The Truth Behind the Myth of the Viet Minh (Pt. 1)

The publication of the now famous “Pentagon papers” has aroused a wave of outrage, indignation and protest in «public opinion».

The «democratic» press has welcomed it as decisive proof of the «crimes» for which the American government has long been put «under indictment» by the «peace movement» and the «court of human rights».

Here’s a list summarizing American «crimes» according to the Democratic Opposition; 1) The «first to start», i.e. the US was the «aggressor»; 2) On the part of the DRV, there was no invasion or even an invitation to insurrection; 3) It was the US that «violated» the Geneva Accords of 1954; 4) With their bestial conduct of war, the USA has a thousand times surpassed the Nazis in ferocity and breadth of means employed in terrorism and organized extermination of a people; 5) The respect that the USA have for treaties does honor to the Nazis; the US has «violated» all international treaties, «human rights», «people’s right to self determination», etc; 6) With their military intervention, finally, the US has acted «against the will of the American people», «against the will of Parliament»; they have trampled on their own laws, have denied their own principles of «democracy», «freedom», etc.

But how could the US government go against everything and everyone: «its people», its «principles», its legislative bodies? Its actions violated a thousand «rights», but it has fully respected the only one that counts, the right of the strongest.

In front of such a blatant shows of brutality and cynicism, how insulting and sterile are the astonishment and the whining of the candid petty-bourgeois pacifists, who against real force wield «rights» and would like to oppose weapons with pieces of paper! The American state, like all bourgeois States, defends neither an ideology nor a constitutional charter, but a network of interests; thus it can and it will, if necessary, trample «its own laws». We have, on one hand, a sleazy «current of opinion» which defines itself with a generic «pacifism» that claims to fight alongside the Vietnamese, pointing to war and violence as the cause of all evil and peace as the solution to everything: on the other hand, a real fight with bombings and massacres. But the heroic Vietnamese fighters, who have been fighting almost unceasingly for more than 25 years, fight alone: alone against US imperialism; alone against the «peace movement» that only confuses the ideas of the Western proletariat and to endorse the thesis that the Vietnamese «can do it alone» and that solidarity with their struggle must take place in democratic and nonviolent forms; alone against their own leaders who are inextricably linked to the policies of Moscow and Beijing, who have always tried to contain the movement within national-bourgeois limits and (as we shall show) who not only always avoided upsetting the interests of the landowning class, but even fought to agree with them, systematically screwing over proletarians and poor peasants.

This fact that the Western proletariat has witnessed, without lifting a finger, the systematic extermination of thousands upon thousands of Vietnamese shows the extent of the degeneration of the movement, ongoing for over 50 years now.

That’s the whole point, and while everyone hypocritically exalts the struggle and the military victories of the Vietcong, we won’t hide the fact that the Vietnamese proletarians and poor peasants are and will remain hopeless, until the Western proletariat is freed from the heavy chains of opportunism that shatters and divides their struggles, keeping them on legalitarian and peaceful ground.

But are those who limit themselves to exalting the battles of the Vietnamese fighters without drawing the necessary lessons from past events, however painful they may be, perhaps helping them? Are those who claim that the events in Vietnam prove that «a small and weak people can defeat imperialism on its own» on the side of the heroic Vietnamese fighters?

What does 25 years of war prove, first against the Japanese, then against the French, and now (for eleven years) against the Americans?

In 1946, after the expulsion of the Japanese, an agreement with France paved the way for the entry of French troops in the North and prelude to a new war. In 1954, after the great victory of Điện Biên Phủ, the Geneva agreements were reached, according to which the French avoided the complete destruction of their expeditionary corps, the Vietnamese had to withdraw their forces above the 17th parallel, and the country was divided in two, laying the groundwork for a new war. Today, after other brilliant military successes such as the Tet Offensive in 1968 and the recent victories in Cambodia and Laos, we may be approaching a new agreement, or rather, another swindle.

