CONFRONTING THE SINO-SOVIET DISPUTE
The insurgency in the South did not sit well with Hanoi’s main allies. The Soviets, who had barely tolerated the passage of Resolution 15 and were still irate that Hanoi had waited weeks before sharing its contents with them, were deeply concerned over the violence and instability it was producing. “The present situation in South Vietnam does not furnish a basis to talk about a favorable internal revolutionary situation, about a possibility to overthrow the Diem regime and to establish the people’s regime,” Asia specialists in the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs concluded in a 1960 report; carrying out an insurgency under such conditions was misguided and even dangerous.36 Hanoi tried to assure Moscow that “the general line” of VWP policy in the South remained to preserve peace “at any price,” but to no avail.37 Soviet leaders worried that any escalation of communist-sponsored violence in Vietnam could lead to American intervention and therefore to an “international conflict” that would undermine or destroy East-West détente.38 Socialist countries must “avoid everything that might be used by reactionaries in order to push the world into the ‘Cold War’ again,” Khrushchev warned.39
The Chinese saw things only somewhat differently. By now Beijing openly preached the inevitability of war between the socialist and capitalist camps. Yet during private meetings in Hanoi in May 1960, Zhou Enlai urged DRVN leaders to maintain the status quo in the South, avoid escalation, and concentrate on the socialist transformation of the North in order to create the “rear base” necessary for an actual war of national liberation.40 Specifically, Zhou advised his hosts to complete agricultural collectivization and build up light industry. On account of domestic concerns of its own, Beijing was both unprepared and unwilling at this point to deal with a war in Vietnam, despite its public advocacy of violent national liberation in the Third World. “Chinese leaders did not encourage a rapid escalation of the fighting,” historian Qiang Zhai wrote, because they “did not want to provoke a U.S. retaliation closer to home.”41 Accordingly, when members of the PAVN General Staff traveled to Beijing shortly thereafter to request more and better weaponry for southern insurgents, their Chinese counterparts answered by “saying nothing.”42 Instead, they warned that war in the South would involve Hanoi in costly struggles on both sides of the seventeenth parallel and possibly bring the United States into direct confrontation with China.43 “There is no longer mention of the inevitability of wars [between socialist and capitalist states] or of the necessity of destroying American imperialism” in Chinese discussions with the North Vietnamese, the French General Delegation in Hanoi noted after the General Staff returned from Beijing. It was as if a “word of order” on “bleating peace” had been issued. By discouraging the escalation of hostilities in Vietnam, Beijing may also have been seeking to disarm the distrust of Asian states fearful of Chinese expansionism, thereby improving the PRC’s prospects for admission to the UN, and perhaps even for reconciling with Moscow.44 Whatever the reasoning, Beijing’s “cautious but ‘principled’” policy toward Vietnam contrasted meaningfully with its positions on other world issues.45
The attitudes of Beijing and Moscow toward the southern insurgency perturbed Hanoi. At a time when the two socialist giants seemed incapable of agreeing on anything, they basically shared the same reservations about Vietnamese communist strategy below the seventeenth parallel. As DRVN leaders tried to reconcile themselves to these reservations, they confronted the nagging and important problem of how to deal with the escalation of Sino-Soviet tensions. In Beijing, articles openly critical of Khrushchev and the Soviet leadership were appearing in the press; heated exchanges took place between Soviet and Chinese delegates at the Third National Congress of the Romanian Communist Party in June; a month later the Soviets withdrew their experts, capital, and technology from the PRC.46 In light of these circumstances, China decided to challenge the Soviet Union for leadership of the socialist camp, dramatically increasing the stakes in their dispute.
The further deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations and the ruptures it caused amplified the significance of every decision Hanoi now faced concerning the revolution in the South.47 Until then it had succeeded in maintaining an even balance in its relations with the two allies. Now its situation was more delicate, “more uncomfortable.”48 As the Sino-Soviet dispute intensified, it became increasingly difficult for DRVN leaders to separate Soviet-Vietnamese relations from Sino-Vietnamese relations and, more problematically, to make decisions without considering their short- as well as long-term implications for relations with each of the communist giants.
What to do? With a clear-headedness that seems surprisingly astute in hindsight, Hanoi acted not only to safeguard its special relations with each but to mend the breach itself. It understood only too well that to gain advantage from being a member of the socialist camp, that camp had to continue to exist.49 Economically, that camp’s support was “indispensable,” the VWP acknowledged, especially since “our country is a backward agricultural country advancing toward socialism, bypassing the stage of capitalist development.”50 “Thanks to the help of our socialist brothers,” Ho Chi Minh told the National Assembly, “we not only succeeded in healing the wounds of fifteen years of war, but we also developed the economy and culture to a level never achieved before in the history of our county.”51 The pursuit of these and related objectives required financial resources that Hanoi did not have, and which only socialist allies could provide.52 Psychologically, socialist unity and “proletarian internationalism” boosted Hanoi’s confidence in its ability to meet the economic as well as political goals of its revolution, and acted as a deterrent against American attacks on the DRVN. Hanoi thus refused to take sides in the dispute, choosing instead to lavish praise fulsomely on both Beijing and Moscow. It commended each for its generous and vital support for the Vietnamese revolution specifically and the world revolution generally. It pressed upon both the necessity of socialist unity for the well-being of all that international socialism stood for and which their own individual histories exemplified.
