Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
- "4. There cannot be any alliance with or any concession to the Trotskyite group. We must do everything possible to lay bare their faces as henchmen of the fascists and annihilate them politically.
- "5. To increase and consolidate its forces, to widen its influence, and to work effectively, the Indochinese Democratic Front must keep close contact with the French Popular Front because the latter also struggles for freedom, democracy, and can give us great help.
- "6. The Party cannot demand that the Front recognizes its leadership. It must instead show itself as the organ which makes the greatest sacrifices, the most active and loyal organ. It is only through daily struggle and work that the masses of the people acknowledge the correct policies and leading capacity of the Party and that it can win the leading position.
- "7. To be able to carry out this task, the Party must uncompromisingly fight sectarianism and narrow-mindedness and organize systematic study of Marxism-Leninism in order to raise the cultural and political level of the Party members and help the non-Party cadres raise their level. We must maintain close contact with the French Communist Party.
- "8. The Central Executive Committee must supervise the Party press to avoid technical and political mistakes. (E.g., in publishing comrade R's biography, the Lao-Dong revealed his address and his origin, etc. It also published without comment etc. his letter saying that Trotskyism is a product of boastfulness, etc.)."9
In August, 1939, however, the Hitler-Stalin alliance was contracted, and the following month all varieties of communists, both domestic and colonial were declared anathema by the French. In Vietnam, communist organizations were once more thoroughly destroyed by police action, the Trotskyites suffering particularly.10 Once the covert segments of the ICP survived.
That the ICP endured the French purges of 1930–1932 and 1939–1940 testifies to its strength, for the same attacks emasculated the VNQDD and all other revolutionary Vietnamese political parties. At the outset of World War II, the ICP enjoyed a virtual monopoly on organized Vietnamese nationalism, a position attributable to (1) ruthlessness of the French in eliminating competition; (2) superior communist discipline, training, and hence, survivability; (3) inherently better communist strategy and tactics for balking the French colonial administration and mobilizing popular opinions; and (4) French tolerance of "popular front" communists generated by the ascendancy of the Left in metropolitan France during the mid-30's. The French, by denying political expression to moderate Vietnamese nationalists, polarized native political sentiments, and invited popular support of the more vehement and radical solutions proffered by the ICP.