The Vietnamese have shown incredible valor on the battlefield; but, while everyone is singing hymns to peace, preparations are again being made to crush them at the negotiating table. The previously described thesis is thus resoundingly disproved. Another thesis that everyone generally endorses and that contributes to confuse the ideas of the Western proletariat claims that in Vietnam there is an oppressed «people» fighting united against a «foreign aggressor». According to this conception, which the current Vietnamese leaders have always upheld, the class struggle has to cease and, faced with the «priority» objective of the struggle against the aggressor, the whole nation must unite as one. A brief examination of the events that have taken place from 1930 to the present day will serve to demonstrate the falsity of this thesis as well and to unmask the attitude of the Vietnamese leaders who have always sacrificed the essential interests of the proletariat and the poor peasants on the altar of «peace» and «national unity».

1930-1940 – INSURRECTION

The Indochinese Communist Party was formed in 1930, when the revolution had already been defeated in Europe and the Third International and the Soviet State had completely degenerated under the blows of the Stalinist counterrevolution. However, there existed within it a left wing of essentially class-based positions (normally generically titled «trotskist») that was at the head of the workers’ and peasants’ revolts and that was always opposed to compromise with the national bourgeoisie.

This is evidenced by the fact that it was only in 1941 (after these best comrades had been exterminated in the repression of the revolts) that the policy of the national bloc with the landowning class (which automatically meant renouncing agrarian reform) was definitively affirmed. According to the Stalinist Jean Chesneaux, author of The Vietnamese Nation: Contribution to a History which we use, «the word «fatherland» in communist texts from 1930 to 1940… practically never appears.” The author, a real bastard, laments the fact that «the communist-directed popular movements, from the Nghe An revolt to the insurrections of 1940, had been content (!) until then to hoist the red flag with the hammer and sickle of international communism». Even General Giap, in his writing People’s War, People’s Army, recalls that «it was not until 1939-1941 that the anti-imperialist task, the task of national liberation was clearly conceived as the most essential”. Indeed, at the time of its establishment, the party’s program included: – Overthrow of French imperialism, feudalism and the reactionary bourgeoisie. – Formation of a government of workers, peasants and soldiers. – Expropriation of banks and other imperialist enterprises. – Confiscation of all property of the imperialists and the reactionary bourgeoisie in Vietnam and its distribution to the poor peasants. – Introduction of the eight-hour workday.

In 1930 (under French rule) Vietnam was a predominantly agricultural country, but it also included a fairly large and concentrated proletariat (the mines and rubber plantations alone employed about 230,000 workers). The workers entered the scene with their own demands with a strike wave in 1928-29. In 1930, following the collapse of rice prices and poor harvests, large-scale peasant agitations took place, led by Communist Party militants. The movement exploded in violent forms; in many areas public places were attacked, registers and archives were burned, landlords were expelled and the slogan of land distribution was launched. In 1931, real Soviet power was established in the Nghệ An province. The peasants’ soviets confiscated the land of the landowners and distributed it to poor peasants, people’s courts were established, and in the villages power is entrusted to committees of poor peasants. But this magnificent example of revolutionary struggle was drowned in blood a few months later. Even in the sugar region, the insurrection was immediately crushed.

Other centers of the insurrection were the great rice fields of the South, which employ a large number of wage earners, and the great plantations of Annam and Cochinchina, where between 1930 and 1932 bloody worker revolts against wage reductions and layoffs took place everywhere. At the same time, in the cities, workers’ agitations for wage increases and against unemployment resumed.

To get an idea of the violence of the struggles and the high degree of revolutionary militancy achieved by the workers and peasants, we only need to point out that in 1930 alone the pro-French authorities carried out 30 summary executions during the demonstrations on May 1, 40 for the anniversary of the October Revolution, 115 for the anniversary of the Canton insurrection. Needless to say, in these repressions the best comrades were exterminated. The Stalinist fraction of the party thus began to gain the upper hand, advocating an alliance with the national bourgeoisie, of which the much-hyped Ho Chi Minh was one of the major exponents. However, the «trotskist» opposition is still strong, especially in Cochinchina where it gathers around the newspaper La Lutte.

The final break between the «trotskist» opposition and the Stalinist wing occurs only in 1937-38, when the latter proclaims the priority of the fight against the «Japanese fascists» over the fight against the landowners, and unity not only with the latter, but also with the French colonialists.

