Goals for Regroupment Post-Geneva
From: Diane Fox
Date: 2009/3/16
Hi--
This all comes from my paying too much attention to "Vietnam, the Country, not the War", I suppose, but I can't make it make sense to regroup post Geneva, if the goal of both the DRV and the ASV was national unity... except in preparation for war, not national elections. Put that way, the ASV and US would have a motive for regroupment. Did the ASV then have confidence it could win a war more easily than an election?
I'm hoping someone on the list can take this out of the realm of my speculative ruminations and help clarify.
(I've looked at 3 textbooks thus far, which simply state the division and regroupment as the results of negotiations, sans plus. I would like plus.)
Thanks in advance.
Diane
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From: Mike High
Date: 2009/3/17
Diane,
That’s an excellent question, and one that has puzzled me more and more as I read different accounts from that period. I hope that someone better-qualified than I will respond, but in the meantime, your question caused me to pull out my Ellen Hammer. (I “cut my teeth” on “The Struggle for Indochina” as a high school student in 1969, and am once again impressed in going back to it.)
In essence, it seems that the “regroupment” idea was initially conceived as in military terms—separating two competing groups, Bao Dai’s French-allied government being stronger in the south, the Viet Minh in the north. Considering the differing perceptions of the French, Viet Minh, nationalists, Chinese, Russians, and the United States (in the background), such an agreement is quite remarkable. (In addition to Hammer, see Duiker in “Why the North Won the Vietnam War,” page 55, Dommen in “The Indochinese Experience,” 230ff for some interesting details on whether the Chinese forced the partition compromise on the Viet Minh, and the possibility that the Viet Minh might have accepted a more permanent partition without elections. I have not yet had a chance to look at Zhai’s “China and the Vietnam Wars” on this point.)
The summaries I’ve seen of the armistice agreement speak largely in terms of regroupment of military forces, not civilian migrations to the north and south. As you say, that would seem to a preparation for a much longer partition than was suggested by the election clause. I suppose this is not all that surprising—any time you get a group of officials together to discuss something, the compromise may include obviously contradictory provisions. (After 25 years in a mega-bureaucracy, I can attest that this happens at all levels—it is human nature.)
So, I’m still trying to find out how the military regruoupment provisions of the Geneva Accords were turned into U.S. ships carrying thousands of northerners to the south. Truly, the devils (and also angels) are to be found in the details...
:: Mike High
Great Falls, Virginia
USA
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From: Frank
Date: 2009/3/17
I forget now just who it was, but someone has an extended argument that the regroupment of civilians from North to South was a strategy launched in NY and Washington by the Friends of Viet Nam, a U.S. lobbying organization whose anti-Communist ideology was complemented by its vested interests in the aid/relief industry (and its investment in the career of Diem). I know there was a recent biography of Tom Dooley that offered evidence compatible with this view. (p.s. lots of pictures of boats, if not of helicopters, evacuating civilians in his books, if I recall.)
But perhaps I am too gullible a believer in the received standard version of the 1960s new left...
Best,
Frank Proschan
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From: Stephen Denney
Date: 2009/3/17
The following book might address the point Frank raised (I don't know for sure since I have not read it):
Morgan, Joseph Gerard. "The Vietnam Lobby: The American Friends of Vietnam, 1955-1975." [Volumes 1 & 2] (Georgetown University, 1993)
The Indochina Archive at Berkeley had an extensive collection of the files of this organization, including even cancelled checks. These were moved to the Vietnam Center at Texas Tech in 1997.
Steve Denney
library assistant, UC Berkeley
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From: Vietnam Indochina Tours
Date: 2009/3/17
Miriam S. Farley in "United States Relations with Southeast Asia," American Institute of Pacific Relations, 1955, pages 19-27, gives the view that the regroupment zones evolved from the initial French proposal at the First Session of the Geneva Conference that a simple cease fire be adopted with political arrangements being made later; Pham Van Dong countered with a proposal for a cease fire coupled with a regroupment followed by elections. Soviet and Indian counter-proposals ensued to no avail until 25 May when the Viet Minh delegate proposed regrouping into larger zones with the SOV protesting; the stalemate broke the same day when Eden proposed military representation at the conference to provide details of the armistice; Eden's proposal was adopted on the 29 May.
After a cacophony of Chinese, Soviet, and British proposals the Laniel government collapsed on 12 June which was followed by an unsuccessful Thai appeal to the United Nations. Mendes-France was confirmed the new French premier on 17 June and promised to resign by 20 July if peace were not produced at Geneva (Mendes-France at the conclusion of the Geneva Conference said he set the deadline because he did not believe the French Forces in the Red River Delta could hold out much longer). On 29 June Medes-Frances ordered the contraction of the RR Delta defense line while soon thereafter threatening French conscription to pursue the war followed by his resignation; he also ordered an offensive in the RR Delta. In a Washington conference on 25-29 June, Churchill and Eisenhower apparently agreed to a basic set of principals which included: non-communist governments for Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, partition of Vietnam at the 18th parallel, if possible a French enclave north of the 18th parallel including Hanoi and Haiphong, withdrawal of Viet Minh forces south of the 18th parallel, and an exchange of populations.
In the final three weeks of the conference all sides compromised: the Viet Minh's insistence on an immediate French withdrawal from the north failed (a 300-day withdrawal was agreed), the French failed to obtain the 18th Parallel and the Viet Minh failed to obtain the 13th parallel (the 17th was agreed), the French/American demand for population exchange prevailed, an immediate political settlement (elections) was deferred for two years and all parties appeared willing to dine on a half-baked potato rather than to pursue continued war. In the end it appeared that the military regroupment and the exchange of populations was evolutionary and governed by what was doable among the parties.
Though there is vast additional detail, it appears clear that the Americans were hell-bent on obtaining an exchange of populations; reflective of this is Eisenhower's declaration on 30 June "I will not be a party to any agreement that makes anybody a slave." Without this provision it appears that the Geneva Conference would have proceeded (or simply collapsed) without American involvement at the ministerial level, and even with that, the Americans took a mere note in the end.
I too have read elsewhere that the Chinese were instrumental in obtaining Viet Minh acquiescence to the accords for what was alleged to be self-serving reasons.
Courtney Frobenius
Olympia, WA
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From: Joseph Hannah
Date: Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 2:10 PM
Hi all,
The Pentagon Papers have some interesting cloak and dagger details of
US "dirty tricks" to encourage the northern population to move south,
purportedly undertaken by Lansdale and others. The sheer scale of teh
migration and theUS efforts to facilitate it are staggering.
I have a related question -- what is know about the linkage between
the negotiations on Korea and those on Vietnam at Geneva. I understand
that the negotiations on Korea started (and were almost immediately
bogged down) in the last week of April, 1954, and the negotiations on
Indochina started a week later. Obviously, many of the same external
players were involved -- US, USSR, PRC... The Cold War had divided
Germany already, and the Korean Armistice had left opposing forces in
N & S Korea. To divide VN in 1954 seems like a continuation of a
similar logic.
Joe
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From: Fr Peter Hansen
Date: Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 4:44 PM
The US propaganda efforts (ie, dirty tricks) bore little relationship to the
numbers who left. The causational linkage was minimal. I have (hopefully)
an article in a forthcoming edition of JVS on this very point.
Peter Hansen
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From: Fr Peter Hansen
Date: 2009/3/17
Dianne,
I’ve not long finished my doctoral dissertation on the transmigration, although its political origins were not central to my particular theme. My understanding is that the demarcation occurred simply because the DRVN (perhaps, indeed, under Chinese influence) believed that the regroupment was merely a temporary expedient pending victory at the 1956 election, and that to compromise on a temporary basis in this manner was the best expedient to achieve longer-term aims.
Peter Hansen
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From: Bradley Davis
Date: 2009/3/17
Dr. Hansen and list,
regarding "My understanding is that the demarcation occurred simply because the DRVN (perhaps, indeed, under Chinese influence) believed that the regroupment was merely a temporary expedient pending victory at the 1956 election, and that to compromise on a temporary basis in this manner was the best expedient to achieve longer-term aims."
Qiang Zhai's 2000 _China and the Vietnam Wars_ (Chapel Hill: UNC Press) contains a discussion of Zhou Enlai's pivotal role and political justification for brokering the demarcation. (pp50-passim) This discussion, it should be noted, mostly relies on Zhou Enlai's writings and documentary collections from the PRC.
Bradley Davis
Instructor
Eastern Washington University
US
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From: Nu-Anh Tran
Date: Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 7:14 AM
I have read the Morgan volume, and, though I don't have it on hand to consult, I don't believe the AFV was ever influential enough to intervene in American policy-making. It was founded in Dec 1955, after Geneva and, I believe, after the border was already closed. That said, the AFV, or, at least, some of its members, did play a role in refugee resettlement and publicizing refugee resettlement, esp inviting Dooley to speak about his experiences.
Nu-Anh Tran
Grad student
UC Berkeley
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From: Stephen Denney
Date: 2009/3/20
I believe the Texas Tech Vietnam Center has about a file cabinet drawer of materials on "Operation Exodus", formerly with the UCB Indochina Center.
Steve Denney
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From: Maxner, Steve
Date: 2009/3/20
Steve Denney is correct and we do have some materials online. If you conduct a search of our Virtual Vietnam Archive using the keywords Operation Exodus, you will retrieve 50 documents.
http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/redirects/vva.htm
Stephen Maxner, Ph.D.
Director
The Vietnam Center
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From: Maxner, Steve
Date: 2009/3/20
And we have digitized the entire component of the Douglas Pike Collection pertaining to the American Friends of Vietnam. If you search the Virtual Vietnam Archive, enter American Friends of Vietnam in the Collection Title Field and it will retrieve 11,000 documents. If you do this, I strongly suggest you also narrow your search using additional keywords to limit the number of records you retrieve to several hundred at the most.
Please let me know if you have any questions regarding the use of these online archival resources.
