers’ Party in Hanoi to abide by the provisions of the 1954 Geneva Agreements—that is, to not take up arms against the U.S.-supported regime of Ngo Dinh Diem. However, after coming to power in 1954, Ngo Dinh Diem initiated a fierce repression of all Communist forces left in the south. By 1958, most of these cadres had been killed, with the rest forced into hiding. In 1959, the party changed its policy, permitting armed activities in combination with political struggle. In the following excerpt, Nguyen Thi Dinh describes leaving a regional meeting that signaled this change. When she returned home to contact her local provincial comrades to launch the first uprising against the Dinh Thuy post in Ben Tre Province, they complained about the lack of arms and worried that the capture of one of their comrades would expose their plans. The insurrection against the Ngo Dinh Diem regime, however, proved to be a success, in effect helping launch the new revolution in the south. Organized “uprisings” in Ben Tre Province entailed new forms of political action: political demonstrations, combined political-military operations, and face-to-face struggles by masses of women (“the long-haired army”) who marched on Ngo Dinh Diem’s military posts to persuade his troops not to open fire on their fellow compatriots. In 1965, Nguyen Thi Dinh was named deputy commander of the Peoples’ Liberation Armed Forces (the armed forces of the National Liberation Front), a position she held until 1975 when Saigon fell to the Communists.
January 17, 1960 [first day of the insurrection], was a day full of hope and worry for the patriotic people in Ben Tre Province. I waited for the attack on the canton militia unit, composed of two squads stationed in Dinh Thuy village. The comrades had decided to attack while the militiamen were sleeping and off guard. At the appointed time, a hard-core youth who knew the militia commander entered in a panic looking for him in regard to an urgent matter. This fellow was still awake while his troops were sound asleep. Our forces, disguised as ordinary merchants, lay in ambush around the communal house. Being suspicious by nature, the commander pulled out his Sten pistol and came to the door of the communal house. His arms akimbo, he tilted his bearded chin and asked haughtily:
—What’s the matter?
Our comrade obsequiously bent down to whisper in his ear, as though to transmit something important, then suddenly raised his arm and hit him hard on the nape of the neck. He collapsed right away. Our forces poured in and called on the troops to surrender. A number of them bolted and fled in disorder, while the rest surrendered. We captured enough weapons to equip about a squad of men. The Dinh Thuy post was only about one kilometer [almost two-thirds of a mile] from here. Hai Thu was afraid that the soldiers belonging to the unit of the canton militia commander would go to warn the post, which would then take precautions, so he ordered the immediate capture of the post at 3:00 P.M. Some of the soldiers in this post were sympathizers, and before the news [of the attack on the militia unit] reached the post, our infiltrators rose up and burned it down. The flames billowed high in the sky. The brothers brought back about ten more rifles.
We let a number of soldiers flee to Mo Cay district town to report that Viet Cong troops had come to take the Dinh Thuy post and were on their way to Mo Cay in large numbers. As we had suspected, the enemy in Mo Cay just fired a few artillery rounds and stayed put in their post, not daring to send out reinforcements. Our first attack was successful, and we seized a large number of weapons. We were greatly encouraged and were even more determined to smash the viselike grip of the enemy. I talked with comrade Hai Thuy about sending two rifles each to Thanh Phu and Minh Tan districts to use as “capital” and to relay the news of victory in Mo Cay to the comrades so they could follow suit. The rest of the weapons were handed over to Hai Thuy and Ba Dao to replace the wooden rifles….26
The forces encircling the posts had been ordered to burn down any posts they captured. The people immediately tore up the flags and burned the plaques bearing their house numbers and their family registers.27 On the roads, the villagers cut down trees to erect barriers and block the movement of the enemy. On both banks of the river where communication trenches and barbed wire crisscrossed in a tangled maze, boats stopped to listen to our propaganda. All the posts were surrounded by the people who made appeals to the soldiers through bullhorns. Once in a while, “a heavy gun” exploded.28 It was a night of terrifying thunder and lightning striking the enemy on the heads. Attacked by surprise, they were scared out of their wits and stayed put in the posts. Occasionally, explosive charges [could be heard], sounding like mortars or grenade launchers. The people who had the most difficult task that night were the units in charge of eliminating tyrannical local officials and agents—the core of the machinery of control in the hamlets and villages. Each member had to disguise himself with a mask and change his clothing in order to prevent the enemy from recognizing him. Only a few comrades appeared publicly to mobilize the people and act as their representatives to condemn this group [for example, the officials and agents]. At 5:00 A.M., we sent for the comrade in charge of eliminating tyrants in the closest village to review the results. Carrying a machete, he came to report:
—Everything’s been done. All the local officials and agents dropped their customary arrogance and became humble. When we rushed in and shouted to them, only one reactionary fled; the rest surrendered right away. They all were shaking and trembling.
As the situation evolved in our favor, the leadership of the committee of the concerted uprising immediately that night drafted a military order, which was then posted everywhere in the areas under the temporary control of the enemy to heighten the prestige of the revolution. The contents of the military order included the following:
—All soldiers, no matter how serious their crimes were, if they repent and rejoin the ranks of the people with their weapons, will be forgiven.
—Village and hamlet officials, heads of interfamily groups, security policemen, and informers who resign and surrender to the people will be forgiven by the people.
—Landlords who relied on the power of the enemy to seize the land of the peasants and increase their rents should return to the peasants what they took…. During the night of January 18 and the early morning of January 19[, 1960], the villages held a rally to display the strength and ardor of the people. The villagers felt very satisfied, especially when the policemen, tyrants, officials, spies, and landlords with blood debts were led out to be executed in front of the people. Every one of them was guilty of countless crimes and deserved the death sentence. In accordance with the lenient policy of the revolution, however, only the gang leaders—the most cruel and treacherous of them all—were executed. The others, those who had blood debts but confessed their crimes and acknowledged their guilt, were given only a suspended death sentence. They were ordered to move to the district and province towns to live in repentance, and if any of them committed new crimes, they would be executed.
That whole week, the enemy remained in their positions. They trembled before the power and prestige of the revolution. Because we had eliminated their machinery of control in the villages—their eyes and arms—they had no way of knowing what the real situation was. Two days after the Dinh Thuy and Binh Khanh posts fell, the enemy abandoned Phuoc Hiep post and fled. These three villages were completely liberated. On January 19, Mo Cay District dispatched a column of troops to Dinh Thuy post to check the situation. Forewarned, comrade Hai Thuy organized a “trick” ambush—complete with crisscrossing communication trenches, foxholes, mortars, and submachine gun and machine gun emplacements—and positioned a cell to fire on the landing crafts. When the clash began, the moment we opened fire the soldiers fled toward Mo Cay and then sent reconnaissance agents back to check. Seeing the grandiose defense network, they became frightened and reported to their superiors:
—It’s true that large units are involved. It’s true that liberation forces from the north [North Vietnam] have arrived!
Emboldened, the villagers stepped up their efforts to eliminate village officials and tyrants, surrounded the posts, called on the soldiers to surrender, and seized weapons. In some places, whenever the soldiers manning the posts wanted to go to the latrine or fetch fresh water, they had to ask permission from the guerrillas. Otherwise if they took the liberty of doing so without asking, they would be shot at by the guerrillas—this was the same tactic of sniping that had been employed at Dien Bien Phu. A week after the concerted uprising began, we reviewed the results and found that we had captured about ten posts and that the apparatus of control that the enemy had spent six years consolidating had either been shaken to the foundations or had disintegrated. The enemy, however, remained completely ignorant of our strength, as though they were deaf and blind….
As a result of these actions, the guerrillas captured about one hundred weapons and resolved to continue more operations to seize weapons. The first platoon of liberation fighters was formed in Mo Cay District. The enemy sent in thirteen thousand troops from Saigon, Tra Vinh, and Ben Tre province towns, focusing their attack on Phuoc Hiep, Binh Khanh, and Dinh Thuy villages starting February 24. But Diem’s government apparatus in Ben Tre Province had been broken.
The “sky horse” rifle appeared for the first time in this battle. This was an invention by a guerrilla who created it based on the principle of explosives used in producing land mines. The barrel of the rifle consisted of a long steel pipe. The rifle had legs like a mortar and was detonated when a wire was pulled, as in land mines. The charge consisted of explosives mixed with steel pellets and glass shards dipped in urine and snake poison. The firing range was ten meters [almost thirty-three feet], and anyone who was hit—even if it was just a scratch on the skin—would die right away. The masses spread the rumor that this was a new weapon, and whenever they heard the “sky horse” mentioned, the enemy soldiers fled in chaos.
While the enemy was concentrating their forces to surround us, the leadership committee had each area spread the news that we were about to attack Mo Cay district town and Ben Tre province town. At the same time, we had the people prepare sampans and get ready to supply rice to large units. As expected, the enemy heard the news the next day. They gave up the operation and withdrew their forces in a panic to defend these towns. In this operation, seeing that our losses had been insignificant while the enemy had lost more than one hundred men, the people felt very optimistic. The women used this situation to work on the soldiers, and a large number of them deserted. Small children picked up and delivered to us thousands of cartridges belonging to the enemy. But the reactionary enemy left behind a force to occupy Phuoc Hiep in the hope of intimidating the people and gradually encroaching on our territory and then taking it back. Most of these troops were Catholics, and they were extremely brutal and reactionary. Within ten days, they had arrested twenty youths, executed them, and buried them around the post. They conscripted the villagers to do forced labor, building the road from Phuoc Hiep to Binh Khanh, and brutally terrorized the people.
The villagers’ excitement cooled noticeably. The comrades in the village pleaded with us to send armed units to destroy the post. We also wanted badly to destroy this gang and relieve our anger, but our armed forces still were weak. So we discussed ways to stop the enemy’s killing while still maintaining the initiative and the legal status of the masses. Everyone unanimously agreed that we should immediately organize a large group of women who would push their way into Mo Cay district town to denounce the crimes of the soldiers in Phuoc Hiep.
