Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965

by Asselin, Pierre

  Resolution 15 represented an important revision of party strategy concerning the South as that strategy had existed since the signing of the Geneva accords. But its support of armed struggle was in qualified, deniable terms, particularly regarding the troop support it provided. These qualifications, that reserve, made clear Hanoi’s continued unwillingness to achieve southern liberation at once, by force. The general policy of southern liberation—that is, Hanoi’s commitment to war to meet revolutionary goals below the seventeenth parallel—was articulated not in 1959 but in 1963–64, as will be demonstrated later. Similarly, comprehensive engagement of DRVN resources in the South “with the expressed goal of attacking and annihilating the enemy’s forces” occurred only after the latter date.116 The importance of Resolution 15 has thus been overstated by historians, especially those in Vietnam. It marked the onset of an insurgency below the seventeenth parallel, of a “new politico-military struggle,” to be sure, but not of an actual, truly national “war of liberation.”117 As Ang Cheng Guan surmises, the armed struggle that began as a result of Resolution 15 was intended merely to support, and not replace, the ongoing political struggle below the seventeenth parallel.118

  REFOCUSING ON THE NORTH

  At the next plenum of the Central Committee, in June, the situation in the South received almost no attention. Instead, the focus was on efforts to improve agricultural production in the North. In the aftermath of land reform and with the onset of collectivization mandated by the three-year plan, Truong Chinh reported that “there exists in the countryside a struggle between two ways, the socialist way and the capitalist way,” and that resolving the contradiction was necessary to strengthen and complete the socialist transformation of the DRVN. To that end, the party must press on with rural collectivization, the most effective means of accomplishing urgent revolutionary objectives. These objectives were, in Truong Chinh’s reckoning, to “contribute to the final eradication of the foundation of the regime of exploitation of man by man in the North of our country, consolidate the development of the rural economy on every front, effect complete renovation of agriculture, contribute in a big way to socialist industrialization of the state,” and “bring about for the peasants as well as for the [rest of the] people of the North of our country a truly peaceful, free, and happy life.” By official count there were 6,830 “agricultural production cooperatives” in the North at the end of March 1959, averaging thirty households each and encompassing most but not all peasant households above the seventeenth parallel.119 The final resolution of the June plenum declared the completion of agricultural collectivization to be the “central revolutionary task of our party and people.”120

  The British consul’s assessment of conditions in and around Hanoi at the time of the June plenum confirmed the economic challenges still confronting the North, despite recent improvements. “So far as Hanoi town is concerned, we can see with our own eyes that the standard of living is sinking steadily into ever shabbier and drabber uniformity. Even the poor are poorer,” he noted. “We feel we are not exaggerating in saying that the number of people who have benefited from Communism in Hanoi (and I think the same can probably be said of the other towns) does not exceed 5 percent of the population.” “No member of the Western community here has ever met a Vietnamese who was in favour of the regime, except the members of the regime itself and those few, mostly young men, who are attracted and convinced by the Communist ideology. The bourgeois, whether large or small, are in despair as the screw of cooperativisation [i.e., nationalization] is turned.” The situation was slightly better in the countryside, where rice production had recently increased. Unfortunately for the peasants, “any increased revenue for [them] resulting from greater production has been more than taken care of by increased taxation.” In parts of the countryside, peasants were demanding to leave the cooperatives into which they had just been organized.121 Despite the increased rice harvests, total production was a million tons short of the planned target. Similarly, though “a considerable amount of new industrial construction is visible throughout the country,” progress in that area was not “as rapid as planned.”122 Northerners generally, the consul concluded, were “worse off under Communism than they were before,” and peasants remained “extremely reluctant” to join rural cooperatives.123

  As long as such problems persisted, the North would be unable to sustain a war below the seventeenth parallel. To make sure that the membership understood their positions on these and other matters, DRVN leaders mandated a series of special “political re-education” sessions. The ten-day program studied the resolutions adopted at the last three plenary sessions of the Central Committee.124 The sessions were also used to address persistent deviationist tendencies among party members and “serious” deficiencies in the performance of government officials, especially those responsible for such rural tasks as tax collection, dike repair, and consolidation of agricultural and other cooperatives.125 A communiqué from the Council of Ministers in July boasted that the socialist revolution in the North had entered a “high tide,” and admonished all workers in the state sector to improve their political and ideological standards to meet the requirements of that revolution.126 A Nhan dan editorial emphasized the major aims of the re-education campaign: to “teach cadres and members of the party to understand seriously the basic problems of the revolution in the North,” and in doing so enable them “to distinguish clearly the dividing line between socialism and capitalism, to recognize friends and enemies,” and “to press forward with energy the policy of socialist reform.”127

