Peasants unhappy about collectivization, heavy taxes, and squalid conditions in parts of the countryside migrated to the cities in large numbers, adding to the challenges authorities there faced. By one estimate, Hanoi’s population grew by an astonishing 300,000 people in 1960–61, the year of the poor harvest.30 Bad weather was largely responsible for the very low yield of paddy and other crops in 1960. Rice rations were often diluted with corn, and the state applied rationing to meat and sugar, among other commodities, as food prices generally rose. The agricultural shortfall severely impacted the industrial sector. During the first half of the year, many factories failed to meet production quotas due to shortages of raw materials, hurting exports and creating a slew of new financial difficulties.31 “The standard of living of the population is very low,” foreign observers reported. “The rice ration will be reduced again, and that for meat,” including cat and dog, “will be only, starting in May, fifty grams for three days.”32
These harsh conditions appear to have been the cause for mass protests and other incidents that threatened the DRVN’s internal stability in mid-1961. “Disenchantment is, indeed, real among the masses,” the French Delegation reported in June. Widespread social unrest occurred in Haiphong, where 1,500 PAVN troops had to be deployed to restore order. During ensuing clashes between the troops and protesters, the latter set fire to rice stocks and harassed policemen and firemen trying to put out the flames. In August, saboteurs set ablaze a bicycle factory, two state stores, and enough dwellings in Vinh to leave a reported twenty thousand people homeless. They also set fire to a state store in Hanoi; exploded a bomb that badly damaged an electrical plant in Dong Anh; targeted a rubber factory in Haiphong, cutting phone lines and neutralizing its guards before setting it on fire; and cut underground electric cables to a chemical products factory in Viet Tri, disrupting production.33
According to foreign observers, these episodes were caused by “the persistence of economic hardships and food shortages” above the seventeenth parallel.34 Cadres and troops newly returned from service in the southern insurgency noted that overall material conditions were “much harsher” in the North than in the South.35 The DRVN indeed remained a poor country, so poor in fact that it barely met its own needs. To develop, it desperately needed foreign aid. Unfortunately, a portion of the aid received from abroad, particularly from the socialist camp, had to be paid in kind, mainly by rice. According to political scientist Céline Marangé, China absorbed half of the DRVN’s rice production, even during “lean” years, as well as three-quarters of its coal production.36 That reality was not lost on the average peasant, who “understands that a large share of his paddy [i.e., rice] harvest will invariably be subjected to these rules” and therefore “suffers such exasperation” that “he starts to neglect, even sabotage, his own crops.”37 Disenchantment in the North became so widespread that even “the spouses of the highest ranking personalities in the Regime” complained about “the inadequacy of food rations allocated to their families and deplor[ed] the austerity measures imposed on the [people in the] capital”!38
These problems were compounded by RVN commando units sent into the North to destabilize the DRVN government through economic sabotage and political subversion.39 These units exploited popular disenchantment with central or local authorities, particularly in minority-dominated areas, to incite unrest and create “centers of resistance” within the DRVN. In June, French diplomats in Hanoi reported that men, weapons, and supplies had recently been air-dropped “in certain mountainous areas” in support of antigovernment forces, and that RVN commandos specializing in sabotage operations and psychological warfare had landed in certain coastal regions.40 In July, the DRVN Foreign Ministry confirmed these reports, including the existence of resistance centers in the Thai-Meo Autonomous Zone, where disgruntled members of ethnic minorities had joined forces with newly infiltrated commandos and disillusioned southern regroupees to stir up trouble.41 That same month, a group of regroupees aided by minority tribesmen attacked a PAVN convoy. Soon thereafter a “small revolt” broke out among PAVN units near Lao Cai.42 Fearing the onset of an insurgency, Hanoi deployed several PAVN units to the northwest.43 Despite this response, the troubles spread. In early August, Hmong tribesmen in Lao Cai attacked military convoys on two occasions.44 Shortly thereafter, subversives derailed a train carrying supplies from China near Viet Tri and distributed anti-DRVN leaflets in Hoa Binh.45 By September, new resistance centers existed in Son La, Lai Chau, and Sapa—all minority areas, prompting Hanoi to intensify its efforts against them.46
