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Abstract
This essay examines the links between the ideological debates in the communist world and the events surrounding the decision to stage the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam. It is based on memoirs, documents from the Public Record Office in London, and some documents from edited Vietnamese collections, as well as Vietnamese journals from the period in question. For analysts of DRV politics in the 1960s, there is still comparatively little in the way of documentary evidence to shed light on the nature of the communist leadership and its decision-making processes. This is true of the year leading up to the Tet Offensive of 1968: as David Elliott has shown in his recent study of the war in My Tho province (2003), Vietnamese accounts of this period present a contradictory and confused record. At the same time, the political events in Hanoi during the latter half of 1967, when what came to be called the `Anti-Party Affair' was revealed, have only been elucidated in unofficial memoirs and open letters from party veterans to the leadership. We know that this period was one of high tension in the communist world, when the Cultural Revolution in China was reaching its peak and relations between the USSR and China had sharply deteriorated. Yet we still know very little about how this tension may have affected policy decisions within North Vietnam. The author concludes that ideological conflicts within the North Vietnamese leadership had a strong bearing on events in 1967–68, and that they influenced not only military decisions but alsoVietnam's post-war development.
Notes
[1] Ilya Gaiduk and Mari Olsen have made extensive use of Soviet documents in their writing; on the Chinese side the works of Chen Jian and Qiang Zhai provide a guide to newly available Chinese documentation.
[2] The release in the spring of 2004 of documents related to decision-making during the Battle of Dien Bien Phu was perhaps the first sign of a change. A large number of Lao Dong party documents have been printed in the most recent volumes of Van Kien Dang [Party Documents], including a number of Central Committee resolutions in edited form, but still many of the key documents relating to the 1967 decisions regarding the Tet offensive are absent.
[3] A number of documents were collected during the war by the Combined Document Exploitation Centre (CDEC) in Saigon. These are now available on microfilm in the US National Archives.
[4] The Paris-based Vietnamese monthly Dien Dan [Forum] has published a number of these documents, some leaked by Hanoi officials.
[5] ‘Tai-lieu pho bien den Dang Vien va Can Bo Cac Doan The’, Theo Ke Hoach so 38/KH-TU ngay 7-4-1994 cua thuong vu Thanh Uy Hanoi [‘Documents Circulated to Party Members and Cadres’, Project 38/KH-TU, 7 April 1994 of the Standing Committee of the Hanoi City Committee], includes a review of the charges, under the heading ‘Hoat dong cua mot so the luc thu dich va chong doi’ [Activities of a number of enemy and opposition forces].
[6] See CitationStowe, ‘“Revisionism” in Vietnam’, for a summary of the Anti-Party Affair. While I am not in agreement with all of her conclusions, she has put together the only coherent account of these events which exists in English. CitationGeorges Boudarel wrote an earlier account of the affair in Cent Fleurs écloses dans la nuit du Vietnam, 256–264.
[7] See e.g. ‘CitationThu ngo cua cong dan Hoang Minh Chinh’.
[8] CitationOberdorfer, Tet!, 65–66.
[9] CitationGaiduk, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War, 139, notes 9 and 11.
[10] Military History Institute of Vietnam, Victory in Vietnam, 214.
[11] PRO, FCO 15/481, Hanoi to Foreign Office Unnumbered 22 August 1967, signed Mr. Colvin.
[12] PRO, FCO 15/481, 1/1/68 Conf. Brit. Congen, Hanoi, 30 March 1968 to SEAD, FO, signed G. S. Hirst.
[13] Oberdorfer, Tet!, 66. Oberdorfer says that Ho Chi Minh signed the decree on 10 November, but it is now known that Ho was in Beijing at the time.
[14] Vu Thu Hien, Dem giua ban ngay, 271–279 in particular.
[15] Vu Thu Hien, Dem giua ban ngay, 297.
[16] Vu Thu Hien, Dem giua ban ngay, 297.
[17] Vu Thu Hien, Dem giua ban ngay, 297.
[18] ‘Tai-lieu pho bien den Dang Vien va Can Bo Cac Doan The’, Theo Ke Hoach so 38/KH-TU ngay 7-4-1994 cua thuong vu Thanh Uy Hanoi, [Documents Circulated to Party Members and Cadres, Project 38/KH-TU 7 April 1994 of the Hanoi City Committee Standing Committee. A copy of this document is in my possession.]
