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Appendix B -- Vietnam
Party Leaders in the 1980s
The Political Bureau elected during the Sixth National Party
Congress in December 1986 consisted of thirteen full members and
one alternate member. Five were new, one was appointed in June
1985, and the remainder were carried over from the previous
Political Bureau, elected at the Fifth National Party Congress in
1982. The Political Bureau elected in 1982 numbered thirteen full
and two alternate members. Between 1982 and 1986, one member
died, three were voluntarily retired, three were removed, and one
was promoted from alternate to full membership. Top party
leadership during this period was therefore restricted to twenty-
one individuals. The inner circle of party leadership, however,
extended to a secondary, but nevertheless critical, tier of
leadership represented by members of the Secretariat of the
Central Committee who were not simultaneously members of the
Political Bureau. In 1986 there were nine..
Political Bureau Members in December 1986
(Members listed in decreasing order of political importance.)
Nguyen Van Linh, elected Vietnamese Communist
Party (VCP, Viet Nam Cong San Dang) general secretary in 1986,
had been a rising political star since the end of the Second
Indochina War. Born in the North in 1915, he had spent most of
his political career in the South and much of that time
underground in Saigon, where he worked closely with Le Duan in
1956. In 1960, because of his underground role in the South, he
was elected secretly to the VCP's Central Committee. At war's end
in 1975, Linh was appointed party secretary for Ho Chi Minh City
(formerly Saigon) for a brief period, only to be replaced by Vo
Van Kiet at the Fourth National Party Congress in 1976. In 1976
he was elected for the first time to the Political Bureau and
ranked twelfth. He was dropped from the Political Bureau in 1982,
however, apparently for his opposition to the rapid socialization
of the South after the 1975 victory. He was renamed party
secretary for Ho Chi Minh City in December 1981, where the
success of his reformist economic policies gained the attention
of the political bureau. Linh's reappointment in 1985, when he
was ranked sixteenth, may have resulted from the intercession of
then-party general secretary Le Duan and had the effect of
strengthening the reform contingent of the VCP's leadership.
Following Le Duan's death in July 1986, he was returned to the
Secretariat where he ranked immediately behind Duan's heir
apparent, Truong Chinh. Before assuming the party's top position
in December 1986, Linh advocated an end to discrimination against
intellectuals who had served the former regime in South Vietnam
and better treatment for Vietnam's Roman Catholics and the
Chinese minority. He publicly thanked representatives of the
Chinese community for their contribution to Vietnam.
Pham Hung, formerly ranked fourth in the
Political Bureau, was promoted to the second-ranked position in
December 1986. In June 1987, he was named to succeed Pham Van
Dong as premier. Hung had been minister of interior from 1980 to
1986, and a vice premier since 1958. He began his career fighting
the French in the South and directed the political campaign in
the South during the Second Indochina War as head of the Central
Office for South Vietnam (COSVN) and the Political Bureau's chief
representative in South Vietnam from 1967 to 1975. His deputy
during this period was Nguyen Van Linh. He was the first native
South Vietnamese to attain senior party and government rank and
was considered a hard-liner not because he was an ideologue but
because he believed communist orthodoxy promoted better security.
Although Hung was associated with the implementation of unpopular
economic policies on money, prices, and wages, his career
apparently suffered no lasting damage. He was born in 1912 and
died on March 10, 1988, after having held the post of premier for
only nine months.
Vo Chi Cong, who was ranked seventh in the
1982 Political Bureau and was promoted to third in 1986, was
appointed to the largely ceremonial post of president in place of
Truong Chinh in June 1987. His previous experience had been
mainly in the field in Central Vietnam, and during the Second
Indochina War he was a formal communist representative on the
Hanoi-sponsored National Liberation Front central committee. From
1976 to 1980 Vo Chi Cong held the government posts of vice
premier, minister of agriculture, and minister of fisheries, but
reportedly he was fired from each post for administrative
incompetence. A strong advocate of liberalization in agriculture,
he was counted as being among Nguyen Van Linh's reform advocates
on the Political Bureau and was an advocate for openness in the
party. Cong was born in 1912.
Do Muoi, ranked eleventh on the Political
Bureau in 1982 and fourth in 1986, directed the party's failed
effort to socialize southern industry and commerce rapidly.
