Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
in the hands of non-Vietnamese, and the proportion was almost 50% on the Laotian frontier. Minority leaders were given seats in the National Assembly and on the Lao Dong Party Central Committee) and in both the Party and government bureaucracies numerous special minority boards and commissions were formed. Nonetheless) the first DRV Five-Year Plan (1960) included an expanded agricultural resettlement program in which 1,000,000 Vietnamese farmers were to move from the delta into the tribal regions to open new farmlands. In fact, the new farms were seldom self-sufficient, much less a contribution to the national food supply. But they aided internal security: their presence debilitated the traditional tribal society, and provided a quasi-military presence on the borders. In 1959, security forces in the border regions were further strengthened with Armed Public Security Forces to counter alleged airdrops of "ranger spies" from South Vietnam.
In most respects, the DRV had gone further in its self-accusation than had the de-Stalinization campaigns in other communist countries. Its recovery was equally exaggerated. Hoang Van Chi) a former Viet Minh cadre, believes that the Land Reform I s advance into mass terror, followed by "Rectification" and reconciliation, had been carefully calculated by Ho as a "bamboo bending" in . deliberate emulation of the Chinese, and that Ho, no less than Mao) was fully aware that bloodshed would eventuate. 48/ Aiming ultimately at nothing less than a rapid and total transformation of traditional society, both leaders resorted to terror, followed by calculated relaxation and retightening of government control, as necessary steps to a disciplined populace. If such was in fact Ho’s views, events bore him out, for by 1959 the DRV was able to resume a forced advance toward collectivization of agriculture, which, though afflicted with occasional administrative setbacks and by production decreases) did not again prompt revolt. 49/
Other internal security messures taken by the DRV included strict controls over personal mobility, the allocation of large manpower resources to internal security functions, and the employment of the Lao Dong Party as a control mechanism and security censor. The regime eventually acquired, through its duplicate Party and governmental bureaucracies, contacts with and control Over virtually every citizen. The formal internal security apparatus was effectively supplemented by population control documentation (identification cards, licenses, travel permits), by incessant propaganda, by networks of informers) and by surveillance in compulsory mass organizations. By 1959) following 5 years of oppression, relaxation, and repression, the people of the DRV were effectively disciplined.
2. Progress Towards Socialism
The assertion of the DRV Constitution of 1960 that the nation
was "transforming its backward economy into a socialist economy with modern industry and agriculture ... " had substance, but entailed a substantial input from abroad. Though a primarily agricultural society,