[19] My thanks to Balazs Szalontai for providing me with a translation of this document: Memorandum: The Visit of Vietnamese Ambassador Hoang Luong to Dep. Foreign Minister Erdelyi (Hungarian Foreign Ministry Archives, VTS 1967.93.doboz,146,001025/19/1967).
[20] Vu Thu Hien, Dem giua ban ngay, 176.
[21] Yang Kuisong, ‘Mao Zedong and the Indochina Wars’, 24.
[22] CitationTran Quynh, ‘Hoi Ky ve Le Duan’, 18, describes the meetings in Wuhan and Chinese efforts to form a new International. Tran Quynh served as Le Duan's political secretary from the late 1950s until 1965.
[23] CitationHoang Van Hoan and Hoang Minh Chinh concur on this point in their separate memoirs. Hoang Van Hoan, Giot Nuoc Trong Bien Ca, 380; Hoang Minh Chinh, 29. In 2003 the Vietnamese published what is said to be a full text of Resolution 9 in Vol. 24 of Van Kien Dang [Party Documents] for 1963.
[24] For a discussion of Chinese aid to the DRV see CitationChen Jian, Mao's China and the Cold War, 215–229.
[25] Tran Quynh, ‘Hoi Ky ve Le Duan’, 30.
[26] Gaiduk, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War, 94.
[27] CitationMacFarquar and Fairbank, The Cambridge History of China, 232–247.
[28] PRO, FCO 15/535, Priority Washington to Foreign Office, Telegram no. 2233, 30 June 1967.
[29] PRO, FCO 15/535, Secret, Immediate Hanoi to Foreign Office, tel. No. 421, 3 July 1967.
[30] CitationHerring, The Secret Diplomacy of the Vietnam War, 717–725 on the meeting between the two French envoys, Pham Van Dong and HCM. On Ho Chi Minh's movements see CitationDuiker, Ho Chi Minh: A Life, 556.
[31] CitationElliott, The Vietnamese War, Chapter 19, 1054–1071.
[32] CitationSmith, ‘The Vietnam War ‘From Both Sides’, 25.
[33] Gaiduk, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War, 128.
[34] CitationMcNamara et al., Argument Without End, 227.
[35] CitationMilitary History Institute of Vietnam, Victory in Vietnam, 214.
[36] A 2001 Hanoi source says that both Giap and Le Duan were absent from the Politburo meeting of 20–24 October 1967: this source claims that these ‘comrades were absent for health reasons, as both were receiving medical treatment abroad’. See Lich Su Khang Chien Chong My Cuu Nuoc, Citation 1954 –1975, 32. My thanks to Merle Pribbenow for this reference.
[37] Hungarian National Archives (Magyar Orszagos Leveltar), XIX-J-1-j, Vietnam SZT 1968.87.doboz, 001051/1968. Report from the Embassy of Hungary in the DRV, 17 January 1968.
[38] Westad et al., 77 Conversations, 25; ‘Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and PhamVan Dong’, Beijing 10 April 1967, 104.
[39] See , The Village of Ben Suc and The Military Half, for unequalled reporting on the realities of the US Pacification Program.
[40] PRO, FCO, 15/481, 1014/67, Confidential report from Consul Brian Stewart to DF Murray, FO, Hanoi 9 November 1967.
[41] CitationYoung, ‘British Governments and the Vietnam War’, 126 – see note 29.
[42] Ralph Smith raised this point in his paper, ‘The Vietnam War “From Both Sides”‘, 10.
[43] Ralph Smith raised this point in his paper, ‘The Vietnam War “From Both Sides”‘, 22–23, refers to the view of Philip Davidson in his 1988 history of the war as representative of this analysis.
[44] See CitationWirtz, The Tet Offensive, 55
[45] CitationMoise, Land Reform in China and North Vietnam, 245–250.
[46] Gaiduk, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War, 6–9.
[47] Chen Jian, Mao's China and the Cold War, 232.
[48] Hoc Tap, 5 (1967): 11.
[49] CitationLe Duan, ‘Nam Vung Duong, 12.
[50] Le Duan, ‘Nam Vung Duong, 20.