Nevertheless, in 1986 he was identified with the reform program
and subsequently was named to the Secretariat of the Central
Committee as a resident economic expert. In 1984 he was called
upon to explain the party's Sixth Plenum resolution on reforming
industrial management, and he has since spoken on behalf of
agricultural reform. Following the death of Pham Hung in March
1988, he was named to replace Hung as premier. He was born in
1920 and established his career in Haiphong..
Vo Van Kiet, vice premier and chairman of the
State Planning Commission in 1986, moved from the tenth to the
fifth position on the Political Bureau. During the Second
Indochina War, he worked with the Hanoi-controlled People's
Revolutionary Party in the South; after the war, he became Ho Chi
Minh City party secretary. In this capacity, Kiet initiated
liberalized local trade and commerce policies that became the
models for later national economic reforms. His rise in the party
was comparatively rapid. Until the Fourth National Party Congress
in 1976, when he appeared as an alternate member on the Political
Bureau and as a member of the Central Committee, he had not been
listed on any list of senior party officials. In company with
Nguyen Van Linh, however, Kiet was initially elected to the
Central Committee in 1960. Because of their sensitive positions
in the South at the time, their Central Committee memberships
were not revealed until after the war in 1976. He was an advocate
of pragmatic economic reform, such as decentralized planning,
loosened central controls, and socialization of the South without
production disruption. The youngest Political Bureau member in
1986, he was born in 1922.
Le Duc Anh, formerly ranked twelfth on the
Political Bureau and promoted to sixth in 1986, was appointed
Minister of National Defense in early 1987. He was almost totally
unknown until given full Political Bureau status in 1982. During
the Second Indochina War, he worked closely with Vo Van Kiet and
was deputy commander of the Ho Chi Minh City campaign;
afterwards, he was appointed commanding general and political
commissar of the military region bordering Cambodia. He commanded
the Vietnamese task force that invaded Cambodia in 1978.
Nguyen Duc Tam, previously ranked thirteenth
on the Political Bureau, was promoted in 1986 to seventh despite
his position as head of the Organization Department of the
Central Committee, which was the target of heavy criticism at the
Sixth National Party Congress. His department was blamed for an
unprecedented decline in the quality of party cadres. A protege
of Le Duc Tho, whom he replaced as head of the Organization
Department, he built his career in his native Quang Ninh
Province.
Nguyen Co Thach, promoted from alternate to
full Political Bureau membership in 1986, was Vietnam's Minister
of foreign affairs and ranked eighth on the Bureau. Immediately
following the Sixth National Party Congress, he was promoted to
vice premier (deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers). Thach
had been a career diplomat serving in diplomatic posts until his
election to the Political Bureau as an alternate member in 1982,
marking the first time that an official from a diplomatic
background had entered the top party leadership. A protege of Le
Duc Tho, Thach was apparently a political moderate, although his
support of Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia demonstrated his
alignment with official policy. Once a specialist on American
affairs (he participated in the Paris negotiations to end the
Second Indochina War with then-United States national security
adviser Henry Kissinger), Thach became increasingly associated
with Soviet and East European affairs and traveled to Moscow in
1978 with other top Vietnamese officials to sign the Treaty of
Friendship and Cooperation. He was the first Political Bureau
member after Ho Chi Minh to speak English, having learned it
while serving in India in the late 1950s. According to one
Western author, Thach's greatest value to the leadership may have
been his ability to interpret the views of the English-speaking
world. He was born in 1920.
Dong Sy Nguyen, promoted from alternate to
full Political Bureau membership in 1986, was a cadre of
surprising resilience. His election to the Political Bureau in
1982 was a surprise to most outsiders. Previously, Nguyen had
been known as a middle-ranking communist and an unspectacular
member of the Quartermasters and Engineers Corps of the armed
forces. He was removed as minister of communications and
transportation in June 1986 because of his alleged involvement
with widespread corruption in that ministry.