In August, Hanoi boldly offered to mediate the dispute between the two.53 Three months later, at the second Moscow meeting of world communist parties organized to address the dispute, Ho Chi Minh “worked tirelessly to bring the Russian and Chinese leaders together.”54 In his address to the meeting, Ho praised both the Soviet Union and the PRC for their contributions to world socialism and national liberation movements. His aim was to impress upon delegates representing eighty-one parties, and those from the CCP and CPSU in particular, the importance of socialist unity and its preservation. “One extremely important international issue presently is preserving and increasing the unity among the socialist countries and among the communist parties and workers’ parties of those countries,” Ho urged. Only “increased unity” could guarantee the future of the socialist camp and the triumph of the world revolution. In Vietnam, Soviet and Chinese support “allowed us to secure many important achievements over the past years, and ensures that we will secure even bigger achievements in future years.” Unity was “our invincible force” as communists. “We must continue to unite closely,” he entreated.55
Ho’s pleas failed; the modus vivendi between the two powers that he and others hoped to achieve did not materialize. But his initiatives were instrumental in convincing a reluctant Chinese delegation to sign the final declaration of the meeting, a feat of symbolic if not substantive significance given the etiquette that then governed the conclusions of international socialist confabulations. The tone of the declaration was neutralist on matters touching on the dispute, owing in part to Vietnamese input, though the language was more consistent with Moscow’s positions on East-West relations and world revolution than with Beijing’s. In one estimation, the declaration “leaned strongly” toward the Soviet position on these matters but remained “sufficiently ambiguous so that the Chinese could (and did) interpret it in their favor.”56 That was a major achievement for which Ho and the Vietnam
ese deserved some credit. Had the Chinese not signed the declaration, Hanoi would have had to decide whether to do as the Chinese or as the Soviets did. Had China not signed, the signature of the Vietnamese in the reckoning of one scholar “would have incurred the gravest displeasure on the part of China, and the consequences of this can only be guessed at, while a refusal to sign would have produced the same effect upon Russia.”57 At the banquet concluding the meeting, Khrushchev toasted the solidarity of socialist countries. According to a Yugoslav diplomat, before PRC premier Zhou Enlai could contest that statement, Ho Chi Minh “rushed round the table to speak to [Zhou], and it seems that this resulted in a conciliatory Chinese speech and the exchange of embraces at the end between Khrushchev and Chou En-lai.”58 Ho’s role at the meeting may also have been instrumental in prompting Khrushchev to announce shortly afterward, in January 1961, that the CPSU intended to increase its assistance to national liberation movements in the Third World in order to “use postcolonialist momentum [to] break into the ‘soft underbelly of imperialism’ and win sympathies of the millions of people” in decolonizing and decolonized states.59
After the Moscow meeting, Hanoi continued to work assiduously to mend the Beijing-Moscow breach while studiously avoiding any public profession of support for one side over the other. This policy aimed not only to “avoid confrontation as long as possible” but “always [to look] for the common ground.” In walking so tight a rope, it was vital that no North Vietnamese official be “caught” siding with one or the other major powers. The VWP Secretariat ordered members to take “advantage of any opportunity” to increase socialist unity, avoid “tension,” and cause “no hatred to anyone” in acting in accordance with party directives. The pressing necessity was to “form [a] reasonable relationship” with each of the socialist giants “without turning the relations with one power against another and with full consideration to future developments and their implications within the overall regional and global framework.”60 Hanoi had to “balance its ideological position with the necessity of maintaining close relations with whichever disputing faction was capable of supplying the quantity and quality of assistance needed,” one western assessment has noted. In doing so, it is possible that Hanoi “found it necessary to subordinate ideological questions to practical logistical considerations.”61 It is also possible, however, that Ho and Hanoi sought to mend Sino-Soviet differences for ideological reasons: to protect socialist unity, to follow Marxist-Leninist orthodoxies, and to prevent the socialist camp from splitting into western and eastern sections, European and Asian. A historical account of Vietnamese diplomacy is circumspect on this point. After 1960, it concludes, the main task of Vietnamese diplomacy was “contributing to and preserving” socialist unity “in the interests of Vietnam, of the socialist camp,” and of “the world revolution.”62
These developments undercut claims that Ho Chi Minh was first and foremost a nationalist who joined the socialist camp and paid lip service to Moscow and Beijing only because he needed their material and political support to achieve Vietnamese reunification and independence. They also dispel claims that Ho was an actual or potential “Asian Tito,” a communist nationalist.63 Ho, like the majority of his peers—whether moderate or militant—in the upper echelon of the party, genuinely believed in the world revolutionary process and in the imperative to eradicate capitalism domestically and at least contain it internationally. Unlike Tito, a nonmember of the Soviet-led socialist camp who disrupted its unity, Ho and his colleagues embraced that camp and endeavored to preserve its unity while appearing to accommodate themselves to Moscow and Beijing. “The fact that neither the Russians nor the Chinese showed any resentment towards these activities by Ho Chi Minh was partly due to his personal standing as a successful practical exponent of Communist theories,” a Yugoslav diplomat noted. “It was also partly because they did not wish to offend him.” Hanoi was “walking on a tightrope,” this diplomat continued, “but her position at the center of the struggle between the two big Bloc powers gave her disproportionate influence.”64 Besides, Ho and the movement he led were too skeptical of American designs in Indochina to contemplate breaking with the eastern bloc and pursuing rapprochement with the western bloc, as Tito and Yugoslavia had done. Ho’s sidelining from active leadership of the party shortly thereafter by militants vehemently opposed to “Tito revisionism,” or national communism, nullified any prospect of transforming the DRVN into another Yugoslavia, if that prospect ever existed.
