“To wage the war in earnest we need a strong and organized rear”.(1) The rear area is a permanent factor of victory for it supplies the front with men, food and materials and gives it constant political and moral encouragement. Without a solid rear area, the front cannot win: this is the general law of all wars.
Our Party faces the following problem: starting from scratch, without an inch of free soil, in a country with a modest area and population and a backward agricultural economy, how to bring the people to rise up to fight for liberation, to build bases and a solid rear area so as to defeat the imperialist aggressors?
Our Party has solved this problem in a creative way. In the course of a long revolutionary struggle, it has accumulated rich and precious experience in building political foundations, bases and a rear area to support mass uprising and people’s war in the concrete conditions of our country.
1. To rely entirely on the people, to begin by building mass political foundations and proceed gradually to set up ever more solid bases and a rear area.
In the past, every time our people rose up to wrest back or safeguard their national independence, our forefathers always saw to the building of a support base. They took account of their fundamental advantages (the people’s high morale and thorough knowledge of terrain) to set it up either in mountainous or swampy regions, or in the plains and bring the human and material resources available into full play in order to organize and expand the armed forces.
At its very founding, by opting for the path of violent revolution, armed insurrection and revolutionary war to overthrow the enemies of the class and the nation and win power, our Party faced the problem of building a support base. As the revolutionary struggle unfolded, we have advanced from the setting up of political foundations to that of bases and a rear area, gradually expanded bases that were at first of only small sizes, linked together bases that were at first isolated, eventually to arrive at the present great rear area – the socialist North – with a complete popular national defence.
In the first days, those of preparation for armed struggle and insurrection, we had not a single inch of free soil. We drew out only support from the people’s revolutionary organization, the patriotism of the politically conscious masses and their boundless loyalty to the revolution. Through unrelenting efforts of revolutionary agitation, education and organization, our Party involved the masses in multiform political struggle. By so doing, it expanded and strengthened its own ranks, set up and developed mass political organitations, and carried into effect the slogan: wherever the masses are, political bases and revolutionary organizations must be set up. From those political bases and in implementation of directives given by President Ho Chi Minh to the first guerilla units – to conduct armed propaganda and pay more attention to political action than to military activities – our Party strove to organize secret armed bases, and boost political action in co-ordination with ever more perfected armed struggle. Then it launched guerilla warfare and partial armed insurrections, set up the Viet Bac liberated area and guerilla bases in other regions, while powerfully expanding political bases in the whole country and bringing about a revolutionary upsurge of the masses. In that way, our people finally launched a general insurrection, won power all over the country and founded the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam.
In the long war of resistance against the French colonialists, on the one hand we sought to preserve and strengthen vast free areas which served as solid bases on which to intensify people’s war, and on the other strove to ceaselessly expand guerilla zones and guerilla bases behind enemy lines. The continual reinforcement of our rear area in all fields was a powerful source of political and moral encouragement for the people and of supply for the front’s increasing requirements. In regions under temporary enemy control, the rule remained essentially the same for the setting up of bases: by relying on secret political bases among the masses and waging an intense struggle evolving from simple to more sophisticated forms, from legal to illegal action, from economic and political claims to armed action, the occupied regions were gradually turned into ever-expanding guerilla zones or bases.
At present, the South Vietnamese people who have risen up to fight for liberation lean on a great and solid rear area: the socialist North. At the same time they have striven to build on-the-spot bases and their immediate rear area: the liberated zones. Those ever-expanding zones have played and are playing an ever bigger role in all aspects of the revolutionary war. Creatively applying and developing the experience accumulated in the present historical context, the South Vietnamese people have built not only solid bases in the mountains and the plains but also jumping-off grounds in key sectors close to urban centres and enemy military posts, and even in certain cities. “Liberated regions with enemy enclaves” have appeared in the very neighbourhood of great enemy military bases. These are regions where the Americans and their puppets, in spite of a fairly dense network of posts and the combination of extremely cruel military measures with perfidious demagogic schemes, have not succeeded in putting into operation a coercive apparatus. There, the population, thanks to a tenacious, courageous and resourceful struggle, has remained master of the ground and is able to keep a blockade and a strong pressure on the enemy’s military bases and rear area.
When the resistance to French colonialist aggression ended victoriously, the North embarked on socialist revolution and became an independent socialist State with complete State structures. It has striven to strengthen its forces in all fields, and to consolidate national defence by relying on the entire people, and has become a firm and powerful rear area for revolutionary struggle in the whole country. A great rear area for the great fighting front in the South, it plays an extremely important role in the nation’s struggle against American aggression.