Best,
Steve
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From: william turley
Date: 2009/3/20
I share Nu-Anh's hunch. A point that is easy to forget is that civilians moved in both directions between North and South and many were dependents of armed forces, government and revolutionary personnel who regrouped under terms of the Geneva agreements and under orders of the authorities. Once the DRV and French agreed on regroupment, some movement of civilians as well was inevitable and did not require any person or agency to decide that it should take place. Nor did it require promotion by the AFV, though it played a role in amplifying the movement, as did the church, Tom Dooley, the CIA, the LDP/Viet Minh, and others. Mike High's comment a few days ago about the unintended consequences of compromise seemed apropos to me.
Bill Turley
William S. Turley
Dept. of Political Science
Southern Illinois University
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From: Fr Peter Hansen
Date: 2009/3/23
Bill,
I agree with your fundamental point, namely that “movement of civilians as well was inevitable and did not require any person or agency to decide that it should take place”. However, the list of those who you represent as ‘amplifying the movement’ really needs to be differentiated a little. The CIA (through Landsdale’s) efficacy lay largely in facilitating support for the US logistical and transport effort (though far less important than the French), rather than in psywar propaganda; Dooley was a minimal player in Viet Nam, but helped keep US public opinion onside; the Viet Minh actively opposed the regroupment. As Nu-Anh rightly points out, the AFV was formed after the exodus was completed. Of all those in your list, the decisive player was the Church, or more particularly, its parochial clergy.
Peter Hansen
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From: Vietnam Indochina Tours
Date: 2009/3/23
A follow up note to Bill Turley's follow up post to Mike High's post: many (most?) of those in the south who did not regroup north became the targets of the anti-communist denunciation campaigns during the Diem regime; of those who remained, many faced death, torture and imprisonment in the south. For those who were able to regroup to the north the unintended consequences of the compromise were positive.
Also, for the DRV, the military regroupees comprised significant numbers of those sent south from 1959-1963 to provide the leadership to reignite the revolution in the south.
Courtney Frobenius
Olympia, WA
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From: william turley
Date: 2009/3/23
Agreed. And the list of players could be extended. The point is that there were many of them and the blame, if that is the right word, cannot be laid at the feet of any one organization, government or person, though certain clergy rightly come in for a large share. Some clergy, by the way, urged their flocks to stay put, which they did. As for the Viet Minh, notwithstanding declaratory policy, cadres in the South encouraged some militants and youths who were too young to have participated much in the fighting to head North. We know this from interviews with those who returned to the South in 1959-1964. My simple point is that the reasons for civilian movement, as distinct from though related to the regroupment of military and government personnel, were messy and complex.
Bill Turley
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From: Shawn McHale
Date: Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 6:13 AM
Dear list,
One other point on regroupment. FRom my research last year on the First Indochina War in the Mekong delta, I repeatedly came across mention of northerners in Cochinchina, some of whom led military units. Some northerners also play important roles in Viet Minh forces in Cambodia. There also were a few places where northerners had settled in the delta. I also assume that on the rubber plantations, whether in Cochinchina or Cambodia, there were lots of northerners. In some cases, my hunch is that regrpoupment may have let these northerners return home.
Shawn
Shawn McHale
Director
Sigur Center for Asian Studies
Associate Professor of History and International Affairs
George Washington University
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From: Vietnam Indochina Tours
Date: 2009/3/24
B.S.N. Murti, the Indian ICC member, in "Vietnam Divided," reports that 130,000 regrouped north of which 87,000 were "warriors" and 43,000 were admin cadres, liberated POWs and families; 64,000 of this total came from the Quang Ngai-Binh Dinh regroupment area alone with the balance departing from Ham Tan-Xuyen Moc (16,000), the Plaine des Joncs (20,000) and Cau Mau (30,000). Fall in "The Two Vietnam's" and J.J. Zasloff of the Rand Corporation in RM-4140 and RM-4703 discusses Montagnards and children regroupees which may account for 20,000 (10,000 each) of the total. W.G Burchett in "Vietnam, Inside. . . " notes 140,000 total regroupees.
Recent viewings of CDEC reports from the timeframe of 1964-1966 from the MR-5 Binh Dinh/Southern sub-region area seems to reinforce that regroupees were primarily "warriors" and cadre from the south albeit with a strong representation of northerners who were serving in the south and regrouped north.
That those who regrouped from the south to the north did so primarily on Polish and Soviet ships, took with them 244 vehicles, 1 tank, 28 artillery pieces and 3,384 tons of supplies, regrouped from 4 different widely dispersed specified zones over an ample time-frame specified in the Geneva Accords, and included 10,000 Montagnards whom would be fundamental to the future war in the south, all point to the conclusion that the reasons might not have been as messy as believed.
For a great many of those regrouping south, the Nungs, the Chinese who supported the Chinese Nationalists, the middle and rich peasants along with the landlords who had witnessed the Viet Minh land reforms, the French civil servants along with the French collaborators, as well as the families of all of these groups, in addition to the Catholics, did not need any agitation to regroup. The consequences of the regroupment, while certainly traumatic to many of those who regrouped, may not have been unintended by either the Viet Minh or by the French/Americans, each of whom possessed practical reasons to support regroupment.
Courtney Frobenius
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From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Date: 2009/3/24
Very interesting statistics. My uncle, born in Ben Tre in 1910, joined the ICP in 1930; he was one of those who went North in 1954. He returned South in 1975 and died in 1994. Too bad that there is no one I can ask about his career and how he left for the North in '54.
I have met a (Catholic) woman whose home was in Thai Binh and now lives in Binh Duong. In 1954, her husband was fighting on the French side in the Mekong Delta and sent word for her to join him there. She did not say that she was urged to leave by her parish priest, and there was no organized effort to help her or others like her. She made her way by foot to Haiphong with her three children all under the age of 7. There she caught a boat South with other regroupees.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
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From: Fr Peter Hansen <phansen@ourladys.org.au>
Date: 2009/3/24
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Hue-Tam,
Regarding the Catholic woman from Thai Binh; In analysing patterns of movement and resettlement in the South amongst the bac di cu, I identified five groups:
1. Those who went as a single unified parish group (normally under clerical leadership) and remained so in a trai dinh cu (resettlement camp) in the RVN;
2. Those who went south together as a parish group, but dispersed on arrival (usually for economic reasons);
3. Those who left by themselves, but located and regrouped with people from their que on arrival;
4. Those who left by themselves, and on arrival formed ad hoc communities with other bac di cu, irrespective of que;
5. Those who left the North by themselves, and melded into southern society on arrival.
The woman to whom you refer may not have been helped to get to Haiphong from Thai Binh, and maybe was not helped to resettle in the RVN; but if she took a ship from Haiphong South, then she must have been registered with the authorities, and helped at least as far as her passage was concerned.
As to Tuan and Jason’s point, it is certainly true that migration from North to South was a recurrent pattern prior to the Geneva Accords. As I understand it, 1954 was a famine year in parts of the North, albeit not as severe as 1945. Moreover, significant movements of people out of Ninh Binh and Nam Dinh had already begun by May 1954 in the wake of the French Operation Auvergne, though most of these displaced people found their wait to the Hanoi-Haiphong corridor, and only to the South post-Geneva. I don’t have a handle on how many people went from North to South in the period of the First Indochina War, but in a numerical sense, it would have been minimal in comparison to the 880,000 who left between July 1954 and August 1955. Finally, to John, re your comment that: The French withdrew its colonial fleet from the north after the defeat in Dien Bien Phu in 1954, but was not able to transport thousands of people to the south It’s true that the French couldn’t shoulder the whole burden, although Diem’s attitude seems to be that he didn’t want them to do so in any case. However, according to figures provided by Diem’s own refugee commissioner, Bui Van Luong, of the 505 sea voyages transporting refugees from North to South, 388 were undertaken by French vessels, compared to only 109 by Americans (the other eight being comprised of Polish, British, and Chinese.
Peter Hansen
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From: Tuan Hoang
Date: Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 9:45 AM
It doesn't look like there is a clear answer yet to Diane's origional
question, but the thread already has so many fine bits of information.
To the secondary sources mentioned so far, I’d add the valuable
article by Pierre Asselin in the Journal of Cold War Studies (Spring
2007). It isn’t about the regrouping per se but does offer a nuanced
explanation (and somewhat revisionist) of the DRV’s decision to sign
the Accord. Briefly, the argument is something like this... (1)
Yes,China and USSR did put pressure on the DRV to sign the Accord.
(2) But the Hanoi Poliburo did not have its arms twisted by the
Chinese and Soviets; it had very good reasons of its own to sign the
Accord. (3) For their own reasons, the southern Vietminh were
terribly upset at the Accord and considered the DRV's leadership
dominated by northerners. (4) Intent on implementing the Accord, the
Politburo issued a major policy statement in September 1954 that
expressed sympathy for the southern Vietminh but ultimately affirmed
adherence to a “North First” orientation. (I should have mentioned
that Asselin relies heavily on the published _Van Kien Dang_ for this
article.)
On civilian movements, is it ok to throw in something not exactly
related to the topic but (I think) is interesting nonetheless? With
good reasons, a lot of emphasis has been paid to 1954-55 movements.
One consequence, however, is that it elevates disruption and obscures
possible continuity. One thing to keep in mind is that there were
already a number of northerners that moved south *prior* to Geneva.
Their primary motive was not so much politics or religion but
economics. There weren’t many jobs available in Hanoi during the
First Indochina War, and they had to seek employment elsewhere.
One example is Pham Duy, the musician. Having joined the Vietminh at
the start of the war, he and his wife and several in-laws left the
Vietminh in 1951 and returned to their native Hanoi. But after two
weeks of seeing friends and watching Italian movies, they grew bored
without work. Pham Duy flew to Saigon, landed a contract with a
record producer, and got an advance. He returned to Hanoi and used
the advance to buy plane tickets for his musical family. Amusingly,
Duy had met Tran Van Giau during his time with the Vietminh. The
southern revolutionary asked Duy jokingly, “Zo^ Nam khong?” [Wanna go
south?] and Duy replied, “Zo^ thi` zo^” [Sure, I'll go.] The joke
turned true, even though it would be almost half a century later when
Pham Duy saw his hometown again.