In 1939, Ho Chi Minh, in a report to the Comintern, wrote: «1) At this time the Party…must avoid aiming too high with its demands…lest it fall into the provocations of the Japanese fascists. It must confine itself to demanding democratic rights – freedom of the press, etc. 2) In view of these aims, the Party must strive to create a broad national-democratic front, including not only Indochinese, but also French progressives, not only the laboring classes, but also the national bourgeoisie. 3) With regard to the national bourgeoisie, the Party must show itself to be skillful and elastic. It must do its best to convert it to the cause of the front. 4) No alliance and no concessions towards the trotskites. We must expose by all means these agents of fascism, we must annihilate them politically».

Note the fury with which the repressor of the Vietnamese workers lashes out at comrades who had always been at the head of the struggles and had suffered the most from their repression; and, on the other hand, the submissive, servile tone towards the national bourgeoisie. He goes so far as to argue in point 6 of the report: «The Party must not impose its leadership on the front», or, in other words, it must leave the leadership of the front to the bourgeoisie (from Scritti, lettere, discorsi del presidente Ho Chi Minh, ed. Feltrinelli).

1940-1946 – THE POPULAR FRONT

In 1940, after the French defeat in Europe, the Japanese penetration into Vietnam begins. In June the Japanese obtain various concessions from the French colonial authorities (i.e. the right to use three airports and to maintain a contingent of troops there, control of a railway, etc.);

In the same year a series of armed riots broke out, directed against both the Japanese and the French. The revolt takes on such large proportions that in the repression, the Japanese and French unite together in a proper joint military operation with the use of aviation. The repression is extremely harsh, and decimates the most militant and radical cadres of the Party. Finally, the French administration, put at a disadvantage, opens even more the doors to the penetration of the Japanese, who remain in Vietnam until the end of the war.

It is the failure of this insurrection that opens the way to the final shift of the Communist Party of Indochina to national-bourgeois positions, and to the victory of the current led by Ho Chi Minh. This line was in fact sanctioned only in May 1941 in the VIII session of the Central Committee: on the same occasion the Vietminh (League for the Independence of Vietnam) was founded.

It took 10 years to make the Vietnamese proletarians and peasants swallow the Popular Front line!

The program of the Viet Minh proclaimed the struggle for «national and democratic revolution», «the struggle against the French government of Vichy and against Japan», the «alliance of the Vietnamese people with the democracies that fight fascism: China, the United States, the Soviet Union», universal suffrage, democratic freedoms, and the eight-hour workday.

Shortly after the founding of the Vietminh, good old Ho, in a letter from abroad, appeals to national resistance: «Rich people, soldiers, workers, peasants, intellectuals, officials, traders, youth, and women who warmly love your country! At the present time, national liberation is the most important problem. Let us unite together!»

But what does union with the «rich», the » officials» mean, if not renunciation of agrarian reform? In fact, the agrarian program of the Vietminh provides for the partition only of the lands of the colonialists and the «traitorous» (of the fatherland) owners. Ho Chi Minh himself, later on, recalling the events of this period, will say: «The slogan ’confiscation and distribution of landowners’ lands to the peasants’ was avoided in order to obtain the support of the landowners to the national front» (op. cit, from a report held in 1951).

In turn, General Giap defined the new agrarian policy as follows: «temporarily put aside the slogan for agrarian reform and replaced it by the slogan of reduction of land rents and interest charges, and confiscation of land belonging to imperialists and Vietnamese traitors and its distribution to the peasants» (op. cit.). But the poor peasants, crushed by taxes and usury, certainly did not rise up to win freedom of the press or universal suffrage, but to chase the landowners from their lands, or at least to obtain an improvement in their living conditions. Thus it’s clear that the poor peasants and the national bourgeoisie, essentially landowners, could never march together for common goals, and that the slogan of «national unity» served only to cover the complete subservience to bourgeois interests.

