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The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) (Vietnamese: Đảng Cộng sản Việt Nam), formally established in 1930, is the governing party of the nation of Vietnam. It is today the only legal political party in that country. Describing itself as Marxist-Leninist, the CPV is the directing component of a broader group of organizations known as the Vietnamese Fatherland Front. In Vietnam, it is commonly referred to as "Đảng" (the Party) or "Đảng ta" (our Party).

The CPV is formally directed by a National Congress held every five years. In practical terms the organization is led by a 160 member Central Committee, which selects a Political Bureau (Politburo) headed by a General Secretary. The current General Secretary of the CPV is Nguyễn Phú Trọng.

Organizational history

Thanh Nien

Today's Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) traces its origins back to 1925. It was in the spring of that year that a young man born Nguyen Sinh Cung — then using the pseudonym Nguyễn Ái Quốc (Nguyen the Patriot) but best known today by a later party-name, Ho Chi Minh (Ho the Enlightened One) — established a Communist political organization called the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth Association (Vietnamese: Việt Nam Thanh Niên Kách Mệnh Hội — commonly: "Thanh Niên").

Thanh Nien was an organization which sought to make use of patriotism in an effort to bring the colonial occupation of the country by France to an end. The group sought political and social objectives — both national independence and the redistribution of land to working peasants.

The establishment of Thanh Nien was preceded by the arrival of Communist International functionary Ho Chi Minh in Canton, China from Moscow in December 1924. Ho was ostensibly sent to China to work as a secretary and interpreter to Mikhail Borodin, but he actually set to work almost immediately attempting to transform the existing Vietnamese patriotic movement towards revolutionary ends. Ho managed to convert a small group of émigré intellectuals called Tam Tam Xa (Heart-to-Heart Association) to revolutionary socialism, and Thanh Nien was born.

The headquarters of the Thanh Nien organization in Canton was made the directing center for the underground revolutionary movement in Vietnam. All important decisions regarding the strategy and tactics of the fledgling Vietnamese anti-colonial revolutionary movement during this interval were made in Canton.

Thanh Nien was designed to prepare the ground for an armed struggle against the French colonial occupation. Three phases were envisioned by Ho Chi Minh and his compatriots. In the first phase, an external center was to be established as a training center, source of unified political propaganda, and headquarters for strategic decision-making and the maintenance of organizational and ideological discipline. Secret revolutionary grouplets called "cells" were to be trained in Canton and returned to Vietnam proper to conduct activity.

In the second phase, activity would move into a "semi-secret" phase, in which Thanh Nien cadres would initiate political and economic activities, including strike action, boycotts, and protests, which might include conscious acts of political violence as a means of mobilizing the masses. This would be a third phase, one of insurrection, in which the unified organization would attempt to rise up and overthrow the established political regime by force of arms, establishing a new centralized revolutionary government.

Thanh Nien was conceived of as a relatively open mass organization, with the most trusted members part of a directing center called the Communist Youth Corps (CYC). At the time of the Thanh Nien's dissolution in 1929, the CYC is believed to have consisted of just 24 members. In addition to Thanh Nien, this small inner circle also directed two other mass organizations, Nong Hoi ("Peasants' Association") and Cong Hoi ("Workers' Association").

The CYC and Thanh Nien published pamphlets and newspapers, including a guidebook of revolutionary theory and practical techniques called The Road to Revolution, as well as four newspapers — Thanh Nien ("Youth") from June 1925 to May 1930; Bao cong nong ("Worker-Peasant") from December 1926 to early 1928; Linh kach menh ("Revolutionary Soldier") from early 1927 to early 1928; and Viet Nam tien phong ("Vanguard of Vietnam") in 1927.