The number of northerners that moved south during the war might have
been very small, but as exemplified by Pham Duy's career in Saigon, it
had huge consequences after Geneva. My basic point is that although
the scale and scope of 1954-55 movements were certainly very large and
the Gevena Accord was certainly disruptive, they should not be
considered separately from events prior to Geneva but in conjuction to
them.
~Tuan Hoang
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From: Jason Gibbs
Date: Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 12:48 PM
I second what Tuan has said about migration from North to South. A good deal was already occurring before 1954.
An addendum to Tuan's comments about Pham Duy. His last concert appearance in Hanoi had been in 1953 with the Gio Nam (South Wind) ensemble two years after moving South. The group name indicates something special blowing up from the South and their concert created quite a sensation. Gio Nam was a super-group for that time consisting of the Thang Long singing group (consisting of Pham Duy, his wife and in-laws), and two famed Southern musicians--the singer/comedian Tran Van Trach and the pianist/band-leader Vo Duc Thu.
I mention this because 55+ years later there will be the first concert of Pham Duy's music with the composer present in Hanoi since that time. It will take place at the Nha Hat Lon on March 27, 2009 at 8:00. I encourage any music lovers living in Hanoi to check it out. I would imagine that it will be very moving.
Jason Gibbs
San Francisco
Official SFPL use only
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From: Stephen Denney
Date: 2009/3/24
As I understand, of the approximately 900,000 who left the north for the south at this time, about 700,000 were Catholic, including 619 priests and five bishops; leaving behind 375 priests and six bishops, two of whom were not Vietnamese. This created a serious shortage of priests and bishops in the north which was not rectified until well after reunification, and is still a problem to some extent today, because the government was extremely reluctant to approve ordinations of priests and appointments of bishops.
- Steve Denney
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From: John Kleinen
Date: 2009/3/24
I have tried to understand the regroupement post Geneva from a local perspective in my upcoming book about Vietnamese maritime history in which I use Nam Dinh province as a case study. This is what I grasped from literature, archives ans local oral history. Local people remembered the landing vessels as "ships with open mouthpieces", which appeared also in the estuaries of Thai Binh and Nam Dinh.
The Vietnam War and the Vulnerability of the Dike System
After 1945, attempts were made to reinforce the vulnerable coastal area by building and enlarging existing sea dikes (see Vu a.o. 1998). In 1946, the new Ho Chi Minh government established a Central Committee for Dike Protection (Decree No. 70-SL). A large program of dike reinforcement began, which according to one source, amounted to 255 million cubic metres of earth fill and 4.2 million cubic metres of rock revetment (Tu Mao 1992). Nam Dinh was supposed to take more than a half million cubic metres into account (NAV, Ministry of Hydraulics, file 29). There is no mention of the costs involved, but the recruitment of local labour by the communes was taken for granted. In Thai Binh and Nam Dinh, this was mainly the work of special army units, which in line with tradition, were sent down to the coast to create military settlements. In 1958, multi-army units (binh doan) composed of several divisions were assigned from Hue-Thua Thien to the coastal districts of Nam Dinh and Nghia Binh. Their purpose was to prevent Catholics fleeing to the south to build dikes and to create New Economic Zones. Their homesteads became the nucleus of state farms, such as Rang Dong in Nghia Hung and Bach Long in Giao Thuy (see e.g. Bach Long 1986). The decision to reinforce the existing DRV-troops in Nam Dinh found its original motive in the Geneva Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities, which had divided Vietnam into two zones for the “regroupement” of the contending Viet Minh and French forces. Vietnamese civilians were allowed to emigrate to the zone of their choice.
From August 1954 to May 1955, the US Navy mounted a massive sea lift between the ports of Haiphong and Saigon. To carry out the “Passage to Freedom” operation (con duong to do cua ban), the US Pacific Fleet called upon 74 large ships to transport tanks, cargo and large numbers of people in the South China Sea under Rear Admiral Lorenzo S. Sabin. The operation became a vast propaganda drive under the influence of the Catholic medical doctor, Thomas A. Dooley. Catholics in the area, especially in Nam Dinh and Ninh Binh were told that the Holy Virgin herself had ordered the evacuation. By May 20, 1955 around 300,000 immigrants (many of them Catholics) formed the core of the anti-Communist segment of the population in South Vietnam.[1] The exodus, accompanied with stories about atrocities towards Catholics and local landlords, set the stage for renewed hostilities between north and south Vietnam, in the context of the Cold War.[2]
The French withdrew its colonial fleet from the north after the defeat in Dien Bien Phu in 1954, but was not able to transport thousands of people to the south. Warships of the US Navy (and Australia) provided coastal defence and naval gunfire support to shell targets in major battle zones and in Northern Vietnam. They left the navy a small number of submarine chasers and coastal minesweepers. Through a greater number of amphibious craft, the navy was capable of undertaking river patrol and minor coastal and amphibious operations. US aid was promised (CIA FOA 1956). The Vietnamese Navy of the Republic of Vietnam started with 4,500 men in 1961 and employed around 45,000 men in 1972. Its vessels were mostly suitable for coastal and river patrolling.
[1] By sea, air and land. An illustrated history of the US Navy and the war in Southeast Asia. Department of the navy at 5060http://www.history.navy.mil/seairland/chap1.htm (consulted January 2008).
[2] See for a background account and the Catholic influence on US Cold War politics in Vietnam, Seth Jacobs, 2001: 589-624. A Time story (12 July 1954) depicted “a bunch of Catholic teenagers [from the Vietnamese village of Nam Dinh (sic) strapped grenades to their belts and vowed they would start war against the communists” (quoted from Jacobs 2001: 616). The story echoed Catholic resistance against French and Viet Minh campaigns during the first Indochina War (see e.g. Fall; Bodar).
John Kleinen Ph.D
Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of Amsterdam
Department of Anthropology and Sociology
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From: Chung Nguyen
Date: Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 12:43 PM
A very interesting discussion on the mechanics of the regroupment process. In terms of the ideas and especially the goals, I think the most important aspect of this event, with the participation of Edward Lansdale's SMM team, is that it signals the US's open psywar involvement in the Vietnam war, strategically transforming it from an anti-colonial struggle into an anti-communist crusade. As a matter of unintended but unavoidable consequence of this, many Vietnamese who were working with and for the French, then viewed as collaborators by the great majority of the population, could now claim the mantle of freedom fighters. The whole native apparatus created by the French to buttress its colonial rule could now form the basis of defending South Vietnam against communism.
In terms of the zeitgeist of the time, this had been well prepared. It tallied well with Pope Pius XII's policy of excommunicating communists or those Catholics who cooperated with communists, which French forces turned into an endless stream of leaflets dropped onto North Vietnam, esp. the Bui Chu-Phat Diem region. Or the letter proclaimed by the Bishops in Hanoi in 1951, urging the faithful to love France because she shared the same religion as the faithful's.
This also stands behind Edward Lansdale's psywar and political activities. The settlement of the Catholics from the North carried out this plan - to create the base of support (which wasn't much in the South) for Ngo Dinh Diem, and to a construct a security zone occupied by Catholic parishes protecting Saigon from likely attacks by the Viet Minh.
Aids, both public and private, poured in to turn these settlements into anti-communist strongholds. To solidify its control on the rather not always cooperative South Vietnamese peasants, the Diem government appointed many northern Catholic refugees to positions of power in the village administration, dispensing with the former custom of electing village representatives.
In the short run, this exodus from the North did help to undergird the Diem government. In the long run, however, the strategy of re-branding the struggle, esp. on relying mainly on religion as the base of core support, as we know, could not change the fundamental character of the conflict as the majority of the population saw it. It did, however, have a greater impact on those who lived in the city.
We can still see the partial consequences of that strategy in the fanatical anticommunism of certain segments of the overseas community and the different views of history among the Catholic population in Vietnam.
C. Nguyen
UMASS Boston
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From: Stephen Denney
Date: Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 12:59 PM
But of the approximately 700,000 Catholics who left north for south at this time, did they leave primarily because of the position of the Vatican
regarding cooperating with communists, or was there also already some basis from their experience of having lived with the Viet Minh that might lead them to be pessimistic over the prospects of practicing their faith had they remained?
Steve Denney
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From: Fr Peter Hansen
Date: Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 2:16 PM
Chung,
I frankly admire your single-minded resoluteness to see every involvement of
the Catholic Church in Viet Nam as arising from a pre-determined plan to
establish religious hegemony. Once again, however, the facts do not support
your case. The evidence shows that:
1. Catholics left the North in 1954 not as a consequence
of any desire to establish or buttress the Catholic Church in the South, but
rather to avoid what they had well-founded fears would be their persecution
under the DRVN regime in the North.
2. You may be right about Lansdale' intentions, but as
several other correspondents have pointed out, the links between Lansdale's
campaign and the decisions of Northern Catholics to leave was negligible.
3. Re your assertion that: The whole native apparatus
of defending South Vietnam against communism The very interesting internal
CIA work, recently declassified and revealed to us in a heads-up by Ed
Miller a few weeks ago (Thomas L. Ahern, THE HOUSE OF NGO: COVERT ACTION IN
SOUTH VIETNAM, 1954-63) makes it clear that Diem's antagonistic attitude
towards the French, and the colonial regime's reluctance to promote
competent local officials, meant that the whole of colonial infrastructure
in the South, both military and civil, was nugatory, and immediately
dismantled. There was, in essence no native apparatus, and the dearth of
competent local officials was one of Diem's major hindrances.
4. Re your claim that . The settlement of the Catholics
zone occupied by Catholic . There was no such plan. What's your evidence
for your claim? I have read the entire file of correspondence between the
Diem and his office, and the Phu Tong Uy Di Cu Ty Nan (Commissioner for
Refugees) for the years 1954-55. It clearly emerges that their patterns of
resettlement until 1956 were entirely as a result of self-determination,
happenstance, and an overwhelming logistical need to put people just about
anywhere to fit them in. When, in 1956, Diem did begin to proactively
direct the bac di cu towards the Cai San settlement camp in the Delta, and
the Central Highlands, it was an afterthought long subsequent to the
regroupment/transmigration itself.
5. We can agree that the bac di cu villages formed
important centres of support for Diem, that they were stridently
anti-communist, and that much of this tendency lives on and can still be
seen in the Vietnamese diaspora. But these tendencies came from
historically ingrained, well-founded fears of persecution, rather than as a
consequence of manipulation either by those in the Norodom Palace, or the
Vatican.
