It was not an auspicious time for discussions in Moscow about the resumption of revolutionary war in South Vietnam; Nikita Khrushchev was making preparations for a September trip to the United States and was reluctant to risk antagonizing Washington over an issue of peripheral concern to Moscow. The Soviet Union announced a long-term aid pact to bolster the DRV economy, but on the issue of national reunification its leaders were less forthcoming. Speeches by Khrushchev and Kliment Voroshilov during Ho’s visit emphasized the importance of implementing peacefully the provisions of the Geneva Accords.
After Ho’s meeting with Soviet leaders, he remained briefly in Moscow for a medical checkup (he was told he was in better health than the previous year) and then embarked on a leisurely tour through the European republics of the USSR, passing through the Ukraine, Crimea, and Caucasus. In late July he traveled by train through Central Asia to Alma-Ata, capital of the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. On August 1, he flew from there to Ürümqi, in China’s Xinjiang province.
Ho had extended his sojourn in the USSR because the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party was gathering for a critical conference, and thus would not be able to meet Ho until later. The meeting was convened at Lushan, a mountain resort in south China, to address growing discord within the Party leadership, sparked in part by the disastrous Great Leap Forward. Launched the previous year with the objective of increasing food production and hastening the socialization of the countryside, that campaign had encountered widespread resistance from peasants and resulted in mass starvation in rural areas. At the Lushan conference, Defense Minister Peng Dehuai, commander of People’s Liberation Army forces in the Korean conflict, angered Mao Zedong by criticizing the Great Leap Forward for its tragic impact on the Chinese economy. He also defended China’s military relationship with the USSR against those who would replace it with a policy of self-reliance. For his temerity, Peng was dismissed from his post and replaced by Marshal Lin Biao, a senior military officer who had commanded Chinese troops during the Civil War and was now one of Mao Zedong’s closest allies.
Ho Chi Minh remained in Ürümqi a few days and then made his way slowly eastward by train to Xian where, as in the fall of 1938, he once again played the role of a tourist. He finally arrived in Beijing on August 13. Because Mao had still not returned to the capital, Ho met with Zhou Enlai and Liu Shaoqi, who informed him that there had been no change in the Chinese view that resistance operations in South Vietnam should be limited to political and low-level forms of paramilitary struggle, although they did approve the DRV’s decision to resort to the strategy of revolutionary war. Ho returned to Hanoi on the twenty-sixth.8
Ho Chi Minh could not have been pleased at the meager results of his lengthy trip abroad. Neither Moscow not Beijing had expressed more than polite sympathy at the breakdown of the Geneva Accords, not had they indicated any firm support for Hanoi’s decision to resort to a policy of revolutionary violence to complete the task of national reunification. He must have been particularly incensed at his treatment in China, where Mao Zedong had not even bothered to return to the capital to greet him. But Ho was accustomed to condescension on the part of Chinese comrades, and in remarks to his colleagues he occasionally referred sarcastically to Mao Zedong as the “Celestial Emperor.” In any case, the slight was soon patched up. That autumn, he led an official delegation to Beijing to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the PRC. After meeting with his old friend and benefactor Madame Soong Qing-ling, Ho conferred with Mao on October 3 and returned home the following day. In an article printed in Nhan Dan that month, Ho urged his compatriots to study the Chinese experience and to be eternally grateful for Chinese support in the Vietnamese war of national liberation.9
While Ho Chi Minh was consulting with Hanoi’s allies about foreign policy, his colleagues were preoccupied with domestic concerns. The three-year plan aimed at building the foundations of a socialist society in the North was well under way and in general had proceeded without the violence and discord of the land reform program. The relative absence of class violence that accompanied the collectivization campaign was undoubtedly gratifying to Ho Chi Minh, who urged his colleagues to avoid coercion and to use “democratic methods” to indoctrinate the rural population in the superiority of the socialist system. Ho was similarly insistent that persuasion rather than force be used in urban areas, where the industrial and commercial sector was being steadily placed under state or collective ownership. In a meeting devoted to Party rectification, Ho took issue with the view expressed by some militants that the bourgeois class was the natural adversary of social revolution in North Vietnam, arguing that the bourgeoisie had joined the ranks of the masses and could be transformed peacefully and voluntarily into useful members of the working class. How much weight Ho’s words carried within Party councils, however, is difficult to ascertain. His influence over decisions relating to domestic affairs had waned considerably, and senior Party leaders had decided that he would devote the bulk of his time to foreign policy concerns and the issue of national reunification.10
By the end of 1959, most of the urban and rural economy in the DRV had been transformed along socialist lines, and Party leaders began to turn their attention to the next step—a five-year plan, Soviet-style, to begin the process of socialist industrialization. Not only would the plan require a major effort, it would take place in conjunction with an escalation of the struggle in the South, so Party leaders decided that a national Party congress should be convened to provide a platform for public discussion of the plan and a means to secure its approval. In October 1959, preparations for the congress, to take place sometime in the late summer or fall of 1960, got under way.
