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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 E. DRV Strategy: Objectives and Timing

From the close of the Geneva Conference on 22 July 1954, through Hanoi’s announcement of the founding of the National Lj.beration Front of South Vietnam on 29 January 1961, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam appears to have passed through four distinct phases in striving toward its national objectives of independence, reunification, assured foreign support, and Vietnamese hegemony in Southeast Asia.

1. Political Struggle : Summer, 1954 -- Summer, 1956. In the year following Geneva, the DRV executed its regroupments and pressed hard towards land reform and economic recovery. In February, 1955, the Malenkov clique fell from power in the USSR, and the Soviet Union came under a collective leadership within which Khrushchev was pre-eminent. Intimations that the new leaders vrereinterested in pursuing a conciliatory policy in the Cold War distinctly at variance with the national interests of the DRV were manifest in Soviet inaction when the deadlines for consultations concerning the Geneva Plebiscite passed in July, 1955. 149/ Doubly disappointed that Diem was not overturned by the sects, and that its principal ally seemed ill-disposed to back its cause, the DRV maneuvered frenetically to precipitate a reconvening of the Geneva Conference and to stymie Diem. U. S. intelligence was aware of a directive passed down through 180 Dong Party channels in August, 1955, for subordinates to struggle against the Americans and Diem It. . . so that there may be a less dangerous administration that will go to a conference with us." 150/ In September, 1955, the newly created Fatherland Front brought · out its proposal for a confederation of North and South Vietnam, coupled with assurances that in both entities landlords would get free treatment. In South Vietnam in the same month, on three occasions soldiers fired on crowds agitating for the Geneva Plebiscite . 151/ Captured reports from Party field operators in South Vietnam were pessimistic, containing predictions of "long, painful and complex struggle," and reporting weaknesses such that "it is not time to meet the enemy." 152/

But within South Vietnam, Diem moved smoothly through his own plebiscite ejecting Bao Dai, announced plans for a new constitution, and proclaimed Ordinance No.6 (11 January 1956), giving the GVN povrerful legal recourse against "struggle movements." And just as the flurry of DRV diplomatic notes finally elicited help in the form of Chou En 18i's letter of 26 January 1956, calling for a new Gen eva Conference, Khrushchev dropped the "de-Stalinizationl" bombshell: at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev, in denigrating Stalin, undermined the Soviet position as the fount of Commun ist international policy, and fractured the Cormnunist Bloc. In April, 1956, just after the United Kingdom issued a note castigating the DRV for violation of the letter and spirit of the Geneva Accords, Khrushchev committed the Soviet Union to "peaceful competition" with the West : Rh