  RESOLUTION 15 IN THE SOUTH

  When southern revolutionaries finally learned of Resolution 15, they were relieved to hear that Hanoi at last supported armed struggle in the South, if only on measured terms so they could defend themselves against the punishing force of the Diem regime. In the Central Highlands, revolutionaries and their sympathizers were reportedly “elated,” especially by the resolution’s declaration that “the people are one, the party is one, our country is one.” Hanoi, they thought, had not forgotten them after all.128 A meeting of southern cadres “burst out in stormy applause” when told of the passage and provisions of the resolution.129 The number of such reports in the Vietnamese archives indicates that the notion that Hanoi had abandoned the South after the Geneva accords was indeed widespread there. In this sense, Resolution 15 “solved” the “deep longing of the people” and “kindled the smoldering, once blazing, revolutionary flame, creating a fire spreading all over the countryside, the mountains, and the cities.”130

  Southern revolutionaries wasted no time in acting upon the resolution once they were apprised of it. They intensified their attacks on individuals with known or suspected ties to the Diem regime. Almost at once, armed propaganda units started assassinating bureaucrats, schoolteachers, hospital employees, village chiefs, and other civil servants at the rate of fifteen per week.131 In 1959–60, they assassinated about 1,700 South Vietnamese officials and government employees, and kidnapped and detained or otherwise dealt with perhaps 2,000 others.132 “Our purpose” in these activities, one revolutionary later stated, “was not only to eliminate those who could be harmful to the [communist] movement”; it was also to act “with a view toward making the people afraid and to prevent them from cooperating with the [RVN] government.”133 The “generalization of organized terrorism” in the South, which is really what implementation of Resolution 15 amounted to at first, was reportedly “effective” and paid immediate dividends for revolutionary forces.134

  Southern communists were also quick to organize “popular uprisings” against the Diem regime, particularly in remote, minority-dominated areas of the Central Highlands. The first of these occurred not in the highlands but in Tra Bong, in Quang Ngai Province. The uprising had been planned for months and in fact broke out before Hanoi distributed the guidelines for implementing Resolution 15. This timing and sequence confirm that local party leaders and cadres frustrated by Hanoi’s lack of respon
se to worsening conditions sometimes “initiated combat without the knowledge” and in defiance of their superiors.135 Vietnamese sources now acknowledge that long before adoption of Resolution 15 some of these leaders and cadres were planning an uprising at Vinh Thanh to take place in February of that year and had in fact begun implementing the plan before learning of the passage of the resolution.136 In light of Saigon’s aggressiveness and Hanoi’s passivity, the plight of people sympathetic to the revolution was compelling enough to prompt some party operatives to “dare to lead the masses to look for weapons” and “take the initiative to rise up,” even though “that was not the position” of the party leadership.137 According to David Elliott, the first uprisings were precipitated not by party operatives at all but by disgruntled peasants and minority groups who took matters into their own hands. Several other uprisings soon followed the one in Tra Bong, most of them in the Central Highlands. The first uprising in the Mekong Delta occurred in September 1959 in Kien Phong Province. Resolution 15 reached communist leaders in the delta only in October 1959, Elliott claims, which meant that they too proceeded without authorization from Hanoi.138

  Generally speaking, the results of these early initiatives were limited. According to a subsequent assessment by southern party leaders, the lasting achievements in this period were minor and largely limited to an ability to “restrict the enemy’s sphere of control, force the enemy to recognize the just rights of the masses, and force [the enemy] to admit that their village and township administration was in a sorry state.” “The South Vietnam people’s forces did not yet have the capability of swiftly overthrowing the entire American-Diemist regime,” this assessment explained, “because the revolutionary armed forces were still weak.”139

  In urban centers, the impact of this flurry of revolutionary activity was even more limited, and revolutionaries in Long An Province actually suffered major setbacks in this period.140 Under Resolution 15, as one official account put it, the revolutionary movement only gradually expanded, “advanc[ing] close to the cities and close to the strategic communication routes” but making no inroads into those areas. This absence of a communist presence in the cities made it especially important that the political struggle be pressed forward: “When the South Vietnam cities, particularly Saigon-Cholon [i.e., Saigon’s “Chinatown”], are able to rise up in coordination with the rural areas, the South Vietnam revolution will have the capability of overthrowing the enemy through the means of a general uprising.”141 Unfortunately, the movement did not have that capability. One reason for this was the lack of cadres effectively trained to accomplish the task. “There has been a failure to thoroughly understand the city proselytizing targets,” namely, “the workers, the poor, and the elementary, high school, and college students,” an item in Hoc tap soon explained. As a result, “the proper attention was not devoted to the matter of intensifying the propaganda, education, organization and training of cadres and masses in the cities” and “around the cities.”142 William Turley concluded that though “sizeable areas” of the South “quickly fell under the revolution’s sway” following implementation of Resolution 15, Hanoi “judged the balance of forces, particularly on the military side of the equation, still to be decisively in Saigon’s favor.”143