The first time, more than five thousand women—including old women, young girls, and children—from the villages of Phuoc Hiep, Binh Khanh, Dinh Thuy, Da Phuoc Hoi, An Dinh, and Thanh Thoi, formed a huge force, wearing mourning bands and ragged clothes and carrying their children, and surged into Mo Cay district town. They demanded an end to the terrorism and compensation for the deaths caused by the soldiers, and punishment of the brutes in Phuoc Hiep village. The district chief was scared out of his mind and shouted to the soldiers to shut the gates tightly and not to allow anyone to enter. The people stayed in front of the district headquarters, defecating and urinating on the spot, and refused to go home. Among the women was an eighteen-year-old girl who had been blind since childhood but was very enthusiastic about struggling against the enemy. A policeman teased her:
—This blind girl can’t see anything, and what does she feel she can accomplish by joining the struggle?
She retorted right away:
—I’m blind, but I know enough to follow the path of light, and this is much better than you people who can see but are following a blind road.
The policeman did not know what to say. The women praised her:
—She’s blind but she’s enlightened.
The girl also was a good singer. During the struggle she sang guerrilla songs, which left the soldiers reflective and less arrogant. The tug-of-war lasted for five days and five nights, and each day the group was reinforced with more women coming to lend a hand, and the struggle became more inflamed. In the end, the district chief had to open the gate and come out to accept the demands of the people, agreeing to withdraw all the soldiers from Phuoc Hiep village. At the height of the “concerted uprising” in Ben Tre Province, the successful struggle of the women in Mo Cay District on March 15, 1960, initiated a new form of struggle by the masses that proved to be very effective. The Americans and Ngo Dinh Diem were very afraid of this powerful force [constituted by the women] and gave it a special name: the long-haired troops….
At the beginning of April 1960, we held a meeting for a preliminary review of the success of the concerted uprising in the districts of Minh island and to learn from it for the uprising scheduled to take place all over Ben Tre Province. Our experiences were very helpful, but our understanding was minimal, so we failed to learn from the best experiences of the masses. Later, higher officials reviewed our experiences and[, from them,] devised the policy of attacking the enemy on “two legs” and with “three prongs.”29 I was very pleased with this policy and proceeded to apply it to mobilize the movement and spread it to every area.
During the conference, the collective [leadership] gave me a key role in the leadership committee of Ben Tre Province. I was very encouraged by the new responsibility but was worried that my limited capacity would prevent me from completing my mission. At first, I declined the responsibility, but the collective [leadership] passed a resolution [that] forced me to go along. The comrades told me:
—The women’s movement is very strong now, and they have the capacity to attack the enemy on all three fronts. You deserve to represent them. Don’t be timid in your work; the collective [leadership] will help you and things will go smoothly.
In the ensuing phase of the “concerted uprising,” which erupted in the few remaining districts, I was assigned the task of keeping close track of and guiding Giong Trom District, the focal point of the province. We held an all-night meeting, and as morning dawned, I immediately had to leave to attend a meeting of district and village cadres. The key leaders of Giong Trom District, such as comrades Be and Khac, were very eager to surpass Mo Cay District. But on this occasion, Giong Trom District did not enjoy the element of surprise. Although the enemy had taken precautionary measures, we attacked using a trick and were better at it than before. The task of proselytizing enemy soldiers proceeded apace. The political struggles in Giong Trom District taught us a new lesson: to achieve results, women should attack the enemy with pointed arguments while the liberation troops attacked them with weapons. The force taking part in the [political] struggle in Giong Trom District was twice as large as the one participating in the earlier struggle in Mo Cay District. For the first time, we hoisted a vast array of banners and slogans, including those demanding the resignation of Ngo Dinh Diem and the dissolution of the puppet “National Assembly.”
Just a few days after the uprising started, six villages in Giong Trom District were liberated, and one hundred weapons were seized. In each village, from one hundred to three hundred people joined the group taking part in the face-to-face political struggle against the enemy. Within a short time, the wave of “concerted uprisings” spread from Minh island to Bao island and broke out all over Ben Tre Province. Vigorous movements developed in each and every province in the south. The majority of villages passed into the hands of the masses, who became masters [of the countryside].
The people of Ben Tre Province who had endured untold miseries during the past six years could now laugh, sing, and live. A new spirit was burning all over the countryside. The political forces held animated discussions about the struggle. Carpenters and blacksmiths raced to produce knives and machetes to kill the enemy. The workshops improved the sky horse rifles, making them more lethal, and produced a batch of new weapons called mut nhet [rudimentary muzzle-loaded rifles]. At this time, the armed forces of the province were more than one company in strength, and each district had from one to two squads. Each village had from one to three rifles, but the majority of these were French rifles. Young girls stayed up many nights to sew “main force” green uniforms for the troops. An information office was set up in each hamlet in Giong Trom, Mo Cay, and Chau Thanh districts. On each side of the road, slogans were drawn on tree trunks and caught everyone’s eyes. On some days, people from the province towns came by the hundreds to visit the liberated areas.
After the gigantic political force of fifteen thousand arrived at Ben Tre province town, Ben Tre Province’s Committee of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam was officially presented to the people. The creation of the Front was of vital significance, for its aim was to consolidate the people’s right to be masters of the countryside. While the high point of the concerted uprising was like a tidal wave sweeping away everything in its path, the people became more insistent in their demand that the revolution set up an official organization to represent the strength, unity, and fighting force of the people, which would continue to lead them forward toward new successes in the resistance to save the country and oppose the American imperialist invaders and their henchmen—Ngo Dinh Diem and the gang of traitors. This was why the “National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam”—the sole organization leading the resistance by the entire population of the South—was created in a timely manner and presented to the people on December 20, 1960.
Aware of this spirit, we made urgent preparations in order to present Ben Tre Province’s Liberation Front Committee to the people on December 26, 1960, that is, six days after the birth of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam. We decided to make it a big occasion by holding a conference that would be attended by representatives of every level of the population in order to establish a provincial Liberation Front Committee and by organizing a ceremony for about ten thousand people representing the countryside, the urban areas, all the religious groups, and the families of soldiers. We selected My Chanh, less than five kilometers [a little more than three miles] from Ba Tri district town, as the site for the presentation ceremony. The population here was large, and the village was located in a favorable strategic terrain and had a big market, the Ben Bao market.
At dusk on December 26, the rally began. We had electric lights and microphones that had been sent by workers in the province town as their contribution to the rally. Seeing the flag raised, which brightened up a whole section of the sky, we all felt very moved. So much blood shed by the comrades and people had dyed this glorious and eternal flag.
The Liberation Front Committee was made up of fifteen people who represented every social stratum, religious group, and political party. The committee solemnly appeared in front of the people, and each member gave a speech. Mr. Ngoi, the representative of the Cao Dai Tien Thien sect; Mr. Ho Hao Nghia, representing university and high school students; Mr. Ngoi, representing the national bourgeoisie; Mrs. Muoi Quoi, representing the women; and brother Ba, representing the peasants all condemned the crimes of the enemy, expressed their gratitude to and their confidence in the revolution, and pledged to unite and fight to the end to overthrow the Americans and Diem.
I had the honor of representing the People’s Revolutionary Party30 and the Front, and on their behalf I made promises and pledges and called on the people to push the fight forward….
I looked at the large popular force and was overjoyed. The armed units had expanded rapidly. Ben Tre Province now had close to a battalion of adequately armed troops. This was a real battalion, not a “fake” one. As for the strong and large “long-haired” force, I did not even know how many battalions of them there were. From now on, on the road of resisting the Americans and their lackeys, our people would stand firm on the two powerful legs of military and political strength to fight and achieve victory. There was no other road to take.
In the face of this enormous and imposing force of the people, I felt very small, but I was full of self-confidence, like a small tree standing in a vast and ancient forest. In struggling against the enemy, I had come to understand that we had to have the strength of the whole forest in order to be able to withstand the force of the strong winds and storms. As I thought about the protection and support of the people, about the enormous efforts that the revolution had expended in educating and nurturing me, about the countless comrades and beloved people—some of whom I had mentioned but all of whose names I could never enumerate—I felt more closely bound, more so than ever before, to the road I had taken and had pledged to follow until my last days. This was the road for which I would sacrifice everything for the future of the revolution and for the interests of the masses. For me there was no other road to take.
[Adapted from Nguyen Thi Dinh, No Other Road to Take, 96–101, 103–7]
COMPLETING NATIONAL REUNIFICATION (1975)
As one of the three most senior party leaders and a former secretary-general of the Communist Party, Truong Chinh (1907–1988) presented the political report to the Conference on National Reunification, which was held in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) on November 14, 1975. The purpose of the conference was to prepare for the political reunification of the north and the south following the collapse of the Republic of Vietnam on April 30, 1975, and the military takeover of the south by Communist forces. By 1976, Hanoi had decided to rapidly reunify the two halves of Vietnam politically and administratively in order to centralize control of the south, although many southern Communists preferred a slower approach. Truong Chinh’s plans for imposing socialist construction on the south, however, proved to be a failure and resulted in an economic crisis, which eventually led to the adoption of market economic reforms in the 1980s.
The victorious spring drive of generalized offensives and uprisings of our people and army as a whole has ushered in a new period in which the strategic task of our revolution is national reunification and the transformation of our country, rapidly, vigorously, and steadily, into socialism.
After South Vietnam’s liberation and the recovery of full national independence, one of the most urgent requirements of our people is to complete national reunification. Over the past forty-five years, our people have never ceased fighting with determination and have foiled all divisive maneuvers and tricks of the aggressive colonialists and their henchmen. During the first days of the resistance, when the French colonialists schemed to sever Nam Bo [the south] from Vietnam, the party led our people to promptly expose the attempt and resolutely to resist it. When the French tried to take over the highlands and set up the so-called Tay Ky [Western Region] state there, the party immediately denounced the move. It was then that President Ho Chi Minh, the great leader of the working class and the nation, trenchantly stated: “Our compatriots in Nam Bo are citizens of Vietnam. Rivers may dry up, mountains may erode, but this truth will never change.” In 1960, at the party’s Third National Congress, President Ho Chi Minh affirmed: “Our nation is one, our country is one. Our people will certainly overcome all difficulties and achieve our aim: the country reunified, north and south brought together again.” This idea, feeling, and determination of 45 million Vietnamese have cemented them into one monolithic bloc resolved to frustrate all the dark plots of the enemy.
