Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
The Lao Dong Party itself was purged with particular attention to the demonstrably unreliable rural membership acquired during the latter stages of Land Reform, and Nhan Dan through the spring of 1957 reported on continuing difficulty restoring the Party's rapport in the countryside. At the same time, the press carried a number of graphic accounts,of life in DRV prison camps. 4~/
In early 1957, in emulation of Mao, the DRV sponsored a "hundred flowers" campaign, and as in China, the regime was surprised by the sharpness of intellectual criticism which it evoked. 45/ The Hundred Flowers movement lasted in full bloom only about three months, but the literary license stimulated an unusual outflow of verse and fable, in which Land Reform, PAVN, foreign advisers, and the Party cadre were all criticized. Eventually the barbs became unbearable for the Lao Dong, and the flow of newsprint to opposition papers was cut, printers went on strike, and a particularly cutting journal, Nhan-Van ("Humanism," a pun on Nhan-Dan), was forbidden to publish. Arrests and trials followed and by mid-1957 the voice of the intellectuals had all but been stilled. Nevertheless, as late as 1960, official releases were still deprecating literature which did not meet regime criteria for "proletarian writings." By mid 1957, the DRV had reversed its policy on Catholics--six months after the "Rectification" rapprochement of December 1956. The denunciation of priests was resumed, and the Church was accused of political activities. In 1959, a more intense campaign of harassment was undertaken, including newspaper barrages depicting the Catholic clergy as the greatest obstacle to collectives in farm regions. Church activity was severely restricted ; all non-Vietnamese priests and nuns were expelled; and the movement of the native clergy was rigidly circumscribed. Catholic schools closed rather than accept DRV political instructors. Western observers in Hanoi in 1962 noted that congregations in Hanoi were composed invariably of the aged. Fall reported that as of that year there were but 5 bishops and 320 priests remaining in the DRV. 46/
The DRV, like the GVN also resorted to population relocations; the forced migration of Vietnamese from overcrowded, potentially dissident coastal region s into areas inhabited by minority peoples. The tribal people of North Vietnam comprise d about 15% of the population thinly settled over about 40% of the country. 47/ These folk had always resisted government from outside their tribal society . The French made only a pretense of governing them. Racially differentiated from the Vietnamese, the highlander-lowlander relationship historically proceeded from hostility on the one hand and contempt on the other. Even Truong Chinh was unwilling to press strongly his Land Reform Campaign against the patriarchal tribal system, but to the extent that he did, violence ensued. In Vo Nguyen Giap's catalog of mistakes recited on 29 October 1956 (supra), these difficulties were admitted, and concessions to the minorities; were part of the Rectification of Errors. The Constitution of 1960 guaranteed the preservation of
minority languages and cultures, and autonomy for local government. More than 70% of public administration in the northeast border region was placed