[51] Le Duan, ‘Nam Vung Duong, 24
[52] CitationLe Duan, ‘Gui Trung Uong Cuc va Quan Uy Mien Nam’, 195.
[53] CitationNgo Vinh Long, ‘The Tet Offensive and its Aftermath’, 35.
[54] CitationLien-Hang T. Nguyen discusses this question in ‘The Sino-Vietnamese Split in the Post-Tet War in Indochina, 1968-1975’, 4. Also see Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 170–171, 178.
[55] Chen Jian, Mao's China and the Cold War, 233–234.
[56] CitationYang Kuisong, Mao Zedong and the Indochina Wars, 32–36.
[57] CitationLe Duc Tho, ‘Xay dung dang kieu moi mac-xit-le-nin-it vung manh’, 29–39.
[58] Tran Quynh, ‘Hoi Ky ve Le Duan’, 43.
[59] Hoc Tap, 2 (1968): 31.
[60] Hoc Tap, 2 (1968):, 32.
[61] Hoc Tap, 2 (1968), 32–34
[62] Moise, Land Reform in China and North Vietnam, 247.
[63] Note on decision making?
[64] SWB – BBC Monitoring of Short Wave Broadcasts, FE/2899/A3, 12 October 1968 press review.
[65] CitationTruong Chinh, ‘Doi doi nho on Cac Mac’, 16.
[66] Personal communication to me from the late Ton That Binh Minh (Manh Tuong).
[67] CitationPrados, Lost Crusader , 177.
[68] These excerpts come from a US analysis of the speech circulated by the French embassy in London. Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Série Conflit Vietnam, 11 (FNL), Extraits d'un rapport de Truong Chinh, diffusé par Radio Hanoi du 16 au 20 sept. 1968.
[69] Hoc Tap, 10 (1968): 17.
[70] SWB trans., FE/2903/C/7.
[71] PRO, FCO 15/481, Analysis of Truong Chinh's statement at Hanoi meeting to celebrate 150th Anniversary of Marx's birth, Lydia Giles, 29 August 1968.
[72] CitationVu Thu Hien, Dem giua ban ngay, 309–311.
[73] CitationMacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, ‘The Dispute Over Collectivization’, 209–233.
[74] CitationDang Phong and Beresford, Authority Relations and Economic Decision-making in Vietnam, 61–62.
[75] Nhan Dan, 29 January 1968, 2.
[76] CitationWestad et al., 77 Conversations, 28; ‘Zhou Enlai, Chen Yi, Pham Van Dong, Vo Nguyen Giap’, Beijing, 12 April 1967, 114–115.
[77] Bao Cao ve vu an “To chuc chong Dang, chong Nha Nuoc ta, di theo chu nghia xet lai hien dai va lam tinh bao cho nuoc ngoai” va thu cua anh Nguyen Trung Thanh, Ban Bao Ve Chinh Tri Noi Bo Trung Uong, 29-6-1995’ [Report on the Case of the ‘Organization to Oppose the Party and the State; to follow Modern Revisionism and gather Intelligence for a Foreign Country’ and the letter of Nguyen Trung Thanh, Committee for Internal Political Security, Central Committee, 29 June 1995], 3–8.
[78] Hungarian National Archives, Report of 17 January 1968 from Embassy of Hungary in the DRV. For many years the dates of the 15th, 16th and 17th plenums were not made public, but in 1998 a publication titled Dang Cong San Viet Nam, edited by CitationLe Mau Han, was published by the party publishing house. This shows that the 15th plenum was held in August 1968, the 16th in May 1969, and the 17th in September 1969.
[79] Russian State Archive of Modern History (RGANI), collection 89, inventory 54, document 8; Report of CC Secretary Hoang Anh to the 20th Plenum of the VWP, December 1970–January 1971 (Russian trans.), 8. According to the Vietnamese count, this was the 19th plenum.
[80] RGANI, collection 89, inventory 54, document 8, 9–10.
[81] RGANI, fond 89, inventory 54, file 10, Report by I. Scherbakov, 21 May 1971, ‘The Policy of the Lao Dong Party regarding a Solution of the Indochina Problem and our Tasks arising from the Decisions of the 24th Congress of the CPSU’, 8.
[82] Hoang Anh, Report to the 20th Plenum of the VWP, 27.