2. To rely on revolutionary forces in both rural and urban areas, to build solid bases and a solid rear area in the countryside while setting up revolutionary bases in the towns, and to coordinate local rear areas with the common national rear area.
Our people’s war relies on the power of the entire people whose main strength lies in the workers and the peasants. Fighting the enemy on our own soil, we attack him by every means in both town and countryside. That is why we must and can rely on revolutionary forces in both rural and urban areas and build solid rear bases in the countryside and revolutionary bases in the cities.
In the rural regions (mountains and plains) there exist immense revolutionary forces, the toiling peasantry which is inspired by resolute revolutionary spirit and makes up 90% of the population. The economy, which can satisfy the local needs, is particularly favourable to the launching and maintenance of a people’s war against a materially and technically superior enemy. The terrain is auspicious to the operations of our armed forces. Lastly the enemy administrative machinery is weak or relatively so and is full of loopholes. The mountain regions with a rugged relief assume great strategic importance. The ethnic minorities living there are deeply attached to the revolution. On the other hand, the enemy system is generally weaker there than elsewhere and insufficiently protected. There lies a particularly solid rear base of the revolution and the revolutionary war. By leaning on it, our people can build, maintain and develop their forces, wage a protracted war in face of the worst difficulties and secure good jumping-off grounds for progressing towards the plains. The rural regions in the plains, populous and wealthy, are regions which the enemy constantly seeks to occupy in order to grab their human and material resources, “pit Vietnamese against Vietnamese and feed the war through war.”
When the revolution has won control of the rural regions, it has at its disposal a firm support base which will allow it to mobilize men and resources, develop its forces, fight a long-drawn-out war, increase its power as the fighting goes on and foil all perfidious machinations of the enemy. A favourable situation will be created in which the rural regions in the mountains and the plains can lend powerful support to the revolutionary movement in the towns which strikes the enemy in his key centres and his lairs.
Obviously, in our country the rural regions are firm and lasting support bases and combat positions; to squarely lean on them and set up there solid rear bases constitute an imperative requirement of strategic importance for revolutionary warfare in our country.
While building up firm rear bases in the countryside, our Party attaches great importance to the implantation of revolutionary bases in urban centres where live most of the workers, the most revolutionary class, the leading class, which together with the toiling peasantry make up the fighting force of the revolution. Also in the urban centres live various strata of toilers, school and college students, progressive intellectuals, all animated by fairly ardent patriotism and anti-imperialist feeling. Urban centres, especially the cities and big provincial towns, are political, military, economic and cultural centres where the enemy concentrates his command organs and means of domination and repression, where he is relatively stronger than in the countryside but where he nevertheless displays weaknesses in the military and especially political fields.
The enemy’s aim is first of all to turn the towns into a secure rear area for his war of aggression. For our part, in order to bring revolutionary war to victory, we must actively set up revolutionary bases in the towns, create conditions for attacking the enemy by all appropriate means, and prevent him from setting up secure bases for himself. We must closely coordinate our urban with our rural revolutionary forces so as to strike the enemy in his very lairs, destroy his armed and political forces to the maximum extent, make it possible for the people to win power in ever-widening regions and secure ultimate victory.
The co-ordinated organization of secure rear bases in rural regions and of revolutionary bases in the towns contributed to the original form taken by our insurrection at the time of the August Revolution and to the success of the strategy of protracted warfare during the first war of resistance, in which we relied on rural bases while intensifying struggle in the towns. The same coordination has greatly contributed to the important successes recorded by revolutionary war at present in the three strategic regions in the South.
In accordance with the law of development of the rear base in revolutionary warfare and with a view to mobilizing our national resources in all fields and turning them to the best account, we have advocated co-ordination between local rear bases and the common national rear base.
Our experience points out that one must have a base, a rear area for the whole country and also bases and rear areas close at hand for each front, each region. The building of on-the-spot bases and rear areas for each front, each region, each echelon, starting from the lowest, is closely bound up with our Party’s general line of mobilization of the whole nation for combat and with the policy of organizing powerful local forces everywhere for waging people’s war. It is in harmony with the size of our country, which is not very big, and with our way of conducting people’s war, which consists in holding our ground, attacking the enemy everywhere and not yielding an inch. It favours the winning and keeping of sovereignty by the people and makes it possible to bring into full play the power of the new social regime which is taking shape and being consolidated in the liberated areas so as to answer the requirements of war in a rapid and timely way.
Our resistance to American aggression combines the local bases and rear areas in the South with the great national rear area, the socialist North, which is itself linked to the socialist camp. This co-ordination makes it possible to fully mobilize the power of the whole Vietnamese nation, of the socialist regime in the North and the new social regime in the liberated areas of the South, as well as the full weight of the achievements recorded by the revolution over several decades of uninterrupted and victorious struggle against the ringleader of the imperialists. This is a fundamental point which shows that in the present war of resistance, our people’s forces and posture are much more powerful than in the first one.
