Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
The realities of the Chinese presence alone required Ho Chi Minh to use circumspection in dealing with rival nationalist groups. Why the Chinese did not follow through, and simply oust Ho's government in favor of a VNQDD/Dong Minh Hoi coalition is not known. It appears that venality played a part – Chiang Fa Kuei and other warlords were direct beneficiaries of an official DRV "gold week" in September, 1945, in which the state appealed to the citizenry for scraps of gold as "a contribution to the finance of national defense."44 Allegedly this campaign produced some 500 pounds of gold and 20 million piastres, and for it the DRV received from the warloards, besides toleration, weapons the Japanese had in their possession — a reported 40,000 arms, including mortars, artillery pieces, and 18 tanks.45
But Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh were constrained to go well beyond bribery. In setting up the government of 2 September 1945, they had been carefuly to include non-Viet Minh politicians, and to hold ICP representation to 6 to 16 cabinet seats. On 23 October, the Viet Minh signed a pact with a dissident faction of the Dong Minh Hoi, purportedly in the interest of the "common struggle against the aggressive attempts of the colonial French, in order to defend the liberty and independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam."46 But other elements of the Dong Minh Hoi and the VNQDD persisted in their attack on the Viet Minh, making a particular point of communist domination.
Ho Chi Minh and the ICP then decided on a drastic move. Following a three day ICP conclave of 9 to 11 November, 1945, the ICP leadership issued the following declaration:
- "1. Whereas, in consideration of the given historical situation, both internationally and internally, the present moment is precisely an exceptional occasion for Viet Nam to reconquer her unitary independence;
- "2. Whereas, in order to complete the Party's task in this immense movement of the Vietnamese people's emanicipation, a national union conceived without distinction of class and parties is an indispensable factor;
- "3. Wishing to prove that the communists, in so far as they are advance guard militants of the Vietnamese people, are always ready to make the greatest sacrifices for national liberation, are always disposed to put the interest of the country above that of classes, and to give up the interests of the Party to serve those of the Vietnamese people;
- "4. In order to destroy all misunderstandings, domestic and foreign, which can hinder the liberation of our country, the Central Executive Committee of the Indochina Communist Party in meeting assembled on November 11, 1945, has decided to voluntarily dissolve the Indochina Communist Party.
