The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930-1975 (Pacific Basin Institute Book) by David Elliott

Author:David Elliott
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781317453949
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2016-04-15T06:00:00+00:00

Impact of the 1965 Hard Line in My Tho

The effects of the 1965 hard line were felt for a long time. For one thing, the depopulation of the countryside had left the revolutionaries with a base of support largely consisting of poor peasants, and they had to take care of the interests of this constituency. By 1971, the base population of the revolution had been reduced to small clusters of poor peasants. It was not revolutionary policy or incentives that kept them there, however, but a combination of strong attachments to the revolution and a lack of capital and skills to move into more secure areas. There is some evidence in the interviews that portions of the harder class line were applied in selected test areas before it was officially adopted as a policy, and to some extent it predated the major refugee outflow of spring 1965. The rationale was clearly to mobilizx manpower and resources for the big military push described in the previous chapter, though its momentum carried it on into the period of the U.S. intervention, by which time the foreclosing of the possibility of quick victory, the increased support from North Vietnam and the socialist world, and the political awkwardness of a divisive class policy in a new stage more suited to the united-front approach rendered this policy obsolete and led to its abandonment by the end of the summer of 1965.

“Motivating the Peasants” was a campaign designed to “stir up resentment in people who had previously not had any resentment against the landlords, the Americans, or the GVN. They were going to use the denunciation technique (to kho or denouncing with recitation of grievances and miseries), telling the poor peasants that they had been exploited, assaulted, enslaved, and impoverished by the landlords and the Americans and their lackeys, and that this was the source of their misery” [DT109]. A district cadre recalled that in indoctrination sessions, “We were told to write denunciations against the imperialists and the feudalists. Each of the participants had to relate all the past sufferings caused to him and his family by the imperialists and the feudalists. We had to remember all our ancestors’ sufferings and make them known to other participants. Each of us had to read our denunciations aloud and, after our reading, other participants had to contribute to our denunciations by making additional comments aimed at increasing the degree of our hatred against the imperialists and the feudalists…. I wttnessed many of them crying. The atmosphere of hatred, in my opinion, was notably increased. Everyone swore he would die for the Party. In fact, this stage of the training was the main key of the indoctrination course” |DT69]. In the short term, this political agitation had a significant impact, especially among Party members. Over the longer term, however, the temporary intensification of class consciousness was supplanted among most cadres by the emotions of war, and the hatreds generated by combat and killing.

Economic restrictions on the civilian population that

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