Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
non-communist nationalist parties in determining representation on the cabinet.15
In November, 1945, Ho disestablished the Indochinese Communist Party; and Association for Marxist Studies was formed when the ICP was abolished, but it was not until 1951 that the Communist Party again asserted itself openly in DRV politics.16 Ho ostensibly threw his entire energies into the Viet Minh, which he described in 1945 as having:
- "...millions of members from all social strata: intellectuals, peasants, workers, businessmen, soldiers, and from all nationalities in the country..."17
Subsequently, he moved to cut down the number of communists in cabinet posts within the government, and otherwise to enhance its coalition nature. Ho, the Viet Minh, and the DRV government stressed their identity with the people, and their patriotic, democratic and nationalist goals, foregoing communist cant. Ho's own writings of the period are to point:18
- "October, 1945: We must realize that all Government organs, from the Central to the Communal level, are the people's servants, that is to say they are appointed to work for the sake of the whole peoples interests.
- "October, 1945: We neither dislike nor hate the French people. On the contrary, we respect them as a great people who were first to propagate the lofty ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
- "November, 1945: The colonialists...have run counter to the promises concerning democracy and liberty that the Allied powers have proclaimed. They have of their own accord sabotaged their fathers' principles of liberty and equality. In consequence, it is for a just cause, for justice of the world, and for Vietnam's land and people that our compatriots throughout the country have risen to struggle, and are firmly determined to maintain their independence.
- "January, 1946: With a view to winning complete independence and bringing about a close cooperation between the various political parties to further strengthen the Government, it is now named the Provisional Coalition Government. At this moment, if all parties unite together, the Government can overcome difficulties.
- Political Objectives: To carry out satisfactorily the elections...to unify the various administrative organs according to democratic principles.
- Economic Objectives: To endeavor to develop agriculture; to encourage cultivation and stock breeding in order to check famine.