3. To bring our spirit of offensive to the highest point, consolidate our bases and rear area in all fields; actively defend our rear area while attacking the enemy’s ceaselessly and turning it into a fighting front; unceasingly expand our bases and rear area.
In a revolutionary war where the building of bases and rear area starts from scratch, that of the first bases is but a beginning. To maintain and develop this initial success and make it possible for those bases to withstand all trials and play a growing role, it is necessary to constantly consolidate them in all fields.
In a people’s war, the solidity of the bases and rear area rests on political, economic, military and geographical factors – first of all on the political factors, the people’s morale and the social regime. The building of the rear area must be pursued in all fields – political, economic, military and cultural; first of all on the political plane by strengthening the people’s political and moral cohesion, enhancing the superiority of the new social regime in every respect, actively but gradually bringing about democratic reforms aimed at improving the material and moral living conditions of the population and ceaselessly reinforcing the potential of the rear area. In this way the latter can ensure its own defence and play an important role in the war.
The bases and rear area of people’s war constitute a permanent threat for the enemy who seeks to attack them without respite and without mercy. Their consolidation is bound up with the struggle waged to defend and enlarge them and allow them to play their role in all fields. One must heighten the spirit of offensive, actively defend our rear area while ceaselessly attacking the enemy’s rear area and turn it into a battlefield. Offensive, active offensive – such is the best way to safeguard and enlarge our rear area while reducing that of the enemy. This is an imperative requirement in the building from scratch of the bases and rear area of a people fighting to win, maintain and expand power.
During our first war of resistance, the fundamental principle governing the defence of our free zone was to intensify offensive activities against the enemy’s rear area, expand guerilla warfare, while ceaselessly consolidating our own rear area in all fields and repelling all enemy attacks. In that way, we succeeded in maintaining and consolidating our free areas, implanting ever more bases and guerilla zones in the enemy’s rear area, and enlarging our rear area ever more while reducing that of the enemy.
That experience is being creatively applied and enriched by the armed forces and people of the South. Inspired by a powerful spirit of offensive, they strive to reinforce the free zone in all fields, and oppose an active and patient struggle to all enemy attempts to attack it, nibble at it, raid it or sabotage it. They resolutely bring the war into the enemy’s rear area, combine political with military struggle, and purely military attacks with mass uprisings, so as to allow the population of occupied areas to win control in various forms and to various extents, sow insecurity in the enemy’s rear area and gradually tum it into a battlefield and the people’s own rear area.
These last few years, the great national rear area, the North, has been firmly defended and has played an important role in the national struggle again American aggression. This is due to its constant reinforcement in all fields, which has made it possible for it to face the aggressors and foil their war of destruction, and to the unceasing development of the revolutionary forces in the South which have gone from victory to victory owing to their offensive strategy.
4. To build and consolidate the great rear area, the socialist North.
After the victory of Dien Bien Phu, the North, wholly liberated, embarked on the road to socialism and became the firm base and rear area for the revolutionary struggle in the whole country. This was a great turning point, a great leap in the building and expansion of the base and rear area of people’s war in Viet Nam. For the first time since the Party assumed its role as leader of the struggle for independence and freedom, one half of the country was entirely liberated where we have been able to successfully build socialism, the most advanced social regime in our millennia-old history, in order to secure a firm and complete rear base for the pursuit of the nation’s revolutionary struggle.
As soon as the first war of resistance ended in victory, the Party stressed that the North should be reinforced in all fields. The resolution adopted at the Party’s Third National Congress held in 1960 said: “The more vigorously the North advances towards socialism, the more consolidated its forces are in all fields and the more favourable conditions grow for the liberation revolution in the South, for the fulfilment of our revolutionary tasks in the whole country, for the maintenance and strengthening of peace in Indochina and the world. The North is the common base for the revolution in the whole country.”
The consolidation and strengthening of the North have made its defence more powerful with each passing day, a national defence of the people, by the people themselves, a defence based on the power of the people in all fields, a defence which safeguards the interests of the people, the fruits of the revolution and the socialist regime. The conception of a national defence of the people was clearly defined for the first time in the resolution adopted at the 12th plenum of the Party Central Committee in 1957. This was the application of the thesis of people’s war to the defence of the socialist North to get it fully prepared to foil all imperialist aggressive attempts and at the same time to play its role as the rear base of the revolution in the whole country. This was a new development of the theory of the building of the bases and rear area of people’s war in the new conditions.