Factional split of 1929

In 1928 the headquarters of the Thanh Nien organization in Canton were forced underground by forces of the Chinese Nationalists, the Kuomintang (KMT). The center which issued directions to the cells inside Vietnam had to be moved repeatedly to avoid repression — first to Wu-Chou and then to Hong Kong. Making matters worse, top leader Ho Chi Minh departed from Canton in May 1927 and was incommunicado with the Vietnamese movement. The lack of contacts with a unified headquarters proved the start of an organizational split, with radicals in the movement beginning to take instructions from the Comintern via the Communist Party of France and others following a different path.

In September 1928 the radical Bac Ky Regional Committee of Thanh Nien held a conference at which it affirmed the Comintern's new Third Period analysis, positing a new revolutionary upsurge around the world. Noting the growth of the organization among intellectuals in urban centers, the conference determined to send its largely petty bourgeois membership into the countryside and to urban factories in an attempt to bring communist ideas to the poor peasantry and the numerically tiny working class. In a letter to the Comintern, the Thanh Nien itself estimated that approximately 90 percent of its membership consisted of intellectuals; a full-scale offensive to win mass support was desired.

The Central Committee of Thanh Nien called a National Congress of the organization, slated to begin on May Day of 1929. This gathering, held 1–9 May 1929 and attended by 17 delegates from each of the three main administrative districts of Vietnam, plus Hong Kong and Siam, would prove the occasion for a split between those who placed primary emphasis on the so-called "national question" (independence from colonialism) and those who sought a more radical movement placing emphasis on social revolution. Ho Chi Minh was not in attendance, still missing from the scene. The conclave was chaired by Nguyen Cong Vien, making use of the pseudonym Lam Duc Thu, who summarily ruled the question of formation of a proper Communist party out of order, prompting a walkout of three members of the northern delegation, leaving only an informer working on behalf of the French secret police at the session as the representative of Tonkin.

The radical Northern delegates who walked out of the Congress were sharply critical of those who refused to split, charging the remaining Thanh Nien leaders were "false revolutionaries" and "petit-bourgeois intellectuals" who were attempting to build bridges with the "anti-revolutionary and anti-worker" Kuomintang. On 17 June 1929 more than 20 delegates from cells throughout the Tonkin region held a conference in Hanoi, where they declared the dissolution of Thanh Nien and the establishment of a new organization called the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP).

The new Northern party published pamphlets detailing its organizational rules based upon the Comintern's "Model Statutes for a Communist Party" as well as the International program approved by the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern in 1928. Three new periodicals were also launched — the newspaper Co do ("Red Flag"), the theoretical journal Bua liem ("Hammer and Sickle"), and the trade union publication Cong hoi do ("Red Trade Union").

The other faction of Thanh Nien, based in the central and southern administrative districts of the country, were to rename themselves the Communist Party of Annam in the fall of 1929. The two organizations spent the rest of 1929 engaged in polemics against one another in an attempt to gain a position of hegemony over the radical Vietnamese liberation movement.

Adding to the complexity of the factional situation, a third Vietnamese Communist Party emerged around this time, a group unconnected with Thanh Nien called the League of Indochinese Communists (Vietnamese: Đông Dương Cộng sản Liên Đoàn). This group had its roots in another national liberation group which had existed in parallel to Thanh Nien, with the two groups seeing themselves as rivals.

Party unification of 1930

The two warring offspring of Thanh Nien joined with individual members of a third Marxist group founded by Phan Boi Chau at a "Unification Conference" held in Hong Kong from 3–7 February 1930. Ho Chi Minh, back in direct activity in the Vietnamese movement, was responsible for brokering the peace between the warring factions as well as writing the initial manifesto and statement of tactics of the group. The new party was named the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV).

The Hong Kong conference (held in Kowloon City) elected a nine-member Provisional Central Committee consisting of 3 members from Tonkin in the North, 2 from the central region of Annam, 2 from the southern district Cochinchina, and 2 from the émigré Vietnamese community in China. The latter group had previously been organized within the South Seas Communist Party.

