Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965
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6. “History of the NLF, 1954–63” [CRIMP Document], undated, Folder 03, Box 01, Douglas Pike Collection [hereafter DPC]: Unit 05—National Liberation Front, Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University [hereafter VATTU], 14.
7. Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012), 698.
8. Vien nghien cuu chu nghia Mac-Lenin va tu tuong Ho Chi Minh, Lich su Dang Cong san Viet Nam, 110.
9. Han Van Tam, “Nghi thuat gianh thang loi tung buoc ket hop voi nhung thang loi quyet dinh trong khang chien chong My, cuu nuoc” [The Art of Gaining Gradual Victory in Combination with Decisive Victory in the Anti-American Resistance for National Salvation], Tap chi Lich su quan su [Journal of Military History], no. 171 (March 2006): 9.
10. On that program, see Edward Miller, Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013), 177–84.
11. “Dien van be mac cua Ton Duc Thang, Truong ban Thuong truc Quoc hoi” [Closing Address by Ton Duc Thang, Chair of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly], 15 April 1960, Ho so 64: Ho so ky hop thuc 12 QH khoa I, tu ngay 11–15.4.1960. Tap 3: Phien hop ngay 15.4.1960: Chuyet trinh, tham luan Nghi quyet ve ke hoach va ngan sach Nha nuoc nam 1960, Luat Nghia vu Quan su, that bai cua che do Diem, Phong Quoc hoi, VNAC3, 2.
12. “Thuyet trinh cua Tieu ban nghien cuu du luat Nghia vu quan su” [Presentation by the Sub-Committee for Research on the Military Service Law], 15 April 1960, Ho so 64: Ho so ky hop thuc 12 QH khoa I, tu ngay 11–15.4.1960. Tap 3: Phien hop ngay 15.4.1960: Chuyet trinh, tham luan Nghi quyet ve ke hoach va ngan sach Nha nuoc nam 1960, Luat Nghia vu Quan su, that bai cua che do Diem, Phong Quoc hoi, VNAC3, 2.
13. “Dien van be mac cua Ton Duc Thang, Truong ban Thuong truc Quoc hoi,” 2.
14. “Dien mat cua Trung uong Dang, so 160, ngay 28, thang 4, nam 1960: Gui xu uy Nam Bo” [Secret Party Center Cable, no. 160, 28 April 1960: Sent to Nam Bo Executive Committee], in Dang Cong san Viet Nam, Van kien Dang—Toan tap, Tap 21: 1960 [Party Documents—Complete Series, Vol. 21: 1960] (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia, 2002) [hereafter VKD: 1960], 289, 293.
15. Philippe Devillers, “La lutte pour la réunification du Viêt Nam entre 1954 et 1961,” in Jean Chesneaux, Georges Boudarel, and Daniel Hémery, eds., Tradition et révolution au Viêt Nam [Tradition and Revolution in Vietnam] (Paris: Éditions Anthropos, 1971), 346.
16. “Tham luan: Hoan toan dong y voi du an ke hoach Nha nuoc nam 1960 va y rieng ve tinh hinh mien Nam, Pham Van Bach, Ben tre ve” [Address: Complete Agreement with Draft State Plan for 1960 and Personal Opinions about the Situation in the South, Pham Van Bach, Ben Tre], 15 April 1960, Ho so 64: Ho so ky hop thuc 12 QH khoa I, tu ngay 11–15.4.1960. Tap 3: Phien hop ngay 15.4.1960: Chuyet trinh, tham luan Nghi quyet ve ke hoach va ngan sach Nha nuoc nam 1960, Luat Nghia vu Quan su, that bai cua che do Diem, Phong Quoc hoi, VNAC3, 2.
17. “Nghi quyet Hoi nghi Lien khu uy V (mo rong), ngay 4–5-1960” [Resolution of the Plenum (expanded) of the Interzone V Executive Committee, 4 May 1960], in VKD: 1960, 1095–1127.