On the other hand, did the local landed bourgeoisie stand on its own strength? No! It relied, from time to time, on the Japanese, the French, the Chinese of the Kuomintang, the Americans, depending on the circumstances. So it’s clear that «national liberation» could only take place against the indigenous bourgeoisie which was bound hand and foot to imperialism.

Between 1941 and 1945, the Vietminh participated in the anti-Japanese struggle alongside the Allies, and in this period, according to what the Pentagoon Papers reveal, the US sent a military mission to the Vietminh. To better characterize the figure of the much hailed Ho Chi Minh, it will be useful to remember that in 1942 he collaborated and was financed by the Chinese Kuomintang, which, leaning on a part of the bourgeoisie, tried to penetrate into Vietnam. Only at the end of the war, on August 13, 1945, shortly after Hiroshima, did the Vietminh launch a call for all-out insurrection: the Japanese were now everywhere in retreat and on September 2 the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed.

The government then formed was truly a government of «national unity», just as Ho liked it. The landed bourgeoisie, which until then had supported the Japanese, fully adhered to the DRV – suffice it to say that the government includes, among others, Hung Huy, a member of the imperial family in Tonkin and the Mandarin Phan Kế Toại, former imperial delegate in Tonkin, while Bao Dai himself, former head of the pro-Japanese government, is appointed «supreme advisor» of Ho Chi Minh’s government. In the aforementioned 1951 report, Ho Chi Minh, recalling these events, exalted the fact that some members of the Central Committee, although they should have been part of the provisional government, «withdrew of their own free will in favor of patriots who were not members of the Vietminh» (i.e. in favor of bourgeois former collaborators of the Japanese). To complete this national unity, came the adhesion of the church; in November 1945, the four Catholic bishops of Vietnam, in a common pastoral letter, invited the faithful to support the new regime; one would later be elected to the national assembly.

But why did the landed bourgeoisie lean so confidently on the DRV? What was the price of «national unity»?

The anti-Japanese insurrection had set in motion the peasants who were also starved by the famine that broke out that year. Any peasant movement made the landowners tremble. They knew that their lands were in danger, while there were no longer any French or Japanese to defend them. What could they do but join the DRV government, which, in the name of the fatherland, protected their interests?

In several provinces, such as Quang Ngai and North Annam, the peasants, in the wake of the anti-Japanese victory, had begun to divide up the lands of the landowners. The DRV government immediately took care to prevent the movement from spreading; a circular letter of November 21 declared: «The rice fields and cultivated land will not be divided up as false rumors have announced» (Jean Chesneaux, op. cit.). Moreover, on November 11, 1945, the Communist Party of Indochina dissolved itself. This was the cost of unity with the national bourgeoisie: renunciation of agrarian reform and dissolution of the party!

In 1945, 80% of the population were peasants; of these, 61.5%, had no land of their own, The distribution of land in North Vietnam, in 1945, was as follows:

(Source: statistics from the Agrarian Reform Committee of the DRV, as reported by Chaliand Gérard in Peasants of North Vietnam)

The communal lands, which, as we can see, are very extensive, are often usurped by the landowners and the peasants are demanding their share. The peasants constitute the majority of the population and the government of the DRV must in some way appease them. Therefore, a number of measures were taken to improve their living conditions: reduction of the rents by 25% (to the benefit of the mass of small tenants), reduction of the rate of credit, confiscation and division of communal lands and of French and Japanese settlers.

However, these measures remained on paper; in fact, their execution is entrusted to local administrative apparatuses, where the influence of landowners predominates. In December 1953, Phạm Văn Đồng denounced the fact that only 5% of the lands belonging to landowners and settlers had been affected by the reduction of the rent; only a little more than half of the communal lands had been partitioned, and about 10% of the lands belonged to settlers and missions.

But the famine still loomed and a peasant uprising was feared; the DRV absolutely had to increase its agricultural production, but the presence of large estates and the excessive power of large landowners (which means high rents, usury, poor cultivation of large areas, etc) prohibited this. On the other hand, a division of the land would imply an open war against the landed bourgeoisie, which Ho and his comrades were careful to avoid. On November 15, the «Central Committee of Intensive and Rapid Agricultural Production» was constituted; a sort of «battle of wheat» or, better, «battle of rice» was launched. In the cities, even the smallest portion of land is cleared (gardens, playgrounds, etc.).