Cumulatively, these developments had important repercussions throughout the DRVN. Curfews, arbitrary arrests, and incarceration of anyone suspected of involvement in the disturbances became widespread. The suppression of resistance centers by PAVN forces was particularly ferocious and involved forced relocation of rebellious tribes.47 Ultimately, the draconian measures proved effective. By October, the disturbances and rebelliousness had been contained; in November, PAVN forces were “methodically pursu[ing] the asphyxiation of resistance centers”; a month later, “the danger seem[ed] remote”; and in January 1962, dissident forces were “if not completely destroyed, at least neutralized.”48 Challenges to public order thereafter became rare in the North, particularly in cities, and people generally were in a mood of “passive resignation.”49
As DRVN authorities repressed dissidence, they tried to appease the people by undertaking liberal economic measures, allowing soup vendors and tailors to exit cooperatives and increasing meat rations when possible.50 Ho Chi Minh addressed economic and related problems in a “rectification” address to the Central Committee in July.51 Reminding his listeners of the enthusiasm and fervor with which the party had launched economic reforms in January, he insisted that it was imperative to continue those reforms now. The party leadership remained entranced by the prospect of realizing its dream of socialist modernity. “We must strive to make fast, significant, and steady advances in the effort to develop agriculture,” he said, and to “provide enough grains and raw materials to develop industry and bring about socialist industrialization.” Summarizing the thinking of the leadership at this time, he stated that with “good agriculture” and “good industry” the socialist transformation of the North “can proceed well,” eventually enabling the DRVN to “serve as a strong base” for the southern liberation struggle.52 A North Vietnamese delegation had recently traveled to China, the Soviet Union, and much of Eastern Europe asking for economic assistance, and had received pledges totaling 295 million rubles to help finance the new five-year plan, the money to be spent on building some eighty new enterprises.53 For its part, the party had recently “subjected itself to a process of self-examination” and resolved to give “higher priority” to agriculture by committing itself anew to the improvement of agricultural techniques.54
Since transforming the North into a strong rear base for the southern revolution required improvements in national defense, the leadership established air and antiaircraft forces, beefed up reserve and self-defense forces, upgraded airfields and ports, and expanded strategic transport routes throughout the DRVN. Finally, in a bid to increase discipline and quality in the armed forces, all PAVN political officers had to undergo a new round of ideological training.
ESCALATING POLITICAL AND DIPLOMATIC STRUGGLE
The year 1961 saw a dramatic escalation of Cold War tensions in flashpoints around the world: mounting tensions in Laos, another crisis in Berlin, accelerating decolonization in sub-Saharan Africa, the politically motivated assassination of Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba, the continuing war in Algeria, and the failed effort at the Bay of Pigs to overturn the Cuban revolution. Hanoi held capitalism and Washington in particular responsible for these developments.55 “Consistent with traditional [American] policy,” the Kennedy administration was “increasing weapons production, following a policy of ‘limited war’” in the Third World, and “creating tense situations and expanding [its] mili
tary ventures throughout the world,” a DRVN report noted. As evidence of this, the report pointed to plans by Washington to “invade Cuba [and] to expand the war in Laos,” to its role in the “coup d’état” in South Korea that brought the reactionary Park Chung-hee to power in Seoul, and to unspecified other government overthrows in South America.56
Such developments, actual or only apprehended, alarmed Hanoi and fueled its sense of siege. The significant activity related to national defense and security in the DRVN just noted, much like the substance of the Politburo’s January resolution, reflected Hanoi’s increasing concern about Washington’s confrontational stance in the Cold War, and in Vietnam and the rest of Indochina in particular. In view of its continuing efforts to achieve southern liberation and national reunification without a major war, Hanoi’s response to this stance in the middle months of 1961 was more political than military. Domestically, the DRVN’s “subversive propaganda” concentrated on mobilizing the people in both halves of the country against the Americans and the legal authority of Diem’s regime in Saigon, with a view to bringing to power there a new administration. That administration, Hanoi hoped, would be more amenable to the peaceful “fusion” of the two Vietnams.57