18. Khuat Bien Hoa, Dai tuong Le Duc Anh [General Le Duc Anh] (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Quan doi nhan dan, 2005), 61–62. Still, the southern fighters considered the weapons they had to be “priceless.”
19. “Nghi quyet Hoi nghi Xu uy Nam Bo lan thu V, thang 7 nam 1960” [Resolution of the Fifth Plenum of the Nam Bo Executive Committee, July 1960], in VKD: 1960, 1059–94.
20. French General Delegation, Hanoi [hereafter FGDH], to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paris [hereafter MFA], 2 May 1960, #44, Asie-Océanie [hereafter AO]: Vietnam Conflit [hereafter VC], Archives Diplomatiques de France, La Courneuve [hereafter ADF], 2, 4.
21. From a Sino-Vietnamese communiqué quoted in FGDH to MFA, 16 May 1960, #37, AO: Vietnam Nord [hereafter VN], ADF, 8.
22. From Pham Van Dong’s comments to a French diplomat quoted in ibid., 9. The DRVN government expressed its belief that the Paris summit would enhance the prospects for a permanent détente between the capitalist and socialist camps on the occasion of May Day 1960. See FGDH to MFA, 5 May 1960, #17, AO: VN, ADF, 2. According to a French assessment, through the first part of the year Hanoi “refrained from questioning the good faith and will of President Eisenhower to achieve a peaceful coexistence between East and West.” The summit’s failure, however, “had a profound echo in the country.” Most notably, it provoked “violent attacks” on the United States in the local press as it “proved” to DRVN authorities that “the Americans are preparing a war of aggression in Asia” (FGDH to MFA, 23 May 1960, #31, AO: VN, ADF, 2, 7).
23. FGDH to MFA, 16 July 1960, #33, AO: VN, ADF, 7.
24. FGDH to MFA, 12 September 1960, #37, AO: VN, ADF, 1.
25. British Consulate General, Hanoi [hereafter BCGH], to Southeast Asia Department, London [hereafter SEAD], 31 October 1960, FO 371/152747, National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew [hereafter NAUK], 3.
26. The editorial is reproduced in FGDH to MFA, 26 November 1960, #16, AO: VN, ADF.
27. BCGH to Foreign Office, London [hereafter FO], 11 April 1960, FO 371/152746, NAUK, 2.
28. On the origins and development of the dispute, see Odd Arne Westad, ed., Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963 (Washington, D.C. : Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1998); Sergei Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009); and Lorenz Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split, 1956–1966 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008).
29. FGDH to MFA, 28 April 1960, 12–13, 15–16.
30. Quoted in FGDH to MFA, 25 July 1960, #35, AO: VN, ADF, 1.
31. FGDH to MFA, 16 July 1960, 2; FGDH to MFA, 16 August 1960, #37, AO: VN, ADF, 2; FGDH to MFA, 12 September 1960, #37, AO: VN, ADF, 2–3; FGDH to MFA, 2 November 1960, #35, AO: VN, ADF, 1.
32. FGDH to MFA, 16 July 1960, 7–8, 22–23.
33. BCGH to FO, 4 August 1960, FO 371/152746, NAUK, 4; “Factions within the North Vietnamese Regime: Their Bearing, If Any, on Policy Pursued toward South Vietnam,” undated [1960], FO 371/160122, NAUK, 1–2; British Embassy, Bangkok to FO, 29 August 1960, FO 371/152747, NAUK, 1.
34. FGDH to MFA, 18 July 1960, #44, AO: VC, ADF, 1–2.
35. French Embassy, Ottawa to MFA, 17 September 1960, #44, AO: VC, ADF, 1.
36. Quoted in Ilya Gaiduk, “Containing the Warriors: Soviet Policy toward the Indochina Conflict, 1960–65,” in Lloyd C. Gardner and Ted Gittinger, eds., International Perspectives on Vietnam (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000), 63.