The Comintern was sharply critical of the way in which the organization was unified, decrying the Vietnamese's party's failure to eliminate so-called "heterogeneous elements" from the organization. The organization's declared emphasis upon national liberation under the slogan "An Independent Viet Nam" was criticized as a manifestation of nationalism, while the party's emphasis of its place in the international communist movement was deemed insufficient. A new conference was demanded, remembered to history as the "First Plenum of the Central Committee." The session was held in Hong Kong in October 1930 and renamed the organization the Indochinese Communist Party (Vietnamese: Đông Dương Cộng sản Đảng) (ICP) to mark the Comintern's imposed changes.

At the time it formally came into being, the ICP could claim to be a vanguard of only a microscopically small working class — a mere 221,000 people in a country of 17 million. Even of this minority, the lives of many was far removed from the workplaces of modern industry, with fully one-third of these employed in various capacities on rubber plantations and the like. The working class in the North was semi-peasant in nature, leaving work in the mines and factories for the Tết festival that marked the start of the new year, often not returning. Working conditions were poor and labor turnover high.

During its first five years of existence the ICP attained a membership of about 1500, plus a large additional contingent of sympathizers. Despite the group's small size, it exerted an influence in a turbulent Vietnamese social climate. Back-to-back bad harvests in 1929 and 1930 combined with an onerous burden of debt served to radicalize many peasants. In the industrial city of Vinh May Day demonstrations were organized by ICP activists, which gained critical mass when the families of the semi-peasant workers joined the demonstrations as a means of venting their dissatisfaction with the economic circumstances which faced them.

As three May Day marches grew into mass rallies, French colonial authorities moved in the squelch what they perceived to be dangerous peasant revolts. Government forces fired upon the assembled crowd, killing dozens of participants and inflaming the population. In response local councils sprung up in various villages in an effort to govern themselves locally as the revolt spread. The inevitable attempt at repression by colonial authorities began in the fall, with some 1300 people eventually killed by the French and many times more imprisoned or deported as government authority was reasserted. While the ICP was effectively wiped out in the region, popular memory lived on.

Popular Front period (1935-1939)

The First National Party Congress was held in secret in Macau in 1935. At the same time, a Comintern congress in Moscow adopted a policy towards a popular front against fascism and directed Communist movements around the world to collaborate with anti-fascist forces regardless of their orientation towards socialism. This required the ICP to regard all nationalist parties in Indochina as potential allies.

World War II

The Second World War drastically weakened the grasp of France on its colonial possession of Indochina. The fall of France to Nazi Germany in May 1940 and the subsequent collaboration of the Vichy France with the Axis powers of Germany and Japan served to delegitimize French claims to ownership. Preoccupation with the European war made colonial governance from France impossible and the country was occupied by the forces of imperial Japan.

Upon the eruption of war, the Indochinese Communist Party instructed its members to take to the rural regions of the country and to go into hiding as an underground organization. Despite this preventative measure, more than 2,000 members of the party were rounded up and arrested, including many key leaders. Party activists were particularly hard hit in the southern region of Cochinchina, where the previously strong organization was wiped out by arrests and killings.

Following the elimination of the old leadership by the authorities, a new party leadership emerged, which included Truong Chinh, Pham Van Dong, and Vo Nguyen Giap — individuals who together with Ho Chi Minh would provide a unified leadership over the ensuing four decades.

Party leader Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam in February 1941 and established a military organization known as the League for the Independence of Vietnam (Vietnamese: Việt Nam Ðộc Lập Ðồng Minh Hội, commonly "Viet Minh"). The Viet Minh originally downplayed their social objectives, painting themselves as patriotic organization battling for national independence in order to garner maximum public support against the Japanese military occupation. As the most uncompromising fighting force against the occupation, the Viet Minh gained popular recognition and legitimacy in an environment that would develop into a political vacuum.

Ho Chi Minh's personal fate was not an easy one. With his organization underarmed and its bases isolated, Ho traveled to China in August 1942 in an effort to win Allied military aid. Ho was arrested by the Nationalist Chinese government and subjected to 14 months of brutal imprisonment, followed by another year of restricted movement. Ho was unable to return to Vietnam until September 1944. The Communist Party and its Viet Minh offshoot managed to survive and prosper without him.

