COMMUNIST STRATEGY AND TACTICS OF EMPLOYING PEASANT DISSATISFACTION OVER CONDITIONS TENURE FOR REVOLUTIONARY ENDS

OF LAND

IN VIETNAM

(A Study by Dr. Paul S. Taylor for the Foreign Operations and Government Information Subcommittee)

Summary

The lineage of current reliance upon peasant disaffection to support revolutionary guerrilla warfare in Vietnam traces directly back through the Chinese revolution of 1949 to the Bolshevik revolution of

1917.

This reliance upon peasants' discontent with land tenure conditions rests on principles deeply embedded in communist theory and practice. Lenin's classic exhortation to his followers was "to work wherever the masses are to be found." 1 This included the peasant masses. Mao Tsetung elaborated the same thesis, applying it to the peasantry of China. "Without a political goal," he said, "guerrilla warfare must fail, as it must if its political objectives do not coincide with the aspirations of the people and their sympathy, cooperation and assistance cannot be gained." Mao stressed that "any tendency... to belittle politics, to isolate war from politics, and to become advocates of 'war is everything,' is erroneous and must be corrected." 2

In the midst of the 1917 Russian revolution, Lenin directed his appeals both to peasant discontent with landlords and to peasantsoldier war weariness, using the slogan, "Peace, Bread and the Land." While the peasants and peasant-soldiers were taking the land from the landlords in the country, the urban workers were freed to perform as the "revolutionary force" taking power in the cities.

In China Mao Tse-tung relied even more heavily and directly upon the peasants. There he organized the discontented peasantry itself into the "revolutionary force" that gained power over the mainland in 1949.

In Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh chose guidance from the Chinese communist experience and likewise organized peasants into a "revolutionary force." Current guerrilla warfare is the logical and planned result of building upon a foundation of peasant discontent over land tenure and the society shaped by it.

In both China and Vietnam, Communist leadership has successfully linked nationalism-with its antagonism toward foreign intrusions whether from French, Japanese or Americans-to land tenure with its class antagonisms. In Russia, too, foreign "imperialism" was used as a rallying cry. These twin motivations have welded the peasants into the present "revolutionary force" in Vietnam.

1 Quoted in Michael Charles Conley. "Communist Thought and Viet Cong Tactics." Asian Survey v. VIII. p. 209. 2 Quoted in Tang Tsu. Problems of Communism v. XIV. p. 6.

In Vietnam, Communist leadership has raised discontent over land tenure to a visibly "burning issue" whenever to do so would favor its ends; it has allowed it to slumber when it would not. Thus during the Viet Minh era prior to 1954, the leadership stressed nationalism, and soft-pedaled land tenure discontent except as identified directly with foreign-owned plantations or indirectly with landlord "collaborators" with the French. After 1954, with the French removed, the leadership began to emphasize land tenure grievances as such, exploiting these to gain and consolidate local power and build a national anti-landlord "revolutionary force."

Whether or not peasant discontents over land tenure rise to the surface at any particular moment as a visibly "burning issue," these discontents clearly identify a pervasive and enduring "gut" issue. Communist leadership has exploited this for a half century to gain power in the western world, for four decades in China, and for nearly that time in Vietnam. Its successes-whatever the price paid, and however its ultimate goals may differ from current peasant goals-are visible not only in Russia and China, but in the day to day happenings in the guerrilla warfare of Vietnam.

I. Introduction

Present Viet Cong-National Liberation Front control of large parts of rural Vietnam rests in substantial degree upon sustained appeal to peasant dissatisfaction originating during the era of Viet Minh resistance against French and Japanese. Specifically, appeal is made to discontent over the conditions of land tenure-peasant-landlord relations and landlessness. The VC-NLF place themselves before the peasants in the role of liberators from the power of the landlords. On the other side, they claim, are the landlords supported by the GVN, which, in turn, is supported by the "U.S. imperialist." Thus they link peasant dissatisfaction to nationalism, a combination that proved its effectiveness particularly in China. They propose, and where in control they put into effect, changes in land tenure to eliminate landlord control and to satisfy peasants' land hunger. The program is designed to erase the pre-existing socio-economic-political-so called "feudal"-peasant structure, and, at a pace that conditions will permit, to replace it in the end with a new form of society. The immediate purpose is to use peasant unrest as a "revolutionary political force," a willing supplier of rice, personnel, information, concealment, and other forms of assistance to insurgent forces.

II. Lineage: From Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung to Ho Chi Minh

Those who lead and inspire the revolutionary forces in Vietnam describe their own efforts as but the latest in a direct line descended from the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and from those thinkers whom they regard as its intellectual forbears. In their eyes the lineage is clear. Ho Chi Minh stated this plainly in his "Political report read at the Second National Congress of the Viet Nam Workers Party held in February 1961":

After World War One (1914-1918), to make up for their heavy losses the French colonialsts invested more capital to do business in our country, grasping more wealth and exploiting more labour power of our people. Meanwhile, the successful Russian Revolution and the boiling Chinese Revolution were exerting deep and extensive influence. As a result, the Vietnamese working class which was growing up, was enlightened, began to struggle and needed a vanguard team, a general staff to lead it.

On January 6, 1930 our Party came into being.

After the success of the Russian October Revolution, Lenin promoted the setting up of the Communist International. Since that time, the international proletariat and the world revolution have become a great family and our Party is one of its youngest members.