----------
From: Chung Nguyen
Date: Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 8:41 PM
Hi Steve:
I would agree that the 700,000 Catholics had good reasons to fear that they wouldn't have the same kind of protection to practice their faith as they did under the French, or under Bao Dai, a French-controlled regime, or under Ngo Dinh Diem and Nguyen Van Thieu in South Vietnam.
Your question, however, presupposes a matter of strict religious practice. Religions in Vietnam, at least then, unfortunately, were never strictly a matter of religious practice, Catholicism included. They were very much intertwined with politics, with the long history of colonialism and anti-colonialism. Only studied in that light can we see the complexity of the issue. To cite one example, Father Le Huu Tu turned the Bui Chu-Phat Diem region into a self-defensed base in collaboration with French troops in their attempt to re-colonialize Vietnam.
To map the historical background to this, I would refer to Cao Huy Thuan's "Les missionnaires et la politique coloniale francaise au Vietnam (1857-1914)" (reprinted by Yale University Press), Father Tran Tam Tinh's "Dieu et Cesar", Patrick J. N. Tuck's "French Catholic Missionaries and the Politics of Imperialism in Vietnam, 1857-1914, A Documentary Survey", and Mark McCleod's "The Vietnamese Response To French Intervention 1862-1874." Or the fuller list of references I cited in an earlier discussion on VSG.
Of course people may consult those and still hold a completely contrary view. In that case, I simply say that we agree to disagree.
C Nguyen
UMass Boston
----------
From: dien nguyen
Date: Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 11:28 PM
I agree with Tuan. That was precisely what my family did. My mother, a widow with 2 young sons, moved from Hanoi to Saigon in 1952 when relatives already in Saigon told her it would be easier for her to make ends meet in the South.
Quite a number of Northerners established themselves in the South before 1945. They were called after 1954 Bắc kì cũ to distinguish them from the Bắc kì di cư who came in 1954-55. My relatives who persuaded my mother to move to Saigon would have gone South in the 1930's. They told me that, when the "Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina" (Cộng hoà Nam kì tự trị or Nam kì quốc) was formed in 1946 under French instigation, the Northerners (Bắc kì) had a bad time at the hands of a few extreme southern separatists.
A few well-known figures who moved South before 1945: Trần Huy Liệu, a journalist in Saigon in the 1920's; the scholar Nguyễn Hiến Lê; the poet Nguyễn Bính .
In 1945, after the French started their reconquest, thousands of young volunteers from the North joined the Nam Tiến campaign to fight in the South. My cousin from Hanoi was among those. He survived the Resistance War to go North again in 1954. Among the best known Northerners during the Resistance period were the legendary general Nguyễn Bình and the brothers Lê Đức Thọ & Mai Chí Thọ.
Nguyen Dien
----------
From: Charles Keith
Date: 2009/3/26
Hi Steve and list,
Allow me to suggest a different, and in my view more useful set of references than Chung's - after all, we should focus first and foremost on the 45-54 period itself before imposing any sort of (a)historical teleologies on what was a very complex period that deserves at least a modicum of agency. Thankfully, now that Peter Hansen's dissertation is complete, we have his outstanding religious/sociological approach to the transmigration to complement Tran Thi Lien's terrific dissertation on the political/diplomatic place of the Church during this conflict. She has read literally every single available French colonial, military and diplomatic document on this topic (and cited most of them at length, as French theses are wont to do). As such, at least in my view, she and Peter are the leading authorities on this topic. Of course, I also agree with Chung that we can and should agree to disagree - I just find that it's usually worth consulting (and meaningfully engaging with) the best available resources before doing so.
The reference: Tran Thi Lien, Les Catholiques Vietnamiens pendant la guerre d'’indépendance (1945-1954): entre la reconquete coloniale et la résistance communiste [Vietnamese Catholics During the War of Independence (1945-1954): Between the Colonial Reconquest and the Communist Resistance] (Ph.D. dissertation, Institut d'’Etudes Politiques de Paris, 1996)
It's a little tough to get a hold of from the states, but it's more than worth the trouble.
Best,
Charles Keith
Michigan State University
----------
From: Tuan Hoang
Date: Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 12:40 PM
We are indeed moving away from the original topic of this thread. But
if I may take the opportunity to make a couple of related points, the
first more sociological than historical.
1. The subject of Catholicism and Vienam has been highly politicized
for a long time, and there is nothing new about opinions on the
alleged collusion of the Vatican, Vietnamese Catholics, and
colonialism. Indeed, what is notable is not the arguments in those
opinions but the persistence of them over the decades. Many of these
opinions could be found in (among other places) websites such as
www.sachhiem.net and www.giaodiem.com/doithoai/. Having looked at
some of Catholicism-related articles on these websites before, I've
found them to be (1) typically reductionist in premises; (2) highly
selective in evidence; (3) illogical in presentation of evidence (and,
not infrequently, contradictory); and (4) ultimately unpersuasive in
conclusions. It is not uncommon either to see in these opinions that
age-old device of historical interpretation that is conspiracy theory.
The more interesting question for someone like myself is sociological
than intellectual: Why such intensity in beliefs and expressions?
While they difer in content, in tone and method they resemble opinions
from extreme anticommunists.
2. Nguyen Ba Chung mentioned Mark McLeod's book, and Jacob Ramsay
took note of it in his recent book _Martyrs and Mandarins_. In a
brief summary of historiography concerning the question "whether
Catholics supported the French invaders," Ramsay wrote the following.
"Milton Osborne’s study of the early years of French rule in
Cochinchina claimed there is no evidence that Vietnamese Catholics
supported the French forces. In a similar vein, although his
motivations were quite different, Tran Van Giau noted that “experience
in Da Nang and Nam Ky demonstrated that not many Catholics followed
the Westerners in attacking the homeland.” Similarly, David Marr, in
his groundbreaking studies of the early colonial era, concurred that
Catholic support “was not forthcoming.” Breaking with these views,
more recently Mark McLeod has argued that “Tonkinese Catholics” not
only joined the Franco-Spanish forces but were formed into detachments
that trained and fought at Da Nang and in the south. This claim still
remains largely unsubstantiated by primary evidence – either French or
Vietnamese" (140).
McLeod's book, I hasten to add, is valuable for a number of things,
including a revision of earlier interpretations on Tu Duc's response
to France. But, as noted above, probably not on this particular point
about Vietnamese Catholics during this period. It's been several
years since I last read it & I don't have a copy nearby to consult.
But except for one chapter on anti-Catholicism, I don't think
Catholicism is the main concern of the book.
In addition to Charles Keith's recommendations below, I'd suggest the
Ramsay book because it deals with the extremely complicated period
prior to the one found in McLeod. IMO, Ramsay deftly challenges a
number of old assumptions about Vietnamese Catholics in the nineteenth
century. For people pressed with time, there is Ramsay's article in
the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (June 2004): “Extortion and
Exploitation in the Nguyen Campaign Against Catholicism in 1830s-1840s
Vietnam." It is less than 20 pages long & of course is not thorough
as the book. But it gives a nice introduction to the complexities of
the period as well as pointers on the larger topic of Vietnamese
Catholicism.
Finally, I think it is very exciting to see a growing number of
scholarly publications about Vietnamese Catholicism, as exemplified by
recent articles in the Journal of Vietnamese Studies from Charles and
Chu Lan. Surely more will come, and hopefully new research will help
us move beyond the highly charged debates on this important subject,
including, indeed, the subject of northern Catholics moving south in
1954-55.
~Tuan Hoang
----------
From: DiGregorio, Michael
Date: 2009/3/26
Now, my shot across the deck. The underlying purpose of the exhibition on Catholic Culture at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology has been to depoliticize Catholicism by presenting Catholics as part of the cultural landscape of Vietnam. For those who have seen this exhibit, the impact is powerful. Among those most moved are the thousands of Catholics who feel confirmed in their beliefs and in their place in the national body. Most of the articles written about it in the Vietnamese press convey these points. The foreign press has not considered this exhibit or its implications as newsworthy.
Among those who have also been moved by the is exhibit has been the Foreign Minister of the Vatican, who visited the site late last month and received a personal tour by the exhibition’s curator, Vu Thi Ha.
Mike
----------
From: Fr Peter Hansen
Date: 2009/3/26
Mike, do you have a closing date as yet? You make me feel more and more dsepressed that I’m likely to miss it.
Can I also say that the mandate you and the Museum have been given to present this subject in this way, is a part of continuum of change in the way that the Vietnamese church has been presented in Vietnamese academia (broadly defined).
Standard party-state analysis has moved from portraying the Church as culturally extrinsic, religiously anomalous, and politically colonialist (still a dominant template as at, say, 1988, the time of the Canonization controversy), to viewing it as being a valuable and integrated constituent in national identity.
I can’t help thinking that this change in intellectual presentation has had its effect in the real politik of church-state relations. Question is, which is the chicken, and which is the egg? Did academic reconsideration cause a political shift, or was it enabled by such a shift? Wish I knew.
Peter Hansen
----------
From: Chung Nguyen
Date: Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 8:53 PM
Thanks, Mike, for your input. I'm busy in the midst of various things at the moment and will take some time to respond to Father Hansen. But I could respond here in a general way fairly quickly, and so I'll do it now.
I'm happy that the exhibition occurs and we certainly need more cultural events of that kind. It's part of the process of working towards the future - a more hopeful, more understanding, and more unified future.
But the very reason that the event aims at - "to depoliticize Catholicism by presenting Catholics as part of the cultural landscape of Vietnam"- implies, does it not, that somehow Catholics wasn't, isn't seen as "of the cultural landscape of Vietnam"? The fact that "thousands of Catholics...feel confirmed in their beliefs and in their place in the national body" because of the exhibition, also indicates that somehow that feeling isn't automatic or natural, or could be taken for granted, like Catholics in the Philippines or in the U.S.?
Why so? Isn't it due to what happened in the past, with its legacy in the present? That's precisely part of the reasons for the discussion. Should we try to figure what was it that left this legacy? If we don't have a common understanding of past history, how could we work towards a common future?
