Population Changes, Hanoi 1945-54

--------- Original Message ---------

From : Pierre Asselin <passelin@sdsu.edu>

To : VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Date : 2021-07-21 (Wed) 03:05:03

Subject : [Vsg] Hanoi Population Changes, 1945, 1954

Cherished Comrades:

It's my understanding that in 1945 and then again after 1954 rural Vietnamese who had fought with/supported the Viet Minh moved en masse into Hanoi, along with their families, as many "old" and often francophile Hanoi families were driven out/moved out/followed the French out.

If this is correct, could any of you recommend literature in French or in English addressing these specific matters? I should probably know this, but tragically Vietnam remains a war and only a war to me.....

Thanks and all my best,

Pierre

Pierre Asselin

Professor of History - Dwight E. Stanford Chair in US Foreign Relations

San Diego State University

History Department

5500 Campanile Dr.

San Diego, CA 92182-6050

Latest book: https://www.amazon.com/Vietnams-American-War-Cambridge-Relations/dp/1107510503

From: Vsg <vsg-bounces@mailman11.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of GROSSHEIM MARTIN

Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2021 6:25 PM

To: vsg@u.washington.edu

Subject: Re: [Vsg] Hanoi Population Changes, 1945, 1954

Dear list,

Comrade Pierre, you are right: After 1954 Hanoi became "red". From 1961 to 1965 the DRV authorities in Hanoi and other cities forced thousands of Vietnamese who were classified as politically unreliable to resettle in remote areas. Others were sent into reeducation camps. In the same vein, people with a "bad CV" (lý lịch không trong sáng) from francophile families who had become teachers were not allowed to teach in Hanoi, Hai Phong etc., but only in remote provinces.

My German habilitation treatise "The Party and the War" has a sub-chapter on this topic, mostly based on official histories of the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security and official decrees. My paper "Fraternal Support: The East German ‘Stasi’ and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War," Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, CWIHP Working Paper #71, 2014. <https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/CWIHP_Working_Paper_71_East_German_Stasi_Vietnam_War.pdf >, 38 pp (also in Vietnamese: <http://nghiencuuquocte.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Nghiencuuquocte.net-232-Stasi-Dong-Duc-va-Viet-Nam-DCCH.pdf>) addresses the issue in a short paragraph which I just insert here:

"The first round-up of about 570 “counterrevolutionary elements” actually took place in 1961, but in the following years the campaign was stepped up. In 1962 in Hà Nội, Hai Phong, and other cities, approximately 4,000 people who used to work for the colonial administration and the pro-French Bảo Đại government, as well as others who were considered to be politically unreliable, were sent to re-education camps in remote regions in the north.¹⁷ According to an official Vietnamese-language publication, in the period from 1961 to 1965 the Ministry of Public Security sent 11,365 individuals who were “considered dangerous to our security and social order to collective re-education [i.e., prison].”¹⁸ After the rectification campaign which took place in the early-1950s and the settling of the crisis in 1956 (that is, the land reform campaign and the Nhân Văn Giải Phẩm movement), the systematic purges in the urban areas of North Vietnam and the resettling of suspect and unreliable persons to remote regions from 1962 to 1965 was a further step in consolidating the party’s power over the DRV. After the end of the war in 1975, these resettlement programs became a model for handing “elements” in the south deemed unreliable and considered a threat to the new “revolutionary government.” The aim of resettling of suspicious “elements” was to physically exclude them from the social body of Vietnam."

Footnote 17 Phạm Văn Quyền et al., eds., Bộ Công An. 60 năm Công An Nhân Dân Việt Nam (1945-2005) (Sixty Years of the

People’s Public Security Forces, 1945-2005) (Hà Nội: NXB Công An Nhân Dân, 2006), 201-202; Bộ Công An, 65

năm Công an nhân dân Việt Nam, 148.

Footnote 18 Bộ Nội Vụ. Tổng cục I (Ministry of Interior. General Department I), Major Nguyen Hung Linh and Lieutenant

Colonel Hoang Mac, Lực lượng chống phản động: Lịch sử biên niên (1954-1975) (Anti-Reactionary Forces:

Chronology of Events, 1954-1975) (Hà Nội: NXB Công An, 1997), 134. I would like to thank Merle Pribbenow for

providing me with some Vietnamese language sources and his translations." (p. 6)

I am not aware of any systematic study addressing this matter, but hopefully I am wrong.....

I believe there is a Vietnamese novel on the matter, but don't remember the exact title.

Best wishes,

Martin

Martin Grossheim

Associate Professor of Vietnamese History

Department of Asian History

Seoul National University

Latest publication: "Reunification without reconciliation? Social conflicts and integration in Vietnam after 1975", in: Journal of Humanities Vol. 78, No. 2 (2021): 459-488. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17326/jhsnu.78.2.202105.459

Website: https://vietnamesisch-lernen.com/ (How to learn Vietnamese - for German speakers)