Internationally, Hanoi sought to mobilize and manipulate world opinion against the American presence in the South, and to enhance the prestige of the DRVN and the Vietnamese revolution as emblems of national liberation and anti-imperialism, thus isolating Washington. This amounted to “supplanting” Saigon and Washington “on the international chessboard.”58 The “diplomatic struggle,” a report to the National Assembly noted in October, “is of major significance” in the DRVN’s effort to “create conditions to elevate the spirit of self-reliance of our people for the cause of building socialism in the North.” It was equally important in the effort to build momentum internationally for peaceful national reunification as well as “the consolidation of socialist unity.”59 “The spirit of unity and mutual cooperation between our country and all socialist countries,” a national assemblyman said of Hanoi’s diplomatic strategy, “is extremely important,” “a firm guarantee for each of our revolutionary victories,” “the foundation of our diplomatic policy.”60
At this time, the DRVN Foreign Ministry was desperately trying to “win over” foreign governments to the nation’s cause, not just those in the socialist camp but others in Africa and the rest of the postcolonial and decolonizing world. This was done chiefly by establishing diplomatic relations and extending political aid and whatever material support Hanoi could provide.61 “The basic direction of our diplomatic policy,” newly appointed foreign minister Ung Van Khiem, a staunch moderate, noted in October, consisted of “striving to tighten friendly, collaborative relations with fraternal socialist countries,” “contributing to the effort to increase unity between the countries of the socialist camp,” and developing ties with newly independent states.62 Through diplomacy, Hanoi also sought to obtain political and material support for its socialist project in the North while generating criticism of American activities in Indochina and increasing pressure on Washington to keep its military forces out of Vietnam. To those ends, in 1961 the Foreign Ministry again aggressively denounced recent American initiatives in the South on the grounds that they violated the Geneva accords.63 Shortly thereafter, the government circulated a letter affirming its commitment to peace and to implementing the accords to “the governments of the entire world, whether they have diplomatic relations with us or not,” with the exception of the United States and “a number of colonial countries of the United States.” The letter denounced the perfidy of Washington and its friends in Saigon and warned of the disastrous consequences of leaving American ambitions unchecked. Hanoi also sent a letter to the governments whose representatives had endorsed the Geneva accords, urging them to pressure the ICSC to demand that the “U.S.-Diem clique” honor the accords.64
CO-OPTING THE ICSC
As this last initiative suggests, Hanoi hoped that the ICSC could be used for its purposes, unlike Diem, who by now sought its abolition. “The North in the past manipulated the International Control Commission to their own advantage rather more successfully than the South did,” the Foreign Office reported in early 1962. “No doubt” DRVN leaders “consider that, given the difficulty of establishing the facts about infiltration, they stand to gain a great deal in the near future by sticking to the [Geneva] Agreement” or maintaining the pretense thereof.65 The ICSC “has had little effect on the preservation of peace in Indochina,” a DRVN national assemblyman observed in October. However, “if it is determined to maintain a fair attitude then it might still contribute to the implementation of the Geneva accords in an equitable way.”66 Unfortunately, the ICSC could do little about anyone’s violations of the accords and had in fact grown increasingly critical of Hanoi in the last year or two.67 Whenever the commission voted to investigate an alleged violation by either side, Hanoi condemned the vote, “fearing that a step had been taken toward its being cited by the commission for violation of the Geneva Agreements.” Such a citation might alienate some of Hanoi’s foreign supporters and thus undermine the diplomatic struggle.68