Thanks for so perceptively bringing the issues to light.
Tuan Hoang poses the right question: why is there such "intensity in beliefs and expressions"? Doesn't our discussion touch upon all the possible causes for that intensity? Or should we simply declare that all is hunky dory and get done with it? But I would disagree that it has always been so. It couldn't be because this kind of issue couldn't be discussed under Diem and somewhat under Thieu (let's recall the story of how Nguyen Hien Le got into so much trouble because he wrote about the Crusades in his world history text); it could not be fully discussed even now in Vietnam because of the party policy of "peace among religions", i.e. no debate of any kind on any sensitive religious issues outside party channels.
The fact that there is this dichotomy of the vast growth of this subject in the last twenty years or so in the overseas community versus its total silence under Diem (even if the prohibition wasn't written down in rules or regulations anywhere under Diem and Thieu) shows that we could live in two histories, one in which this censorship was invisible and not felt; and the other, very visible and felt, as Nguyen Hien Le did. When something is repressed, it tends to go overboard when it's released. Should it be a surprise?
The scholarship on this subject is vast. Cao Huy Thuan's tome is particular noteworthy: his doctoral dissertation was acclaimed with special honor - no mean feat when you present a devastatingly critical account of the French missionaries at the heart of France. One of its powers lies in the fact that most of the documents he cited had never been made public before. It was once again honored when Yale UP decided to reprint it - in French - in this country. I haven't seen any work that disproves the fundamental points of his thesis. Other tomes that follow complement his analysis.
We know enough about the writing of history texts that by taking a different snapshot of events, one can always come up with a different picture. The challenge is to take the same snapshot and prove that it isn't what it seems.
One final point: My post is about the war, and how US' policy made use of religion in carrying its objectives, something perfectly understandable. It isn't about Catholicism in VN per se. But no one seems to notice it.
I will respond in more details, perhaps with a different angle in my response to Father Hansen.
C. Nguyen
UMASS Boston
----------
From: Tuan Hoang
Date: Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 2:21 PM
I forgot to say that you could read the Introduction in Jacob Ramsay's
book from the publisher's website. It includes a historiography
survey on the subject.
http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=10631
The book looks into the complex local situations in addition to
factors from outside. By implication, it seeks to move away from the
more or less exclusive emphasis on external factors that characterizes
earlier scholarship such as Cao Huy Thuan's dissertation and Nguyen
Van Kiem's articles. (The Introduction makes note of Thuan and Kiem,
among many others.)
~Tuan Hoang
----------
From: Stephen Denney
Date: Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 10:16 PM
Chung, I agree that politics and religion are historically intertwined in Vietnam as in almost every country, but in terms of that term "well founded fear of persecution" I would say that subsequent events justified the concerns of the 700,000 Catholics who left north for south at that time.
Speaking of Catholics and politics in Vietnam, would anyone have had contact with Fr. Chan Tin in recent years or know of his current circumstances? According to reports two years ago, he was put under house arrest for his involvement as editor of an online dissident magazine, Tu Do Ngon Luan, but I notice in checking just now that it is still being published online with him listed as the editor:
http://tudongonluan.atspace.com/
----------
From: Chung Nguyen
Date: Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 1:00 PM
Hi Steve:
I don't think "politics and religion are historically intertwined in Vietnam", as you put it, "as in almost every country." There is politics and there is politics! I am somewhat at a loss as to why it isn't clear that the kind of politics I describe isn't something any country worth its salt can accept: religion being used as an instrument of colonization. And just to make sure that this isn't some sort of animosity against Catholicism per se, let's look at the role Western religions had played in the colonization of third-world countries from the 17th to the 19th century:
In the case of Ireland, it was Catholicism that was the victim of British colonization, and the role played by its religious partner. Here are a few excerpts:
-- Ireland during the period 1536-1691 saw the first full conquest of the island by England <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England> and its colonization with Protestant <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant> settlers from Britain. This established two central themes in future Irish history - subordination of the country to London <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London> based governments and sectarian <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectarian> animosity between Catholics and Protestants.
-- From the mid-16th and into the early 17th century, crown governments carried out a policy of colonisation known as Plantations. Scottish and English Protestants were sent as colonists to the provinces of Munster <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munster> , Ulster and the counties of Laois <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laois> and Offaly <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offaly> (see also Plantations of Ireland <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantations_of_Ireland> ). The largest of these projects, the Plantation of Ulster <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantation_of_Ulster> , had settled up to 80,000 English and Scots in the north of Ireland by 1641. The so-called Ulster Scots <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Scots> were predominantly Presbyterian <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyterianism> , which distinguished them from the Anglican <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican> English colonists
-- These settlers, who had a British and Protestant identity, would form the ruling class of future British administrations in Ireland. A series of Penal Laws <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_Laws> discriminated against all Christian faiths other than the established <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion> (Anglican) Church of Ireland <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Ireland> . The principal victims of these laws were Roman Catholics and also, from the late 17th century on, adherents of Presbyterianism.
-- In the early years of the 17th century, it looked possible for a time that, because of immigration of English and Scottish settlers, Ireland could be peacefully integrated into British society. However, this was prevented by the continued discrimination by the English authorities against Irish Catholics on religious grounds.
-- As punishment for the rebellion of 1641, almost all lands owned by Irish Catholics were confiscated and given to British settlers <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantations_of_Ireland#The_Cromwellian_Plantation> . The remaining Catholic landowners were transplanted to Connacht <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connacht> . See also Act of Settlement 1652 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_Settlement_1652> . In addition, Catholics were barred from the Irish Parliament altogether, forbidden to live in towns and from marrying Protestants (although not all of these laws were strictly enforced). It has been calculated that up to a third of Ireland's population (4-600,000 people) died in these wars, either in fighting, or in the accompanying famine and plague. The Cromwellian conquest therefore left bitter memories <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Drogheda> in Irish popular culture.
- ETC. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Modern_Ireland_1536%E2%80%931691 ]
In the case of Sri Lanka, first the Portuguese, then Dutch, and finally British, one after the other colonized the island, each leaving behind its religious imprint - Catholicism and Protestantism.
We can see the same pattern repeated, even more brutally, in the case of South and Latin America. Hundred of millions of natives were killed in the process of subjugation, enslavement and forced conversion. More closer to home, we had the history of the treatment of Native Americans. And further in history, the Inquisition in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany and France, etc. For a glimpse of the forced conversion in Central Vietnam, see the dossiers brought out of VN by former foreign minister Vu Van Mau.
These are the kind of transgressions Pope John Paul II referred to in his apology to the world on Mar 12, 2000: "yielding to a mentality of power, they have violated the rights of ethnic groups and peoples, and shown contempt for their cultures and religious traditions."
Are we to argue that the conquest of VN by France was a unique exception, a one-of-a-kind colonization endeavor in which religion, as pure as snow, played a shining role as the protector of the natives against the exploitation of its own colonial government, as the patron saints of their culture and way of life? Since religion has been steep enough in mythology already, let's not spread it to the field of history.
Let's also note that the Pope wears many hats: One as the titular Spiritual Leader of the Catholics all over the world. Second, he's also a head of state, with a diplomatic corps, an intelligence service (upon which William Donovan of the OSS had to rely on for information re: Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during and after WW II), several banks (the Vatican bank is a one-of-a-kind bank, responsible only directly to the Pope, Google it for more information), etc.
It took the Vietnamese almost a century, with incredible sacrifice of blood and tear, to get their country back after defeating French forces at Dien Bien Phu. That fruit of struggle was once again sidetracked with the intervention of US troops in Vietnam, with two Catholic Presidents ruling a SVN whose population was more than 80% Buddhist. Ngo Dinh Diem was supported by a Catholic-only Can Lao party set up by advice of the US State Department (and strongly opposed by Edward Lansdale although he failed to convince Secretary of State Dulles to stop it) while Nguyen van Thieu resurrected it by employing the remnant of that party. Was that, in the run-of-the-mill order of things, merely coincidental?
The great majority of the Vietnamese knew in their bones what they had gone through. As victims for a century of foreign-imposed warfare, I doubt that they really need any scholar, esp. those who know little about Vietnamese history and culture, to tell them about what did happen to them. These scholars have no idea how comical that could be. Was that, and still is, part of the great "mission civilizatrice"?
You keep saying that "subsequent events justified the concerns of the 700,000 Catholics who left north for south at that time." Which is the chicken, which is the egg? Are you saying that the use of religion to colonize third-world country was, and is, "justified"? And if that's how religion was used, at least to a less extent until 1975, what should be the reaction of the population of that country? How did the US react in WW II vis-a-vis the Japanese-Americans when there wasn't even any proof of disloyalty?
All of these are historical facts that can be easily verified. I want to emphasize, however, that it doesn't mean at all that in the Church there aren't millions and millions of upright and compassionate human beings led by thousands and thousands of upright and compassionate priests. But the Church is an authoritarian organization, top down. Read its histoy (works by Loftus, Kavanaugh, de Rosa, Martin, Manhattan, Kung, etc.). It has made many decisions involving international politics for which the faithful play no role, and which many of them only dutifully follow. For example, it was Pope Pius XII who chose to sign the Concordat with Hitler, not the German Catholics. And it was Cardinal Spellman, the "American Pope", who pushed for Diem to be the President of South Vietnam, not the Catholic citizens of America. And unlike the Catholic population in most European countries, many parishes in VN are still steep in the medieval tradition in beliefs and outlook. Father Tram Tam Tinh's observations on this issue are still relevant, religiously as well as politically.
In post-1975 Vietnam, the country has been unified, initially as an orthodox communist country. Well, that wasn't the choice of every Vietnamese, but the only choice that could bring about the defeat of foreign subjugation. What happens to Father Chan Tin isn't unique. The entire Third-Block movement of the Buddhist that inspired the Buddhist Struggle Movement in 1964-1966 (Robert Topmiller's "Lotus Unleashed") was also crushed. And many other independent-minded intellectuals.
