North Vietnam
North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, was a country in Southeast Asia from 1945 to 1976, with sovereignty recognized in 1954. A member of the communist Eastern Bloc, it opposed the French-supported State of Vietnam and later the Western-allied Republic of Vietnam. North Vietnam launched a successful military offensive against South Vietnam in 1975 and ceased to exist the following year when it merged with the South to become the contemporary Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
During the August Revolution following World War II, Vietnamese communist revolutionary Hồ Chí Minh, leader of the Việt Minh Front, declared independence on 2 September 1945 and proclaimed the creation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The communist-led Viet Minh, cloaked in nationalism, was designed to appeal to a wider population than the Indochinese Communist Party could command.
From the beginning, the communist-led Việt Minh sought to consolidate power by purging other rival groups. Meanwhile, France moved in to reassert its colonial dominance over Vietnam in the aftermath of WW2, eventually prompting the First Indochina War in December 1946. During this guerrilla war, the Việt Minh captured and controlled most of the rural areas in Vietnam, which led to French defeat in 1954. The negotiations in the Geneva Conference that year ended the war and affirmed Vietnamese independence. The Geneva Accords provisionally divided the country into a northern zone and a southern zone along the 17th parallel, stipulating general elections scheduled for July 1956 to "bring about the unification of Viet-Nam". The northern zone was controlled by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and became commonly called North Vietnam, while the southern zone, under control of the non-communist State of Vietnam, was commonly called South Vietnam.
Supervision of the implementation of the Geneva Accords was the responsibility of an international commission consisting of India, Canada, and Poland, respectively representing the non-aligned, the capitalist, and the communist blocs. The United States, which did not sign the Geneva Accords, stated that it "shall continue to seek to achieve unity through free elections supervised by the United Nations to ensure that they are conducted fairly". Meanwhile, the State of Vietnam strongly opposed the partition of the country, with its prime minister Ngô Đình Diệm announcing in July 1955 that the State of Vietnam would not participate in elections, claiming that it had not signed the Geneva Accords and was therefore not bound by it, and raising concerns that an unfair election would occur under the Việt Minh governance in North Vietnam. In October 1955, Diệm's government held its own referendum, which was widely marred by electoral fraud, to depose Chief of State Bảo Đại and established the Republic of Vietnam with Diệm as its first president.
Failure to unify the country by referendum led to the Vietnam War in 1955. Supported by their communist allies, mainly China and the Soviet Union, the northern People's Army of Vietnam and the southern National Liberation Front of South Vietnam guerrillas fought against the Military Forces of South Vietnam. To prevent other countries from becoming communist in Southeast Asia, the United States intervened in the conflict along with Western Bloc forces from South Korea, Australia and Thailand, who heavily supported South Vietnam militarily. The conflict spread to neighboring countries and North Vietnam supported the Lao People's Liberation Army in Laos and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia against their respective US-supported governments. By 1973, the United States and its allies withdrew from the war, and the unsupported South Vietnam was swiftly overrun by the superior Northern forces.
The Vietnam War ended on 30 April 1975 and saw South Vietnam come under the control of the Việt Cộng's Provisional Revolutionary Government, which led to the reunification of Vietnam into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on 2 July 1976. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the unified Vietnamese state experienced economic decline, refugee crises and conflicts with the Khmer Rouge in 1977 and China in 1979. The expanded Socialist Republic retained Soviet-style political culture, economic system and memberships in Eastern Bloc organisations such as COMECON until the Đổi Mới economic reforms in 1986 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Etymology
The official name of the North Vietnamese state was the "Democratic Republic of Vietnam". The South was known as the "Republic of Vietnam".Việt Nam was the name adopted by Emperor Gia Long in 1804. It is a variation of "Nam Việt", a name used in ancient times. In 1839, Emperor Minh Mạng renamed the country Đại Nam. In 1945, the nation's official name was changed back to "Vietnam". The name is also sometimes rendered as "Viet Nam" in English. The term "North Vietnam" became common usage in 1954, when the Geneva Conference provisionally partitioned Vietnam into communist and non-communist parts.