THE THIRD NATIONAL PARTY CONGRESS
As it navigated the dangerous waters of the Sino-Soviet dispute, the VWP confronted myriad continuing problems at home. Besides the lack of ideological conformity in its ranks addressed earlier, there was also the economic situation and popular opposition to the regime to deal with. Hanoi understood that these continuing problems had some relationship to the lack of popular understanding of its strategic priorities. Was the socialist transformation of the DRVN still its first priority? If so, how important was improving the revolutionary situation in the South, and what means were permissible to accomplish the latter? How was the balance between these goals to be explained not only to cadres but to the people?
At the Third National Party Congress in September, the first such gathering in nine years, 576 delegates representing more than half a million members approved a five-year plan (1961–65) emphasizing increased agricultural collectivization and the development of heavy industry in the North.65 The goal of the plan, prepared by the Politburo, was to transform the DRVN economy into a “socialist economy” by 1965 through reorganizing the peasantry into cooperatives of more than a hundred households each, replacing private trade and industry with “state capitalism,” and promoting industrialization.66 This would constitute a major step toward the realization of “true” communism in Vietnam.
The plan was ambitious, to say the least. The economic situation in the North remained dire everywhere, despite advances in some fields. The Czechoslovak ambassador reported that some peasants refused to sell their surplus crops to the state and hoarded food because they feared the consequences of currency reform, launched the previous year.67 As a result of that and other problems, during the second half of 1960 the government had had again to reduce rice rations, already dangerously low.68 In the cities, many of the new factories functioned poorly, in part because the technicians who ran them had insufficient training or failed to follow the directions of foreign advisers. Elimination of that situation was unlikely, at least in the near future, because the standards of the technical training Vietnamese nationals received, most of it in Eastern Europe, were “deplorably low.” Furthermore, in selecting individuals to study abroad, the government favored combat veterans over persons with appropriate skills or talent. Hanoi, the Czechoslovak ambassador felt, was squandering much of the assistance it received from its socialist allies.69 According to other foreign observers, economic and other shortcomings of the regime were causing “considerable discontent” in cities, especially among intellectuals, shopkeepers, and Catholics.70 This situation was also widespread in the countryside, where disenchantment with Hanoi and its policies was “rampant” and “90 percent of the population” was “ready for an uprising if it had the means.”71
Party leaders were cognizant of the challenges they faced.72 Because of the economic backwardness that was at once the cause and result of their circumstances, and in defiance of Chinese advice, the five-year plan included ambitious goals for development of heavy industry, which were to be achieved “at all costs.”73 But given the progress already made, the leaders were optimistic. By official account, 55 percent of peasants, 70 percent of handicraftsmen, and 49 percent of merchants were now members of cooperatives, and industrial production, which accounted for 17 percent of the gross economic product in 1955, had increased to 40 percent in 1960.74 These improvements were the results of party guidance, support from the masses, and aid from China and the Soviet Union.75 “The entire revolutionary project of the pe
ople of the North is firmly directed,” Ho Chi Minh told the congress of this progress, “on the basis of a solid alliance between workers and peasants, by the [VWP], an authentic Marxist-Leninist party.”76
To accomplish the five-year plan, the party pledged to complete a series of “subrevolutions” to reduce private ownership of property, eliminate small-scale production for local use, centralize production, increase industrial production and productivity, and encourage national unity and party popularity through “moderate” approaches to economic change and social reform.77 In thus prioritizing economic development and party popularity over class struggle, the party leadership promised the people a “new democracy,” a concept introduced by Chinese communists to signify the combination of economic development and political consolidation that was requisite for successful transition to socialism.78 To facilitate the promised changes, the party would streamline its oversight of the economy by bringing all economic assets into organizations managed by state employees, who would in turn be responsible to national economic planners for setting and meeting production targets, fixing prices, and performing other managerial tasks. The party even agreed to further reductions in the size of the regular army. “At present, economic construction in the North has become the initial [i.e., foremost] task of the party,” Vo Nguyen Giap told the congress in explaining the reduction. “That is why our defense budget must be reduced and military effectives cut appropriately, so that both our manpower and material resources can be concentrated on economic construction.” “This is a very correct policy,” Giap said in an endorsement of the current line.79 Party leaders hoped these measures would enable the DRVN to achieve autarky, as Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy prescribed.80
Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 Page 14
