Number One Realist by Moir Nathaniel L.;

Author:Moir, Nathaniel L.; [Moir, Nathaniel L.;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781787384804
Publisher: Hurst
Published: 2021-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

More than any other subject, issues related to land in North Vietnam formed internal challenges that divided and threatened Lao Dong authority. According to Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, “From the outset, collectivization exposed tensions between what Vietnam’s national leaders wanted and what a large proportion of villagers in the Red River delta preferred.”125 Fall had written about problems stemming from land reform in 1953, but, after subsequent land-related initiatives in 1955, he returned to the subject with even more critical analysis in a January 1957 article for Far Eastern Survey called “Crisis in North Viet-Nam.”126 Even though he had respected the Viet Minh’s drive for independence in prior years, he despised zealous ideology and implementation of policies that needlessly inflicted harm on civilians. He recognized that land reform contributed to mass mobilization against the French at a pivotal point in 1953. However, harsh reforms also created problems, including “The indiscriminate lumping together of practically all land-owning groups down to the middle-class farmers into the category of ‘exploiters’ [which] brought about a dangerous condition in which the regime risked alienating more farmers than it could afford to in time of war.”127

The bigger problem was that the Viet Minh did not release their grip over farmers with the end of the First Indochina War. If anything, villagers faced even greater persecution as a series of farmers’ revolts in Nghe An Province indicated in November 1956.128 Also writing in an article in the Washington, DC Sunday Star, Fall noted, “A land reform program, designed to take away all land from ‘capitalist landlords’ was pushed through ruthlessly, until even the small farmers, driven to the wall by Communist cadres, rebelled against the government.”129 His broader purpose was to point out how “at the very same time as the city of Budapest rose against the Russians in November 1956, at the other end of the world Vietnamese farmers of Nghe An Province rose against their own brand of Communist oppressors—and suffered the same fate as the Hungarians, with the difference that their heroic stand never received any of the publicity which surrounded the plight of the Hungarians.” The resistance of the North Vietnamese farmers “had been so fierce that, for a time at least, Ho Chi Minh’s government had to stop its peasant purges. More than 50,000 innocently imprisoned farmers were released from jails and labor gangs … and for a brief time some literary magazines critical of the regime were allowed to appear. But not for long.”130

The revolts in Nghe An were especially surprising because “the territory was considered so thoroughly permeated by Communist ideas that the DRV had begun to establish Soviet-type collective farms in 1954. That open revolt against the regime should nevertheless take place in this area suggests the depth of popular resentment against the Hanoi government.”131 This was a unique and challenging view to present accurately and objectively in a US publication at the time. It was one thing to access information in South Vietnam or see the Diem administration’s repression in action, but learning of dissent in the north was rare in the late 1950s.

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