Alex Thai Dinh Vo
Published: 2019
Total Pages: 436
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This interdisciplinary research investigates the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's (DRV) Chinese-inspired mass mobilization and land reform policies to explore the rise of the communist revolution in Vietnam and the country's violent transformation from colonialism to communism, from 1945 to 1960. I situate this post-WWII period of transformation in North Vietnam within the context of decolonization and the global Cold War and argue that land reform was the communist-led DRV's most important domestic policy during the First and Second Indochina Wars against France and the United States. Drawing on Vietnamese, English, French, and Chinese sources, including interviews and previously untapped archival documents, the dissertation demonstrates that the mobilization of the masses to implement land reform was an orchestrated class campaign to mobilize popular support against colonial French rule. This support contributed to the 1954 defeat of French forces at Dien Bien Phu, which essentially led to the division of Vietnam into two opposing polities-Democratic of (North) Vietnam and Republic of (South) Vietnam. Moreover, land reform legitimized and consolidated socio-political power for the DRV by abolishing established, village-level bureaucratic and social-cultural power structures that could block the Party-state's transformation of the state, society, economy, and culture. Those tasks paved the way for full-scale modernization, following the Sino-Soviet model, on agricultural collectivization and industrialization. The Party-state was then able to assume control over the population by subjugating it to the repressive authority of the state, setting the foundation to militarily outlast the United States in the Second Indochina War. Thus, land reform was the Party-state's most important domestic policy during this transitional period as it allowed the Party-state to decolonize, to consolidate power, and to transition Vietnam into an authoritarian socialist state. These achievements, however, resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being falsely and summarily prosecuted, tortured, ostracized, or executed. Ultimately, this dissertation rectifies the imbalances in the traditional Western-centric literature of the wars in Vietnam by emphasizing the centrality of non-Western actors-Vietnamese and Chinese-and illuminating the significance of domestic policies such as class mobilization and land reform in nation-building and in determining the trajectories of national and international affairs and the outcome of conflicts. Consequently, it presents a better understanding of the Party-state, its decision-making and rule.