As in the past, however, during the confrontation with the French aggressors and their flunkies, when not all the country was yet liberated, we upheld the banner of national reunification to assemble the entire people from all parts of the country to rally all their forces to struggle for national independence and for people’s democracy. Today, with the north having been liberated many years ago and having embarked on socialist construction, the cause of national reunification similarly rests on national independence and socialism, which is a higher basis representing a new step forward in that very cause.
Why must national reunification be based on independence?
Because our people, who were strongly against “reunification” under French colonial rule and that of their feudal agents, were also firmly opposed to “reunification” under the neocolonialist regime of U.S. imperialism and the pro-U.S. comprador capitalists, landlords, and feudalists. To us, real reunification can be achieved only with real independence, and only when complete independence is realized can full national reunification be achieved.
Why must national reunification be based on socialism?
Because socialism means freedom and happiness for the people. The socialist order is one that knows no exploitation of man by man: from each according to his ability, to each according to his work. A socialist society is a society with a prosperous economy; a developed culture, science, and technology; a society in which national defense is consolidated; the people’s right to mastership is assured; [and] where there is equality among nationalities and between men and women, and freedom of [religious] belief. It meets the aspirations and supreme interests of the working people, both manual workers and intellectuals, and of all progressive forces. It represents the inevitable trend of human society.
But establishing socialism is not an easy task. It requires industriousness and creativity, a high level of technical ability, discipline and productivity, persistence, [and] a readiness to cope with all difficulties and to endure all hardships from the outset, for the sake of future prosperity and happiness. This attitude is all the more necessary because our country is still poor and backward and has been badly devastated by war.
Socialist revolution includes socialist transformation and socialist construction. The central task of socialist construction is socialist industrialization. These tasks are very new and complicated for us. But if we try hard to learn while we work and are resolved to overcome all difficulties and persist in our efforts, our success is certain.
We are resolved to mobilize our power and wealth and the talents of our people to build a socialist Vietnam with a modern industry, a modern agriculture, a strong national defense, advanced culture and science, and a civilized and happy life.
At present, the north is becoming socialist. Only when both north and south have embarked on the road to socialism can our national reunification have a practical and solid foundation. Naturally, to carry out the socialist revolution successfully and build socialism in the south, we must take its specific situation into consideration.
The basis on which to achieve national reunification is a matter of principle. Our people fought the imperialist aggressors and their lackeys, winning back independence and unity in order to build a new Vietnam and ensure for all Vietnamese a civilized and comfortable life. Independence and national reunification are indispensable [conditions]. But once independence and national reunification have been achieved, this problem emerges: what road will our country follow so that our people can experience real freedom and happiness and our country can enjoy real prosperity, wealth, and strength? These are the fond aspirations of our people and also firm guarantees to safeguard and consolidate our independence and national unity.
The party did not wait until half or all our country was liberated to consider the problem of shaping the nation’s future. Right at the beginning when our country was founded, we defined in final and unequivocal terms the ultimate goal of our revolution. If we follow the right path to our goal, the revolution will be successful. This vital issue is directly related to the destiny and future of our country and our people, to every social sector and every family among us, both today and for future generations in the thousands of years to come.
Under the current historical conditions, after having regained independence, our country is at a crossroads: we can take either the path of transition to socialism or the path of capitalist development. The second path will likely be soaked with the blood and tears of millions of toiling people because it is the path of ruthless oppression and exploitation and is characterized by the most abominable social evils such as can seen every day in the United States or in any other capitalist country, including southern Vietnam in the past. Most assuredly, we will not follow this dark and painful path. The bright path is none other than the road to socialism, the only road that will lead our land to prosperity and our entire people to happiness while securing national independence and unity forever. Moreover, only socialism can eliminate all forms of oppression and exploitation and all the sources of class difference. Only socialism can bring about perfect unity in our country’s political, economic, cultural, and social life and strengthen our people’s political and moral unity.
From another perspective, southern Vietnam has completed its people’s national and democratic revolution. At present, it is completely liberated; should the south continue as such for a period of time before embarking on the path of socialist revolution and socialist construction? I think not. The great spring victory [of 1975] has put a victorious end to this phase of the people’s national and democratic revolution in southern Vietnam and opened up the way for the south to enter a new phase of revolution with a new strategic task, that of socialist revolution.
Now that the U.S. neocolonialist regime has collapsed, southern Vietnam must not halt its journey but must immediately embark on the road to socialist revolution; more concretely, it must begin a step-by-step socialist transformation of its national economy and build the first foundations of socialism. At the same time, the south must complete the remaining tasks of the people’s national democratic revolution: putting in place the people’s revolutionary administration and helping the population exercise their right to determine their own destiny, repressing reactionary forces and helping former members of the puppet administration and army to undergo reeducation to become useful members of society, abolishing the feudal system of landownership, and putting into practice the “land to the tiller” slogan wherever the land problem still exists in society.
This is the spirit and substance of the Leninist theory of “permanent revolution.”31 Applying this theory to the conditions of Vietnam, the Vietnam Workers’ Party assumes that the Vietnamese working class and people must wage two revolutions at the same time: the people’s national democratic revolution and the socialist revolution. From the people’s national democratic revolution, they must go directly to socialist revolution, bypassing the stage of capitalist development.
To sum up, now that the resistance against U.S. aggression and for national salvation has won total victory and our country has recovered independence, Vietnam has been effectively reunited. But the reunification remains incomplete, and our present task is to finish it. Following our total triumph over U.S. aggression, the two zones [the north and the south] will change their two strategic tasks—from socialist revolution and socialist construction in the north and the people’s national democratic revolution in the south—to a common strategic task: socialist revolution and socialist construction.
[Adapted from Truong Chinh, “Political Report to the Conference
on National Reunification,” 799–805]
LETTER TO THE COMMUNIST PARTY URGING DEMOCRATIC REFORM (1998)
General Tran Do (1924–2002) fought at the battle of Dien Bien Phu and was the second-highest-ranking commander of Communist forces in southern Vietnam during the American war. He also assumed important cultural and ideological posts in the 1980s, including director of the Central Committee’s Department of Culture and the Arts. With the advent of Doi Moi (Renovation), Tran Do advocated a greater role for intellectuals and greater openness in the party. Although he believed that the party should continue its leading role, he stated that it should share power and become more accountable, abandoning what he called the “unity of the party and the government,” or one-party rule. Tran Do sent this letter, written in early 1998, to the Communist Party, the prime minister’s office, and the National Assembly to argue his case. Tran Do’s petition contains echoes of earlier court memorials identifying problems and recommending reforms.32 In his letter, Tran Do argues forcefully for democratizing the Communist Party and implementing democratic reforms in the government and throughout Vietnamese society. In the addendum to his letter, Tran Do proposes creating a free press to monitor the party and government and holding democratic elections by letting anyone stand for election, with nominations to be screened by both party and nonparty organizations. In the preface, he says, “These are drops of blood wrung out of the heart of a person, who, for the last several decades, has had a great desire to express his thoughts and to discuss [matters pertaining to] the nation and the party.” Tran Do’s views, however, put him at odds with the party leadership and led to his expulsion in 1999.
The State of the Nation and the Role of the Communist Party
FACING THE TRUTH ONCE AGAIN
Not long ago, the mass media described the state of the nation as “on the road to great victories,” as “having already climbed out of the social and economic crisis,” as “blossoming,” “encouraging,” “very exciting,” “promising,” and so on, and in the midst of “transformation to a new phase of development in the process of modernization and industrialization.” But in recent days, one also heard, in the same media, that the economic expansion has “slowed down,” that life in many areas, especially in the countryside, has faced many difficulties, that social evils, notably corruption, are increasing, and so on. The unrest in Thai Binh and other places has been mentioned very cautiously but enough for us to realize the country is facing new disturbances. The few newspapers that wanted to report the real situation were criticized or banned.
The truth is that these articles told only a small part of what has been happening. Concern in public opinion is emerging: What is going on? Is the country advancing or coming to a halt? Is the good side or the bad side in control?
There is definitely a problem, a fundamental problem. But how do we evaluate the situation correctly? History has taught us many lessons in this respect. Correct evaluation leads to a correct course of action; conversely, incorrect evaluation leads to inevitable blunders. Only by following this principle can we correctly analyze the current state of the nation.
What is the current state of the nation? In truth, after ten years of reform, there have been a number of positive changes and achievements in the country…. In the economic realm alone, who would not be happy to hear that owing to our “open door” policy, foreign investors and international financial organizations have poured billions of dollars into our country to help us build our infrastructure, [to form] joint ventures, and so on. Our country has risen from a food-importing country to one exporting 2 million to 3 million tons of rice per year. Living conditions have generally improved for a considerable portion of the population, and so on.
Along with these achievements, however, we need to acknowledge that we should have analyzed the negative effects of reform from the beginning, that is, both the actual and potential contradictions and the major threats to our stability and development. These are now becoming critical problems for the nation.
A few simple questions will suffice to depict the situation:
Why does “the state-owned economic sector taking the leading role” continue to be emphasized, even though this is the least effective sector and the worst “den” of corruption?
Why are we unable to mobilize domestic capital (projected to equal funds borrowed from outside countries) to raise the total GDP to $40 billion to $50 billion, so that the per capita GDP will reach $400 by the year 2000?
What has caused foreign investors to become more hesitant to invest in our country, and some foreign firms are even withdrawing their capital?
Why are we unable to control corruption effectively, but instead, it continues to grow freely, aggressively, and defiantly today?
Why are the people, despite better living conditions, not concerned about and interested in contributing their efforts and wealth to building the country in line with the party’s constant appeals? In some areas, why do people even oppose the party’s functions and stand up and fight (because they have no other option) to defend their interests?
