Land reform in North Vietnam in the 50's, arbitrarily, killed and/or imprisoned the top 5% of land owners. Of which many were Vietnamese Workers Party aka Communist Party officials. At the time this was written about in, "The New International, " the journal of the Shactmanites, and much later in, "The International Socialist Review, " of the SWP, circa '75, by the French Trotskyist, Pierre Rousset. See his chapter in the Tariq Ali collection, "The Stalinist Legacy, " Lynne Rienner publishers. Also, "Vietnam Under Communism, " by a Vietnamese exile, published by Hoover Inst.
Wdwin Moise, is the major source thanked by Gabriel Kolko in his book on the Vietnam War. Michael Pugliese http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~eemoise/54-64.html Edwin E. Moise, Land Reform in China and North Vietnam: Consolidating the Revolution at the Village Level. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1983. xiv, 305 pp. The land reform of 1953-56 in North Vietnam, which distributed the land of rich landlords to the poor peasants as private property, was botched in an astonishingly stupid and brutal fashion. The mess was cleaned up very skillfully, but until the cleanup was just about finished (1958), the authorities in North Vietnam had very little attention to spare for events in South Vietnam. http://www.revolutionary-history.co.uk/backiss/Vol3/No2/OnViet.html http://www.marxist.com/Asia/vietnam1945.html ietnam 1945 - The derailed revolution By Jim Hensman
In 1975 the Vietnamese people gained a historic victory, driving out the US
armed forces and liberating the south. After 28 years of war - costing two
million Vietnamese lives, the defoliation of 10% of the total land area, and
the destruction of much of industry and transport - the country was reunited
and capitalism and landlordism abolished throughout....
Membership of the Trotskyist parties grew to around 5000, and the CP split with
a considerable part of its working-class membership joining the Trotskyists.
The historian J. Buttinger commented of this period: "…the Communist party for
several years was overshadowed by a Trotskyist movement so strong as to make it
for a short time the leading group in the entire communist and nationalist
camp."...
The working class had created a number of workers' militias to defend the
revolution. In Saigon these came together to form a Workers' Guard under
Trotskyist leadership. This was viewed with horror by the CP leaders. "Those
who incite the people to take up arms will be considered as saboteurs and
provocateurs, enemies of national independence," they screamed. Instead, they
declared: "Our democratic liberties will be guaranteed by our democratic
allies." Who were these "democratic allies"?...
>From September 12, British troops, mostly Indian Gurkhas, commanded by General
Gracey started to arrive. They were greeted with demonstrations organised by
the Vietminh with the slogan (in English) "Welcome to the Allies!" The Vietminh
even turned over their own headquarters to the British forces.
The Peoples' Committees denounced the Vietminh collaboration with the British forces. As a result, on September 14 the Vietminh police chief and Communist Party stalwart Duong Bach Mai, sent an armed detachment to where the Peoples' Committees were meeting in assembly. They broke it up, tearing down the red flags that bedecked its assembly rooms, destroying its records, and arresting and imprisoning its leaders.... The masses responded magnificently to the attempt to re-impose colonial rule. An insurrection followed and most of Saigon was taken over by the workers. Mass demonstrations rocked the city, the market was burned down and barricades erected. Power plants and the radio station were attacked and a general offensive launched against the imperialist forces... Ta Thu Thau, the other leading Trotskyist, had gone to the north of the country to help organise famine relief. Ellen Hammer, an American writer, described what happened on his return. "On orders from Hanoi he was arrested on the way. He was tried three times by local Peoples' Committees and acquitted each time. But Tran Van Giau [the CP leader], ruthless in the pursuit of power, reportedly felt that his position in the South was being threatened by Ta Thau's popularity. He seems to have served a sort of ultimatum on the Vietminh Central Committee in Hanoi - either himself or Thau - and Hanoi gave way. Ta Thu Thau was killed in Quang Ngai, Annam, on the orders of Tran Van Giau." Thau had been a leader of workers in China in the abortive uprising of the Canton Commune of 1927 in China, and had survived its defeat by counter- revolutionary troops. He spent years in prison including six years in Paulo Condor, where torture had left him partially paralysed. He had been elected to the Saigon Municipal Council and the Cochin China Colonial Council on several occasions...
First published in the South African Marxist magazine Inqaba Ya Basabenzi September 1986 issue 20/21