In the meantime, the proletariat, after 5 years of stagnation, starts to move again. The government of the DRV is forced to proclaim freedom to the trade unions and the 8-hour day, and to officially recognize Labor Day. On May 1, 1946, massive demonstrations take place with thousands upon thousands of participants. During the summer, strikes break out all over the country. One example is enough to demonstrate the magnificent militancy of the Vietnamese proletariat: in June, 5000 miners from the Hon Gay mines strike against a dismissal and in July they obtain the re-hiring of their comrade.

1946-1954: THE WAR AGAINST THE FRENCH – DIÊN BIÊN PHU – GENEVA

While the great powers divided the world according to their interests, however, there was no prospect for an independent Vietnamese state. In the winter of 1944-45, the French Republic (which had come out of the resistance) had already established the French Expeditionary Corps for the Far East in preparation for its return to Vietnam. In the Potsdam Agreements it was decided to send Chinese troops north of the 16th parallel and British and French troops south. This decision is officially explained as a «technical measure» to disarm the Japanese troops still present in the area. After a series of bloody incidents between the occupation troops and the population, in March 1946 an agreement was signed between the DRV and France. According to this agreement, France formally recognized the DRV as an independent state, but French troops could establish themselves in the North to replace Kuomintang troops. On his return from the negotiations, Ho Chi Minh, in a proclamation to the people, presented these agreements as a victory and called on them to be «courteous to the French military, conciliatory towards French citizens», to take «democratic political forms» in action and to «unite closely without distinction of party, class, or religion» (Ho Chi Minh, op. cit.).

But the substance of the agreements is well explained by General Giap: «The problem then before the French Expeditionary Corps was to know whether it would be easy for them to return to North Vietnam by force. It was certainly not so, because our forces were more powerful there than in the South». And how did the French manage to get their troops into the North? Through those very negotiations.

Once they’d settled in, the French resumed their repression, massacres, and looting with increasing brutality: the bombing of the port of Haiphong caused about 6000 deaths (remember that, in this period, the PCF was part of the French government that «came out of the resistance»). The government of the DRV, faced with these organized massacres, limited itself to making appeals to the French government asking for a change of policy in order to avoid war. It is only on December 20, when resistance spontaneously spread throughout the country, that the government calls for a general insurrection, while continuing to invite the government in Paris to resume negotiations (!).

At this point, according to General Giap, “[our troops], after fierce street-combats in the big cities, beat strategical retreats to the countryside on its own initiative in order to maintain its bases and preserve its forces”. The strategy of the so-called «long term resistance» was adopted, which is nothing but the strategy of the peasant war. This strategy triggered some opposition: Giap recalls the opposition against this strategy in the following terms: «These were subjectivisms, loss of patience, eagerness to win swiftly which came out in the plans of operations of a number of localities at the start of the Resistance War which were unwilling to withdraw their force to preserve our main force, and in their plan of general counter-offensive put forth in 1950 when this was not yet permitted by objective and subjective conditions» (op. cit.). The Vietnamese army, almost intact, reorganized into small formations. According to Jean Chesneaux, some large units are even disbanded to reorganize them into small guerrilla bands. The same author affirms that, due to the great difficulty of communication, it was «impossible to maintain true centralization; it became necessary to stick to general directives, and leave a wide margin of initiative to regional and local authorities. To this end, the country was divided into fourteen military zones with wide autonomy».

It is a conduct of war that appears, at the very least, renounced and defeatist, and all these facts would seem to indicate that it deliberately left the urban proletariat to the tender mercies of the French. What’s certain is that only the workers remained to defend the cities. In Hanoi, a regiment of proletarians resisted for two months before surrendering. The French troops thus crushed the proletarian movement that had been rekindled in the summer of 1946.