Despite its position as the core of the Viet Minh organization, the Indochinese Communist Party remained a very small organization through the war years, with an estimated membership of between 2,000 and 3,000 in 1944.

1945 dissolution and reformation

The Indochinese Communist Party was formally dissolved in 1945 in order to hide its Communist affiliation and its activities were folded into the Marxism Research Association and the Viet Minh, which had been founded four years earlier as a common front for national liberation.

The Party was re-founded as the Workers Party of Vietnam (Đảng lao động Việt Nam) at the Second National Party Congress in Tuyen Quang in 1951. The Congress was held on territory in north Vietnam controlled by the Viet Minh during the First Indochina War. The Third National Congress, held in Hanoi in 1960, formalized the tasks of constructing socialism in what was by then North Vietnam, or the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and committed the party to carrying out the revolution of liberation in the South. At the Fourth National Party Congress, held in 1976, the Workers Party of North Vietnam was merged with the People's Revolutionary Party of South Vietnam to form the Communist Party of Vietnam.

Ideology

The Communist Party of Vietnam has adopted Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought as the ideological basis of the party and the Revolution. Though formally Marxist-Leninist, the Communist Party of Vietnam has moved towards market reforms in the economy (see also Đổi Mới, the Renewal launched by the Sixth Congress in 1986) and has permitted a growing mid-level private sector. However, the party retains a monopoly on power.

Organization

National Congresses

A Party Congress is held every five year to elect a new Central Committee, which in turn elects the General Secretary, the Secretariat and the Politburo.

General Secretaries

The activities of Politburo and Secretariat are directed by the General Secretary, called "First Secretary" from 1960 to 1976. The General Secretary is considered the Party's leader, though between 1951 and 1969, the position of President of the Central Committee, held by Ho Chi Minh, was considered supreme.

Politburo

The Politburo, currently consisting of fourteen members, determines government policy, while the Secretariat, currently consisting of eight members, oversees day-to-day policy implementation. The Party's Central Military Commission, which is composed of select Politburo members and additional military leaders, determines military policy.

Despite efforts to discourage the overlapping of party membership with state positions, the practice continues. Currently, four Politburo members hold high positions in the government.

The current Politburo was selected in January 2011 and includes:

1. Nguyễn Phú Trọng (General Secretary of the Party, Secretary of the Party Central Military Commission)
2. Trương Tấn Sang (President of the Republic, Member of the Secretariat of the Party Central Committee, Chair of the National Defense and Security Council)
3. General Phùng Quang Thanh, Vietnam People's Army (Minister of Defense, Deputy Secretary of the Party Central Military Commission)
4. Nguyễn Tấn Dũng (Prime Minister, Secretary of the Government Party Committee, Vice Chair of the National Defense and Security Council)
5. Nguyễn Sinh Hùng (President of the National Assembly, Secretary of the National Assembly Party Caucus)
6. General Lê Hồng Anh, People's Public Security (Standing Member of the Secretariat)
7. Lê Thanh Hải (Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee)
8. Tô Huy Rứa (Member of the Secretariat of the Party Central Committee, Chair of the Central Organization Committee of the Party)
9. Phạm Quang Nghị (Secretary of the Hanoi City Party Committee)
10. General Trần Đại Quang, People's Public Security (Minister of Public Security, Secretary of the Central Public Security Party Committee)
11. Tòng Thị Phóng (Vice President of the National Assembly, Deputy Secretary of the National Assembly Party Caucus)
12. Ngô Văn Dụ (Member of the Secretariat of the Party Central Committee, Chair of the Party Central Supervision Committee)
13. Đinh Thế Huynh (Member of the Secretariat of the Party Central Committee, Chair of the Party Central Information and Education Committee, Chair of the Central Political Thought Council, President of the Association of Journalists of Vietnam)
14. Nguyễn Xuân Phúc (Deputy Prime Minister)