Marx, Lenin and Stalin are the common teachers for the world revolution. Comrade Mao Tse-Tung has skillfully 'Chinised' the ideology of Marx, Engles, Lenin and Stalin, correctly applied it to the practical situation of China and has led the Chinese revolution to complete victory.

Owing to geographical, historical, economic and cultural conditions, the Chinese revolution exerted a great influence on the Vietnamese revolution which had to learn and indeed has learned many experiences from it.

Thanks to the experiences of the Chinese Revolution and to Mao Tse-Tung's thoughts we have further understood the ideology of Marx, Engles, Lenin and Stalin and consequently scored many successes.

This the Vietnamese revolutionaries must engrave on their mind and be grateful for.3

III. Russia

STRATEGY

Upon arrival in Russia with the aid of the German High Command in 1917, Lenin determined at the outset that he would not rely upon the peasants as his "revolutionary force." True, theirs had been a long history of exploitation, with an emancipation from serfdom in 1861 that failed to lift their economic burdens. They had joined in revolt in 1905 and even participated in peasant disorders as recently as February 1917. Viewing the earlier upheavals as handwriting on the wall, William Henry Chamberlain has observed:

Any shrewd observer of Russian conditions who weighed the lessons of the agrarian disorders of 1905 could have foreseen that a breakdown of central power and authority was almost certain to bring an even greater upheaval in its train.' The peasants comprised the overwhelming mass of the Russian population, were discontented, and were represented by parties-notably the Social Revolutionaries-strongly dedicated to peasant interests. Nevertheless, Lenin chose to rely for "revolutionary force" upon the urban workers rather than upon the peasants. The very fact that an established, organized leadership recognized by peasants existed, created a competition between himself (the Bolsheviki) and others for leadership of the impending revolution. In April, 1917, Lenin said:

We want the peasantry to go further than the bourgeoisie and seize the land from the landowners, but at the moment it is impossible to say anything definite about its further attitude . . . It is not permissible for the proletarian party to rest its hopes now on a community of interest with the peasantry. We are struggling to bring the peasantry over to our side, but to some extent it stands consciously on the side of the capitalists.5

3 Ho Chi Minh. Selected Works v. III, Hanoi, 1962. pp. 237-238.

Chamberlain, William Henry. The Russian Revolution, 1917-1921 v. I, New York, 1952. p. 257.

5 Quoted in Edward Hallett Carr. History of Soviet Russia: History of the Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1923 v. II, New York, 1952.

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Two years later, in 1919, official theoreticians of communism spelled out the crucial difference between the purposes of the Bolsheviks and the Social Revolutionaries, the latter at that time the organized spokesmen of the peasant movement.

"Before the revolution," Bukharin and Preobrazhensky wrote, "privately owned land, and especially the land in the possession of the great landowners, was heavily embarrassed. . . In other words, the real owners of these estates were Russian and foreign banks. This explains why the various parties of the social solidarians, the social revolutionaries in especial, although they had clamoured for the assignment of all the privately owned lands to the peasants without compensation to the owners, were afraid to face the issue, or desired to postpone the confiscation when the day of realization approached. It was only the party of those whose sole relationships with capitalism were the relationships of war to the knife, which (in contrast with the social solidarians) pushed to its logical conclusion the present revolution directed against the landlords." 6

The historian, Professor Carr, corroborates and amplifies:

Politically Lenin was right in believing that the Social-Revolutionary Party (SR) would not break with the bourgeoisie; and the peasantry still clung to the SRS as its traditional champions. To win it from this allegiance was the condition of successful Bolshevik leadership in the revolution. Hence within the struggle of the Soviets against the Provisional Government, waged wholeheartedly and consistently by the Bolsheviks and waveringly by the SRs who had a foot in each camp, a further struggle was being waged by the Bolsheviks against the SRS for the support of the peasant."

Latent for the time was a further difference between Bolsheviks and Social Revolutionaries-the emphasis of the former upon the necessity ultimately to change to large-scale collective farming in the interest of efficiency, in contrast to acceptance by the latter of the traditional peasant conception of small-scale farming. "Individual husbandry on individual plots, even though it be 'free labor on free land,' offers no way out of the terrible crisis;" said Lenin, "it is essential to go over to joint cultivation on large model farms." This issue between peasant spokesmen and Bolsheviks, however, was not one to be raised by the latter in the midst of the crisis of their struggle to gain power; it was one to be postponed.

Although the Bolsheviki denied the strategic role of "revolutionary force" to the peasantry for reasons indicated above, they were greatly concerned, as Lenin said, "to bring the peasantry to our side." As means of accomplishing this they included them in their popular slogan, Peace, Bread and the Land. Thus they appealed broadly, but at the same time specifically, to soldiers and peasants. Further, almost immediately upon assuming power, they issued the Land Decree left lying upon the desk of the Provisional Government.

The decree did not spell out the ultimate land program of the Bolsheviki and so avoided conflicts with peasants that were to arise later. Immediately, issuance of the decree served to undermine the landlords. and underscore the appeal of the Bolsheviki to the peasants. It emphasized the division between landlords and "ordinary peasants" by

Bukharin, N. and E. Preobrazhensky. The ABC of Communism. Translated by Eden and Cedar Paul. Ann Arbor, 1966. p. 296. 7 Carr, loc. cit.

8 Quoted in Ibid., p. 32.