37. Quoted in Ilya V. Gaiduk, Confronting Vietnam: Soviet Policy toward the Indochina Conflict, 1954–1963 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2003), 112.
38. Gaiduk, “Containing the Warriors,” 63.
39. Quoted in Gaiduk, Confronting Vietnam, 105.
40. Beijing pressed for economic development in the DRVN also in hope that the Vietnamese would achieve autarky. Its promotion of autarky in Vietnam and elsewhere was an explicit rejection of the CPSU policy of socialist economic interdependence characterized by “economic specialization, long-term plan co-ordination and division of labor” within the socialist bloc. This divergence of views fueled the Sino-Soviet dispute. See Donald S. Zagoria, “Khrushchev’s Attack on Albania and Sino-Soviet Relations,” China Quarterly, no. 8 (October–December 1961): 11.
41. Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 82–83.
42. Khuat Bien Hoa, Dai tuong Le Duc Anh, 60.
43. Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 84–85.
44. FGDH to MFA, 6 October 1960, #37, AO: VN, ADF, 2–3.
45. Jay Tao, “Mao’s World Outlook: Vietnam and the Revolution in China,” Asian Survey 8, no. 5 (May 1968): 417.
46. Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an
American Adversary (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 328; Robert Service, Comrades! A History of World Communism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 320. Most of the articles in the Chinese press actually criticized Tito and Yugoslavia but were clearly intended as denunciations of Khrushchev’s and the CPSU’s “deviations.” See Zhihua Shen and Danhui Li, After Leaning to One Side: China and Its Allies in the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2011), 164–65.
47. Chen Jian, “A Crucial Step toward the Breakdown of the Sino-Soviet Alliance: The Withdrawal of Soviet Experts from China in July 1960,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, nos. 8–9 (Winter 1996–97): 246, 249–50; Xiaoming Zhang, “Communist Powers Divided: China, the Soviet Union, and the Vietnam War,” in Gardner and Gittinger, eds., International Perspectives on Vietnam, 82.
48. FGDH to MFA, 28 April 1960, 11.
49. BCGH to BES, 13 December 1960, FO 371/152747, NAUK, 1.
50. “Resolution of the Third National Congress of the Viet Nam Workers’ Party on the Tasks and Line of the Party in the New Stage,” in Third National Congress of the Viet Nam Workers’ Party: Documents, Volume 1 (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, undated), 235.
51. “Loi phat bieu cua Ho Chu tich” [Speech by President Ho], 15 April 1961, Ho so 64: Ho so ky hop thuc 12 QH khoa I, tu ngay 11–15.4.1960. Tap 3: Phien hop ngay 15.4.1960: Chuyet trinh, tham luan Nghi quyet ve ke hoach va ngan sach Nha nuoc nam 1960, Luat Nghia vu Quan su, that bai cua che do Diem, Phong Quoc hoi, VNAC3, 2.
52. “Chi thi cua Ban Bi thu, so 26-CT/TW, ngay 15 thang 9 nam 1961: Ve viec tich cuc cong tac giup do cach mang mien Nam” [Secretariat Instruction, no. 26-CT/TW, 15 September 1961: On the Effort to Actively Help the Southern Revolution], in Dang Cong san Viet Nam, Van kien Dang—Toan tap, Tap 22: 1961 [Party Documents—Collected Works, Vol. 22: 1961] (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia, 2002), 472–74.
53. Balazs Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era: Soviet-DPRK Relations and the Roots of North Korean Despotism, 1953–1964 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005), 163.
54. P. J. Honey, “The Position of the DRV Leadership and the Succession to Ho Chi Minh,” China Quarterly, no. 9 (January–March 1962): 28.
55. “Bai noi cua dong chi Ho Chi Minh thay mat Doan dai bieu Dang Lao dong Viet Nam trong cuoc Hoi nghi dai bieu cac Dang Cong san va Dang Cong nhan hop o Matxcova (11–1960)” [Speech by Comrade Ho Chi Minh on Behalf of the Delegation of the Vietnamese Workers’ Party at the Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties in Moscow, November 1960], in VKD: 1960, 1035–46.
