The Democratic Republic of Viet Nam (DRV; Vietnamese: Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa – VNDCCH) was a country in Southeast Asia from 1945 to 1976, with sovereignty recognized in July 1954, after which it became commonly known as North Vietnam. A member of the communist Eastern Bloc, it opposed the anti-communist, French-supported State of Vietnam and later the Western-allied Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). North Vietnam launched a successful military offensive against South Vietnam in 1975 and ceased to exist the following year when it merged with the South to become the contemporary Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
During the August Revolution following World War II, Vietnamese communist revolutionary Hồ Chí Minh, leader of the Việt Minh Front, declared independence on 2 September 1945, proclaiming the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The communist-led Viet Minh, cloaked in nationalism, was designed to appeal to a wider population than the Indochinese Communist Party could command.
From 1945, the communist-led Viet Minh sought to consolidate power by purging rival groups. Meanwhile, France moved in to reassert its colonial dominance over Vietnam in the aftermath of WW2, eventually prompting the First Indochina War in December 1946. During this guerrilla war, the Viet Minh controlled most rural areas, and later, with assistance from Chinese communists, achieved the French defeat at Điện Biên Phủ in 1954. The negotiations in the Geneva Conference that year ended the war and affirmed Vietnamese independence. The Geneva Accords provisionally divided the country into a northern zone and a southern zone along the 17th parallel, stipulating general elections scheduled for July 1956 to "bring about the unification of Viet-Nam". The northern zone was controlled by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and became commonly called North Vietnam, while the southern zone, under control of the non-communist State of Vietnam, was commonly called South Vietnam.
Supervision of the implementation of the Geneva Accords was the responsibility of an international commission consisting of India, Canada, and Poland, respectively representing the non-aligned, the capitalist, and the communist blocs. The United States, which did not sign the Geneva Accords, stated that it "shall continue to seek to achieve unity through free elections supervised by the United Nations to ensure that they are conducted fairly". Meanwhile, the State of Vietnam strongly opposed the partition of the country, with its prime minister Ngô Đình Diệm announcing in July 1955 that the State of Vietnam would not participate in elections, claiming that it had not signed the Geneva Accords and was therefore not bound by it, and raising concerns that an unfair election would occur under the Việt Minh governance in North Vietnam. In October 1955, Diệm's government held its own referendum, which was widely marred by electoral fraud, to depose Chief of State Bảo Đại and established the Republic of Vietnam with Diệm as its first president.
Failure to unify the country by referendum led to the Vietnam War in 1955. Supported by their communist allies, mainly China and the Soviet Union, the northern People's Army of Vietnam and the southern National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Viet Cong) guerrillas fought against the Military Forces of South Vietnam. To prevent other countries from becoming communist in Southeast Asia, the United States intervened in the conflict along with Western Bloc forces from South Korea, Australia and Thailand, who heavily supported South Vietnam militarily. The conflict spread to neighboring countries and North Vietnam supported the Lao People's Liberation Army in Laos and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia against their respective US-supported governments. By 1973, the United States and its allies withdrew from the war, and the unsupported South Vietnam was swiftly overrun by the communist forces.
The Vietnam War ended on 30 April 1975 and saw South Vietnam come under the control of the Việt Cộng's Provisional Revolutionary Government, which led to the reunification of Vietnam into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on 2 July 1976. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the unified Vietnamese state experienced economic decline, refugee crises and conflicts with the Khmer Rouge in 1978 and with China in 1979. The expanded Socialist Republic retained Soviet-style political system, economic system and memberships in Eastern Bloc organisations such as COMECON until the Đổi Mới economic reforms in 1986 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Etymology
The official name of the North Vietnamese state was the "Democratic Republic of Vietnam" (Vietnamese: Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa). The South was known as the "Republic of Vietnam".
Việt Nam (Vietnamese pronunciation: [vjə̀tnam]) was the name adopted by Emperor Gia Long in 1804. It is a variation of "Nam Việt" (南 越, Southern Việt), a name used in ancient times. In 1839, Emperor Minh Mạng renamed the country Đại Nam ("Great South"). In 1945, the nation's official name was changed back to "Vietnam". The name is also sometimes rendered as "Viet Nam" in English. The designation North Vietnam became common usage after 1954, when the Geneva Conference provisionally partitioned Vietnam into communist and non-communist zones.
History
Hồ Chí Minh's leadership (1945–1960)
Proclamation of the republic
After nearly three centuries of partition by feudal dynasties, Vietnam was again under one single authority in 1802 when Gia Long founded the Nguyễn dynasty, but the country became a French protectorate after 1883 and under Japanese occupation after 1940 during World War II. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt was opposed to a return to French rule in Indochina, and proposed placing the region under United Nations trusteeship.