But that is the responsibility of the Vietnamese: it's their country. After a century of warfare, a country devastated environmentally, socially, and physically, VN could not turn into an exemplar of civil society overnight. There is no magical wand. It's a hard road to become a truly democratic society. Esp. when it has to face concurrently enormous pressures from many foreign interests that could threaten its very survival. It will have to learn, develop, and make progress on the democratization process to become part of the advanced modern world. But certainly it could do without the spirit of St. Ignatius Loyola's dictum - "We should always be prepared so as never to err to believe that what I see as white is black, if the hierarchic Church defines it thus."
----------
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 2:54 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Father Hansen:
I appreciate your generosity and charity. I would agree that anyone can write about anything, with suffifcent familiarity with the subject. On this topic, it's my humble view that:
1) one needs to discuss the issue re: the Church not just as a matter of pure spiritual mission (Hat #01 of the Pope), but also its actual involvement in the world (Hat #02 - with the diplomatic corp, intelligence service, banking operations, etc.).
2) one needs to know, not just about the subject of the Catholic church in VN, the nature of the French conquest, and US involvement, but also a great deal about Vietnamese history and culture. Since it's an Asian culture - steep in Buddhism, a subject mostly barely comprehensible in traditional Western frame of reference, only a few, I think, master it. And as VN's history is long, very long, I do not envy anyone who wish to delve deeply into it. That's one of the many reasons I have tremendous respect for those who do, as shown in the works of David Marr and others.
With Respect,
C. Nguyen
UMASS Boston
----------
From: Stephen Denney
Date: Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 7:20 PM
Chung,
Thank you for your comments. You raise many points, which I don't really care to debate, but just to clarify one point: Of course, I did not say the use of religion to colonize a third-world country, in this case Vietnam, is justified. What I said was that the concerns -- or fears -- of those Catholics who left north for south at that time were borne out by subsequent events over the twenty years from 1955-75. These were very hard years for the Catholics in the North, not just because of the war but because of heavy-handed repression against the church by the government. The church was so restricted from the outside world that it even missed out on the liberalizing changes of Vatican Council II, which did have some impact on the church in the south.
You raise another interesting point: Indeed, they were crushed.
Regarding Fr. Chan Tin, I would be interested to know if anyone here has had contact with him or followed his activities in recent years. To me he is a courageous priest and dissident and I find it interesting that he is somehow able to keep this online dissident magazine alive. Polemics aside, it is interesting to observe the nature of the dissident movement in Vietnam -- the issues it addresses, the people involved, how the government deals with them, and so forth.
Steve Denney
library assistant,
U.C. Berkeley
----------
From: Chung Nguyen
Date: Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 8:58 PM
Hi Steve:
Put yourself in the position of DRVN: After 80 years under French colonial regime which the Church worked closely with and enjoyed enormous advantage in terms of its efforts to proselytize, expand its wealth and influence, now 700,000 Catholics moved south, under US sponsorship and direction, to form the backbone of RSVN's anti-communist government. US policy and the Vatican's both raised the issue of godless communism as a worldwide crusade. Should the DRVN worry about the Catholics remaining in the North, and its implication in terms of its own national security? I don't think that it is the kind of question that's so difficult to understand.
Note also that the great majority of Vietnamese commandos secretly dropped in North VN in Operation Plan 34A (Oplan 34A) were Catholic. And so were the target villages for their contacts in the North.
That's why the question is which was the chicken, which was the egg. Facing with that kind of history and reality, was the DRVN's response an action or reaction?
----------
From: Tobias RETTIG
Date: Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 8:34 PM
Dear All,
To be a bit provocative in view of what is Asian and what is Western, I
would like to submit the following theses:
1) Christianity is an Asian religion;
2) Buddhism is a non-Vietnamese religion;
3) Confucianism is a non-Vietnamese ideology;
4) the Leninism-Stalinism-Trotskyism-Marxism complex is a non-Vietnamese
ideology;
5) a social constructivist approach might be pertinent to explain the
plasticity of religions and ideologies.
In light of this, all existing contradictions can be resolved.
Best from Singapore,
Tobias
School of Social Sciences
Singapore Management University
----------
From: lawrence driscoll <lawdri@hotmail.com>
Date: 2009/3/25
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
"........of the 505 sea voyages transporting refugees from North to South, 388 were undertaken by French vessels, compared to only 109 by Americans (the other eight being comprised of Polish, British, and Chinese"
It's a pity that American Captain Leonard LaRue was not available to spirit away those refugees, as he did some 14,000 Koreans from the perils of war in Hungnam Korea just four years earlier, at Christmas 1950 aboard the Meredith Victory.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/20/us/leonard-larue-rescuer-in-the-korean-war-dies-at-87.html?scp=1&sq=leonard%20la%20rue&st=cse
Lawrence Driscoll
------------------------
From: Frank
Date: 2009/3/27
With reference to Mike's shot across the deck: In the early stages of planning the VME's exhibit on Vietnamese Catholics, I was conducting a training workshop in museum evaluation for museum professionals from all over the country at VME. As an exercise, we conducted what museum folks call a "front-end evaluation" to understand what kind of information and attitudes visitors might bring to an exhibition. One element of the evaluation exercise was an attitude survey (agree/disagree with the following statements). I was astounded to see the attitudes of this sample of museum professionals (not of course a representative sample, statistically) to propositions such as "Catholicism is a foreign religion, not really part of Vietnamese culture" or "Catholic rituals are strange and mysterious to me" or "Catholics are not real Vietnamese because they do not keep an ancestral altar" (all of which had shockingly high "agree" scores), which contrasted sharply with predictably low agreement scores for "Catholics in Vietnam face both formal and informal discrimination" or predictably high agreement for "Catholics in Vietnam are treated equally with all other Vietnamese". It was apparent that for this group of museologists and ethnologists, Vietnamese Catholics were far more exotic culturally than the most remote highlanders, even while they were politically embraced as co-equal citizens. And VME colleagues had an eye-opener about the difficulty of the educational task that lay ahead of them.
BTW, hardly anyone agreed with the statement, "Most of the xich-lo, xe om, and taxi drivers in Hanoi are Catholic".
Frank Proschan
------------------------
From: vu tuong <vhtuong@yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, May 25, 2007 at 9:45 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear list,
Just to piggyback on the comments from my dear
Mongolian comrade Balazs, I have run into two recently
released Party documents which are relevant to the
topic. Before I discuss these documents, let me say
that I am focusing on the particular issue of executed
and persecuted people during the land reform. I am not
trying to assess all the good and bad things about the
land reform, which is a different topic.
1) “Chi Thi Cua Bo Chinh Tri Ve May Van De Dac Biet
Trong Phat Dong Quan Chung” (Political Bureau’s Decree
on Special Issues in Mobilizing the Masses), May 4,
1953. Van Kien Dang Toan Tap v. 14 (2001), 201-206,
wrote:
Quote—
“In this campaign, [we] will have to execute [xu tu] a
number of reactionary or evil landlords. In our
current situation, the ratio of executions [xu tu] of
these landlords to the total population in the free
areas is fixed at the rate of 1/1000 in principle.
This ratio will be controlled by the leadership and is
to be applied for the rent and interest reduction
campaign this year and next year; it does not mean
only for this year, and it does not mean that every
village will execute landlords according to this
ratio. (Thus there may be communes that execute 3-4
people, others that execute only one or none at all).
The lives of people are an important matter. It is not
that we don’t want to execute those who deserve
execution. But the number of executions should not be
too many; if so, it would be difficult [for us] to win
popular support.
[The document went on to mention several mitigating
factors (such as “dia chu tre tuoi co hoc thuc va co
hy vong cai tao duoc”) and special cases such as
Catholic priests that require special treatment].
“[The executions of] criminals [pham nhan, referring
to landlords to be executed] who were local cadres
from district level up, who were soldiers from the
company level up, must be approved [in advance] by
central leaders [Trung Uong]. [The executions of]
local cadres at the commune level [and below] must be
approved by Interzone Party Committee. [The executions
of] soldiers from the platoon level [and below] must
be authorized by the Central Party Committee of the
Army [Tong Quan Uy].
At the central level, an executive committee will be
formed....This Committee is authorized to collect and
protect information about criminals, make
recommendations to the Chairman of the Government [Chu
Tich Chinh Phu—Ho Chi Minh himself, who was also a
member of the Politburo which issued this decree] for
approval, and deliver the decision to the special
people’s court for ruling on the cases.”
Unquote—
I am not sure if this document had ever been released
before—I would appreciate any information on this. In
all the five volumes that contained documents on the
land reform (1953-1957), this was the only document
that mentioned the issue of executions in specific
terms. Now what is the value of this document?
First, one often hears the argument that the central
government did not intend to kill so many people
during the land reform. This happened only during the
implementation of the policy and was the acts of some
zealous low-level cadres. Perhaps this was true to
some extent. The question is how much of the mistake
was the responsibility of the central government?
On the one hand, the document shows that Politburo
members (or at least some of them) were concerned
about indiscriminate killings. This caution, if not
for humanitarian reasons, was driven by political
concerns for popular support for the policy as the
document explicitly mentioned. The Politburo also
suggested that the ratio or quota was to be applied in
a flexible manner depending on local situations.
On the other hand, the Politburo had calculated and
decided in advance, before launching the campaign, a
targeted ratio of 1/1000, or 0.1% of the total
population, to be executed. If we take the population
of North Vietnam in 1955 to be 13.5 million (Nguyen
Tien Hung, Economic Development of Socialist Vietnam,
1955-1980, Praeger 1977, p. 98), about 13,500 people
were to be executed. The population in “the free
areas” that this execution ratio was meant for were in
fact much fewer, perhaps about 10-11 million people.
In this case, the number of executions planned for for
1953-1954 was 10,000-11,000. But after 1954 the
campaign was extended to most of North Vietnam, so the
figure of 13,500 was perhaps within the expectation of
the Politburo.