Tran Xuan Bach, a relatively unknown official
newly elevated to the Political Bureau in 1986, formerly headed
the secret Vietnamese organization code-named "B-68," which
supervised the administration of Cambodia. Bach was in Phnom Penh
in 1979 as the personal secretary of Le Duc Tho, the Political
Bureau member in charge of Cambodia at that time. In the early
1960s he led the Vietnam Fatherland Front, and from 1977 to 1982
he chaired the Central Committee cabinet. In 1982 he was elected
a full member of the Central Committee and secretary of the
Secretariat of the Central Committee. Following the Sixth
National Party Congress in December 1986, he ranked third on the
Secretariat and tenth on the Political Bureau.
Nguyen Thanh Binh, newly elected to the
Political Bureau, was elected secretary of the Hanoi municipal
party committee in 1986. Before that he had been a Central
Committee secretary. A strong advocate for the party's
agricultural reforms and for the gradual rather than rapid
socialization of southern agriculture, Binh was a strong critic
of the party's failure to revise agricultural policies.
Doan Khue, a new member of the Political
Bureau in 1986, was first elected to the Central Committee in
1976, but was virtually unknown except for his military
background. He was former commander and political officer of
Military Region V (central Vietnam) of the People's Army of
Vietnam (PAVN), and in 1987 was appointed PAVN chief of staff.
Mai Chi Tho, the lowest ranking of the new
full Political Bureau members, was appointed minister of interior
in early 1987. He was a former Ho Chi Minh City deputy secretary
and mayor and was believed to have overall responsibility for
security in southern Vietnam. Having been a past subordinate of
Nguyen Van Linh and Vo Van Kiet, Tho was a strong supporter of
economic reform and increased openness in the party. He was born
in 1916 and is a brother of Le Duc Tho..
Dao Duy Tung, named as an alternate member of
the Political Bureau in 1986 and a full member in 1988, was
criticized, nevertheless, in the political report of the Sixth
National Party Congress for his leadership of the Propaganda and
Training Department. During his tenure, the department was
faulted for failing to meet the party's goals in carrying out
propaganda and training work. First appointed deputy chief of the
Propaganda and Training Department in 1974, he was promoted to
chief in 1982. In 1976 he was elected an alternate member of the
Central Committee, and he attained full membership in 1982. He
was named editor-in-chief of Tap Chi Cong San (Communist Review)
in 1977 and director of the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) in 1982. In
1986 he ranked fourth on the Secretariat of the Central
Committee.
Political Bureau Members Voluntarily Retired in 1986
Truong Chinh retired at age 79 as the
incumbent VCP general secretary, having held the position for
some five months following the death of Le Duan. Previously Chinh
had ranked second on the Political Bureau and was chairman of the
Council of State and of the National Defense Council, as well as
chief of state. He stepped down as president in June 1987 and was
succeeded by Vo Chi Cong. A founding member of the Indochinese
Communist Party (ICP), Chinh was viewed by party colleagues as a
theoretician and as the leader of the party ideologues. He
initially opposed economic and liberal agricultural reforms and
was firm in seeking to maintain Vietnam's "special relationship"
with Laos and Cambodia. He suffered a brief eclipse from 1956 to
58 for his leading role in the failed agrarian reform program in
the North, but he retained a strong following among party cadres.
A firm believer in such Maoist theories as relying on poor and
landless peasants to carry out revolution, he was the leader of a
pro-Chinese element in the party hierarchy in the early 1970s.
But after 1979 Chinh strongly condemned the Chinese, rejected the
idea of emphasizing the role of the peasantry and ignoring the
role of the working class, and supported Hanoi's alliance with
Moscow as essential. As early as 1985 he publicly endorsed
reform, but by 1986, nevertheless, he appeared out of step with
the direction the party was beginning to take. He died September
30, 1988.
Pham Van Dong, the only one of the three
retirees known to be ill when he stepped down, resigned from his
number-two Political Bureau position, but retained his prime
ministership until June 1987, when he was replaced by Pham Hung.
Like Chinh, Dong was a founding member of the ICP, but he was a
political moderate and probably the most popular of his
generation of leaders. He was born in 1906..
