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The ICP was formed in Hong Kong in 1930 from the
amalgamation of the Vietnamese and the nascent Lao and Khmer communist groups,
and it received its instructions from the Moscow-based Communist International
(Comintern).
Communist Movement
The Vietnamese communist movement began in Paris in 1920, when Ho Chi Minh,
using the pseudonym Nguyen Ai Quoc, became a charter member of the French
Communist Party. Two years later, Ho went to Moscow to study Marxist doctrine
and then proceeded to Canton as a Comintern representative. While in China, he
formed the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League, setting the stage for the
formation of the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930. French repression of
nationalists and communists forced some of the insurgents underground, and
others escaped to China. Other dissidents were imprisoned, some emerging later
to play important roles in the anti-colonial movement.
Ho Chi Minh was abroad at that time but was imprisoned later in Hong Kong by
the British. He was released in 1933, and in 1936 a new French government
released his compatriots who, at the outset of World War II, fled to China.
There they were joined by Ho, who organized the Viet Minh-- purportedly a
coalition of all anti-French Vietnamese groups. Official Vietnamese
publications state that the Viet Minh was founded and led by the ICP.
Because a Vichy French administration in Vietnam during World War II cooperated
with occupying Japanese forces, the Viet Minh\'s anti-French activity was also
directed against the Japanese, and, for a short period, there was cooperation
between the Viet Minh and Allied forces. When the French were ousted by the
Japanese in March 1945, the Viet Minh began to move into the countryside from
their base areas in the mountains of northern Vietnam. By the time Allied
troops--Chinese in the north and British in the south--arrived to take the
surrender of Japanese troops, the Viet Minh leaders had already announced the
formation of a Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and on September 2, 1945,
proclaimed Vietnam\'s independence.
Deep divisions between Vietnamese communist and non-communist nationalists soon
began to surface, however, especially in the south, and with the arrival of
Allied forces later in September, the DRV was forced to begin negotiations with
the French on their future relationship. The difficult negotiations broke down
in December 1946, and fighting began with a Viet Minh attack on the French in
Hanoi.
Civil War
A prolonged three-way struggle ensued among the Vietnamese communists (led by
Ho Chi Minh), the French, and the Vietnamese nationalists (nominally led by
Emperor Bao Dai). The communists sought to portray their struggle as a national
uprising; the French attempted to reestablish their control; and the
non-communist nationalists, many of whom chose to fight alongside the French
against the communists, wanted neither French nor communist domination. Ho Chi
Minh\'s Viet Minh forces fought a highly successful guerrilla campaign and
eventually controlled much of rural Vietnam. The French military disaster at
Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 and the conference at Geneva, where France signed the
Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Vietnam on July 20, 1954, marked
the end of the eight-year war and French colonial rule in Indochina.
1954 Cease-Fire Agreement and Partition
The 1954 cease-fire agreement negotiated in Geneva provided for provisional
division of the country at approximately the 17th parallel; a 300-day period
for free movement of population between the two \"zones\" established
thereby; and the establishment of an International Control
Commission--representatives of Canada, India, and Poland--to supervise its
execution. The cease-fire agreements also referred to \"general
elections\" that would \"bring about the unification\" of the
two zones of Vietnam. The agreement was not accepted by the Bao Dai government,
which agreed, however, to respect the cease-fire.
Following the partition of Vietnam under the terms of the Geneva agreements,
there was considerable confusion in the south. Although Bao Dai had appointed a
well-known nationalist figure, Ngo Dinh Diem, as prime minister, Diem initially
had to administer a country plagued by a ruined economy and by a political life
fragmented by rivalries of religious sects and political factions. He also had
the problem of coping with 850,000 refugees from the north. The communist
leaders in Hanoi expected the Diem government to collapse and come under their
control. Nevertheless, during his early years in office, Diem was able to
consolidate his political position, eliminating the private armies of the
religious sects and, with substantial US military and economic aid, build a
national army and administration and make significant progress toward
reconstructing the economy.