The document (together with many others in the same
volume) also demonstrates the careful planning of the
campaign. There was a clear process of required
approval for executions that could go all the way up
to the Chairman of the Government. I am sure that
there were many cases (persecutions out of personal
revenge) in which local committees did not report the
executions (against central order), but I doubt that
this was widespread. It seems more plausible that
those local committees would rather fabricate crimes
to get their requests for executions approved than to
kill people without approval from above. I am also
aware that the campaigns moved left and right a few
times during 1953-1956, but the dominant trend was the
fear of committing rightist rather than leftist
errors. Given this fear, and the way these political
campaigns were run in North Vietnam (read To Hoai’s
new novel Ba Nguoi Khac [Three Different Characters]
for a sense of campaign-style politics; To Hoai served
as a land reform cadre), local committees must have
had greater incentives to over-report than
under-report executions. The central government, and
its Chairman, must have approved most, if not all,
executions. Central leaders could blame local
officials for fabricating charges and for
overreporting, but it was they who gave the final
approval to most executions. At the very least, the
document suggests that, besides the fact that the
central government was responsible for the overall
supervision of the campaign, it must bear sole
responsibility for at least 10,000-11,000 deaths that
it planned to carry out.
To be sure, this was the number planned for, not the
actual number of executions. But the intention to kill
was there, and the percentage of the population to be
killed was calculated and fixed in principle, before
any verdict had been made on those to be executed.
Furthermore, there is no reason to expect, and no
evidence that I have seen to demonstrate, that the
actual executions were less than planned; in fact the
executions perhaps exceeded the plan if we consider
two following factors. First, this decree was issued
in 1953 for the rent and interest reduction campaign
that preceded the far more radical land redistribution
and party rectification campaigns (or waves) that
followed during 1954-1956. Second, the decree was
meant to apply to free areas (under the control of the
Viet Minh government), not to the areas under French
control that would be liberated in 1954-1955 and that
would experience a far more violent struggle.
Thus the number of 13,500 executed people seems to be
a low-end estimate of the real number. This is
corroborated by Edwin Moise in his recent paper “Land
Reform in North Vietnam, 1953-1956” presented at the
18th Annual Conference on SE Asian Studies, Center for
SE Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
(February 2001). In this paper Moise (7-9) modified
his earlier estimate in his 1983 book (which was
5,000) and accepted an estimate close to 15,000
executions. Moise made the case based on Hungarian
reports provided by Balazs, but the document I cited
above offers more direct evidence for his revised
estimate. This document also suggests that the total
number should be adjusted up some more, taking into
consideration the later radical phase of the campaign,
the unauthorized killings at the local level, and the
suicides following arrest and torture (the central
government bore less direct responsibility for these
cases, however).
Second, the decree suggests that the campaign in
Vietnam was proportionally just as murderous as the
one launched in China after 1949. Viviene Shue
(Peasant China in Transition, University of California
Press 1980, 80) who is very sympathetic to the Chinese
revolution quotes Benedict Stavis, who estimates the
number of executions in China during 1949-52 based on
official sources to be between 400,000 and 800,000
(These executions may also have come from other
campaigns besides the land reform in the same period,
and if unofficial deaths are added, the total number
could reach more than a million). If 500,000 deaths
(officially and unofficially) can be assumed to be
specifically related to land reform, then the
proportion was also about 0.1% in the total population
of 572 million Chinese in 1952 (Dwight Perkins, ed.
China’s Modern Economy in Historical Perspective,
Stanford University Press 1975, 122). Given that
Chinese advisors were heavily involved in the
Vietnamese campaign, a relationship may have existed
between this Chinese ratio and the Vietnamese decree,
but this hypothesis needs further research to confirm.
2) “De cuong bao cao cua Bo Chinh tri” (Draft Report
of the Politburo), Van Kien Dang Toan Tap v. 17
(2001), 432-474.
(This was Party Secretary General Truong Chinh’s
report at the Tenth Central Committee Plenum, August
25-October 5, 1956, which ordered the Error
Rectification Campaign [Sua Sai]. Truong Chinh was to
resign from his post after this Plenum). I am very
certain this document had never been released before.
This document offers the most details as yet about the
number of punished cadres but unfortunately it
contains no information on those who were executed (or
the number may have been removed before publication).
In this document, Truong Chinh cited statistics about
the land reform “yet to be confirmed.” He said that
three-quarters (2,876) of all Party cells (3,777) in
16 provinces had been rectified in the rent reduction
and land reform campaigns by the time these campaigns
were suspended (some time in May 1956). 84,000 members
in these cells were punished [xu tri] among the total
of 150,000, or 56%. “Punishment” usually meant being
expelled from the Party after torture, and could
amount to execution. As Truong Chinh (ibid., 435)
frankly but belatedly admitted, “most cadres and party
members who were arrested were subject to brutal and
barbaric torture [nhuc hinh rat tan khoc, da man].”
The goal of the Party was to purge only members of
exploitative class backgrounds but in practice those
of working classes were purged as well. In the Ta Ngan
Zone (provinces to the left of the Red River), it was
found out that 7,000 of the total 8,829 persecuted
party members belonged to “peasants and other
[non-exploitative] classes.” While the persecutions of
these working-class cadres based on fabricated charges
were clearly not intended by central leaders, they
could not have been carried out without their prior
approval.
According to the same document, in the 66 districts
and seven provinces where the party rectification
campaign was carried out (the campaign at the
provincial level was directed by none but the Party’s
Central Organizational Department headed by Le Van
Luong), 720 were “punished” out of 3,425 cadres and
employees (80% of these 3,425 were party members). The
ratio was 21%. If only cadres from provincial
department level up were counted, 105 were punished
out of 284, or 37%. Among 36 incumbent members of
provincial party committees who were subjects of the
campaign, 19 (or 57%) were persecuted. Among 61 former
members of provincial party committees who were
subjects of the campaign, 26 were punished. At the
district level, 191 out of 396 district party
committee members were punished, or 48%. In an extreme
case (Ha Tinh province), all 19 members of the
provincial party committee, police department, and
district militia commanders were branded
“counter-revolutionaries” and purged during the
campaign (all were later found to be innocent by
central authorities).
To conclude, both documents are not to be taken as
truths but they seem to be the best available sources
about this complex topic. I expect documents to be
released in the future will improve substantially on
what we know. Also it should be reiterated that,
whether some of those executed landlords deserved to
die, and whether the benefits of the campaign for the
peasantry justified or outweighed the sacrifice of
these landlords, are questions that require a
different debate.
Tuong Vu
Naval Postgraduate School
----------
From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: 2007/5/26
Dear Tuong,
thanks a lot for these extremely interesting documents! I completely agree with you in that "the intention to kill was there, and the percentage of the population to be killed was calculated and fixed in principle, before any verdict had been made on those to be executed." Nevertheless, I slightly disagree with the view that "there is no reason to expect, and no evidence that I have seen to demonstrate, that the actual executions were less than planned; in fact the executions perhaps exceeded the plan." Namely, I am inclined to lay a greater emphasis on swings from right to the left (and vice versa) than you do. The Politburo resolution of May 1953 was passed in a very "leftist" phase, and thus the quotas set by this resolution may not be representative for every subsequent phase. For instance,
on 2 November 1954 Csatorday, having conversed with various DRV diplomats on the situation in Vietnam, reported that the VWP leaders intended to extend their land reform campaign to the newly liberated areas, but ‘while during the liberation struggles they used the Chinese method and brought the landlords to people’s courts or subjected them to the judgement of the people, by now they have already adopted a different method. They confiscate the landlords’ holdings in a much more flexible way, with great circumspection and without making too much noise’. Protest meetings were to be stopped, and landlords were to be allowed to donate their land to the state so as to escape outright expropriation (a change also noted by Moise).
To be sure, the phase from the spring of 1955 to mid-1956 was, by and large, a "leftist" one, and thus one may apply the May 1953 guidelines to it without missing the mark too much. Still, the Hungarian document I previously quoted suggests that a higher number of persecuted persons did not necessarily mean a higher number of executions, and the number of executions did not necessarily grow exponentially.
I think we must pay great attention to the possible connections (1) between the land reform campaign and the struggle against the Bao Dai/Diem regimes, (2) between DRV measures and the policies of other Communist regimes (the USSR, China, and North Korea). These two external factors underwent several changes, and if they really influenced the progress of the campaign, it is reasonable to assume that the targets of the campaign may have also repeatedly changed between 1953 and 1956. For this reason, we cannot take granted that a land redistribution wave always claimed more victims than a rent-reduction wave. Let me point out that the land reform campaign started only after the establishment of the Bao Dai regime, and it did not become really radical until the Bao Dai government initiated its own land reform campaign.
All the best and thanks again,
Balazs
----------
From: Stephen Denney
Date: 2007/5/26
Thanks to Tuong Vu for the very interesting and detailed information on the land reform and rectification campaigns, and its victims, based on documents from Van Kien Dang Toan Tap. We also have that multi-volume work here at the UC Berkeley library. It has been published by NXB Chinh Tri Quoc Gia since 1998 and its call number here is JQ898.D253 D33 1998.
I am surprised these documents would contain such revealing information, particularly the 1953 Politburo decree which set a quota on the number of people to be executed during the land reform campaign, 1 in 1,000.
- Steve Denney
----------
From: vu tuong
Date: Sun, May 27, 2007 at 1:01 AM
Comrade Balazs,
Your points are well-said and well-taken. The two
documents clarified some issues but there are still
numerous others.
In response to your point and Courtney’s question
below:
“certainly there was a decisive propaganda benefit to
the agrarian reforms, but were they done to prove that
the casier landscape was an unproductive way of
farming? What is your view on this beyond what you
indicated as noted above? Do you feel that the
destruction of a class was/could have been all along a
primary object of the VWP’s agrarian reform program?”
the existing literature tends to look at the event
known as the land reform as a land reform and fails to
capture its full dynamics. Ostensibly land
redistribution was for the good of poor peasants but
given what we know
1)about how Vietnamese communist leaders generally and
consistently disdained small-scale agriculture (not
surprising; this disdain is traceable to Marx’s
comparison of the peasantry to a bag of potatoes; “san
xuat nho, le, manh mun” is their perjorative phrase
that one hears repeatedly then and still hears now in
2007 from some Bo Nong Nghiep officials), and
2)that they would soon launch collectivization by the
late 1950s
one should not regard economic or technical rationale
as a significant leadership motive in land
redistribution (land rent reduction to alleviate the
exploitation of tenants was different).