56. William E. Griffith, “The November 1960 Moscow Meeting: A Preliminary Assessment,” China Quarterly, no. 11 (July–September 1962): 55. The pro-Soviet bias was also apparent in a 7 December Nhan dan editorial on the Moscow Conference reproduced in FGDH to MFA, 8 December 1960, #16, AO:VN, ADF.
57. Honey, “Position of the DRV Leadership,” 28.
58. The comments by the Yugoslav diplomat are reported in British Embassy, Paris, to FO, 15 February 1962, FO 371/160125, NAUK, 1.
59. Quoted in Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 138–39; Mark Atwood Lawrence, The Vietnam War: A Concise International History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 68.
60. Nguyen Dy Nien, Ho Chi Minh Thought: On Diplomacy (Hanoi: The Gioi Publishers, 2004), 125–26 (emphasis in original).
61. “The VWP and the International Communist Movement” Folder 08, Box 02, DPC: Unit 13—The Early History of Vietnam, VATTU,” 15.
62. Nguyen Dinh Binh, ed., Ngoai giao Viet Nam, 1945–2000 [Vietnamese Diplomacy, 1945–2000] (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia, 2005), 175.
63. George McT. Kahin and Robert Scalapino, “Excerpts from National Teach-in on Vietnam Policy” in Marcus G. Raskin and Bernard B. Fall, eds., The Viet-Nam Reader: Articles and Documents on American Foreign Policy and the Viet-Nam Crisis (New York: Random House, 1965), 294.
64. British Embassy, Paris, to FO, 15 February 1962, FO 371/160125, NAUK, 1.
65. William J. Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, 2nd ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996), 193; FGDH to MFA, 22 September 1960, #33, AO:VN, ADF, 1–3.
66. “Nhiem vu va phuong huong cua ke hoach 5 nam lan thu nhat phat trien kinh te quoc dan (1961–1965): Bao cao bo sung tai Dai hoi dai bieu toan quoc lan thu III do dong chi Nguyen Duy Trinh trinh bay, ngay 7–9-1960” [Tasks and Direction of the First Five-Year Plan to Develop the National Economy (1961–1965): Report Presented by Comrade Nguyen Duy Trinh at the Third National Congress, 7 September 1960], in VKD: 1960, 835–36; BCGH to FO, 26 September 1960, FO 371/152747, NAUK, 3.
67. The ambassador’s comments are reported in BCGH to British Embassy, Saigon [hereafter BES], 9 April 1960, FO 371/152746, NAUK, 1.
68. FGDH to MFA, 8 October 1960, #33, AO:VN, ADF, 4.
69. BCGH to BES, 9 April 1960, 1.
70. British Embassy, Bangkok, to FO, 31 August 1960, FO 371/152747, NAUK, 1.
71. FGDH to MFA, 8 October 1960, 3–4.
72. Ho Chi Minh, Tuyen tap [Collected Works] (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Su that, 1960), 772.
73. “Political Report of the 2nd Central Committee to the Congress,” in Communist Party of Vietnam, 75 Years of the Communist Party of Vietnam (1930–2005): A Selection of Documents from Nine Party Congresses (Hanoi: The Gioi Publishers, 2005), 212.
74. Hoang Anh, “Relationship between Accumulation and Consumption, and Diligent and Economical Building of the Country,” in Third National Congress of the Viet Nam Workers’ Party: Documents, Volume 3 (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, undated), 226; “Nhiem vu va phuong huong cua ke hoach 5 nam lan thu nhat,” 818.
75. “Nhiem vu va phuong huong cua ke hoach 5 nam lan thu nhat,” 831.
76. Ho Chi Minh is quoted in Truong Chinh, Écrits, 1946–1975 [Selected Writings, 1946–1975] (Hanoi: Éditions en langues étrangères, 1977), 634.