The DRV government had retreated into the countryside; at this point, faced with the necessities of war, the problem of agrarian reform took on decisive importance. Could the war be sustained without the support of the peasants? Could the war be fought without soldiers? General Giap, as head of the army, had already had to come to grips with this reality: «A general mobilisation of the whole people is neither more nor less than the mobilisation of the rural masses. The problem of land is of decisive importance. From an exhaustive analysis, the Vietnamese people’s war of liberation was essentially a people’s national democratic revolution carried out under armed form and had twofold fundamental task: the overthrowing of imperialism and the defeat of the feudal landlord class… In a colony where the national question is essentially the peasant question, the consolidation of the resistance forces was possible only by a solution to the agrarian problem» (op. cit.). Now that cannon fodder was needed, the need for agrarian reform was supported, while before, in the name of national unity, the ownership of land had always been defended.

But Giap himself, after the war, would repudiate these positions: «Our country was a colonial and semi-feudal one. The two basic contradictions in our society were the contradiction between imperialism and our nation and the contradiction between the feudal landlord class and our people, chiefly the peasantry; of these two contradictions, that between imperialism and our nation had to be considered as the most essential. That is why the revolution in Vietnam, which was a national democratic revolution, had two fundamental tasks: the anti-imperialist and the anti-feudal task. Among these two tasks, the anti-imperialists task, the task of wiping out imperialism to liberate the people, had to be regarded as the most essential» (op. cit.).

In order to achieve the above-mentioned goals, in 1950 interest rates were reduced; uncultivated lands were distributed free of charge and ownership was guaranteed within two years on condition that they were cultivated; the lease contract was also regulated by prohibiting the subletting of land and stating that the contract must last at least three years; an attempt was made to increase cooperation by inviting peasants to form «work exchange brigades» etc. The new civil code stated that «property is respected, but… it is forbidden for owners to leave land uncultivated».

In the same year the Vietnamese go on the offensive and inflict a series of defeats on the French. Also in 1950, the DRV government, which before, as the Pentagon Papers reveal, had repeatedly but unsuccessfully asked the US for help against the French, turned towards the Soviet bloc: the USSR and the People’s Republic of China officially recognized the DRV. In 1951, the clearly pro-Soviet «Vietnam Workers’ Party» was founded, which, according to Ho Chi Minh’s expression, «adopted Marxism-Leninism», which meant not a return to the struggle for communism, but merely the entry of the DRV into the Soviet bloc.

On the other hand, the USA actively supported the French. According to the figures reported by Giap, American aid, which in 1950-51 covered 15% of the costs of the war, rose to 35% in 1952, to 45% in 1953, to reach 80% in 1954. As Giap rightly states, this was a war «backed by the American dollar and French blood».

However, the internal situation in the countryside under the control of the DRV was still critical: the measures mentioned above, aimed at obtaining an increase in production and the support of the masses of peasants, were to no avail, so much so that in 1951, the government cited the poor results achieved in the villages.

According to figures reported by Phan Van Dong, in 1952, out of 3,000,000 ha belonging to landowners and settlers, only 156,000 (5%) had been subject to the reduction of rents and only 230,000 (8%) had been distributed.

Also according to Phan Van Dong, in December 1953, the distribution of land was as follows:
     Lands belonging to landowners: 50%
     Communal lands (in reality hoarded by the landowners): 10%
     Land occupied by the remaining 9/10% of the peasant population (more than half of whom were totally landless): 30%
     Lands belonging to settlers and the church: 10%

Faced with the need to increase production and end the war, the government had to seriously address the problem. After having publicly denounced the state of misery of the peasant masses and the fact that the feudal forces continued, «behind a curtain of bamboo», to exercise their power, after having attacked the «reactionary landowners» who in many cases collaborated with the enemy, in April of 1953 the agrarian decree was issued. This decree, for the type of measures to be adopted, does not differ much from those of ’45 and ’49 (reduction of rents, interest, division of the land of the colonists, etc.). However, this time its execution is no longer entrusted, as then, to the local administrative apparatus, where the influence of landowners predominates, but to the peasant unions and agricultural committees, that is, to the organized peasants themselves.