Why are the reform and open-door policies leading to such deep social divisions and to such bold and illegal get-rich schemes on the part of a small group composed mainly of officeholding cadres and party members? We need to fully evaluate the significance of the ongoing unrest in Thai Binh. This may be the first time that tens of thousands of peasants have joined in the struggle against the “new village bullies” with such scope and intensity. From my personal experience, the peasants of Thai Binh have long been a solid social base for the party in the revolutionary struggle, the anticolonial resistance, and the buildup of the nation. For self-protection, these very peasants are now turning their backs on local party functions (and the party itself). I could never have imagined such an eventuality. I am afraid that the unrest in Thai Binh is an early warning sign of a much more dangerous condition facing the party if it refuses to learn the proper (and painful) lessons from this situation.
With a giant machinery to run the country, why are the campaigns against corruption, smuggling, and social evils almost totally ineffective? …
What are the causes [of the present crisis]?
The author claims that the country is drifting aimlessly, and social vices such as drug trafficking and corruption are increasing, as is the gap between the rich and the poor. Honest and constructive debates about this situation need to be aired openly in the press, without any restrictions.
I do not claim to have a complete answer to this matter, but would like to offer a number of ideas:
1. Our country’s goals are “economic development, a prosperous people and strong nation, a just and civilized society” while we continue to emphasize “our determination to follow the socialist path.” Therein lies an irreconcilable contradiction. In both theory and practice, the market economy—which we must adopt in order to develop the economy—cannot coexist with the socialist path. Eventually, one or the other must be eliminated; otherwise, economic chaos will result, in which neither is recognizable.
We have to choose [between the socialist path and the free-market economy] in order to provide the necessary conditions to develop the economy (although this is a tough choice for socialist-oriented people). This must be a real choice and not the ambiguous “market economy with a socialist path.” One or the other, but not both. Are we going to choose the economic development of the country or the socialist path? The choice between the nation’s economic development and the socialist direction is not that difficult if one accepts that the highest priority is the country’s interests, not the party’s interests. In other words, economic development requires that the party abandon its ideology, which it has imposed on the entire society. So long as we prolong the current mixture of the two, the country will not be able to develop normally. All we will have is chaos, which creates loopholes for some people to take advantage of, but does not benefit the vast majority of the people.
2. Economic development, especially in today’s changing environment, requires an appropriate strategy supported by the majority of the population. So far, we have not come up with such a strategy. Although the party has announced the strategy of “economic development, industrialization, and modernization,” this is vague, not a concrete and feasible plan to benefit the whole population….
Today, we almost always commit to just one measure for each problem, and that measure is called supreme just because it is the party’s measure. Nobody is allowed to propose another. Nobody is allowed to debate the announced measure freely. I am speaking of the general strategy, not strategies for specific regions or areas. I believe our people, particularly our corps of intellectuals inside and outside the country, have many good ideas. If they are allowed to express those ideas, compare and debate them freely, they can break the current mental blockage and find an appropriate way out for the country. In other words, restrictions on intellectuals, the yoke of supremacy over people’s minds, and the labeling of opinions other than the official one as “rebellion” are among the most important causes of the current stalemate of the national development strategy.
3. In regard to [the right to hold] power, in all official documents, national political power is expressed as a function “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” with the additional notion that “the people know, the people discuss, the people do, and the people inspect.” But in reality there is no such thing. The party decides everything—or rather, party members in top positions do…. The party hierarchy, from the top down, has absolute authority and is under no legal jurisdiction. As a result, we have “party rule” in a totalitarian regime. The constitution stipulates the party’s exclusive leadership but does not mention the party’s responsibility to the people. If the party acts correctly, the people will benefit; if it errs, the people will suffer. The record of the last several decades shows that the party has not always been right. This is because the party holds absolute power without any institution or group to monitor its behavior. This is the source of abuses of power and corruption, which internal campaigns cannot stop….
In my opinion, the current economic reform demands vigorous political reform. Without political reform, economic reform will result in an impasse, and the country will retain an obsolete, party-ruled regime. The party’s leadership and prestige will weaken and be critically compromised. The concentration of power in the hands of the party’s leading organs is causing the party to deteriorate and party members to become a new ruling class in society, working for their own interests and against the people’s interests. We can assert that many party members who hold power have become “new capitalists,” guarding their authority, using power to accumulate private wealth, and causing ever more severe social tensions (such as in the situation in Thai Binh Province).
4. The last but most important factor is the party itself. In our society and regime, the party leads, directs, and decides all matters. Every success or failure, therefore, can be attributed to the party. Indeed, many difficulties in developing the economy and society originate from outside (the world, the region) and from our country’s historical and cultural situation. By virtue of its leadership position, the party is responsible for analyzing the situation and coming up with an appropriate position. In many cases, the party has not been able to do that. Unable to master developments, the party has simply followed the situation passively.
Currently, the following points pertain to “the leading role of the party.”
The author suggests that many other schools of thought can be applied to the specific conditions of the country besides Marxism-Leninism. The party’s monopoly of power completely stifles any democratic tendencies. Many party bosses have become an obstacle to the nation’s advancement in all spheres, including the economic sphere.
What is to be done?
What needs to be done to lead the country out of the current crisis so we can continue to develop steadily and rapidly? How can we achieve both an open society in which people can participate in national development while enhancing the leadership of the party? More precisely, how should the party change its leadership to successfully carry out social development and ensure people’s acceptance of its role?
The answers to these questions are not simple and seem unknown even to leaders at the highest level. It is, therefore, a matter of life and death to mobilize the intellectual power of the entire people.
Various party documents refer to the need to reform the party’s method of leadership. I think this reform should include the abandonment of the party’s absolute and total control. The party should retain only the role of political leadership and let the National Assembly, the government, and the Fatherland Front have their own responsibilities and independent authority.
Everyone knows that the people’s collective intellectual power can be developed only in a democratic regime. Without such a regime, we cannot keep intellectual power alive, much less develop it. I emphasize the words democratic regime, in which democratic rights are fully institutionalized on the basis of law and everyone upholds them. All the talk about people’s “democratic awareness” and “democratic ownership” is meaningless without a solid democratic regime.
I would like to stress that to escape the current grave condition and to ensure a bright future for the country, the most fundamental, critical, and deciding factor is true democracy, a real democratic process to give people real power to carry out their privileges and responsibilities.
To do that, first we must change our perception of democracy, at least in the following ways:
1. In defining democracy, we should not mechanically divide the concept into “capitalist democracy” and “proletarian democracy” and insist that these two are mutually incompatible. We should acknowledge that the developed countries, which we customarily call the “Western capitalist” countries, have had much success in building and refining their democracies, despite many shortcomings. We should learn from them. Of course, we will not imitate everything they do; but not everything they do is reactionary, decadent, and deceitful, either. Democracy in these countries was not guaranteed, having been the fruit of the struggle of all levels of the population for several centuries. We have never implemented the rights to freedom and democracy, human rights, a law-abiding government, and so forth and do not even know how to go about doing so. We need [to learn] and accept that humanity today has a number of common democratic values, which we must uphold to ensure the power of the people and the benefits that come with this responsibility. We must remember to learn from Ho Chi Minh. President Ho Chi Minh respected the democratic values of mankind and took the two most important sentences on democracy and human rights from the declarations of the American and the French revolutions in the eighteenth century for the opening sentences of the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. We must continue to think like Uncle Ho on the implementation of democracy in our country. (I can assert that during the first days of the revolution, had we not emphasized the goal of democracy, we would not have gathered the support of the entire people as we did. Should we just talk about democracy instead of implementing it as we promised?)
2. We often proudly claim that “our regime’s democracy is many times better than capitalist democracy.” Let us make that a clear reality. Let us end the current situation in which people continue to feel more restricted and less comfortable than [their counterparts] in capitalist societies. Many of our leading cadres who have returned from visiting capitalist countries abroad have observed that people’s lives in those countries are more open, free, and law-abiding. Everyone there is protected by the law. Their rights to freedom and democracy are not encroached on. Meanwhile in our country, we lack a system of laws, and the laws we do have are not enforced fairly. Many individuals charged with the responsibility of upholding the law have seriously violated it themselves. (In recent years, ever greater numbers of cadres of the Public Security branch, the Inspectorate branch, and even the court system have faced the court as defendants.) … We must immediately correct the mistaken view that democracy will bring disorder and chaos. Only the opposite is correct: the absence of democracy is the cause of disorder and chaos. Democracy with clear and just laws guarantees stability and societal development. The full implementation of democracy will take away the democratic and human rights flags from the hands of our adversaries. Instead, these flags will belong to us.
3. During the decades of war, people were willing to accept orders from higher-ups in the spirit of “all for victory.” People voluntarily restricted and even sacrificed their rights to freedom and democracy. This debt we owe to the people is overdue. We must now repay them fairly in this era of peace and nation building. The regime that people sacrificed to protect must now carry out the motto “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” We cannot let this regime become “of a small group, by a small group, and for a small group.” If we fail to do that, people will no longer consider this regime to be theirs.
4. Recently, some people suggested that we improve the economy first and talk about democracy later. Reality demands the opposite. Given a poor and backward nation like ours, to build the country we must mobilize all our domestic strength. [But] we cannot mobilize such strength when people do not even have minimal democratic rights. People must have the right to know and decide what they need to contribute, how much, how efficiently their contribution is used, and what the results are. In the end, external funds must be monitored in a democratic context. What are they being spent on; are they appropriate or not? We cannot allow society to be entirely controlled by a few individuals. The current intractable problem of corruption comes directly from that domination….
Indeed, democracy cannot be built in one day. It takes decades, even centuries, to establish a solid democracy. But that should not be the excuse to postpone building a democracy and implementing democratic practices.
Our country is in desperate need of democratization. I am not saying that democracy is a panacea. Many other factors will be needed to bring the country out of poverty and backwardness and on the road to development. But democratization is a first and necessary condition to ensure the success of national development. As long as people lack freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of association, and other fundamental freedoms of a democracy, all the talk about national development and modernization is useless.