Rather, land redistribution was primarily motivated by
politics. It was simultaneously (1) a China-inspired
wartime strategy of mobilizing peasant labor and
taxes, (2) a reaction to the Bao Dai government’s land
reform initiatives, (3) a rural class struggle (to
eliminate landlords as a class and to build new, loyal
local governments), and (4) a tool for organizational
purge. Regarding the last item which I discuss in my
manuscript yet to be published, there was a strong
suspicion among many top party leaders that the Party
at local levels had been thoroughly infiltrated by
“reactionary” elements, including French spies. More
broadly, there was the concern that the Party had been
contaminated by bourgeoise elements (constituting
about 60% of membership by 1950) due to earlier lax
membership policy.
Clearly there must have been party leaders who were
more concerned about the broad struggle with the
French and the Bao Dai government. There were others
such as Truong Chinh and Le Van Luong who were more
worried about the class integrity of the Party. There
were bureaucrats such as Pham Van Dong and Le Van Hien
who were concerned about tax receipts and rice
supplies. Hoang Quoc Viet and Nguyen Chi Thanh can be
assumed to care more about mass mobilization and troop
recruitment. And so on, but we still know almost
nothing about politics at this level. My hypothesis is
that the priority of different elements changed with
time: the first two elements perhaps triggered the
land reform campaign and explained its timing (thanks
for pointing this out), the second two became more
important after 1954. This was only the broad trend,
because the campaign also shifted daily or monthly
within the limits defined by the balance among the
four elements, and the limits set by organizational
and institutional capacity.
Since late 1954, one can add to the four elements
above the long-term goal of reunification (meaning the
rural struggle should not cause people to defect en
mass to the Ngo Dinh Diem government in case of
general elections under Geneva’s terms), emerging
opposition in the North (that would later become the
Nhan Van-Giai Pham affair and the Quynh Luu protests),
and the rising prominence of Southern-based leaders
such as Le Duan (officially made number 3 since 1951),
Le Duc Tho, and Pham Hung. These were elements that
affected the dynamics of the campaign and imposed new
limits on it but did not change its main goals or
character substantially. Events in the Soviet bloc in
early 1956 (Khrushchev’s speech, etc.) belonged to a
special class, however. The suspension of the land
reform and organizational purge, I believe, was more
or less caused by those events.
To be sure, as Prof. Tai noted, a full study of the
land reform requires perspectives from below. You
don’t have to look for these only in Orange County;
they can come from the most unexpected places. A few
years ago I was quite taken aback when a retired
Vietnamese professor in Hanoi suddenly reacted angrily
to my argument that the Vietnamese communist regime
was “more moderate” than its counterpart in China. It
turned out that the family of this professor (when he
was still a young man) had been persecuted and then
reinstituted during the land reform but his life and
career ever since had been subject to constant
suspicion and bitterness. Academic arguments stop
making sense when we talk about particular lives and
deaths. 10,000 or 13,500 doesn’t matter much to the
victims who just wanted to have their innocent youths
(or their dead fathers) back.
Thanks to Stephen Denney for giving the full
bibliographic reference for the documents, which I
forgot. I used the printed volumes but many volumes
are now downloadable from the party website.
Best,
Tuong Vu
----------
From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: 2007/5/27
Dear dong chi Tuong,
I completely agree with you in that "one should not regard economic or technical rationale
as a significant leadership motive in land redistribution." In fact, as both Moise's book and the Hungarian documents show, the land reform campaign produced a negative, rather than positive, effect on the economic situation.
In my view, it is worth putting the leadership's suspicion that "the Party at local levels had been thoroughly infiltrated by “reactionary” elements, including French spies," into a broad international context. As Georges Boudarel correctly pointed out, this intra-party witch-hunt seems to have been patterned upon an earlier CCP purge, the so-called "campaign against the AB-tuan." This purge, having peaked in 1930-32, was gradually re-examined in the mid-1930s, resulting in numerous rehabilitations. Interestingly enough, in 1933 the CCP leadership launched another irrational witch-hunt, but this time the targets were the Korean members of the Manchurian CCP organizations. While in 1930-32 the CCP had laid a great emphasis on recruiting Koreans (and other minorities), and the purges carried out in these years seem to have affected mainly Han Chinese party members, in 1933-34 the leadership changed course, and started to persecute Koreans, charging them with collaborating with the Japanese. It is particularly remarkable that the anti-Korean campaign closely coincided with an anti-Buryat campaign in Soviet-controlled Mongolia. Since the Soviet security organs were heavily involved in the anti-Buryat purges, one may assume that the anti-Korean campaign was also at least partly influenced by Soviet guidelines. Another interesting point is that the anti-Korean campaign, similarly to the "anti-AB-tuan campaign," was eventually re-examined, resulting in another wave of rehabilitations.
In other words, we can observe the repetition of the same pattern on at least three occasions: irrational witch-hunt, then re-examination and rehabilitations. I wonder what recent research have unearthed about the motives behind the "anti-AB-tuan purge." Since this was clearly the mother and model of the subsequent purges, it deserves great attention, all the more so because it predated Stalin's Great Terror by at least four years.
All the best,
Balazs Szalontai
Mongolian University of Science and Technology
----------
From: Vietnam Indochina Tours
Date: Sun, May 27, 2007 at 1:35 PM
Dear Tuong,
First, thank you for your recent extraordinary post concerning the quotas.
I have several questions/comments regarding your 1) and 2) in your post with
regard to the DRV motivation for proceeding with land reform.
1) China-inspired wartime strategy - Perhaps the first significant shift towards
active land reform began with the DRV's 14 July 1949 initial rent reduction
decree which corresponded to the tactical shift to a stronger position on
the battlefield from 1947 to 1949, and as well to the consolidation of Viet
Minh power within the revolution. It argues that the DRV began its movement
away from the strategy of the national front towards a strategy land reform
by mid-1949. Though the Chinese arrived at the border in late 1949/1950,
this shift in policy would have preceded their arrival and would have been
contemporaneous with the Chinese land reforms at least in some measure. A
series of events in 1951, following the battlefield victories along RC-4 in
1950 (which were in great measure thanks to the Chinese arrival at the
border), which seemed to be related followed: (1) the Viet Minh merged into
the Lien Viet in March 1951 signaling VWP dominion over the Lien Viet; (2)
the Dang Lao Dong re-emerged in 1951; and (3) Chinh's admonishment to the
nationalists during the 1951 Lien Viet Party Congress which signaled a
decisive change in policy, that the VWP, not the national front, was the
final authority. Could the shift had been as much prompted by China-inspired
wartime strategy as it was by these other events?
2) Bao Dai Land Reforms - Though the State of Vietnam/Bao Dai land reforms
were first discussed in 1951 they were enacted on 4 June 1953 (Ordinance No.
19) after the DRV's Population Classification Decree was issued on 2 March
1953 and the Mobilization Decree (second land rent reduction expanding
upon the first) was issued on 2 April 1953; both of these decrees were
enacted prior to the adoption of the Ordinance 19. The Agrarian Reform Law
followed on 4 December 1953 however the reform campaign envisioned by Truong
Chinh anticipated three steps to land reform, all inter-related and
inter-dependent to achieve the stated ends of land reform program; this
argues that the three primary laws governing the land reforms should be
viewed as three parts to the same effort, or an effort which pre-dated the
Bao Dai reforms.
There were also perhaps other considerations to the timing of the land
reform campaign as well: Giap, in reference to the Winter 1953-Spring 1954
Campaign (DBP, 2nd Edition, 57) held that a major new factor appeared, 'the
policy of systematic rent reduction,' obviously referring to the
Mobilization Decree. He attributes a dramatic rise in the morale of his
troops ("Hence, the combativeness increased greatly") after training his
troops on the decree, for they would now receive land, if they won. Could
also the timing of the DRV decrees been for the purposes of fostering morale
for the upcoming Winter/Spring Campaign and the battle of DBP itself for the
French occupation of DBP began on 20 November 1953? Contributing to this
were substantial battlefield losses in the immediate years prior, Hoa Binh,
Nghia Lo and Na San among them, which had the affect of depressing morale.
By this time too, after seven-years of war, all hope was fast diminishing
for an early result. Cumulatively, could it have been that in some
significant measure that the battlefield conditions prompted the decrees?
No doubt, as you note, there were clear aims to eliminate the landlords as a
class and use the land reforms as an organizational tool to purge the party
of undesirable elements (landlords and rich peasants), but I question the
relative significance of the Bao Dai reforms in prompting the DRV reforms vis-a-vis other factors and as
well feel that the connection to the China-inspired strategy may require more
elaboration to be thoroughly persuasive.
Though I am not at all clear on this, it appears that there were two series of mass mobilizations/land reforms cleaved by Geneva which principally addressed the liberated areas (before Geneva and exclusive of those areas adjoining the French occupied areas as well as the Autonomous Zones) and the newly liberated areas (Nam Dinh/Ninh Binh/Day River area, plus French post Geneva withdrawal areas) after Geneva; there too seems to be a period of calm after Geneva until the re-commencement of the land reforms . . . in allowance for the business at hand? famine, regroupment and the occupation of the French evacuation areas?
Totally agree that the existing literature tends to absolve the land reform of its surrounding dynamics.
Courtney Frobenius
----------
From: Judy Stowe
Date: 2007/5/28
Hi Balazs, The ICP or more specifically Truong Chinh was very familiar with the technique of condemning possible opponents as AB elements.According to a memorial volume published in Hanoi on the life of Tran Dang Ninh,( sorry I don't have the exact reference) in August 1941 following his return from the 8th Party Plenum in Pac Bo, Truong Chinh carried out a purge of the Bac Ky Party Committee on the grounds they were AB. Truong Chinh had experienced great difficulty in returning to the Red River Delta and suspected some Party members had betrayed his itinerary to the French. At the same time Van Tien Dung ( later General) relates in Mo Ky Nguyen Tu Do (NXB Van Hoa, Hanoi 1980) how in 1942 having been released from detention in Son La penitentiary, he was suspected of being AB and had to spend the next 18 months in the wilderness before being accepted back into the Party's leading ranks.
Regards Judy Stowe, Independent Researcher