Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945–1960
Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945–1960

Author: Alec Holcombe

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2020-08-31

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 0824882911

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Immediately after its founding by Hồ Chí Minh in September 1945, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) faced challenges from rival Vietnamese political organizations and from a France determined to rebuild her empire after the humiliations of WWII. Hồ, with strategic genius, courageous maneuver, and good fortune, was able to delay full-scale war with France for sixteen months in the northern half of the country. This was enough time for his Communist Party, under the cover of its Vietminh front organization, to neutralize domestic rivals and install the rough framework of an independent state. That fledgling state became a weapon of war when the DRV and France finally came to blows in Hanoi during December of 1946, marking the official beginning of the First Indochina War. With few economic resources at their disposal, Hồ and his comrades needed to mobilize an enormous and free contribution in manpower and rice from DRV-controlled regions. Extracting that contribution during the war’s early days was primarily a matter of patriotic exhortation. By the early 1950s, however, the infusion of weapons from the United States, the Soviet Union, and China had turned the Indochina conflict into a “total war.” Hunger, exhaustion, and violence, along with the conflict’s growing political complexity, challenged the DRV leaders’ mobilization efforts, forcing patriotic appeals to be supplemented with coercion and terror. This trend reached its revolutionary climax in late 1952 when Hồ, under strong pressure from Stalin and Mao, agreed to carry out radical land reform in DRV-controlled areas of northern Vietnam. The regime’s 1954 victory over the French at Điện Biên Phủ, the return of peace, and the division of the country into North and South did not slow this process of socialist transformation. Over the next six years (1954–1960), the DRV’s Communist leaders raced through land reform and agricultural collectivization with a relentless sense of urgency. Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945–1960 explores the way the exigencies of war, the dreams of Marxist-Leninist ideology, and the pressures of the Cold War environment combined with pride and patriotism to drive totalitarian state formation in northern Vietnam.

Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945-1960
Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945-1960

Author: Alec Holcombe

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780824884468

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Immediately after its founding by Hồ Chí Minh in September 1945, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) faced challenges from rival Vietnamese political organizations and from a France determined to rebuild her empire after the humiliations of WWII. Hồ, with strategic genius, courageous maneuver, and good fortune, was able to delay full-scale war with France for sixteen months in the northern half of the country. This was enough time for his Communist Party, under the cover of its Vietminh front organization, to neutralize domestic rivals and install the rough framework of an independent state. That fledgling state became a weapon of war when the DRV and France finally came to blows in Hanoi during December of 1946, marking the official beginning of the First Indochina War. With few economic resources at their disposal, Hồ and his comrades needed to mobilize an enormous and free contribution in manpower and rice from DRV-controlled regions. Extracting that contribution during the war's early days was primarily a matter of patriotic exhortation. By the early 1950s, however, the infusion of weapons from the United States, the Soviet Union, and China had turned the Indochina conflict into a #34total war.#34 Hunger, exhaustion, and violence, along with the conflict's growing political complexity, challenged the DRV leaders' mobilization efforts, forcing patriotic appeals to be supplemented with coercion and terror. This trend reached its revolutionary climax in late 1952 when Hồ, under strong pressure from Stalin and Mao, agreed to carry out radical land reform in DRV-controlled areas of northern Vietnam. The regime's 1954 victory over the French at Điện Biên Phủ, the return of peace, and the division of the country into North and South did not slow this process of socialist transformation. Over the next six years (1954-1960), the DRV's Communist leaders raced through land reform and agricultural collectivization with a relentless sense of urgency. Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945-1960 explores the way the exigencies of war, the dreams of Marxist-Leninist ideology, and the pressures of the Cold War environment combined with pride and patriotism to drive totalitarian state formation in northern Vietnam.

Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945-1960
Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945-1960

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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Immediately after its founding by Hồ Chí Minh in September 1945, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) faced challenges from rival Vietnamese political organizations and from a France determined to rebuild her empire after the humiliations of WWII. Hồ, with strategic genius, courageous maneuver, and good fortune, was able to delay full-scale war with France for sixteen months in the northern half of the country. This was enough time for his Communist Party, under the cover of its Vietminh front organization, to neutralize domestic rivals and install the rough framework of an independent state. That fledgling state became a weapon of war when the DRV and France finally came to blows in Hanoi during December of 1946, marking the official beginning of the First Indochina War. With few economic resources at their disposal, Hồ and his comrades needed to mobilize an enormous and free contribution in manpower and rice from DRV-controlled regions. Extracting that contribution during the war's early days was primarily a matter of patriotic exhortation. By the early 1950s, however, the infusion of weapons from the United States, the Soviet Union, and China had turned the Indochina conflict into a #34total war.#34 Hunger, exhaustion, and violence, along with the conflict's growing political complexity, challenged the DRV leaders' mobilization efforts, forcing patriotic appeals to be supplemented with coercion and terror. This trend reached its revolutionary climax in late 1952 when Hồ, under strong pressure from Stalin and Mao, agreed to carry out radical land reform in DRV-controlled areas of northern Vietnam. The regime's 1954 victory over the French at Điện Biên Phủ, the return of peace, and the division of the country into North and South did not slow this process of socialist transformation. Over the next six years (1954-1960), the DRV's Communist leaders raced through land reform and agricultural collectivization with a relentless sense of urgency. Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945-1960 explores the way the exigencies of war, the dreams of Marxist-Leninist ideology, and the pressures of the Cold War environment combined with pride and patriotism to drive totalitarian state formation in northern Vietnam.