[Tran Do, “Thu cua Tran Do gui Dang,” 1–13; trans. Jayne Werner]
ON THE BASIC COMPLETION OF LAND REFORM IN THE NORTH (1956)
Land reform in both North Vietnam and South Vietnam reflected the historical concerns of the Vietnamese state to regulate the rural land regime for economic, social, political, and ideological reasons.33 The Agrarian Reform Law of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, passed in December 1953, led to the expropriation of large estates held by landlords as well as the rice fields of “middle peasants,” often consisting of no more than a few hectares. Land reform teams came into northern villages to transfer land titles to poor and landless peasants. These teams were composed of cadres from outside the villages and typically used quotas to fulfill expropriation targets. Their highly politicized campaigns relied on class struggle, ideological fervor, and often violence against selected “enemies of the people.” Thousands of people were killed or jailed, including members of Viet Minh families. A peasant revolt in Nghe An in the fall of 1956 indicated the seriousness of the ensuing backlash. The following appeal by Ho Chi Minh was the first indication that the Vietnam Workers’ Party had decided to launch a “rectification campaign” to correct the errors of the land reform campaign. It was published in Nhan Dan, the party’s official newspaper, on August 18, 1956. The party’s Central Committee had met in July 1956 and decided to replace Truong Chinh, the party’s secretary-general and one of the chief proponents of the land reform, with Ho Chi Minh. In his appeal, Ho Chi Minh does not admit that the land reform itself was a mistake, only that its errors had to be corrected. Moreover, as an elder statesman, Ho Chi Minh framed this statement in terms of highly patriotic language, the overriding need for unity in the wake of the social rifts caused by the land reform, and the ultimate goal of uniting north and south.
Two years have passed since the victorious end of the resistance. The northern part of our country has been completely liberated from the colonialists’ shackles; now the peasants in the north also have been freed from the yoke of the feudal landlords.
Nearly 10 million peasant compatriots have received land, and tens of thousands of new cadres have been trained in the countryside. Changes have been made in the organization of the party, its administration, and the peasants’ associations in the communes.
This great victory opens the way for our peasant compatriots to build a life with sufficient food and clothing and brings a valuable contribution to economic rehabilitation and development and to the consolidation of the north into a solid base for the struggle to reunify our country.
The victory has been secured thanks to the correct policy of our party and government, the united struggle of the laboring peasants, the active support of the army and the people, and the cadres’ sacrifices and efforts.
On this occasion, on behalf of the party and government, I affectionately congratulate our peasant compatriots on their victory; congratulate the land reform cadres and the communal cadres and activists who have undergone hardships, overcome difficulties, and perseveringly struggled; [and] congratulate the people and the army who have actively contributed to the common victory.
Land reform is a class struggle against the feudalists; an earthshaking, fierce, and hard revolution. Moreover, the enemy has frantically carried out sabotage work. A number of our cadres have not thoroughly grasped the land reform policy or correctly followed the mass line. The leadership of the party’s Central Committee and of the government has sometimes been lacking in concreteness, and control and encouragement have been disregarded. All this has caused us to commit errors and shortcomings in carrying out land reform: in realizing the unity of the countryside, in fighting the enemy, in making organizational changes, in applying the policy of agricultural taxes, and so on.
The Party Central Committee and the government have rigorously reviewed these errors and shortcomings and have drawn up plans to resolutely correct them with a view to uniting the cadres and the people, stabilizing the countryside, and promoting production.
We must correct shortcomings such as not relying fully on the poor and landless peasants, not uniting closely with the middle peasants, and not establishing a real alliance with the rich peasants.
The status of those who have been wrongly classified as landlords or as rich peasants should be reviewed.
Party membership, rights, and honor should be restored to party members, cadres, and others who have been wrongly convicted.
We should abide by the eight-point regulation when dealing with landlords and pay attention to those who took part in the resistance and supported the revolution or those whose children are enrolled in the army or are working as cadres.
Wherever land area and production output have been erroneously estimated, a readjustment is required.
The correction of errors should be resolute and planned. What can be corrected immediately should be done without delay. What cannot be corrected forthwith should be done in combination with the checking-up operation. We must advance the achievements we already have made and, at the same time, resolve to right the wrongs committed.
At present, the people have become masters of the countryside; therefore they should be closely united, enthusiastically engage in production, develop and consolidate the mutual aid teams, and so on, in order to become wealthier day after day and to contribute to the enrichment of our people and the strengthening of our country.
Cadres should endeavor to study culture and politics, set an example in work and production, and, in a practical way, take care of the people’s living conditions.
The people should frankly criticize and help the cadres in their work.
Cadres at zonal and provincial levels should give practical assistance to cadres of districts and communes so that their work and production may have good results.
Unity is our invincible force. In order to consolidate the north into a solid base for the struggle to reunify our country, our entire people should be closely and widely united in the worker-peasant alliance in the Vietnam Fatherland Front. It is all the more necessary for veteran and new cadres of the party and government to assume an identity of ideas, to be united and single-minded, and to emulate one another in serving the people.
All the cadres and people should closely unite around the party and government and try to emulate one another in making our democratic countryside happier and more prosperous.
[Ho Chi Minh, “Thu cua Ho Chu Tich gui dong bao nong
thon va can bo nhan dip cai cach ruong dat o mien bac can ban
thanh cong”; trans. Jayne Werner]
LAW ON LAND TO THE TILLER (1970)
The southern republican regimes tried different approaches to land reform, under pressure from both Viet Minh revolutionaries who were taxing landlords and distributing the fields of landlords who had fled to the cities and the Americans who were seeking a more stable regime. Ngo Dinh Diem indemnified landlords who relinquished their fields for small-holder distribution, but his reforms stalled. Nguyen Van Thieu’s Land to the Tiller Program (March 26, 1970) was more successful. Nguyen Van Thieu’s new land law recognized the Communist land reform and gave priority to current tillers, unlike Ngo Dinh Diem’s reform. The Land to the Tiller Program gave peasants up to three hectares (about 7.5 acres) of land both free and with permanent title, with the objective of creating a small, independent, peasant, landholding class. By the time this program was initiated in 1970, southern peasants had access to credit, modern fertilizers and seeds, and pumps. Even so, despite these gains, many peasants continued to waver in their loyalty to the Nguyen Van Thieu government because the program was begun late in the war, after large-scale urbanization had already taken place, and military mobilization had depleted much of the rural labor force.
Chapter I: Objective Measures to Be Applied
ARTICLE 1
The Land-to-the-Tiller Policy set forth by this law is aimed at
• Giving ownership to farmers by making them actually cultivating landowners and allowing them to receive all the benefits from their labor.
• Providing equal opportunity for advancement to all farmers.
ARTICLE 2
In order to achieve the preceding objectives, the following measures shall be applied:
1. Expropriate with fair compensation those lands not directly cultivated by landowners, for distribution to farmers, free of charge.
2. Eliminate tenancy and land speculation by middlemen.
3. Distribute communal rice land.
Chapter II: Scope of Application
ARTICLE 3
This law [regarding the scope of application] applies to rice land and secondary cropland belonging to private persons or legal entities, under public or private jurisdiction.
ARTICLE 4
Lands recorded in the Land Register under the name of one owner will be considered as a single property unit. Any transfer not registered before the promulgation date of the law will be null and void. Lands registered separately under the names of a man and his wife shall be considered as a single private property unit, except under the separate property system in the case of marriage.
ARTICLE 5
This law does not apply to the following categories of land:
1. Land, not exceeding fifteen hectares [about 37.5 acres], currently directly cultivated by landowners or their spouses or parents or children or legal heirs. Landowners directly cultivating their land have the right to hire laborers to farm.
2. Ancestral worship land [huong hoa, hau dien, and ky dien] and cemetery land not exceeding five hectares [about 12.5 acres] for each family.
3. Land currently owned by religious organizations.
4. Industrial cropland and orchard land (excluding crops with a life of less than one year).
5. Industrial building sites.
6. Salt fields, lakes and ponds, and pasture land on livestock farms.
7. Land designated on maps for urban planning, residential areas, and gravesites.
8. Land in experimental centers and agricultural demonstration projects.
9. Land specifically reserved in Montagnard buons [villages] and hamlets in accordance with Decree-Laws 003/67 and 034/67 dated August 29, 1967.
10. Land [set aside] for the public.
11. Land that has never been planted in rice and is cleared after promulgation of this law….
Chapter III: Landlord Compensation
ARTICLE 7
Landlords having land expropriated will be compensated quickly and fairly.
The rate of compensation will be determined by a special committee, which shall be established by a decree.
ARTICLE 8
The rate of compensation shall be equivalent to two and one-half times the annual paddy yield of the land. Annual yield means the average yield during the past five years.
ARTICLE 9
Landlords shall be compensated according to the following standards:
• Twenty percent of the value of the expropriated land shall be paid immediately in cash.
• The remainder shall be paid in bonds guaranteed by the government over eight years at 10 percent interest.
If landownership and usufruct right belong to two different persons, the compensation to each should be determined by the special committee just mentioned.
ARTICLE 10
Bonds may be pledged, transferred, and used to pay hypothecs [a type of non-possessory remortgage] and land taxes or to buy shares in private or national enterprises.
ARTICLE 11
Rights of privileged creditors, pledgers, hypothecators, or heirs will become the creditors’ right with respect to the amount of compensation to landlords based on the legal status of the land in the Land Register.
ARTICLE 12
Land for distribution will be distributed free of charge to each farm family with a maximum area of
• Three hectares [about 7.5 acres] in southern Vietnam.
• One hectare [about 2.5 acres] in central Vietnam.
A farm family is composed of parents, spouses, and children living together in a house and listed on the family register.
ARTICLE 13
Land for distribution shall be distributed in the following order of priority:
1. Present tillers, those people cultivating land belonging to another person.
2. Parents, spouse, or children of war dead who will cultivate the land, if they have submitted an application.
3. Soldiers, civil servants, and cadres when discharged or retired who will cultivate the land, if they have submitted an application.
4. Soldiers, civil servants, and cadres who had to abandon cultivation because of the war, if they have submitted an application in order for their families to cultivate the land.
5. Farm laborers who will cultivate the land, if they have submitted an application.
In any case, land distributed and added to the land already owned cannot exceed the area fixed in article 12.
ARTICLE 14
Persons receiving land are exempted from registration taxes, stamp taxes, land administration fees, and all other fees relating to the transfer of land and are exempted from any tax related to the distributed land in the first year.