Le Duc Tho was ranked fourth on the Political
Bureau when he retired, but his rank belied his true power. Tho
was a protege of Le Duan and before Duan's death was arguably the
most influential Political Bureau member and possibly the party
chief's preferred successor. As an adviser to the Central
Committee after his retirement, his influence probably remained
considerable. Tho was also a founding member of the ICP; he
apparently was at Pac Bo for the formation of the Viet Minh in
1940 and with Ho Chi Minh when the provisional government was
established in Hanoi in August 1945. Like many of his generation
of communists, he spent much of his early adulthood in prison. In
1950 Tho was sent south by the party, and in 1951 he helped
establish the VCP's Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN),
where he assisted Le Duan. Later, he played the role of trouble-
shooter for Duan, representing the party secretary in the South
during the final offensive in 1975, on the Cambodian border when
fighting erupted there in 1978, and on the Chinese border
immediately before and after the Chinese invasion in 1979.
Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia was apparently Tho's
responsibility after 1978, and he headed Commission Sixty-Eight,
the VCP special commission handling Cambodian affairs. In 1982 he
emerged as a supporter of economic reform. His birth date is
variously given as 1911 or 1912.
Political Bureau Members Removed in 1986
Van Tien Dung was one of the most prominent
casualties of the Sixth National Party Congress in 1986. He was
minister of national defense and ranked sixth on the Political
Bureau before being dropped for his or his family's involvement
in corruption scandals. He was, nevertheless, permitted to retain
his seat on the Central Committee. PAVN had earlier given Dung a
vote of no-confidence when it failed to elect him as one of the
seventy-two delegates chosen for the Sixth Party Congress.
Considered a government lame duck following the loss of his
Political Bureau seat, he lost his defense post to his protege,
Le Duc Anh, shortly afterward. Dung had commanded the forces that
won Hanoi's final victory over the Saigon government in 1975 and
is credited with the "blooming lotus" technique of warfare, which
was used to take Saigon and was used again in Cambodia four years
later. The technique calls for troops first to assault the heart
of a city in order to seize the enemy command center and then to
proceed to occupy suburban areas at leisure. He was a formidable
conservative, vocal in stressing the need for a strong defense,
and an adamant supporter of the continued Vietnamese occupation
of Cambodia. He was born in 1917.
To Huu, fired as vice chairman of the Council
of Ministers in June 1986, was reported to be responsible for a
currency change in September 1985 that led to disastrous
inflation. He had ranked ninth on the Political Bureau before his
removal and had held more truly significant party and government
positions than virtually any other senior Political Bureau
member. As a protege of Truong Chinh, Huu was a leader among the
ideologues and an opponent of economic reforms. He had been in
charge of party propaganda when tapped to be vice premier and, in
the early 1980s, was a leading candidate to succeed Premier Pham
Van Dong. Huu was born in 1920.
Chu Huy Man ranked eighth when removed from
the Political Bureau and the Central Committee. Prior to the
Sixth National Party Congress, he had headed the army's political
department and reportedly was severely criticized by PAVN for his
autocratic leadership style. Like Van Tien Dung, he was not
initially elected to represent PAVN at the Sixth Party Congress.
Man was a protege of former Minister of National Defense Vo
Nguyen Giap and one of the most important battlefield commanders
during the Second Indochina War, most notably in the Central
Highlands. He was born in 1920.
Political Bureau Members Deceased in 1986
Le Duan, until his death in July 1986, was
VCP general secretary; he had been elevated to the post following
the 1969 death of Ho Chi Minh, who had groomed Duan as his
successor beginning in the late 1950s. Under Duan's leadership,
the war in the South was successfully concluded, the country was
reunified, Cambodia was invaded and occupied, relations with
China were severed, and dependence upon the Soviet Union for
economic and military aid increased dramatically. After initially
supporting overly ambitious policies that worsened Vietnam's
economic condition, he encouraged gradual political change
coupled with moderate economic reforms. These included financial
incentives for peasants and workers, some decentralization in
planning, and a broadening of economic relations with the rest of
the world. Le Duc Tho, Nguyen Van Linh, Pham Hung, and Vo Van
Kiet were close colleagues. During his career, Duan was
considered to be colorless, more an organizer than a diplomat. He
never held a government position. In the spring of 1985, a year
before his death, he was described in a series of articles in the
party newspaper, Nhan Dan (People's Daily), as the architect of
the 1975 victory in the South and as the dominant figure in
Vietnamese communist history next to Ho Chi Minh. He was born in
1908.