Meanwhile, tensions between Hanoi’s chief allies escalated. At a congress of the Romanian Communist Party in June 1960, the Sino-Soviet dispute for the first time broke out into the open to a stunned world, sparked by bitter attacks uttered by delegates on both sides. After the congress, Moscow ordered many of its advisers in China to return home. Vietnamese representatives in Bucharest had probably not been advised of Khrushchev’s intentions at the congress, and remained largely silent in the face of Soviet attacks on Chinese views regarding imperialism and global war; Le Duan, the senior VWP delegate at the conference, issued a brief statement supporting the Chinese line that the U.S. imperialists were attempting to foment a new world war. But Hanoi was not ready yet to take sides in the dispute, which reflected the growing chasm between Moscow and Beijing over the strategy to be adopted by socialist countries in the Cold War. A Nhan Dan editorial published after the conference adjourned ignored the issues raised there and warned that the lack of Communist unity could badly hurt the Party and the cause of Vietnamese reunification.
Hanoi tried desperately to keep the dispute from damaging its own security interests, and Ho Chi Minh himself took every opportunity to appear evenhanded in dealings with Moscow and Beijing. That May, he had flown to south China to celebrate his seventieth birthday and rest for a few days. Shortly after his return, an article supporting Moscow’s “correct policies” appeared under his name in Nhan Dan. In August, he made a quiet visit to Moscow and Beijing, where he undoubtedly tried to reassure both his hosts regarding DRV intentions in South Vietnam, while at the same time urging them to make every effort to reconcile their differences.
The Third National Congress of the VWP, the first to be held since the resistance congress in the Viet Bac in early 1951, convened in Hanoi on September 5, 1960. In attendance were 576 delegates representing more than half a million Party members in both zones. As Party chairman, Ho gave the opening speech, in which he made a brief reference to past mistakes (the Party, he pointed out, had actively corrected its shortcomings and was not “dizzy with success”), but he devoted the bulk of his address to the future, declaring that the major task for the next few years was to lead the North onward to socialism. The best guarantee of victory for the Vietnamese revolution, he emphasized, was “to steep ourselves i
n Marxism-Leninism, to remain loyal to the interests of the working class and the people, and to preserve solidarity and unity within the Party, between all Communist parties, and all countries of the big socialist family.” He had relatively little to say about the South—which he described as the “brass wall of the fatherland”—except to note that the Party hoped to achieve reunification by peaceful means.11
Ho’s speech set the tone at the congress; the bulk of attention was devoted to giving formal approval to the new five-year plan to lay the basis for a technologically advanced and fully socialist society. The struggle for national reunification was by no means ignored; in the resolution issued at the close of the meeting, it was assigned equal billing with the Party’s domestic objectives over the next five years. But it was clear that Party leaders had still not reached a consensus on how to proceed in the South. In his political report to the congress, Le Duan made a number of references to the situation, but he avoided specifics, noting only that it would be “a long and arduous struggle, not simple but complex, combining many forms of struggle,” requiring flexibility and a move from legal to illegal forms of activity. The primary tool, he declared, would be the revolutionary power of the masses. He did not refer to the possibility of active involvement by the DRV. That the Party leadership did not expect that it would be required, at least for the immediate future, was suggested by the fact that the congress approved without much debate the Politburo’s ambitious proposal to adopt a five-year plan for socialist industrialization in the North. Still, there were indications that the debate over strategy in the South had not entirely abated. In his address before the delegates, Vo Nguyen Giap remarked that some comrades were not fully aware of the plots of the United States and their lackeys in Saigon, pointing out that they “don’t understand that while our policy is to preserve peace and achieve peaceful reunification, we should always be prepared to cope with any maneuver of the enemy.”
Finally, the Third Congress ratified the shift in Party leadership that had been under way for several years. Le Duan was formally elected first secretary (replacing the old title of general secretary, in imitation of a decision taken by the Soviet Party) of the VWP. Ho Chi Minh remained Party chairman. Duan’s promotion to a ranking in the Party second only to that of Ho himself left no doubt that the issue of national reunification would receive ample attention during the next decade. As a further indication of its growing importance, there were now three native South Vietnamese in the new Politburo—Le Duan, Pham Hung, and a senior military officer of rising prominence, Nguyen Chi Thanh. Charismatic and ambitious, Thanh had been promoted to the highest grade of General of the Army in the late 1950s, thus equaling in rank his rival Vo Nguyen Giap. Unlike Giap, Thanh was a political creature, having previously served as head of the army’s Political Department, which was charged with maintaining ideological purity among the troops. A fourth new member of the Party’s ruling body, Le Duc Tho, was not a southerner, but had served there as Le Duan’s deputy during the war of resistance against the French.12
The Third National Congress took no official position on the Sino-Soviet dispute, and (with delegates from both countries present) the issue apparently did not spark debate at public sessions. Statements issued after the meeting continued to describe the USSR as the leader of the socialist camp, but with militant new leaders under Le Duan coming to the fore, Ho’s long effort to maintain a balance in relations with the DRV’s two socialist patrons was now increasingly in jeopardy. Ho did his part in minimizing tensions by acting as interpreter in discussions between Soviet and Chinese representatives at the congress. But neither ally was prepared to give its approval to a possible escalation of the ferment in South Vietnam. Moscow refused to give Ho a blank check in South Vietnam and rejected Ho’s appeal to lower tensions within the socialist camp. During a short visit to Hanoi in July, Zhou Enlai had urged the Vietnamese to be flexible and to make maximum use of political struggle in seeking victory in the South.13
Party leaders continued to grapple with the problem of how to bring about the collapse of the Diem regime without running the risk of provoking direct intervention by the United States. Past experience suggested that a new political organization in the South was needed that could occupy a role similar to that played by the Vietminh Front in the early years of the struggle against the French. In effect, Hanoi required a national front that would serve as a magnet for all dissident elements opposed to the Saigon regime, while remaining subject to the will of the VWP. It would need a program that would appeal to patriots dedicated to Vietnamese reunification without alienating separatist elements in the South who were suspicious of northern domination. It would need to appeal to moderates who distrusted communism in ideology and practice, while still eliciting the enthusiastic support of workers and peasants. It would also need to hold the promise of liberating South Vietnam from the clutches of Diem’s authoritarian rule without embodying the threat of an immediate takover of the southern provinces by the Communist regime in the North.