Soon after Japan surrendered, the Việt Minh in the August Revolution entered Hanoi, and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed on 2 September 1945 establishing independence and a new government for the country, replacing the Nguyễn dynasty. Hồ Chí Minh became leader of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
Early periods
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam claimed sovereignty over all of Vietnam, but during this time, several areas, particularly in the South, were not aligned with the Viet Minh. The successive collapse of French, then Japanese power, followed by the disputes among the political factions, had been accompanied by widespread violence in the countryside. On 12 September 1945, the first British troops arrived in Saigon, and on 23 September 1945, French troops occupied the police stations, the post office, and other public buildings. In the north, the Chinese Nationalist Army arrived to disarm the Japanese, and the Chinese presence had forced Hồ Chí Minh and the Việt Minh to accommodate Kuomintang-supported Vietnamese nationalists. After the departure of the British in 1946, the French controlled the urban regions of Vietnam south of the 16th parallel following the Southern Resistance War. Meanwhile, the Viet Minh sought to consolidate power by terrorizing and purging rival Vietnamese nationalist groups and Trotskyist activists.
In January 1946, the Việt Minh held an election, mainly in the North, to establish a National Assembly. There were few competitive races and the party makeup of the Assembly was determined in advance of the vote. Former Prime Minister Trần Trọng Kim claimed there were places where people were forced to vote for the Việt Minh. Rumors of secret negotiations with the French were putting the Viet Minh at a disadvantage. In late February, gripped by despair, Hồ went so far as to ask Bảo Đại to take over the government. Before Bảo Đại could reach a decision, however, Hồ changed his mind after receiving assurances from the Chinese that they would pressure the nationalist parties to join the new government. The Vietnamese Nationalist Party (Việt Quốc) and the Vietnam Revolutionary League (Việt Cách) then accepted 70 assigned seats in the National Assembly, allowing the DRV to present the appearance of an inclusive government.
In March 1946, the Franco-Chinese and Ho–Sainteny Agreements enabled French forces to replace the Chinese north of the 16th parallel and facilitated a coexistence between the DRV and the French that strengthened the Viet Minh while undermining the nationalists. In June, Chinese Nationalist troops evacuated Hanoi, and on 15 June, the last detachments embarked at Haiphong.
With the Chinese Kuomintang withdrawal, Võ Nguyên Giáp resolved that the Viet Minh must consolidate full control of the government and promptly moved to secure a monopoly of power for the movement. That summer, the Viet Minh colluded with French forces to eliminate Vietnamese nationalists, targeted for their ardent anti-colonialism. It was reported that a force of about 13,000 nationalists was destroyed in Tonkin. Another estimate indicates that 15,000 were massacred across northern Vietnam.
When France declared Cochinchina, the southern third of Vietnam, a separate state as the "Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina" in June 1946; Vietnamese nationalists reacted with fury. In November 1946, the DRV's National Assembly adopted the first constitution.
First Indochina War
In the wake of the Hai Phong incident and the deterioration of the Fontainebleau Agreements, the French reoccupied Hanoi and the First Indochina War (1946–54) followed, during which many urban areas fell under French control. Following the Chinese Communist Revolution (1946–50), Chinese communist forces arrived on the border in 1949. Chinese aid revived the fortunes of the Viet Minh and transformed it from a guerrilla militia into a standing army. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 transformed what had been an anti-colonial struggle into a Cold War battleground, with the U.S. providing financial support to the French.
The DRV became increasingly radicalized in 1948 as Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) leaders began looking beyond independence toward building a socialist regime. At its accession, the DRV state had accommodated urban elites, the colonial-trained bureaucracy, former officials of the Empire of Vietnam, and local mass organizations. However, these compromises fell apart in 1948 as internal conflict between communist and non-communist leaders escalated at many levels of government. The ICP valued its political cadres and distrusted educated professionals, managers, and intellectuals. Following the establishment of the Cominform and the Chinese Communist Party's victories in areas where Mao Zedong attributed success to the mobilization of landless peasants, the DRV adopted a more aggressive land policy. Although the ICP expanded rapidly, with its membership surging from 5,000 in late 1945 to about 180,000 by the end of 1948, the radical vision of ICP leaders met opposition among party members, who were mostly from the middle peasantry and higher social classes. Communist leaders resolved to eradicate judicial independence entirely. As Trường Chinh indicated, it was "now time for the Indochinese revolution to show its true colours," 1948 thus marked an irreversible, proletarian turn of the DRV toward a communist revolution.