Central Committee Secretariat Members in 1986
Membership on the Secretariat of the Central Committee stood
at thirteen in 1986. The four highest ranking members--Nguyen Van
Linh, Nguyen Duc Tam, Tran Xuan Bach, and Dao Duy Tung--held
concurrent positions on the Political Bureau and are described
above. The remaining nine are listed below in order of decreasing
political importance.
Tran Kien, also known as Nguyen Tuan Tai, was
formerly secretary of party chapters in Haiphong, Gia Lai Kon
Tum, Dac Lac Province, and Nghia Binh Province. He was first
appointed secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee
and chairman of the Central Control Commission in 1982 and
reappointed in 1986. He was minister of forestry from 1979 to
1981.
Le Phuoc Tho was elected an alternate member
of the Central Committee in 1976 and a full member in 1982. He
was appointed a member of the Secretariat of the Central
Committee in 1986. At the Fifth National Party Congress in 1982,
he was selected to address the congress on the subject of
agriculture, and in 1987, he was listed in Soviet sources as head
of the party's agriculture department.
Nguyen Quyet, a lieutenant general in PAVN in
1986, was appointed to full membership on the Central Committee
at the Fourth National Party Congress in 1976 and reappointed in
1982 and 1986. In December 1986, at the Sixth National Party
Congress, he was appointed to the Secretariat of the Central
Committee. Previously he had been commander of the Capital
Military Region, Hanoi, and commander of Military Region III. In
1986 he was a member of the Central Military Party Committee and
deputy head of the General Political Department. He replaced Chu
Huy Man as director of the General Political Department in
February 1987.
Dam Quang Trung, an ethnic Tay, was a major
general and commander of Military Region I (the Sino-Vietnamese
border region) at the time of the Chinese invasion in 1979. He
was promoted to lieutenant general in 1981. In 1976 he was
elected to the Central Committee, and in 1982, while still
commander of Military Region I, became a member of the Central
Military Party Committee. He was a member of the National
Assembly from 1976 to 1981 and in 1981 was appointed to the
Council of State.
Vu Oanh was elected an alternate to the
Central Committee at the Fourth National Party Congress in 1976.
He was elevated to full membership in 1982 and assumed the
directorship of the VCP's Agriculture Department, a position he
continued to hold in 1987. He was elected to the Secretariat at
the Sixth National Party Congress in December 1986.
Nguyen Khanh, elected as an alternate to the
Central Committee in 1982, gained full membership and a seat on
the Secretariat in 1986. Appointed chief of the Central Committee
cabinet (replacing Tran Xuan Bach) and director of the General
Affairs and Administration departments of the Central Committee
in 1982, he assumed similar duties in the government when
appointed general secretary and a vice chairman of the Council of
Ministers in February 1987.
Tran Quyet, when appointed to the Secretariat
at the Sixth National Party Congress in December 1986, had been a
full member of the Central Committee since 1976. As a vice
minister of Public Security from the mid-1960s and vice minister
of Interior from 1975, he specialized in security matters. A
northerner, he was sent to Ho Chi Minh City in 1976 to establish
the Ministry of Interior's Permanent Office for South Vietnam as
a measure to more firmly impose North Vietnamese control. Between
1975 and 1980, he was commander and political officer of the
Ministry of Interior's People's Public Security Force and held
the rank of lieutenant general.
Tran Quoc Huong, also known as Tran Nach Ban
and Muoi Huong, was elected to full membership on the Central
Committee in 1982, under the name Tran Nach Ban. A southerner, he
was formerly a standing member of the Ho Chi Minh City Party
Committee and head of its Organization Department. In 1983, under
the name Tran Quoc Huong, he was appointed deputy secretary of
the Hanoi Party Committee, and in 1986 was named to the
Secretariat of the Central Committee of the VCP. His government
positions have included vice chairmanship of the State Inspection
Commission, to which he was appointed in 1985, and chairmanship
of the Vietnam Tourism General Department, which he assumed in
1986.
Pham The Duyet, previously a coal mine director in Quang Ninh
Province and vice chairman and general secretary of the Vietnamese Confederation
of Trade Unions, was elected a Central Committee alternate member at the Fifth
National Party Congress in 1982. At the time of his election to full Central
Committee membership at the Sixth National Party Congress in 1986 and his succeeding
appointment to the Secretariat of the Central Committee, he was also acting
chairman of the Confederation. In 1987 he was promoted to chairman..
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