|
Vietnam The General Uprising and Independence
On August 13, 1945, the ICP Central Committee held its Ninth
Plenum at Tan Trao to prepare an agenda for a National Congress
of the Viet Minh a few days later. At the plenum, convened just
after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
an order for a general uprising was issued, and a national
insurrection committee was established headed by ICP general
secretary Truong Chinh
(see Development of the Vietnamese Communist Party
, ch. 4;
Appendix B). On August 16, the Viet Minh
National Congress convened at Tan Trao and ratified the Central
Committee decision to launch a general uprising. The Congress
also elected a National Liberation Committee, headed by Ho Chi
Minh (who was gravely ill at the time), to serve as a provisional
government. The following day, the Congress, at a ceremony in
front of the village dinh, officially adopted the national
red flag with a gold star, and Ho read an appeal to the
Vietnamese people to rise in revolution.
By the end of the first week following the Tan Trao
conference, most of the provincial and district capitals north of
Hanoi had fallen to the revolutionary forces. When the news of
the Japanese surrender reached Hanoi on August 16, the local
Japanese military command turned over its powers to the local
Vietnamese authorities. By August 17, Viet Minh units in the
Hanoi suburbs had deposed the local administrations and seized
the government seals symbolizing political authority. Selfdefense units were set up and armed with guns, knives, and
sticks. Meanwhile, Viet Minh-led demonstrations broke out inside
Hanoi. The following morning, a member of the Viet Minh Municipal
Committee announced to a crowd of 200,000 gathered in Ba Dinh
Square that the general uprising had begun. The crowd broke up
immediately after that and headed for various key buildings
around the city, including the palace, city hall, and police
headquarters, where they accepted the surrender of the Japanese
and local Vietnamese government forces, mostly without
resistance. The Viet Minh sent telegrams throughout Tonkin
announcing its victory, and local Viet Minh units were able to
take over most of the provincial and district capitals without a
struggle. In Annam and Cochinchina, however, the Communist
victory was less assured because the ICP in those regions had
neither the advantage of long, careful preparation nor an
established liberated base area and army. Hue fell in a manner
similar to Hanoi, with the takeover first of the surrounding
area. Saigon fell on August 25 to the Viet Minh, who organized a
nine-member, multiparty Committee of the South, including six
members of the Viet Minh, to govern the city. The provinces south
and west of Saigon, however, remained in the hands of the Hoa
Hao. Although the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai were anti-French, both were
more interested in regional autonomy than in communist-led
national independence. As a result, clashes between the Hoa Hao
and the Viet Minh broke out in the Mekong Delta in September.
Ho Chi Minh moved his headquarters to Hanoi shortly after the
Viet Minh takeover of the city. On August 28, the Viet Minh
announced the formation of the provisional government of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) with Ho as president and
minister of foreign affairs. Vo Nguyen Giap was named minister of
interior and Pham Van Dong minister of finance. In order to
broaden support for the new government, several noncommunists
were also included. Emperor Bao Dai, whom the communists had
forced to abdicate on August 25, was given the position of high
counselor to the new government. On September 2, half a million
people gathered in Ba Dinh Square to hear Ho read the Vietnamese
Declaration of Independence, based on the American Declaration of
Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and
the Citizen. After indicting the French colonial record in
Vietnam, he closed with an appeal to the victorious Allies to
recognize the independence of Vietnam.
Despite the heady days of August, major problems lay ahead
for the ICP. Noncommunist political parties, which had been too
weak and disorganized to take advantage of the political vacuum
left by the fall of the Japanese, began to express opposition to
communist control of the new provisional government. Among these
parties, the nationalist VNQDD and Viet Nam Phuc Quoc Dong Minh
Hoi parties had the benefit of friendship with the Chinese
expeditionary forces of Chiang Kai-shek, which began arriving in
northern Vietnam in early September. At the Potsdam Conference in
July 1945, the Allies had agreed that the Chinese would accept
the surrender of the Japanese in Indochina north of the 16°N
parallel and the British, south of that line. The Vietnamese
nationalists, with the help of Chinese troops, seized some areas
north of Hanoi, and the VNQDD subsequently set up an opposition
newspaper in Hanoi to denounce "red terror." The communists gave
high priority to avoiding clashes with Chinese troops, which soon
numbered 180,000. To prevent such encounters, Ho ordered VLA
troops to avoid provoking any incidents with the Chinese and
agreed to the Chinese demand that the communists negotiate with
the Vietnamese nationalist parties. Accordingly, in November
1945, the provisional government began negotiations with the
VNQDD and the Viet Nam Phuc Quoc Dong Minh Hoi, both of which
initially took a hard line in their demands. The communists
resisted, however, and the final agreement called for a
provisional coalition government with Ho as president and
nationalist leader Nguyen Hai Than as vice president. In the
general elections scheduled for early January, 50 of the 350
National Assembly seats were to be reserved for the VNQDD and 20,
for Viet Nam Phuc Quoc Dong Minh Hoi, regardless of the results
of the balloting.
At the same time, the communists were in a far weaker
political position in Cochinchina because they faced competition
from the well-organized, economically influential, moderate
parties based in Saigon and from the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai in the
countryside. Moreover, the commander of the British expeditionary
forces, which arrived in early September, was unsympathetic to
Vietnamese desires for independence. French troops, released from
Japanese prisons and rearmed by the British, provoked incidents
and seized control of the city. A general strike called by the
Vietnamese led to clashes with the French troops and mob violence
in the French sections of the city. Negotiations between the
French and the Committee of the South broke down in early
October, as French troops began to occupy towns in the Mekong
Delta. Plagued by clashes with the religious sects, lack of
weapons, and a high desertion rate, the troops of the Viet Minh
were driven deep into the delta, forests, and other inaccessible
areas of the region.
Meanwhile, in Hanoi candidates supported by the Viet Minh won
300 seats in the National Assembly in the January 1946 elections.
In early March, however, the threat of the imminent arrival of
French troops in the north forced Ho to negotiate a compromise
with France. Under the terms of the agreement, the French
government recognized the DRV as a free state with its own army,
legislative body, and financial powers, in return for Hanoi's
acceptance of a small French military presence in northern
Vietnam and membership in the French Union. Both sides agreed to
a plebiscite in Cochinchina. The terms of the accord were
generally unpopular with the Vietnamese and were widely viewed as
a sell-out of the revolution. Ho, however, foresaw grave danger
in refusing to compromise while the country was still in a
weakened position. Soon after the agreement was signed, some
15,000 French troops arrived in Tonkin, and both the Vietnamese
and the French began to question the terms of the accord.
Negotiations to implement the agreement began in late spring at
Fontainbleau, near Paris, and dragged on throughout the summer.
Ho signed a modus vivendi (temporary agreement), which gave the
Vietnamese little more than the promise of negotiation of a final
treaty the following January, and returned to Vietnam.
Data as of December 1987
|