History
Hồ Chí Minh's leadership (1945–1960)
Proclamation of the republic
After nearly three centuries of partition by feudal dynasties, Vietnam was again under one single authority in 1802 when Gia Long founded the Nguyễn dynasty, but the country became a French protectorate after 1883 and under Japanese occupation after 1940 during World War II. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt was opposed to a return to French rule in Indochina, and proposed placing the region under United Nations trusteeship.Soon after Japan surrendered, the Việt Minh in the August Revolution entered Hanoi, and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed on 2 September 1945 establishing independence and a new government for the country, replacing French rule and the Nguyễn dynasty. Hồ Chí Minh became leader of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
File:Mít tinh chào mừng Cách mạng Tháng Tám năm 1945 thành công tại Nhà hát Lớn Hà Nội.jpg|thumb|A Viet Minh rally outside the Hanoi Opera House during the August Revolution, 1945.
Early periods
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam claimed sovereignty over all of Vietnam, but during this time, several areas, particularly in the South, were not aligned with the Viet Minh. The successive collapse of French, then Japanese power, followed by the disputes among the political factions, had been accompanied by widespread violence in the countryside. On 16 August 1945, Hồ Chí Minh organized the National Congress in Tân Trào. The Congress adopted 10 major policies of the Việt Minh, passing the General Uprising Order, selecting the national flag of Vietnam, choosing the national anthem and selecting the National Committee for the Liberation of Vietnam, which later became the Provisional Revolutionary Government led by Hồ Chí Minh. On 12 September 1945, the first British troops arrived in Saigon, and on 23 September 1945, French troops occupied the police stations, the post office, and other public buildings. The salient political fact of life in Northern Vietnam was that the Chinese Nationalist Army occupied it, and the Chinese presence had forced Hồ Chí Minh and the Việt Minh to accommodate Kuomintang-supported Vietnamese nationalists.In January 1946, the Việt Minh held an election, mainly in the North, to establish a National Assembly. There were few competitive races and the party makeup of the Assembly was determined in advance of the vote. Despite not joining the election, the Vietnamese Nationalist Party and the Vietnam Revolutionary League were given 70 seats in the National Assembly in an effort to establish an inclusive government. Former Prime Minister Trần Trọng Kim claimed there were places where people were forced to vote for the Việt Minh. The Vietnamese Nationalist Party kidnapped Giáp and the Propaganda Minister Trần Huy Liệu and held them for three weeks until Ho Chi Minh agreed to remove Giáp and Liệu from the cabinet. As a result, the Vietnamese Nationalist Party's Vũ Hồng Khanh became defence minister, with Giáp as his deputy.
In June 1946, Chinese Nationalist troops evacuated Hanoi, and on 15 June, the last detachments embarked at Haiphong. After the departure of the British in 1946, the French controlled a part of Cochinchina, South Central Coast and Central Highlands since the end to the Southern Resistance War. The Viet Minh sought to consolidate power by terrorizing and purging rival Vietnamese nationalist groups and Trotskyist activists. In 1946, the Franco-Chinese and Ho–Sainteny Agreements enabled French forces to replace the Chinese north of the 16th parallel and facilitated a coexistence between the DRV and the French that strengthened the Viet Minh while undermining the nationalists. That summer, the Viet Minh colluded with French forces to eliminate nationalists, targeted for their ardent anti-colonialism.
When the Chinese nationalist army withdrew from Vietnam on 15 June 1946, in one way or another, Võ Nguyễn Giáp decided that the Việt Minh had to completely control the government. Võ Nguyễn Giáp began immediate action with the goal of spreading Việt Minh leadership. The Allied Powers were supported by the Vietnamese Nationalist Party. According to Cecil B. Currey, this organization, which borrowed the revolutionary name of Vietnamese Nationalist Party of 1930, was founded by Nguyễn Thái Học and, according to David G. Marr, the Vietnamese Communist Party under Hồ Chí Minh tried to ban the Vietnamese Nationalist Party. Võ Nguyễn Giáp gradually sought to marginalize the opposition such as the pro-Japan nationalist groups, the Trotskyists, the anti-French nationalists, and a catholic group known as the "Catholic Soldiers". On 19 June 1946, the Việt Minh Journal reportedly vehemently claimed "reactionaries sabotage the Franco-Vietnamese preliminary agreement on 6 March".
When France declared Cochinchina, the southern third of Vietnam, a separate state as the "Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina" in June 1946, Vietnamese nationalists reacted with fury. In November, the National Assembly adopted the first Constitution of the Republic.