With communist leaders no longer concealing their social revolutionary agenda and Chinese guidance, the DRV underwent further radicalization, including rectification (chỉnh huấn) campaigns to indoctrinate party members, soldiers, and government personnel in communist ideology. This process of radicalization, in which land reform was the latest and most radical, provoked widespread disillusionment and large-scale defections from the maquis to areas controlled by the French and the State of Vietnam (SVN), a phenomenon known as dinh tê. Among the defectors were numerous intellectuals, teachers, landlords, civil servants, soldiers, and cadres, including Phạm Duy, Trần Chánh Thành, Trần Ngọc Châu, and Nguyễn Văn Thiệu. Some joined the SVN, others entered existing anticommunist groups, and still others supported anticommunist nationalism in principle but adopted an attentiste (wait-and-see) stance. In the meantime, with Chinese communists' assistance, Giáp built and unleashed a remarkably modern army against the French in the decisive Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
Provisional military demarcation of Vietnam
Following the partition of Vietnam in 1954 at the end of the First Indochina War, more than one million North Vietnamese migrated to South Vietnam, many under the US-led evacuation campaign named Operation Passage to Freedom, with an estimated 60% of the north's one million Catholics fleeing south. The Catholic migration is attributed to an expectation of persecution of Catholics by the North Vietnamese government, as well as publicity employed by the Saigon government of the Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem. The CIA ran a propaganda campaign to get Catholics to come to the south. However Colonel Edward Lansdale, the man credited with the campaign, rejected the notion that his campaign had much effect on popular sentiment. The Viet Minh sought to detain or otherwise prevent would-be refugees from leaving, such as through intimidation through military presence, shutting down ferry services and water traffic, or prohibiting mass gatherings. Concurrently, between 14,000 and 45,000 civilians and approximately 100,000 Viet Minh fighters moved in the opposite direction.
Lê Duẩn's leadership (1960–1976)
Vietnam War
During 1962, North Vietnam intensified its war efforts by infiltrating military personnel and materiel into South Vietnam. Meanwhile, Beijing, following the Sino-Soviet split and rejecting Moscow's policy of "peaceful coexistence" with the West, backed Hanoi's escalation by providing the Viet Cong with vital small arms and heavier weaponry.
Reunification
After the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975, the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam, or the Việt Cộng, alongside the North Vietnamese Army, governed South Vietnam for the next year. However it was seen as a vassal government of North Vietnam. North and South Vietnam were officially reunited on 2 July 1976 as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The merged country's government was dominated by holdovers from North Vietnam, and adopted the North Vietnamese constitution, flag and anthem.
Government and politics
North Vietnam was a unitary and centralised state during the Vietnam War.
Constitution
As an ideologically Marxist-Leninist state, North Vietnam adopted a constitution modelled on Joseph Stalin's 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union.
Administrative divisions
"The administrative units in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam are as follows:
The country is divided into provinces (tỉnh), autonomous regions (khu tự trị), and centrally run cities (thành phố trực thuộc trung ương);
The province is divided into districts (huyện), cities (thành phố), and towns (thị xã);
The district is divided into communes (xã) and townships (thị trấn).
Administrative units in the autonomous region are statutory."
Autonomous regions
North Vietnam established a system of autonomous regions (Vietnamese: Khu tự trị) similar to (and based on) the autonomous regions of China. In recognising the traditional separatism of tribal minorities, this policy of accommodationism gave them self-government in exchange for acceptance of Hanoi's control. These regions existed from 1955 but following the merger of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Republic of South Vietnam the system of autonomous regions was not continued and were fully abolished by 1978.
List of North Vietnamese autonomous regions and their subsidiary provinces:
Thái-Mèo Autonomous Region (Khu tự trị Thái – Mèo, 1955–1962), later renamed Northwestern Autonomous Region (Khu tự trị Tây Bắc, 1962–1975)
Lai Châu
Sơn La
Nghĩa Lộ
Việt Bắc Autonomous Region (Khu tự trị Việt Bắc), established in 1956.
Cao Bằng
Lạng Sơn
Thái Nguyên
Bắc Cạn
Hà Giang
Tuyên Quang
Lào-Hà-Yên Autonomous Region (Khu tự trị Lào-Hà-Yên), established in 1957.
Military
Foreign relations
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam was diplomatically isolated by many capitalist states, and many other anti-communist states worldwide throughout most of the North's history, as these states extended recognition only to the anti-communist government of South Vietnam. North Vietnam however, was recognized by almost all Communist countries, such as the Soviet Union and other Socialist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, China, North Korea, and Cuba, and received aid from these nations. North Vietnam refused to establish diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia from 1950 to 1957, perhaps reflecting Hanoi's deference to the Soviet line on the Yugoslav government of Josip Broz Tito, and North Vietnamese officials continued to be critical of Tito after relations were established.
Several non-aligned countries also recognized North Vietnam. Similar to India, most accorded North Vietnam de facto rather than de jure (formal) recognition. In the case of Algeria however, relations between the DRV and Algeria were much closer as a result of clandestine weapon transfers from the former to the latter during the Algerian War, with Algeria placing a draft resolution in the 1973 summit of the Non-Aligned Movement calling on its members to support the DRV and PRG.