ARTICLE 15
Persons receiving distributed land must cultivate the land themselves.
For a period of fifteen years starting from the date he becomes owner, the person receiving land distributed under this law cannot transfer ownership or agree to establish real right on the land received except in case of prior official authorization. A person (or his spouse) who has sold distributed land will not be given land a second time.
ARTICLE 16
Any farmer who has received expropriated land under ordinance 57 or formerly French-owned land and has not completed purchase payments to the government will be exempted from payment of the balance due. Persons who have paid more than 50 percent of the purchase price will not be subject to article 15, paragraph 2, of this law.
Chapter V: Punitive Measures
ARTICLE 17
Any person acting to prevent implementation of this law will be sentenced from six months to three years imprisonment or fined from VN$20,000 to VN$200,000 or both.
ARTICLE 18
Any landlord as determined in article 5, paragraph 1, who refuses to directly cultivate his land shall have his entire property expropriated without compensation.
ARTICLE 19
Any farmer violating article 15 by not directly cultivating the land will be expropriated without compensation. The land shall be redistributed to other farmers under the provisions of this law.
ARTICLE 20
Any lawsuit that results during the implementation of this law will be under the jurisdiction of the Land Court, which is composed of professional judges.
Any violation of provisions regarding penal law will be under jurisdiction of the Civil Court.
[Callison, Land-to-the-Tiller in the Mekong Delta, 347–51]
RESOLUTION OF THE SIXTH PARTY CONGRESS (1986)
Passed in December 1986, this historic resolution ushered in Vietnam’s era of Doi Moi (Renovation). In doing so, it transformed Vietnam’s economic system from a centrally controlled command economy to one based on market principles and the profit motive. Faced with a profound economic crisis, the Vietnamese government was forced to turn to material incentives in production, bring inflation under control, change the two-price system into a one-price system, and abolish other barriers to economic efficiency. In the pre-1986 socialist command economy, one set of prices was determined by the central government according to procurement and consumption considerations, and the other, by supply and demand (the so-called black market). The first set of prices was based on the value of the dong; the other, on international exchange rates. Vietnam also turned to light industry instead of heavy industry to support an export-driven growth strategy, opened its economy to international trade and foreign investment, and, in 1988, started to dismantle agricultural cooperatives, returning land to individual peasant proprietors (known as Resolution 10). The Sixth Congress Resolution also paved the way for the decentralization of economic and political power, shifting power to local people’s committees.
The Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam notes that the past five years were a path beset with trials for our party and people. The revolution in our country took place in the context of fundamental international and domestic advantages, but it was fraught with difficulties and complexities. While implementing the tasks and objectives set by the party’s Fifth Congress [March 27–31, 1982], our people have made tremendous efforts, overcome difficulties and obstacles, recorded important achievements in socialist construction, and won great victories in the fight for the defense of the homeland and the fulfillment of their international duty. Many fairly good production and business establishments and excellent units emerged….
While affirming the successes already recorded, we are fully aware that our socioeconomic situation is faced with tremendous difficulties: a slow increase in production, low production and investment inefficiencies; many disturbances in the distribution and circulation of products; delays in adjusting major imbalances in the economy; the slow strengthening of socialist relations of production; difficulties in the working people’s life; [and] negative manifestations in many localities, especially in some places where they are very serious.
In general, we have not yet fulfilled the overall target set by the Fifth Party Congress, namely, generally stabilizing the socioeconomic situation and the people’s livelihood. The congress has not underestimated the objective difficulties; it has severely pointed out that the subjective causes of the preceding situation are the mistakes and shortcomings in the leadership and management of the party and state.
We have made mistakes in assessing the concrete situation in the country and defining the objectives and the initial stage of socialist construction. From 1976 to 1980, we in fact promoted industrialization even before the necessary premises for it were in place; we displayed both hastiness and a careless approach in socialist transformation; [and] we were slow in renewing the already outdated mechanism of economic management. Between 1981 and 1985, we did not correctly implement the judicious conclusions of our Fifth Party Congress on making concrete the economic line in the first stage; we were not sufficiently resolved to do away with the manifestations of wishful thinking, hastiness, conservatism, and sluggishness in laying out the economic structure in [our] socialist transformation and economic management. Moreover, we made new and serious mistakes in the distribution and circulation of products. We slackened proletarian dictatorship in social and economic management, in the ideological and cultural struggle, and in the fight against the enemy’s wicked schemes and acts of sabotage.
These were serious mistakes in major undertakings and policies, in strategic guidance, and in the organization for implementation. The main ideological trends leading to these mistakes, especially mistakes in the economic policy, are wishful thinking and voluntarism, simplistic thinking and action, hastiness, carelessness in economic and social management, and failure to strictly observe the party’s line and principles. These were manifestations of both “left” and “right” deviations of petty bourgeois ideology.
The mistakes and shortcomings in the economic and social fields originated in shortcomings in the party’s ideological, organizational, and cadre work. Ideology lags in theoretical perception, and the application of the laws of the transition to socialism in our country is weak. In organization, the greatest shortcoming is the lack of programming and the slow renewal of cadres; the principle of democratic centralism has been violated in party life; the style of leadership and work are fraught with bureaucratism; the apparatus is too big, overlaps, and is ineffective; [and] the education and management of cadres and party members are inadequate.
From the practice of past years, our party has drawn valuable lessons of experience, particularly the following: First, in all its activities, the party must implement the idea “to rely on the people as the root” and to promote the working people’s right to collective mastery. Second, the party must always proceed from reality, observe, and act on objective laws. Third, we should know how to combine the forces of the nation and those of the times in the new condition. Fourth, we should take care to build up the party to the level of a party in power, leading the people in the socialist revolution….
On the task of building socialism, [the Sixth Party] Congress asserts: The overall task and overall objective of the remaining years of the first stage are to stabilize the socioeconomic situation in every respect [and] to continue to build the necessary premises for accelerated socialist industrialization in the subsequent stage. The stabilization of the socioeconomic situation implies stabilization and the development of production, the stabilization of distribution and circulation of products, the stabilization and gradual improvement of the material and cultural life of the people, the enhancement of the effectiveness of organization and management, the establishment of order and discipline, and the achievement of social justice.
The concrete objectives are to produce enough for consumption and accumulation, to create a rational economic structure to develop production, to take a step further in building and strengthening the new relations of production, to bring about changes to improve social life, and to satisfy the needs of strengthening national defense and security….
The congress entrusts the Central Committee [Sixth Congress] with guiding the implementation of the tasks set out in the political report. The following tasks shall be emphasized:
1. To elaborate and organize the implementation of the three programs for grain and foodstuffs, consumer goods, and exports so as to achieve the following targets by the end of the first stage:
• To meet the needs of society in food grains and to have some reserves and to stabilize essential needed foodstuffs. The level of consumption of grain and foodstuffs should be high enough to ensure the reproduction of the workforce.
• To satisfy the demands in staple consumer goods….
These three programs will guide the streamlining of the national economy into a proper structure, first, the rearrangement of the production structure and major adjustments in the investment structure to effectively use the labor potential, land, and currently available material and technical bases.
We need to ensure that agriculture, as well as forestry and fishery, is at the forefront and is given priority in the provision of investment, energy, materials, and working skills, first in the key areas, so as to achieve high economic efficiency. We should strive to develop light industry, small industry, and handicrafts so as to meet the needs for common consumer goods and processed agricultural, forestry, and marine products; and to rapidly increase the quantity of subcontracted goods for export and other export items. We should continue to build a number of heavy-industry establishments and substructures, first for the energy industry, communications, and transport, in accordance with the real conditions [in the country] to serve the practical objectives in economic life and national defense in the first stage and prepare the foundation for promoting industrialization in the next stage. Service activities in production, circulation, daily life, and tourism should be expanded….
We should broaden and heighten the effectiveness of external economic relations, promote exports to meet the needs for imports, widen our participation in the international division of labor, first and mainly by promoting the all-sided relations in the division of labor and cooperation with the Soviet Union, Laos, and Kampuchea and with other member countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance [CMEA]. We should take the initiative in cooperating with the fraternal countries in charting and implementing the CMEA program for assistance to Vietnam, and the CMEA General Program for Scientific and Technical Progress until the year 2000. We should actively develop economic and scientific-technical cooperation with other countries, international organizations, and private organizations abroad on the principle of equality and mutual benefit. We should seriously observe our commitments in external economic relations.
2. We should continue to carry out the task of socialist transformation, in proper steps, making the relations of production conform to the character and level of the productive forces and promoting the development of the productive forces. We should strengthen the socialist economy according to all three aspects—the system of ownership, the management system, and the distribution system—enabling the state-run economy to exercise its leading role and, together with the collective economy, to hold a decisive place in the national economy and to control the other economic sectors. The development of the household economy should be encouraged. We should use the active capabilities of small-scale commodity production while mobilizing and organizing individual producers into different forms of collective production to enhance the effectiveness of their production and business; arrange, transform, and use small traders; and help transfer those not necessary to the production and service sectors’ circulation. We should use the private capitalist economy [small capitalists] in some branches while transforming them step-by-step through various forms of state capitalism; abolish private capitalist trade; [and] expand many forms of association among different economic sectors on the principle of mutual benefit and equality before the law.
3. The economic management mechanism should be renewed with a view to creating a driving force that will make economic units and the working masses eagerly develop production and enhance productivity, quality, and economic effectiveness. We should resolutely do away with the bureaucratic centralized mechanism based on state subsidies, establish a balanced planning mechanism in accordance with socialist cost-accounting and business transactions in strict observance of the principle of democratic centralism. The new mechanism shall make planning its centerpiece, along with the correct use of commodity/currency relations and economic measures as the main form of control, combined with administrative and educational measures. It shall divide managerial power according to the principle of democratic centralism and establish order and discipline in all economic activities….
We should make full and appropriate use of economic levers in economic planning and management, based on the harmonious combination of the interests of the entire society, the collectives, and individual producers. The income of the collective and of individual producers depends on the results of their labor and the economic efficiency of their activities. Policies and regulations regarding the control of materials, labor, consumption of products, pricing, finance, credit, wages, and the like are to steer economic activities to implement the objectives of the country’s economic plan and create the conditions and raise the demand for all economic units to undertake accurate cost-accounting methods and business transactions and for all organizations and people to practice thrift in production and consumption.