Secretariat

The current Secretariat, since February 2011, consists of:

1. Nguyễn Phú Trọng (Member of the Politburo, General Secretary of the Party, Secretary of the Party Central Military Commission)
2. Trương Tấn Sang (Member of the Politburo, President of the Republic, Standing Member of the Party Central Military Commission)
3. General Lê Hồng Anh (Member of the Politburo, Standing Member of the Secretariat)
4. Tô Huy Rứa (Member of the Politburo, Chair of the Central Organization Committee of the Party)
5. Ngô Văn Dụ (Member of the Politburo, Chair of the Party Central Supervision Committee)
6. Đinh Thế Huynh (Member of the Politburo, Chair of the Party Central Propaganda and Education Committee, Chair of the Central Political Thought Council, President of the Association of Journalists of Vietnam)
7. Sr. Lt. Gen Ngô Xuân Lịch (Chief of the General Department of Politics of the Vietnam People’s Army, Standing Member of the Party Central Military Commission)
8. Trương Hoà Bình (Chief Justice of the Supreme People's Court)
9. Hà Thị Khiết (Chair of the Party Public Relations Committee)
10. Nguyễn Thị Kim Ngân (Vice President of the National Assembly)

Footnotes

1. Huynh Kim Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982; pp. 63-64.
2. ^ Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 64.
3. Canton is known today as Guangzhou. Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 66.
4. ^ Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 66.
5. ^ Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 67.
6. Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pp. 67-68.
7. ^ Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 70.
8. ^ Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 71.
9. Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pp. 78-79.
10. Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 79.
11. ^ Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 76.
12. ^ Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 114.
13. Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 109.
14. Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pp. 110-111.
15. Letter from "Vietnamese Communists" to the Comintern, received 20 October 1929; first cited in Vu Tho, Qua trinh thanh lap dang vo san, pg. 18, cited again in Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 111.
16. Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 116.
17. ^ Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pp. 116-118.
18. Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 119.
19. ^ Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 120.
20. ^ Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 122.
21. ^ Gabriel Kolko, The Anatomy of War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience. New York: Pantheon, 1985; pg. 27.
22. ^ "Ho Chi Minh and the Communist Movement," asianartmall.com/
23. Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 127.
24. Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 128.
25. Kháhn, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945, pg. 126.
26. ^ Kolko, The Anatomy of War, pg. 16.
27. ^ Kolko, The Anatomy of War, pg. 17.
28. ^ Kolko, The Anatomy of War, pg. 28.
29. ^ Kolko, The Anatomy of War, pg. 30.
30. ^ Kolko, The Anatomy of War, pg. 31.
31. Kolko, The Anatomy of War, pp. 30-31.
32. ^ Kolko, The Anatomy of War, pg. 32.
33. "Nguyen Phu Trong elected Party General Secretary", Nhan Dan Online, 19 January 2011.
    "Ông Nguyễn Phú Trọng đắc cử Tổng Bí thư", BaoOnline.vn, 20 January 2011. Includes pictures of the entire leadership.

Further reading

• "11th National Congress of Communist Party of Vietnam Draws Wide Attention," 10 January 2011. xinhuanet.com/

External links

• Communist Party of Vietnam official English language web site.
• Nhân Dân (The People), CPV official party newspaper.
• "The unification of the country and the advance to socialism," Nhân Dân. —Index to group of articles on Vietnamese revolutionary history.
• "Chiefs of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments: Vietnam," U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, www.cia.gov/

See also

• Nhân Dân (The People)
• Tenth National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam
• Politburo of the Communist Party of Vietnam
• Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam
• List of Communist Parties
• List of political parties in Vietnam

• Ruling Communist parties
• National liberation movements
• Political parties established in 1930
• Political parties in Vietnam
• Communist parties in Vietnam
• Anti-Revisionist organizations
• 1930 establishments in Vietnam
• Communist Party of Vietnam