The setting up of a national defence of the people in the North must be carried out in all fields.
In order to have a powerful national defence of the people, one must, on the political plane, ceaselessly consolidate and reinforce the Party’s leading role, reinforce the proletarian dictatorship State, consolidate the socialist regime, strengthen the unity of the toiling people: workers, co-operative peasants, and socialist intellectuals, on the basis of the worker-peasant alliance. One must ceaselessly heighten the socialist consciousness of the masses, their patriotism and love of socialism, their consciousness of being the collective master and their will to reunify the country. On this basis, one must call on the entire people to increase production, build socialism while standing ready to fight heroically to defend the North should the need arise, fulfil all tasks relating to the revolutionary struggle in the South, and contribute to the fulfilment of our international duties. One must correctly carry out the policy of compulsory military service and that regarding wounded and sick militarymen, the families of soldiers fallen on the field of honour, those of armymen, etc.
As the national defence of the people in the North must rely on a powerful socialist economy, economic building takes on great importance. In this building, we must combine economics with national defence, peace-time needs with war-time needs, short-term requirements with long-range ones. Such coordination must be embodied not only in the over-all State plan, but also in the plans of each branch of activity (industry, agriculture, transport and communications, etc.) at the national and local levels, so that at each stage of economic development there should be a corresponding reinforcement of the defence potential and that in case of foreign aggression the economy could quickly be put on a war footing. A correct line should be defined for the readjustment of economic building to wartime conditions in agreement with the principle of associating combat with production so that the latter could continue to increase and the economy to expand, and the requirements of the resistance and the people could be met even in time of war.
With a view to a powerful national defence, the North must be strengthened militarily. Military power does not lie only in that of the standing army, but in that of the entire people, with the people’s armed forces serving as the core. It is based on the manifold power of the new social regime. The tasks of military building consist in arming and militarizing the entire people, reinforcing the people’s armed forces with battle-seasoned regulars and powerful reserve forces, gradually turning villages and urban districts into combat positions, strengthening security. The whole country must be prepared in every respect. The armed forces and the people must redouble their vigilance, and stand ready to fight and smash all acts or schemes of aggression of the imperialists. It is also necessary to define the importance of each strategic region and reinforce the more important ones in all fields. One must also strengthen leadership by the Party and the administration at all levels in the consolidation of national defence and the building of the armed forces.
The development of culture, education, science and technology, public health work, physical training and sports, etc. takes on a deep significance for economic construction, the strengthening of national defence and the building of the armed forces, and especially for the making of new men, of cadres and fighters with a high revolutionary consciousness, good general knowledge and scientific and technical knowhow, and good health.
In short, the power of the people’s national defence in the North is based upon the power of the socialist regime in its entirety and on the fruits of the socialist revolution. It has stood the test of the American air war of destruction. Our people’s moral and political cohesion is more solid than ever. Production has been maintained and developed; communication lines have remained open and transport ensured; cultural activities, education and health continue to make progress; the people’s life has remained stable for the essentials; the army’s requirements are met; the national defence forces have been consolidated and have shown considerable growth. The Democratic Republic of Viet Nam has held its ground, proud and victorious; she successfully carries on socialist construction and fulfils her duties towards the South. Socialism has proved its superiority. National defence by the entire people in the North has shown its power on the political, organizational, material and technical planes – as well as on the human plane, regarding the resolve, intelligence and moral qualities of the combatants.
5. To rely on the socialist camp, our vast rear area.
Right from the first days the Vietnamese revolution has had the support of the world revolution of which it is an integral part, and this support has grown with each passing day. At the beginning encircled by the imperialists, we have succeeded in solidly leaning on the socialist camp.
At present we are carrying on our war of resistance against the American aggressors in particularly favourable circumstances: the socialist camp, with a population of one billion, a powerful economic potential and invincible armed forces, has been considerably strengthened. It constitutes a firm backing and a sure rampart for our people and the peoples of the world in their struggle for peace, national independence, democracy and socialism.
Our people stand in the van of the world’s peoples fighting against imperialism headed by American imperialism. A member of the socialist camp, the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam is also its forward post in Southeast Asia. And so, while essentially relying on our own forces, we can and must secure the sympathy, support and help of the socialist camp in all fields. This is a very important factor for the strengthening of the combat capabilities of our people.
With an ever-expanding and more powerful rear area, a national rear area and local ones, our people can besides lean on the immense potential of the vast rear area made up of the fraternal socialist countries. It can thus bring into full play its own economic and military potentialities while turning to account the favourable conditions of our time in order to take our present war of resistance to total victory.
(1) V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Vol. 27, p. 76.
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