Meanwhile, the communist leaders consolidated their power in North Vietnam and
instituted a harsh \"agrarian reform.\" In the late 1950s, they
reactivated the network of communists who had stayed in the south (the Viet
Cong) with hidden stocks of arms, reinfiltrated trained guerrillas who had been
regrouped in the north after 1954, and began a campaign of terror against
officials and villagers who refused to support the communist cause. The
communists also exploited grievances created by mistakes of the Diem government
as well as age-old shortcomings of Vietnamese society, such as poverty and land
shortages.
By 1963, the North Vietnamese communists had made significant progress in
building an apparatus in South Vietnam. Nevertheless, in 1964 Hanoi decided
that the Viet Cong (VC) cadres and their supporters were not sufficient to take
advantage of the political confusion following the overthrow of Diem in
November 1963. Hanoi ordered regular troops of the North Vietnamese army
(People\'s Army of Vietnam--PAVN) into South Vietnam, first as \"fillers\"
in VC units, then in regular formations. The first regimental units were
dispatched in the fall of 1964. By 1968, PAVN forces were bearing the brunt of
combat on the communist side.
US Assistance
In December 1961, President Diem requested assistance from the United States.
President Kennedy sent US military advisers to South Vietnam to help the
government deal with aggression from the North. In March 1965, President
Johnson sent Marine units to the Danang area to defend US installations. In
July 1965, he decided to commit up to 125,000 US combat troops to Vietnam. By
the spring of 1969, the United States had reached its greatest troop
strength--543,000--in Vietnam.
The US bombing of North Vietnam, which began in March 1965, was partially
halted in 1968. US and North Vietnamese negotiators met in Paris on May 15,
1968, to discuss terms for a complete halt and to arrange for a conference of
all \"interested parties\" in the Vietnam war, including the
Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN) and the National Liberation Front.
President Johnson ordered all bombing of the North stopped effective November
1, 1968, and the four parties met for their first plenary session on January
25, 1969.
The Paris meetings, which began with so much hope, moved slowly. Beginning in
June 1969, the United States began a troop withdrawal program concurrent with
the assumption by GVN armed forces of a larger role in the defense of their
country. While the United States withdrew from ground combat by 1971, it still
provided air and sea support to the South Vietnamese until the signing of the
cease-fire agreements. The peace agreement was concluded on January 27, 1973.
After the 1973 Peace Agreement
While Hanoi continued to proclaim its support of the peace agreement, it
illegally sent thousands of tons of materiel into South Vietnam, including
sophisticated offensive weaponry new to the South. Tens of thousands of PAVN
troops infiltrated South Vietnam to join the 160,000 there at the time of the
cease-fire. Numerous attacks were carried out against installations, lines of
communication, economic facilities, and, occasionally, population centers.
At the beginning of 1975, the North Vietnamese began a major offensive in the
South that succeeded in breaking through the central highlands defenses. After
taking over provincial capitals in that area, a combination of forces from the
demilitarized zone area and the highlands routed South Vietnamese defenders.
Pressures from the highlands and from the Cambodian border region led to a
general GVN military collapse, which in turn resulted in the fall of Saigon
itself by the end of April. Faced with the threat of a takeover by a communist
regime, tens of thousands of Vietnamese fled the country. The exodus of
dissatisfied Vietnamese--both from the North and the South--continues today.
Reunification
For the first few months after the war, separate governments were maintained in
the northern and southern parts of the country. However, in mid-November 1975,
the decision to reunify the country was announced, despite the vast social and
economic differences remaining between the two sections. Elections were held in
April 1976 for the National Assembly, which was convened the following June.
The assembly ratified the reunification of the country and on July 2 renamed it
the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV). It also appointed a committee to draft
a new constitution for the entire country. The party Central Committee approved
the constitution in September 1980. New National Assembly elections were held in
April 1981.