More to the point, Hanoi had always accused the Canadian representative on the ICSC of partiality toward Washington and Saigon, and by 1959–60 began accusing India, the “neutral” member of the commission, of the same thing. In commission deliberations, unaligned India was indeed increasingly siding with capitalist Canada against socialist Poland, a consequence of the deterioration of Sino-Indian relations that culminated in war in 1962. The “dramatic realignments in India’s external relations” that accompanied these developments, in the words of one study of the subject, were “paralleled in [the ICSC] delegation’s behaviour.” India in fact joined Canada on the commission to vote against Hanoi on the legality of three “extremely critical issues”: the presence of DRVN military forces in the South, the presence of American military advisers in the South, and Saigon’s draconian Law 10/59 against dissidence in the South.69 Not surprisingly and with some justification, Hanoi surmised from these votes that the ICSC was a deck stacked against its legitimate interests, a body acting in bad faith and thus itself “violating the accords of July 1954.”70 In 1961 a Polish diplomat concluded that “whatever happened at the Commission was interpreted by the Indians through the prism of their hostility toward China,” and thus to the detriment of Hanoi.71
This partiality of the ICSC, in the estimation of historian Douglas Ross, reflected the conclusion of its Canadian and Indian members that the commission should function as a “shield” for the RVN, which was “too weak to defend itself” and thus “required a measure of external buttressing if American intervention and possible Sino-American confrontation were to be precluded.” By June 1960, in Ross’s judgment, the Canadians were using the ICSC “to the fullest possible extent” to “combat the DRVN campaign of ‘indirect aggression’ against the southern regime,” and the Indians were “in effect working with Ottawa . . . to strengthen the [Saigon] regime and thus forestall a return to open warfare between the two sides of the Indochina conflict.” Thus “all of the truly important decisions and ‘non-decisions’ in this period were taken by Indo-Canadian majority vote” and, “without exception,” favored Saigon to the detriment of Hanoi.72
The commission thus not only validated Washington’s “magnified” claim that Hanoi was sending soldiers into the South but legitimated American efforts to protect the South.73 In early July 1961, the VWP Secretariat took note of the fact that the ICSC majority had “illegally” assumed the right to investigate all subversive activities taking place below the seventeenth parallel, whether or not they had anything to do with the Geneva accords. That was, the Secretariat insisted, “entirely contrary to the responsibilities and mandate” of the commission. It was also “dangerous,” inasmuch as it created a circumstance that would encourage the Americans to believe that they could introduce their own military forces into the South without rep
rimand for violating the Geneva accords.74
This change of direction by the ICSC dealt a major blow to Hanoi’s diplomatic struggle. Nonetheless, DRVN leaders continued to regard the commission as “more useful than not.” In a pointed effort to encourage the Indian commissioner to take a more “objective” stance on the introduction of more and more American military hardware and advisers into the South, Hanoi openly supported Delhi in its dispute with Portugal over Goa.75 Also, to shore up diplomatic support for the DRVN generally, and in its treatment by the ICSC specifically, foreign minister Ung Van Khiem traveled to Guinea, Mali, Niger, Morocco, Tunisia, and the United Arab Republic (that is, Egypt and Syria) in the spring.76 Then, in June and July, Pham Van Dong visited China, North Korea, Mongolia, the Soviet Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia for the same purpose, as well as to secure increased material and financial aid. Dong’s visits were also meant to “remind the United States and her allies that North Vietnam had powerful friends, who could be expected to back North Vietnam if hostilities broke out.”77 The visits marked “a new phase in the relationship between our country and [host] countries,” Khiem reported, and were “a positive contribution” to “the effort to increase the great spirit of friendship and the unity that cannot be broken between our people” and socialist as well as Third World countries.78 In a nod to the Soviet leadership, Hanoi announced that Dong’s visits had served to “increase the unity of the socialist camp, with the Soviet Union at its core.”79 Continuing this flurry of diplomatic activity, Nguyen Van Hien of the NLF soon also visited the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Cuba, China, Indonesia, North Korea, and, presumably, war-torn Algeria. Wherever they went, the Vietnamese travelers urged their hosts to do all they could to pressure Washington to exercise restraint in Indochina.
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