  SAIGON ANSWERS RESOLUTION 15

  Saigon’s response to the upsurge in insurgent activity during the second half of 1959 was effective and constituted a primary reason that communist initiatives had very limited success. Ferocious ARVN counterattacks led directly to the recapture of most villages lost to insurgents and to the Diem regime’s consequent resumption of administrative control. Law 10/59, promulgated by Saigon in May as the revolutionary surge began, decreed a “sentence of death, and confiscation of the whole of or part of his property, with loss of rank in the case of army men” upon anyone who “commits or attempts to commit . . . crimes with the aim of sabotage, or of infringing upon the security of the state.” Under that law, the RVN government rounded up thousands more dissidents and suspected dissidents, including student activists, leaders of religious sects, and anyone suspected of cooperation with or even sympathy for the communists.144

  These actions soon had devastating consequences for southern revolutionaries. Carried out with “drive and energy” by Saigon, they raised the morale of southerners loyal to the regime or opposed to the revolutionary movement, while having a visibly “depressing” effect on communist forces.145 Under the new law, Diem’s security forces had within months rounded up half a million people with ties to the communist revolution, and killed more than 68,000.146 According to a subsequent DRVN National Assembly report, Saigon had been particularly successful in Ben Tre Province, where “the party base suffered heavy losses” and “only 18 cells in 115 villages and 162 party members” survived at the end of 1959. The survivors developed one or the other of two “tendencies,” the report noted. The first was to question their “belie[f] in political struggle” as defined by the party and either “demand of their superiors permission to fight” without restraint or to “cease working until ordered to [carry out unrestricted] armed struggle.” Some “comrades” stopped “believ[ing] in [continuing the] political struggle,” another report noted, and “demanded to stop working until orders for [a full escalation of] armed struggle were issued.” The second tendency was to not want or not dare to do further work for the revolution because survivors “blamed the North for forgetting the South.”147

  The Nam Bo Executive Committee convened in late 1959 to review these developments and assess the state of the revolutionary situation within its jurisdiction. It concluded that the revolutionary movement in recent months had exposed the weakness of the Diem regime but had caused the regime no permanent damage.148 In fact, the committee feared that the regime would soon seek to “drown the [revolutionary] movement in blood and fire even more savagely [and] devastatingly” than it had recently been doing. It was confident the movement would survive but expressed concern over Hanoi’s failure to provide greater support to ensure its survival. Because of that failure, “we . . . have not yet used at the right level and also not yet brought into play” the “potential” of revolutionary forces to “attack” the enemy and secure long-term success. The use of violence was too restrained to “bring about realistic support to execute the political struggle of the masses.” The struggle had to be “strengthened” to constrain enemy influence, especially in the cities but also in the countryside, if the appeal of revolutionary sentiment was to spread. The movement especially needed the wherewithal to combat “the policy of cruel terrorism, the policy of exploitation and confiscation, the policy of plundering the country and selling the country [and] enslaving the people and provoking war” of the Diem regime.

  The committee had still other concerns. Rank-and-file revolutionaries and even cadres disobeyed orders, questioned party policies, or otherwise disregarded party discipline. Others supposedly under party discipline were “too timid” to use force even to carry out orders, as noted above. Such displays of “rightist deviationist inclinations,” the committee warned, risked “guiding the [revolutionary] movement to passivity and creating more complex difficulties” by making it easy for the enemy to “bully” the masses and attack revolutionary bases. Other revolutionaries showed disdain for Hanoi’s existing emphasis on political struggle. Admittedly, the committee told Hanoi, that emphasis “can only produce defeat or a draw.” But “seeking the sympathy of the masses” without a willingness to use appropriate levels of violence against the enemy, it concluded bluntly in defense of the latter attitude among southern communists, did amount to a policy of gradual “surrender.”

  Despite such bluntness, the committee professed its endorsement of Resolution 15 and loyalty to Hanoi. It cautioned, however, that to be successful the movement in the South must have a more fully “revolutionary” thrust, one that would enable it to “seize [the] favorable opportunity to defeat completely the enemy and bring about final victory.” Hanoi’s
cautious approach was sound policy, but failure to recognize when circumstances dictated major changes in tactics if not strategy could imperil the entire revolutionary project.

  Throughout 1959, DRVN leaders faced challenge after challenge that forced them to make difficult choices balancing the imperatives of the three-year plan and the socialist project more broadly in the North with the vital necessity to sustain the revolution in the South. In endorsing Resolution 15, the Central Committee seemed to suggest that the latter trumped the former. In the guidelines to implement the resolution, however, Hanoi revealed that its greater commitment was still to the North. Clearly, those guidelines were an enterprise of the moderates who still controlled party decision-making. They seem to have been inspired less by a genuine commitment to the merits of revolutionary violence than by a perceived need to placate militants in both the North and the South. This cautious pragmatism, embodying as it did an acknowledgment of the revolution’s weaknesses and dependencies without compromising the party’s purposes, may have been the policy’s most distinctive characteristic. It avoided for the time being risks Hanoi thought it could not afford to confront unsuccessfully.