Page:Pentagon-Papers-Part IV. A. 5.djvu/191

Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011  B. The DRV's Domestic Objectives

Ho Chi Minh was always a revolutionary. Whether he was first and foremost a nationalist, or a potential Tito, or the last of the Stalinists--and arguments can be advanced for each theory--as head of state he subscribed to internal programs for the DRV which were communist in concept and Maoist in execution. In repeated statements on the goals of the regime, he and the rest of the Lao Dong leadership made it plain that they were determined to revise radically North Vietnam's land-holding system, and reconstruct its traditional society along egalitarian and collectivist lines. Further, they were determined that North Vietnam would become agriculturally self-sufficient, and industrialized to the degree its natural resources would permit. In fact, the modernization they envisaged for North Vietnam surpassed in degree and urgency any of the My-Diem undertakings in South Vietnam. yet the latter aroused the peasant's apprehensions, and eventually their hostility. What of Ho Chi Minh's internal security? From the record of DRV policy from 1950 to 1960, it is clear that, while "progress towards socialism" in both the agrarian and industrial realms was always one principal State/ Party objective, a well-disciplined society thoroughly submissive to Party leadership was another, and frequently overriding goal.

1. Societal Discipline

By no means can it be said that at any time prior to Geneva, Ho and the Lao Dong Party held complete sway in rural North Vietnam. Aside from French supported counter-movements, the Viet Minh leaders had to contend with peasant reluctance to support them, and even outright rejection of their policy. Almost as soon as the DRV "legalized" the Lao Dong Party in 1951, the Party launched a series of land reform schemes which contravened even the popularity Ho et al enjoyed as heroes of the Resistance. Moreover, tensions developed-early between the Viet Minh and the Catholics as a group--less apparently over political issues than over traditional Catholic fear of Tonkinese persecution in the absence of French protectors. The Catholics of Tonkin had developed a political and military independence like that of the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao in Cochin-china, and resisted the Viet Minh as vigorously as the latter resisted the Saigon regimes. In both land reform and relations with the Catholics, the Party and the DRV encountered stiff opposition.

a. Rural Opposition, 1954-1956

Prior to 1954, the Lao Dong Party experimented in Viet Minh liberated 3reas of Tonkin with a Maoist-style Land Reform Campaign. 20/ Other than the "Tar, Land Reform was the foremost undertaking of the Lao Dong Party after 1951. In essence, the Land Reform Campaign committed the party to an assault on the traditional rural social hierarchy, and to redistribution of land and wealth. Beginning with punitive taxes, the Campaign matured terror, arrests, and public condemnation, trials, and executions. Within the DRV hierarchy, the proponent of Land Reform was Truong Chinh Rh