Net 1953, Ho Chi Minh explained what the government was aiming at with its reform: «By promoting land reform, we will influence our fellow countrymen who live beyond enemy lines, encourage them to fight more vigorously for their freedom and to support the democratic government of resistance with more ardor. At the same time we will cause the break-up of the additional formations of the puppet army, the majority of which are composed of the peasants living in the occupied zone».

In launching the reform, however, it is stated that it must be carried out «in stages», and different criteria are indicated for its implementation depending on the areas: «The agrarian policy” – Ho Chi Minh continues – “will be applied to the guerrilla zones and the provisionally occupied areas, when these are liberated. In places where the mobilization of the masses for a rigorous reduction of rent rates has not yet been organized, it will be necessary to go through this first stage before committing to agrarian reform. Where the mobilization of the masses has not yet been decided by the government, it is absolutely forbidden for the local authorities to promote it on their own initiative».

Furthermore, the directive is to be applied with differentiated measures according to the political position of the landowners: «We must, in carrying out agrarian reform, make a distinction between landowners according to their political position. In other words, we must apply a whole range of measures: expropriation, requisition without compensation, purchase by authority, instead of a general expropriation or requisition» (op. cit).

The government, with the usual duplicity, while on the one hand tries to deceive the peasants to get them to fight, on the other hand has no intention to break with the landed bourgeoisie, Phan Van Dong states: «The interests of the landowners, of those who have not compromised with the enemy, and above all of the democratic personalities and of the resistant landowners will not be prejudiced» (from J.Chesneaux, op.cit). According to J.Chesnesux, «to the French colonists the lands are purely and simply confiscated and so are the other assets. On the contrary, lands and goods of «traitorous, reactionary landowners and nobles who have been guilty of cruelty» are confiscated only «in proportion to the sins committed». As for the «democratic personalities», they are compensated for their lands, capitals and agricultural tools, while the other goods are left. The measures adopted towards the «wait-and-see» landowners living in the occupied zone will depend on their political attitude towards the resistance».

As we can see, Ho Chi Minh’s government certainly did not intend to push agrarian reform all the way to the end; the primary purpose of these measures was to use the peasants’ impetus in the anti-French war; but to do this they had to be deceived at least until the end of military operations. That purpose was fully achieved, as General Giap explains: «There were errors in land reform but they were, in the main, committed after the restoration of peace and thus did not have any effect on the Resistance War. It should be added that not only was land reform carried out in the North, but in south Vietnam, land was also distributed to the peasants after 1951. » (op. cit.)

The great victory of Diem Bien Phu in 1954, in which the French expeditionary corps was annihilated, was largely the result of this half-hearted agrarian reform: in fact, as is well known, the victory obtained by the Vietnamese on the battlefield turned into a defeat at the negotiating table.

The Geneva Accords of July 1954 established a «provisional» division of the country along the 17th Parallel. The respective forces were to be withdrawn north and south of this demarcation line, and the parties pledged to hold general elections by 1956. In the aftermath of the victory at Diem Bien Phu, the French forces were virtually annihilated; yet the DRV government did not want to take advantage of the situation.

According to Chaliand Gérard. (op, cit.), «in the hour of Vietnam’s greatest triumph, the victory of Diem Bien Phu (achieved the very day before the opening of the peace negotiations in Geneva), Phan Van Dong, Foreign Minister of the DRV, assumed a modest as well as magnanimous attitude towards the French, emphasizing the desire of his government to maintain, despite everything that had happened, friendly relations with France». «Naivety?» «Love of peace?» Nothing of the sort! Impotence and complete subservience to the decisions of the great imperialist giants. At the negotiating table, military prowess did not weigh in; the dollar was what mattered.

The Geneva Accords, the violation of which everyone traces back to the cause of the subsequent war, already contained the premises for a new war. With them, not only was the conflict interrupted in a phase of overwhelming Vietnamese superiority, but it was established that the French troops would concentrate in the north and then retreat beyond the 17th parallel, and that the Vietnamese troops would do the same in the south. Thus, the French were able to recover their divisions encircled in the Red River delta, and secure the withdrawal of 100,000 men of the Vietnamese army from the south, leaving the southern peasants, who had just begun to divide up their lands, practically helpless and at the mercy of fierce repression.