77. Eero Palmujoki, Vietnam and the World: Marxist-Leninist Doctrine and the Changes in International Relations, 1975–93 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 31.
78. Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 74.
79. Excerpts from Giap’s speech are quoted in BCGH to SEAD, 26 September 1960, FO 371/152747, NAUK, 3.
80. See Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era.
81. BCGH to SEAD, 31 October 1960, and FGDH to MFA, 7 November 1960, #16, AO:VN, ADF.
82. Reproduced in FGDH to MFA, 19 December 1960, #16, AO:VN, ADF.
83. A summary of the statute is in BCGH to SEAD, 31 October 1960. For the statute itself, see “Dieu le Dang (do Dai hoi dai bieu toan quoc clan thu III cua Dang thong qua)” [Party Statute (Ratified by the Party’s Third National Congress)], FO 371/152747, NAUK; and FGDH to MFA, 7 November 1960, #16, AO:VN, ADF.
84. Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 53–56. An organ of the PAVN’s GPD, the Bao ve (“protection”) was officially mandated to “guarantee the total loyalty of every military officer and unit toward the party” and to “investigate and deal with those who deviate from its policies.” In reality, it also monitored individuals outside the armed forces, including other branches of the party and the DRVN government. In that sense it served not only the GPD but the VWP Organization Committee and the Ministry of the Interior. See Bui Tin, Following Ho Chi Minh: Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999), 54–55.
85. Quoted in Céline Marangé, Le communisme vietnamien, 1919–1991 [Vietnamese Communism, 1919–1991] (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2012), 280. Lavrentiy Beria was Stalin’s infamous secret police chief.
86. Hoang Anh, “Relationship between Accumulation and Consumption,” 225.
87. BCGH to FO, 26 September 1960, 3.
88. Third National Congress of the Viet Nam Wo
rkers’ Party: Documents, Volume 1, 222.
89. Nguyen Chi Thanh, “We Must Study, Support and Develop What Is New,” Hoc tap (June 1961). Reproduced and translated in Folder 12, Box 10, DPC: Unit 08—Biography, VATTU, 4–5.
90. A comprehensive assessment of that aspect of the congress plus excerpts from certain speeches at the congress are in BCGH to FO, 24 September 1960, FO 371/152747, NAUK. On the Soviet accusations against Beijing, see French Consulate General, Hong Kong, to MFA, 10 October 1960, #16, AO:VN, ADF, 3.
91. Quoted in FGDH to MFA, 12 September 1960, #16, AO:VN, ADF, 1–3.
92. Le Mau Han, Dang Cong san Viet Nam: Cac Dai hoi va Hoi nghi Trung uong [The Communist Party of Vietnam: Congresses and Plenums] (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia, 1995), 93.
93. Duiker, Communist Road to Power, 194.
94. FGDH to MFA, 9 September 1959, #19, AO:VN, ADF, 1–2; Duiker, Communist Road to Power, 194.
95. Quoted in William S. Turley, The Second Indochina War: A Concise Political and Military History, 2nd ed. (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 45. On the formation of the NLF and the PLAF, see Robert K. Brigham, Guerrilla Diplomacy: The NLF’s Foreign Relations and the Vietnam War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 11–18; and Tran Cong Tuong and Pham Thanh Vinh, The N.L.F.: Symbol of Independence, Democracy and Peace in South Vietnam (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1967). Though Hanoi proclaimed its formation in 1960, the NLF did not hold its first formal congress until 1 January 1962.
96. Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, “The Valiant Struggle for Liberation of the South Vietnamese People” (Hanoi, October 1965), 2.
97. George A. Carver, “The Real Revolution in South Vietnam,” Foreign Affairs, no. 43 (April 1965): 406.
98. Republic of Vietnam, Vietnam Report: Why Bomb North Viet Nam? (Saigon: Ministry of Information, undated), 2. The South Vietnamese government issued this pamphlet in 1965 or 1966.