The division of managerial responsibilities must be based on the principles of democratic centralism. Efforts should be made to overcome manifestations of bureaucratic centralism [and] the lack of discipline, regionalism, and selfishness. The right to autonomy in production, business transactions, and the finances of grassroots’ economic establishments and the production collectives’ right to mastery must be ensured. Management bodies from the center down to urban wards and villages should correctly perform their financial and economic management functions and should not interfere in the production and business undertakings of local units. The efficiency of centrally run, unified, and concentrated management should be ensured in spheres of national importance. At the same time, efforts should be made to ensure the initiative of local authorities at various levels in the economic and social management based on territory.
4. Resolutely resolve urgent problems relating to distribution and the circulation of products with the following major measures:
• Productive capacities must be released. Efforts should be focused on ensuring the supply of raw materials and the renovation of concrete policies aimed at strongly stimulating the production of essential goods and items that create major sources of revenue for the state budget.
• The state should closely control raw materials and goods produced or imported by state-run economic establishments, issue rational pricing policies and judicious modes of purchase and sale in order to have a firm hold on commodities and money. Socialist trade must be shifted to a commercial basis with a higher quality of service aimed at taking control of the market. The central authorities should work out a decentralized and practical system of price-fixing and price controls [and] ensure the normal operation of production establishments and the initiative of socialist trade in buying and selling.
• To rapidly increase the volume of goods in circulation, we should expand the flow of goods, and remove restrictions, and split up the market according to administrative territories. We should promptly identify and severely punish speculators and traffickers.
• We must markedly reduce the budget deficit by creating sources of revenue and increasing turnover in conformity with our policies. Efforts should be made to cut back on expenditures, cancel or postpone spending on what is not urgently needed, [and] gradually reduce and eventually end the issuing of banknotes for budget expenditures. We should enforce the control of money in circulation, draw in excess cash kept by the public, and quickly turn around funds. At the same time, we should expand modes of clearance without using cash for production and business transactions.
These measures should be taken in equal measure to redress step-by-step the balance between the volume of goods and money in circulation, with a view to solving the pivotal issue, namely, gradually reducing and then ending inflation. On this basis, we will lower the tempo of price increases, stabilize prices and the purchasing power of money, reduce difficulties, and gradually stabilize the working people’s livelihood, first for wage and salary earners….
Increase the Effectiveness of State Management
We should uphold the position and role of the National Assembly and the People’s Council at all levels; create the conditions for popularly elected bodies to correctly discharge their functions, their duties, and their rights as stipulated in the constitution; [and] strengthen socialist legality and the management of society by law. The duties, rights, and obligations of the state organs should be clearly defined for each level, based on the principle of democratic centralism, distinguishing between the function of administrative-economic management and that of production-business management and combining management by branches with that by localities and regions. We must streamline the state’s managerial apparatus to enable it to institutionalize the party’s lines [political positions] and undertakings into laws and specific policies, build and organize the implementation of the state’s plans, effectively manage and direct social and economic activities, [and] maintain law, discipline, and social order and security.
[Adapted from Socialist Republic of Vietnam,
Sixth National Congress, 182, 184–96]
THE CRISIS IN FOOD, PRICES, AND MONEY (1988)
Despite the adoption of the Sixth Party Congress reforms in 1986, Vietnam was faced with serious food shortages in 1987/1988. Vo Van Kiet, a chief proponent of economic reform who was prime minister from 1991 to 1997, attributed the crisis to the government’s inability to control food prices, as well as to hoarding and speculation. He also blamed hyperinflation, the hasty 1984 currency devaluation, bad banking practices, and the two-price system, which was still in effect. In acknowledging widespread food shortages and the failure of the government’s economic polices, Vo Van Kiet laid the blame squarely on the country’s Communist leaders. The two-price policy continued to hinder the production of adequate food supplies. Essential commodities were rationed at low prices, but the supply rarely met the demand, in part because producers were obliged to sell at state prices. For its part, the government was unable to deliver production inputs at contract prices, so it had to buy them at higher prices, necessitating the printing of more money, which fueled inflation. In this June 28, 1988, report to the National Assembly, published in the party newspaper Nhan Dan, Vo Van Kiet suggested that immediate measures had to be taken to bring the situation under control. Under Vo Van Kiet’s leadership, Vietnam would move away from its Soviet-style command economy to a market-based system. This text’s attributing the state’s responsibility for addressing food shortages and hunger as well as currency and pricing problems is reminiscent of Le Thai To’s edict on currency (1430) and Ngo The Lan’s memorial to the Nguyen ruler of 1771.34
Since early this year, our country’s northern provinces have been experiencing a very serious grain shortage, in both the state sector and the countryside, which has developed into a social problem that adversely affects the people’s livelihood and many areas of the economy. The shortages of grain sources in the northern provinces’ state sector became very serious in January and February 1988. The state grain supply available for distribution in the northern provinces in January accounted for only a quarter of the minimum needed in the key areas and only one-sixth of the normal monthly demand. This situation sharply pushed up each day the price of rice in the northern provinces. The price of rice on the market far exceeded that used by the state for wage computation purposes and raised the prices of other commodities, creating extremely grave difficulties for wage earners, especially those with low incomes, such as workers and employees in the mining and border regions.
Immediately after becoming aware of serious hunger in the countryside, the Standing Committee of the Council of Ministers delegated specific responsibility to the central administration and provincial people’s committees from Binh Tri Thien Province northward to focus their leadership on hunger alleviation measures. The council sent several official delegations to the local areas to assess the situation and help the provinces direct hunger alleviation efforts, and distribute paddy from the state warehouses for immediate assistance to compatriots of areas in dire need.35 The Standing Committee of the Council of Ministers directed the immediate mobilization and transport of food from southern to northern Vietnam and arranged for additional food imports. So far, the south has supplied the north with 260,000 metric tons of rice, twice as much as last year. Provinces that have made significant efforts in this mobilization include Tien Giang, Cuu Long, and An Giang. Ho Chi Minh City strove to meet its own food needs, thereby reducing the amount of rice received from the central government, so that more rice could be reserved for the north.
The government diverted a portion of the existing food resources and granted additional budget allocations to help the localities alleviate hunger and provided more vegetable seeds and fertilizer to the provinces so that families in need could grow vegetables and tubers to help themselves during the lean months. In localities with food shortages (such as Nghe Tinh Province), the party committees, mass organizations, and people’s committees have tried to urge rural inhabitants to engage in mutual assistance, cultivate vegetables, coordinate the fall and spring harvests, and use food banks. They have encouraged cadres and workers to practice thrift in providing food assistance to the hungry, conduct effective educational campaigns, thoroughly assess the situation at hand, and provide timely assistance to the neediest areas. Unfortunately, the people’s committees of the districts and province of Thanh Hoa have not been very diligent in their leadership and have failed to identify and resolve in time their urgent local hunger cases.
The recent situation reflects, first, the immediate and long-term difficulties in the relationship between the supply and demand of food in our country, particularly in the north. Over the past five years, food production has stagnated or risen only slightly while the population has grown very quickly, resulting in a steady drop in the per capita food supply, which has become increasingly severe in the north. From Binh Tri Thien Province north, the average annual per capita food production has fallen steadily from 264 kg (1982 [1 kilogram is 2.2 pounds]) to 247 kg (1985) and 230 kg (1987).36
Obviously, so long as there is no fundamental solution to the slow growth in food production, rapid population growth, and an excessive number of government employees and workers for whom food must be supplied by the state, periodic difficulties in the food supply cannot be avoided. Even in normal years, about 5 to 10 percent of peasants in the north (approximately 2 million to 3 million people) face food shortages because of local crop failures and inadequate labor in those families.
Unusually widespread and severe food shortages in recent months are due to the following factors:
• Food reserves in the countryside have dwindled. The severe failure of the 1987 spring/summer crop forced peasants affected by food shortages to borrow food and money. The 1987 harvest was comparatively better, but the newly harvested crop was consumed immediately after the early harvest (beginning in September and October 1987) and was used for repaying old debts. Food reserves in the agricultural cooperatives and the districts also were quite low.
• The state has been unable to provide adequate food supplies to state cadres, officials, and workers. As a result, many of them sought their own food from the rural areas or bought it on the open market. This reduced supplies in the rural areas and caused the price of paddy and rice to rise, in turn affecting the lives of peasants who faced food shortages and lacked the money to buy grain on the open market.
• Large-scale grain shortages have had a strong psychological impact on society, making it more difficult to regulate the rural food supply. Faced with inflation and a rapid rise in food prices, some people with surplus rice have hoarded their rice supplies instead of selling them. People with available cash, in both urban and rural areas, have tried to buy and hoard rice, further disrupting the food supply.
The principal shortcoming in the leadership of the Council of Ministers was its failure to foresee the operative factors and to correctly anticipate the amount of the grain shortage in late 1987 and early 1988, both in the state sector and among the population. This led to its lack of initiative in adopting special policies and measures for promptly checking the shortages and limiting their consequences. The Council of Ministers also failed to closely monitor the collection and transport of grain in late 1987, as well as food shortages and hunger in some places. The council was indecisive in its policy to import grain, and it failed to determine early the need to import the necessary grain to compensate for the shortfall in grain and to ensure adequate grain reserves.
If the Council of Ministers had predicted the situation earlier and if the administration at all levels had directed the food relief drive in an urgent manner and a spirit of full responsibility, we could have entirely avoided the regrettable events that occurred in a number of localities. The Council of Ministers accepts its responsibility for this situation before the National Assembly.
In reviewing the food situation over the past few months, we have determined that it will be necessary to firmly and uniformly carry out production, storage, processing, distribution, consumption, reserves, and food import measures. We also will need to reduce the population growth rate, relocate the population, and readjust state plans in keeping with resolution 10 of the Politburo on the renovation of agricultural economic management.37 We also need to change and amend our economic policies in order to fundamentally resolve the food problem in our country. At the same time, we must always be mindful to monitor and to correctly predict the overall situation in each region in order to apply timely measures for dealing with urgent issues.
