The ICP was formed in Hong Kong in 1930 from the amalgamation of the Vietnamese and the nascent Lao and Khmer communist groups, and it received its instructions from the Moscow-based Communist International (Comintern).
Communist Movement
The Vietnamese communist movement began in Paris in 1920, when Ho Chi Minh, using the pseudonym Nguyen Ai Quoc, became a charter member of the French Communist Party. Two years later, Ho went to Moscow to study Marxist doctrine and then proceeded to Canton as a Comintern representative. While in China, he formed the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League, setting the stage for the formation of the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930. French repression of nationalists and communists forced some of the insurgents underground, and others escaped to China. Other dissidents were imprisoned, some emerging later to play important roles in the anti-colonial movement.
Ho Chi Minh was abroad at that time but was imprisoned later in Hong Kong by the British. He was released in 1933, and in 1936 a new French government released his compatriots who, at the outset of World War II, fled to China. There they were joined by Ho, who organized the Viet Minh-- purportedly a coalition of all anti-French Vietnamese groups. Official Vietnamese publications state that the Viet Minh was founded and led by the ICP.
Because a Vichy French administration in Vietnam during World War II cooperated with occupying Japanese forces, the Viet Minh\'s anti-French activity was also directed against the Japanese, and, for a short period, there was cooperation between the Viet Minh and Allied forces. When the French were ousted by the Japanese in March 1945, the Viet Minh began to move into the countryside from their base areas in the mountains of northern Vietnam. By the time Allied troops--Chinese in the north and British in the south--arrived to take the surrender of Japanese troops, the Viet Minh leaders had already announced the formation of a Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and on September 2, 1945, proclaimed Vietnam\'s independence.
Deep divisions between Vietnamese communist and non-communist nationalists soon began to surface, however, especially in the south, and with the arrival of Allied forces later in September, the DRV was forced to begin negotiations with the French on their future relationship. The difficult negotiations broke down in December 1946, and fighting began with a Viet Minh attack on the French in Hanoi.
Civil War
A prolonged three-way struggle ensued among the Vietnamese communists (led by Ho Chi Minh), the French, and the Vietnamese nationalists (nominally led by Emperor Bao Dai). The communists sought to portray their struggle as a national uprising; the French attempted to reestablish their control; and the non-communist nationalists, many of whom chose to fight alongside the French against the communists, wanted neither French nor communist domination. Ho Chi Minh\'s Viet Minh forces fought a highly successful guerrilla campaign and eventually controlled much of rural Vietnam. The French military disaster at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 and the conference at Geneva, where France signed the Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Vietnam on July 20, 1954, marked the end of the eight-year war and French colonial rule in Indochina.
1954 Cease-Fire Agreement and Partition
The 1954 cease-fire agreement negotiated in Geneva provided for provisional division of the country at approximately the 17th parallel; a 300-day period for free movement of population between the two \"zones\" established thereby; and the establishment of an International Control Commission--representatives of Canada, India, and Poland--to supervise its execution. The cease-fire agreements also referred to \"general elections\" that would \"bring about the unification\" of the two zones of Vietnam. The agreement was not accepted by the Bao Dai government, which agreed, however, to respect the cease-fire.
Following the partition of Vietnam under the terms of the Geneva agreements, there was considerable confusion in the south. Although Bao Dai had appointed a well-known nationalist figure, Ngo Dinh Diem, as prime minister, Diem initially had to administer a country plagued by a ruined economy and by a political life fragmented by rivalries of religious sects and political factions. He also had the problem of coping with 850,000 refugees from the north. The communist leaders in Hanoi expected the Diem government to collapse and come under their control. Nevertheless, during his early years in office, Diem was able to consolidate his political position, eliminating the private armies of the religious sects and, with substantial US military and economic aid, build a national army and administration and make significant progress toward reconstructing the economy.
Meanwhile, the communist leaders consolidated their power in North Vietnam and instituted a harsh \"agrarian reform.\" In the late 1950s, they reactivated the network of communists who had stayed in the south (the Viet Cong) with hidden stocks of arms, reinfiltrated trained guerrillas who had been regrouped in the north after 1954, and began a campaign of terror against officials and villagers who refused to support the communist cause. The communists also exploited grievances created by mistakes of the Diem government as well as age-old shortcomings of Vietnamese society, such as poverty and land shortages.
By 1963, the North Vietnamese communists had made significant progress in building an apparatus in South Vietnam. Nevertheless, in 1964 Hanoi decided that the Viet Cong (VC) cadres and their supporters were not sufficient to take advantage of the political confusion following the overthrow of Diem in November 1963. Hanoi ordered regular troops of the North Vietnamese army (People\'s Army of Vietnam--PAVN) into South Vietnam, first as \"fillers\" in VC units, then in regular formations. The first regimental units were dispatched in the fall of 1964. By 1968, PAVN forces were bearing the brunt of combat on the communist side.
US Assistance
In December 1961, President Diem requested assistance from the United States. President Kennedy sent US military advisers to South Vietnam to help the government deal with aggression from the North. In March 1965, President Johnson sent Marine units to the Danang area to defend US installations. In July 1965, he decided to commit up to 125,000 US combat troops to Vietnam. By the spring of 1969, the United States had reached its greatest troop strength--543,000--in Vietnam.
The US bombing of North Vietnam, which began in March 1965, was partially halted in 1968. US and North Vietnamese negotiators met in Paris on May 15, 1968, to discuss terms for a complete halt and to arrange for a conference of all \"interested parties\" in the Vietnam war, including the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN) and the National Liberation Front. President Johnson ordered all bombing of the North stopped effective November 1, 1968, and the four parties met for their first plenary session on January 25, 1969.
The Paris meetings, which began with so much hope, moved slowly. Beginning in June 1969, the United States began a troop withdrawal program concurrent with the assumption by GVN armed forces of a larger role in the defense of their country. While the United States withdrew from ground combat by 1971, it still provided air and sea support to the South Vietnamese until the signing of the cease-fire agreements. The peace agreement was concluded on January 27, 1973.
After the 1973 Peace Agreement
While Hanoi continued to proclaim its support of the peace agreement, it illegally sent thousands of tons of materiel into South Vietnam, including sophisticated offensive weaponry new to the South. Tens of thousands of PAVN troops infiltrated South Vietnam to join the 160,000 there at the time of the cease-fire. Numerous attacks were carried out against installations, lines of communication, economic facilities, and, occasionally, population centers.
At the beginning of 1975, the North Vietnamese began a major offensive in the South that succeeded in breaking through the central highlands defenses. After taking over provincial capitals in that area, a combination of forces from the demilitarized zone area and the highlands routed South Vietnamese defenders. Pressures from the highlands and from the Cambodian border region led to a general GVN military collapse, which in turn resulted in the fall of Saigon itself by the end of April. Faced with the threat of a takeover by a communist regime, tens of thousands of Vietnamese fled the country. The exodus of dissatisfied Vietnamese--both from the North and the South--continues today.
Reunification
For the first few months after the war, separate governments were maintained in the northern and southern parts of the country. However, in mid-November 1975, the decision to reunify the country was announced, despite the vast social and economic differences remaining between the two sections. Elections were held in April 1976 for the National Assembly, which was convened the following June. The assembly ratified the reunification of the country and on July 2 renamed it the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV). It also appointed a committee to draft a new constitution for the entire country. The party Central Committee approved the constitution in September 1980. New National Assembly elections were held in April 1981.