The first public reference to the projected new front appeared at the Third National Congress, when it was briefly described in an address by the Party elder statesman Ton Due Thang. According to Thang, the onetime labor organizer who had promoted the formation of dockworkers’ unions in colonial Saigon, the front would be based on the familiar Leninist concept of the four-class alliance, but in deference to the complexity of South Vietnamese society, it should also encompass the various religious and ethnic minorities. Its aim was to be general in nature in order to appeal to a wide range of the population. It should emphasize nationalist and reformist themes and set forth as a final goal the creation of a peaceful, unified, democratic, and prosperous Vietnam. The interim step would be the formation of a government composed of all progressive elements in southern society, a coalition that would eventually discuss peaceful reunification with the North. This new southern front, like its famous predecessor, the Vietminh Front, would need to be organized at various echelons, from a central committee down to cells at the village level. There would be no mention of communism.
The National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (commonly known as the National Liberation Front, or NLF), was formally established on December 20, 1960, at a secret conference of representatives of various strata of South Vietnamese society “somewhere [as Party histories described it] in the liberated area of South Vietnam.” In fact, the meeting took place in a collection of small buildings in a densely forested area of rubber plantations along the Cambodian border, an area that would later serve as the headquarters of the Party’s military command in the South. For the sixty delegates, it was a moving experience. According to Truong Nhu Tang, a South Vietnamese intellectual who participated in the congress, “each individual in the hall was conscious that he was participating in a historic event.” After the conference adjourned, Tang returned by bus to Saigon, nourishing “sublime hopes.” A few weeks later, a new president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, took office in the United States. In briefing his successor, President Eisenhower made no mention of the rising tempo of insurgent activity in South Vietnam.14
In fact, although Dwight Eisenhower was unaware of it, anger against Ngo Dinh Diem and his influential younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu was on the rise in many sectors of South Vietnamese society: among farmers suffering from official corruption and high rents charged by absentee landlords; among Buddhists outraged at the alleged favoritism shown by the government to Catholics; and among national minorities such as the overseas Chinese, the sects, and the mountain peoples, from the regime’s efforts to consolidate control over all aspects of society. Most vocal were dissident intellectuals in Saigon and other cities, who criticized Diem’s dictatorial tendencies and his intolerance of any form of opposition to his rule. The constitution, drafted in 1956 with the assistance of U.S. advisers, appeared to many to be a dead letter.
The rapid growth of the resistance movement in South Vietnam convinced Party leaders in Hanoi that a reo
rganization of the existing revolutionary apparatus there was vital. In mid-January 1961, shortly after an abortive putsch by disgruntled military officers against the Diem regime in Saigon, the Politburo met to reevaluate the situation and issue directives for future operations. Concluding that the period of stability in the South was now at an end, Party leaders called for an intensification of both political and military struggle in preparation for a general uprising that, in their view, could come at any time. There was no longer any possibility, they concluded, of a peaceful resolution of the problem. Although Ho Chi Minh agreed with these conclusions in general terms, he continued to caution his colleagues against launching a premature uprising or placing an overemphasis on military activities; careful preparations, he advised, should be adopted for any opportunity that should arise.15
To handle military operations, Party strategists decided to return to the operational arrangements that had been used in the war against the French. The Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN), the old southern branch of the Central Committee that had operated in the South during the Franco-Vietminh War and then was abolished after the Geneva conference, was secretly reestablished, with Nguyen Van Linh, a quiet-spoken Party veteran, as chairman. Beneath COSVN were five regional committees, along with a range of Party branches at the provincial, district, and local levels. At a secret conference held in February 1961 in Zone D, paramilitary units in the Mekong delta and the Central Highlands were merged into a new People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF) and placed under unified command. Before the end of the month, some of these new units, operating in coordination with the military forces of the dissident religious sects, had begun to engage with the enemy. The PLAF would now become the military arm of the National Liberation Front. The Saigon regime had already begun to call them the Viet Cong, or Vietnamese Communists.
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