At present, along with strengthening the leadership of the summer/fall production and harvest and preparing for the winter crop, the Council of Ministers will see to it that production inputs and money are sent to rural areas at harvest time for people to buy food, initially through economic contracts, in order to mobilize peasants to cultivate the winter/spring crop and summer crop and to quickly collect all current taxes in paddy as well as unpaid taxes in paddy from previous crops.
Abruptly soaring prices of grain, food staples, and gold have led to rapidly increasing prices of production inputs and other goods. These increases have spread from region to region. Even in the regulated [state-controlled] market, prices have risen under the influence of the free market. In many cases, inflation in the regulated market has even surpassed that of the free market, triggering even stronger and more chaotic inflation in the free market.
The competition among state enterprises in purchasing commodities for export in region 2 [central Vietnam to the south] and in forcing up prices has continued at a very alarming pace: the purchase price of coffee for export has increased from the usual level of 1,300 to 1,500 dong/kg (January 1988) to 3,500 dong/kg and that of best-quality prawns, from 5,000 dong/kg to 20,000 dong/kg. The same situation applies to many other export commodities.
From the beginning of this year, provinces have purchased paddy with or without contracts based on market prices. But the price of paddy rose rapidly at the start of the summer harvest because the state and peasants faced food shortages in many areas. For example, the price of paddy in the Hau Giang River [southern branch of the Mekong River] Delta increased from 90 to 100 dong/kg in January 1988 to 220 to 240 dong/kg currently, and, in the Red River Delta, from 180 dong/kg to 400 dong/kg. The prices of pork and ocean fish continue to rise, with the trend of further increases.
The rapid rise in paddy prices has pushed up the wholesale prices of grain, food, and industrial consumer goods. Provincial authorities have had to continuously readjust the retail prices of goods sold by state trading organizations, including items that are rationed and on which wages are based, necessitating a monthly readjustment of the compensation of wages indexed by prices.38 In Hanoi, pork prices increased from 900 dong/kg in January 1988 to 4,500 dong/kg in mid-June, and in Ho Chi Minh City the price of rice rose from 175 dong/kg to 470 dong/kg, and pork from 950 dong/kg to 2850 dong/kg. The retail prices of industrial consumer goods increased by one and a half to more than three times.
The government’s policy has been to maintain a very low wholesale price of production materials compared with production costs and import prices, and this has been slow to change. Yet, determining the state price of production materials continues to be poorly managed, with many loopholes. As a result, selling, buying, and reselling materials is a widespread practice, with many units using the pretense of “joint ventures and enterprises” to sell materials supplied by the state to reap a profit from the difference in price. This unjustified behavior by many state enterprises and cooperatives has given rise to a serious leakage of materials and price increases, with a concomitant deterioration in ethics among many officials.
Skyrocketing and fluctuating prices and the rapid devaluation of our currency have had serious consequences for the economy and have become a cause of anxiety for the entire society.
• The circulation of goods has been disrupted, and disparities in income distribution and difficulties in living conditions have worsened. Honest workers, particularly those who depend on salaries, have been the most adversely affected. Yet the bulk of traders, particularly wealthy trading households, have enjoyed unreasonably high incomes, while dishonest elements in state business and production enterprises and in society at large have availed themselves of the opportunities to reap profits for their units and for themselves, to the detriment of state property and the interests of laboring people.
• Price fluctuations have caused the relative price index between industrial goods and agricultural products to change rapidly, compared with [the prices of] industrial goods. The prices of paddy and agricultural products purchased by the state have increased very quickly, while the prices of construction materials and industrial goods have risen more slowly (such as the price ratio between fertilizer and paddy which in 1985, was one [unit of] urea for three units of paddy; in 1987, two and a half; after that, two units). As a result, the state has had to spend much more money to purchase paddy, which has become an important factor leading to overexpenditures in the state’s budget and cash outlays. Although the prices for agricultural products have rapidly increased, peasants have not benefited fully from these increases. In a number of cases, price increases have filled only the pockets of intermediaries who benefited from the price differentials through their convoluted deals.
• With continually fluctuating prices, the central government, its administrative agencies, and the provincial and local authorities have faced great difficulties in economic planning. Economic organizations have faced insuperable difficulties in capital and sales and have been unable to perform honest and correct business accounting, with a clear picture of profits, losses, and productivity. There has been a widespread tendency in business and production enterprises to keep their goods in stock while waiting for the right price, while confusion, unease, and small-scale hoarding prevail among various strata of the population.
• Price volatility also is a major opportunity for enemies, speculators, and smugglers to undermine our economy.
Faced with such a situation in prices, the party and state have several times analyzed the causes and established policies and measures to deal with the problem. First, rapid price increases are the direct consequence of inflation. For many years now, our economy has been facing serious and widespread imbalances between production and consumption and between supply and demand. The mistakes and shortcomings of the 1981 and 1985 price readjustments have further exacerbated these imbalances, causing greater budget overspending, greater cash outlays, and higher inflation, with the growth in the volume of money in circulation largely surpassing the growth in the volume of goods.39
Serious food shortages in the north at the beginning of this year and soaring food prices in the whole country are important factors that have caused a rapid rise in the prices of all goods.
Price increases have also been associated with shortcomings in the process of implementing the new management system. We carried out several measures to vigorously promote the spirit of initiative of government agencies and provincial and local authorities in economic activities, but we have been slow to rectify and develop the institutions for macroeconomic management, particularly in finance, currency, prices and market circulation of materials and goods, export/import, and so on. We allowed erroneous tendencies in management to reduce the state’s efficiency in regulating and controlling the material resources at its disposal (inputs, [consumer] goods, capital, foreign currency). As a result, the central government has not been able to focus on undertaking emergency measures to alleviate sudden and dangerous price fluctuations.
The chaotic price situation over the past six months is also due to shortcomings of the Council of Ministers in its leadership over price policies, particularly the exchange rate and the wholesale price of production inputs: there were endless meetings, but haphazard and slow decisions regarding implementation. This led to a wait-and-see attitude and created confusion among producers and traders, which resulted in a standstill in the production and consumption of goods. It also triggered expedient measures and drained budgetary resources, creating opportunities that bad elements were able to exploit.
The loose management of prices and the market by the central government and local authorities was a major shortcoming. On the local level, this was the direct responsibility of the people’s committees.
In the near future, in order to reduce the rate of price increases and stabilize prices, we must apply uniform measures to gradually reduce and then end the excessive printing of money, as party and government resolutions have pointed out, and narrow the imbalance between budget revenues and expenditures and between goods and money. In particular, we must satisfactorily resolve the food problem.
With respect to prices, we must focus on uniformly achieving two important objectives: a rational price system that supports the reforms of the economic management system in active and steady steps, and effective measures for price management in order to gradually stabilize prices….
We would like to report further on implementing the one-price system. We believe that the one-price system has many advantages, and this is what our government needs to achieve. But, as mentioned in many party resolutions, shifting from the two-price to the one-price system requires steps consistent with the economic situation, with the necessary material conditions, especially with the volume of goods. Resolution 11 of the Politburo on urgent anti-inflation measures states that currently we must temporarily apply the two-price policy to certain basic production materials—indigenous or imported—such as coal, electricity, petroleum and oil, iron and steel, cement, wood, and newsprint.
• Stable prices will be applied to materials supplied to all branches of economic activity and to production and sales units in accordance with state plans and through economic contracts with the state.
• Market prices will be applied to materials supplied to other production units and the population.
Market prices will also be applied to other materials in keeping with state production and consumption policies.
In view of the severe shortages in production inputs and continuously fluctuating prices, we cannot rely solely on price control measures to overcome speculation and the sale and resale of production inputs for price advantage. It is more important to rectify the management of materials, to intensify the inspection of production input reserves subject to quotas, to efficiently monitor and evaluate the inventory of production inputs, to prevent and severely punish the illicit sale of materials on the free market, and to abolish the selling and reselling of strategic materials exclusively produced or imported by the state.
In view of the very large fluctuations in the market prices of paddy and rice, the sale, purchase, and payment of paddy and rice between the state and the peasants must be handled mainly through economic contracts, contract-like rational means, and a reasonable relative price index between agricultural and industrial prices.
For a number of important export items such as prawns, cuttlefish, pepper, coffee, and cinnamon—which are subject to sales competition [among state enterprises], resulting in excessive price increases, the state must specify the maximum price commensurate with production and market conditions in each area. In the near future, the state will promulgate import and export regulations, as well as measures for managing and using foreign currency, determining reasonable exchange rates, and so on. These are important conditions to restore order and discipline in the purchase of goods for export.
Noncontract agricultural products can be purchased directly from the producer at prices close to the market price, and this will be coordinated with the effort to eliminate negative factors such as speculation and competition in purchases and sales.
For now, retail sales will have two prices for a small number of essential consumer goods: stable retail prices during specific periods will be applied to wage earners and beneficiaries of state programs, and commercial prices will be applied to other groups of people.
This retail pricing policy should not be applied uniformly in all areas. Wherever there are adequate conditions [in goods and cash], stable retail prices can continue to be applied to persons whose wages are indexed to prices and to goods that are rationed and constitute part of their wages, but care should be taken so that indexing ensures balanced budgets. Other goods will be sold at one commercial price, while luxury goods and high-grade consumer goods also are sold at market prices.
Prices directly affect the lives of the people. Therefore, faced with rampant inflation, the state must control the prices of goods essential to production and livelihoods. Depending on the progress in stabilizing the economy and achieving reforms in the management system, the state will actively extend, in an orderly manner, the rights and responsibilities of grassroots economic units to determine and manage prices and will perfect state tools for managing prices and the market. The Council of Ministers has issued a new list of goods for the management of prices, which specifies which prices are to be determined by the Council of Ministers or by the chairman of the people’s committees of the provinces and the cities. It is the responsibility of the relevant agencies to supervise and inspect the implementation of these regulations on price management, to help restore order, and to gradually stabilize prices.
[N. D., “Luong thuc va gia ca, tien te,” 1, 4; trans. Jayne Werner]