title: Nationalism in the Aims and Motivations of the Vietnamese Communist Movement
Creators: name: Deane, Alexander
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2001
Subjects: subject: Vietnamese Communist Movement
subject: Ho Chi Minh
subject: Viet Minh
subject: Vo Nguyen Giap
subject: Democratic Republic of Vietnam
subject: Vietnamese identity

description: The Vietnamese people have always harboured an extraordinarily strong patriotic drive. But the government formed by Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) after the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) on the 2nd September 1945, the group that was to represent majority Vietnamese opinion until and after 1975, was spearheaded by the Vietminh (League for Vietnam's Independence) - a movement that did not define itself as Nationalist, but rather as an expressly Communist group. When the people of Vietnam looked for leadership, this was the obvious group to choose - the only movement prepared and willing to step in (other, more nationalist resistance groups had prematurely flourished and failed, as shall be discussed). In the Vietnam that found itself suddenly free at the close of the Second World War, no other lobby was ready, no group presented itself nationally as the Communists were and did. The Liberation Army that seized control of town after town was the military arm of the Viet Minh, formed in 1944 under Vo Nguyen Giap (b. 1912), an element of a movement that published its manifesto in February 1930, that had begun preparation and ideological training in the late 1920's in Guangzhou under Ho Chi Minh. Given the long preparation carried out by the Vietminh, the progression to the declaration of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as a Communist nation with Ho at its head was a natural one. Whilst that development seems logical given the conditions of the day, the manner in which those conditions were reached (or manipulated) has been the subject of intense debate. Was that natural progression one in which the ideologists of Communist revolution 'captured' the Nationalist movement, exploited a nationalistic fervour to produce the desired revolt, using the front of the Viet Minh to blend their esoteric dogmas with the more easily understood nationalist cause of resistance? This is a perception held by many modern historians - that, in effect, Communists are the parasites of the modernization process. This attitude was and is encouraged by examination of advice given to Asian revolutionaries by their Soviet counterparts; Grigori Zinoviev (1833-1936) - later to die by Stalin's order - argued in 1922 that Communists should co-operate with the rising nationalists in Asia, gain the leadership of their movement, and then cast aside the genuine national leaders. For by itself, the tiny Indochina Communist Party could never have hoped to attract the support of politically engaged Vietnamese, let alone the hearts and minds of the nation at large. This is the essence of the currently accepted analysis of the revolutionary Vietnamese setting - that the Communist lobby exploited a majority furious with the abuses of French rule, sliding Communism into a dominant role in Vietnamese life. The majority of people had not fought for a communist government, but to be rid of the colonial occupying power. Such a perception, as shall be discussed, is representative of the Western reading of the whole Southeast Asian region of the day. The Vietnamese people were accustomed to the use of violence to protect their independence; perennial opposition to expansionist China meant that few peoples in Asia had been compelled to fight longer and harder to retain their identity as a separate and independent state than the Vietnamese. Whilst the ability and commitment of the Vietcong in resistance to outside power has been recognised, the strong sense of Vietnamese identity in and of itself has never really been acknowledged beyond the most simplistic of terms by external observers, perhaps because of the difficulty of comprehending how such an emotion can form when looking at the odd shape of the nation on a map. Such a lack of awareness allows supposed Vietnam specialists to assert that the dominant Vietnamese self-assessment is the extent to which the country is not Chinese (and, to a lesser extent, not French) rather than entering into a more significant analysis of how a national identity formed: how, whilst certainly influenced by feelings of encirclement and domination, Vietnam also developed a separate, distinct sense of self. This, whilst a sense that has only relatively recently manifested itself in territorial demands, is a longstanding emotion and sense, in and of itself. Given an understanding of that sense or merely an awareness of its existence, the willingness of the Vietnamese to combat the most powerful nation on Earth, though certainly impressive, needs little explanation; this work has attempted to explore a more difficult question - why they chose the dogma that served them. The idea that the majority of the Vietnamese people had not fought for a communist government, but to be rid of the colonial occupying power is in truth the presentation of a false dichotomy. The fact that a group within a broad movement participates for different reasons from another group does not necessarily imply exploitation or pretense. Neither does the fact that one has a strong political ideology such as socialism forbid the possession of any other political inclination, such as patriotism. The concept of a socialist exploitation of Vietnamese nationalism will be opposed here: a discussion of the disputed importance of nationalism to the Vietnamese Communist movement in resistance, and of Communism to the nationalist movement, will form the subject of this essay. The unity of Vietnam under Communist government in 1975 seems a fitting end to the period to be considered. Much of interest - the politics behind partition, or the Communist-led conduct of war with America, for example - can be considered only briefly; fortunately, these are issues considered in great depth elsewhere. The central issue to this work shall be the development of the Communist movement in French Indochina, and the thesis herein shall be that nationalism and Marxist-Leninism occupied a symbiotic relationship in the motivation of the Communist movement and its chief practitioners in the nation once again known as Vietnam.