|
Vietnam Establishment of the Viet Minh
In early 1940, Ho Chi Minh returned to southern China, after
having spent most of the previous seven years studying and
teaching at the Lenin Institute in Moscow. In Kunming he
reestablished contact with the ICP Central Committee and set up a
temporary headquarters, which became the focal point for
communist policymaking and planning. After thirty years absence,
Ho returned to Vietnam in February 1941 and set up headquarters
in a cave at Pac Bo, near the Sino-Vietnamese border, where in
May the Eighth Plenum of the ICP was held. The major outcome of
the meeting was the reiteration that the struggle for national
independence took primacy over class war or other concerns of
socialist ideology. To support this strategy, the League for the
Independence of Vietnam (Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi,
Viet Minh for short--see Glossary) was established. In this new front
group, which would be dominated by the party, all patriotic
elements were welcomed as potential allies. The party would be
forced in the short term to modify some of its goals and soften
its rhetoric, supporting, for example, the reduction of land
rents rather than demanding land seizures. Social revolution
would have to await the defeat of the French and the Japanese.
The Eighth Plenum also recognized guerrilla warfare as an
integral part of the revolutionary strategy and established local
self-defense militias in all villages under Viet Minh control.
The cornerstone of the party's strategy, of which Ho appears to
have been the chief architect, was the melding of the forces of
urban nationalism and peasant rebellion into a single
independence effort.
In order to implement the new strategy, two tasks were given
priority: the establishment of a Viet Minh apparatus throughout
the country and the creation of a secure revolutionary base in
the Viet Bac border region from which southward expansion could
begin. This area had the advantages of being remote from colonial
control but accessible to China, which could serve both as a
refuge and training ground. Moreover, the Viet Bac population was
largely sympathetic to the Communists. Viet Minh influence began
to permeate the area, and French forces attempted, but failed, to
regain control of the region in 1941. The liberation zone soon
spread to include the entire northern frontier area until it
reached south of Cao Bang, where an ICP Interprovincial Committee
established its headquarters. A temporary setback for the
Communists occurred in August 1942, when Ho Chi Minh, while on a
trip to southern China to meet with Chinese Communist Party
officials, was arrested and imprisoned for two years by the
Kuomintang. By August 1944, however, he had convinced the
regional Chinese commander to support his return to Vietnam at
the head of a guerrilla force. Accordingly, Ho returned to
Vietnam in September with eighteen men trained and armed by the
Chinese. Upon his arrival, he vetoed, as too precipitate, a plan
laid by the ICP in his absence to launch a general uprising in
the Viet Bac within two months. Ho did, however, approve the
establishment of armed propaganda detachments with both military
and political functions.
As World War II drew to a close, the ICP sought to have the
Vietnamese independence movement recognized as one of the
victorious Allied forces under the leadership of the United
States. With this in mind, Ho returned again to southern China in
January 1945 to meet with American and Free French units there.
From the Americans he solicited financial support, while from the
French he sought, unsuccessfully, guarantees of Vietnamese
independence. On March 9, 1945, the Japanese gave the French an
ultimatum demanding that all French and Indochinese forces be
placed under Japanese control. Without waiting for the French
reply, the Japanese proceeded to seize administrative buildings,
radio stations, banks, and industries and to disarm the French
forces. Bao Dai, the Nguyen ruler under the French, was retained
as emperor, and a puppet government was established with Tran
Trong Kim, a teacher and historian, as prime minister. Japan
revoked the Franco-Vietnamese Treaty of Protectorate of 1883,
which had established Indochina as a French protectorate, and
declared the independence of Vietnam under Japanese tutelage.
The communists concluded that the approaching end of the war
and the defeat of the Japanese meant that a propitious time for a
general uprising of the Vietnamese people was close at hand.
Accordingly, the ICP began planning to take advantage of the
political vacuum produced by the French loss of control and the
confinement of Japanese power largely to urban and strategic
areas. Moreover, famine conditions prevailed in the countryside,
and unemployment was rampant in the cities. In the Red River
Delta alone, more than 500,000 people died of starvation between
March and May 1945. Because Japan was considered the main enemy,
the communists decided that a United Front should be formed that
included patriotic French resistance groups and moderate urban
Vietnamese bourgeoisie. The overall ICP strategy called for a
two-stage revolt, beginning in rural areas and then moving to the
cities. Accordingly Communist military forces responded to the
plan. Armed Propaganda units under ICP military strategist Vo
Nguyen Giap began moving south from Cao Bang into Thai Nguyen
Province
(see the Armed Forces
, ch. 5). To the east, the 3,000-
man National Salvation Army commanded by Chu Van Tan began
liberating the provinces of Tuyen Quang and Lang Son and
establishing revolutionary district administrations. At the first
major military conference of the ICP, held in April in Bac Giang
Province, the leaders determined that a liberated zone would be
established in the Viet Bac and that existing ICP military units
would be united to form the new Vietnam Liberation Army (VLA),
later called the People's Army of Vietnam
(
PAVN--see Glossary)
(see The Armed Forces
, ch. 5). Giap was named Commander in Chief
of the VLA and chairman of the Revolution Military Committee,
later called the Central Military Party Committed (CMPC).
Meanwhile, the ICP was expanding its influence farther south by
forming mass organizations known as national salvation
associations (cuu quoc hoi) for various groups, including
workers, peasants, women, youth, students, and soldiers. As a
result of labor unrest in Hanoi, 2,000 workers were recruited
into salvation associations in early 1945, and 100,000 peasants
had been enlisted into salvation associations in Quang Ngai
Province by mid-summer. In Saigon, a youth organization, Thanh
Nien Tien Phong (Vanguard Youth), established by the communists
in 1942, had recruited 200,000 by early summer. Thanh Nien Tien
Phong became the focal point for the Communist effort in the
south and soon expanded to more than one million members
throughout Cochinchina. By June 1945, in the provinces of the
Viet Bac, the Viet Minh had set up people's revolutionary
committees at all levels, distributed communal and French-owned
lands to the poor, abolished the corvee, established quoc
ngu classes, set up local self-defense militias in the
villages, and declared universal suffrage and democratic
freedoms. The Viet Minh then established a provisional
directorate, headed by Ho Chi Minh, as the governing body for the
liberated zone, comprising an estimated one million people.
Despite its success in the north, the ICP faced a range of
serious obstacles in Cochinchina, where the Japanese maintained
100,000 well-armed troops. In addition, the Japanese also
supported the neo-Buddhist
Cao Dai sect (see Glossary) of more
than one million members, including a military force of several
battalions. Another sect, the
Hoa Hao (see Glossary), founded and
led by the fanatical Huynh Phu So, eschewed temples and hierarchy
and appealed to the poor and oppressed. Although lacking the
military force of the Cao Dai, the Hoa Hao was also closely
connected with the Japanese. Meanwhile, the Japanese had also
gained control of the Viet Nam Phuc Quoc Dong Minh Hoi (League
for the Restoration of Vietnam), established in 1939 as an
outgrowth of Viet Nam Quang Pluc Hoi. Mobilized by the communists
to face this array of forces in Cochinchina were the Vanguard
Youth and the Vietnam Trade Union Federation, with 100,000
members in 300 unions.
Data as of December 1987
|