From Anticolonialism to Mobilizing Socialist Transformation in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945-1960
From Anticolonialism to Mobilizing Socialist Transformation in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945-1960

Author: Alex Thai Dinh Vo

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13:

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This interdisciplinary research investigates the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's (DRV) Chinese-inspired mass mobilization and land reform policies to explore the rise of the communist revolution in Vietnam and the country's violent transformation from colonialism to communism, from 1945 to 1960. I situate this post-WWII period of transformation in North Vietnam within the context of decolonization and the global Cold War and argue that land reform was the communist-led DRV's most important domestic policy during the First and Second Indochina Wars against France and the United States. Drawing on Vietnamese, English, French, and Chinese sources, including interviews and previously untapped archival documents, the dissertation demonstrates that the mobilization of the masses to implement land reform was an orchestrated class campaign to mobilize popular support against colonial French rule. This support contributed to the 1954 defeat of French forces at Dien Bien Phu, which essentially led to the division of Vietnam into two opposing polities-Democratic of (North) Vietnam and Republic of (South) Vietnam. Moreover, land reform legitimized and consolidated socio-political power for the DRV by abolishing established, village-level bureaucratic and social-cultural power structures that could block the Party-state's transformation of the state, society, economy, and culture. Those tasks paved the way for full-scale modernization, following the Sino-Soviet model, on agricultural collectivization and industrialization. The Party-state was then able to assume control over the population by subjugating it to the repressive authority of the state, setting the foundation to militarily outlast the United States in the Second Indochina War. Thus, land reform was the Party-state's most important domestic policy during this transitional period as it allowed the Party-state to decolonize, to consolidate power, and to transition Vietnam into an authoritarian socialist state. These achievements, however, resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being falsely and summarily prosecuted, tortured, ostracized, or executed. Ultimately, this dissertation rectifies the imbalances in the traditional Western-centric literature of the wars in Vietnam by emphasizing the centrality of non-Western actors-Vietnamese and Chinese-and illuminating the significance of domestic policies such as class mobilization and land reform in nation-building and in determining the trajectories of national and international affairs and the outcome of conflicts. Consequently, it presents a better understanding of the Party-state, its decision-making and rule.

The Road to Dien Bien Phu
The Road to Dien Bien Phu

Author: Christopher Goscha

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2023-08-15

Total Pages: 568

ISBN-13: 0691228647

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A multifaceted history of Ho Chi Minh’s climactic victory over French colonial might that foreshadowed America’s experience in Vietnam On May 7, 1954, when the bullets stopped and the air stilled in Dien Bien Phu, there was no doubt that Vietnam could fight a mighty colonial power and win. After nearly a decade of struggle, a nation forged in the crucible of war had achieved a victory undreamed of by any other national liberation movement. The Road to Dien Bien Phu tells the story of how Ho Chi Minh turned a ragtag guerrilla army into a modern fighting force capable of bringing down the formidable French army. Taking readers from the outbreak of fighting in 1945 to the epic battle at Dien Bien Phu, Christopher Goscha shows how Ho transformed Vietnam from a decentralized guerrilla state based in the countryside to a single-party communist state shaped by a specific form of “War Communism.” Goscha discusses how the Vietnamese operated both states through economics, trade, policing, information gathering, and communications technology. He challenges the wisdom of counterinsurgency methods developed by the French and still used by the Americans today, and explains why the First Indochina War was arguably the most brutal war of decolonization in the twentieth century, killing a million Vietnamese, most of them civilians. Panoramic in scope, The Road to Dien Bien Phu transforms our understanding of this conflict and the one the United States would later enter, and sheds new light on communist warfare and statecraft in East Asia today.

Disunion
Disunion

Author: Nu-Anh Tran

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2022-02-28

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0824891635

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Since the 1950s, the domestic politics of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) has puzzled outside observers. To these external analysts, the American-backed regime seemed to be plagued by instability and factionalism for no apparent reason. Their bewilderment, however, has obscured a deep and complex history. In Disunion, Nu-Anh Tran shows how factional struggles in the Saigon-based republic reflected serious disagreements about political ideas at a pivotal moment in the lead-up to the Vietnam War. The book traces the emergence of Vietnam’s anticommunist nationalists back to the struggle for independence and explores how their alliances were tested and then broken during the rule of the RVN’s first president, Ngô Đình Diệm. The anticommunists rejected the authoritarianism and ideology of the Vietnamese communists and dreamed of building an independent, democratic government that would unite the Vietnamese nation. The RVN was supposed to be the fulfillment of this long-cherished vision. But discord soon erupted among the anticommunists. Politicians fiercely debated to what extent the government should be democratic and which groups had a legitimate place in political life. The unresolved disagreements provoked intense and continuous infighting that troubled the RVN throughout the regime’s existence. Ultimately, the animosity undermined any possibility of realizing the anticommunists’ shared vision for the country. Based on previously neglected primary sources and extensive research in Vietnamese and American archives, Disunion paints a rich and sensitive portrayal of leaders and activists in the RVN. Anticommunist nationalists were deeply devoted to their homeland and inspired by forward-looking visions, but they were also hobbled by their failure to live up to their lofty ideals. By examining these historical figures on their own terms, the book offers a fresh perspective on the political history of South Vietnam that has remained misunderstood to this day.