President Ho Chi Minh said:
“Soon after its birth, our Party organized and led the heroic movement of the Nghe-Tinh Soviets.
“At the age of twelve, it organized the guerilla movement against the French and the Japanese.
“When fifteen, it organized and led the August Revolution and brought it to victory.
“When sixteen, it led the war of resistance against the French colonialists, which ended in triumph eight years later.”
Today our people are conducting against the American aggressors the greatest war of resistance in our nation’s history.
The history of the struggles for liberation waged by our people over a century shows that in our epoch only under the leadership of the party of the working class can a national-liberation war, a revolutionary war of a truly popular character be launched, organized and led to complete victory. The leadership of our Party is the essential factor which accounts for the victory of the people’s uprising, of the people’s war waged to open the way to socialism and defend its achievements.
The reason is that our Party is a new-type party of the Vietnamese working class, a party with a thoroughly revolutionary spirit, a scientific theory – Marxism-Leninism – a close-knit organization, a strict discipline and close ties with the masses.
Our Party was born of the alliance of MarxismLeninism with the workers’ movement and the national-liberation movement in Viet Nam. Since its birth it has held undivided leadership of the revolution. The party of the working class, it is also the party of the nation. Nowadays only the party of the working class – the most revolutionary class, which represents the socialist mode of production, the fundamental interests of the broad masses of the working class and peasantry, of the toiling people, the fundamental and long-term interests of the nation – can assume the role of genuine leader of the nation, uphold the banner of national independence and democracy, bring the national and democratic revolution to success and our country to socialism: only such a party can mobilize our people to rise up and wage a revolutionary war until victory.
In Viet Nam, our Party alone has had the revolutionary courage to resolutely lead the masses to stand up and break the yoke of the colonialists and feudalists, to overcome all difficulties and hardships and defeat strong and fierce imperialist aggressors, including US imperialism – the ringleader of all imperialisms and the enemy number one of the world’s peoples – to fulfil at all costs the tasks of the revolution. Our Party has become a party experienced in leading all-people uprising and people’s war, having a judicious and creative revolutionary line, a solid knowledge of the laws of revolution and revolutionary war and guiding the implementation of its political and military line in a resolute, bold and scientific manner.
Closely associated with the masses of the people, it constitutes the firm core of the all-people united struggle. Hence it can mobilize broader and broader forces of the nation and closely rally them around it so as to overcome all trials and lead the revolutionary war to victory.
The leadership of our Party in all-people uprising and people’s war can be seen first of all in the defining of judicious political and military lines, of the fundamental as well as immediate tasks and goals of the revolution, in the elaboration and application of revolutionary methods of action, organizational forms, methods and means of struggle and of the most appropriate, efficient and revolutionary tactics as mentioned above.
This leadership can also be seen in the following problems:
1. To realize a sustained and sweeping political mobilization of the Party, the army and the people, foster and promote Vietnamese revolutionary heroism, enhance the determination to fight and to win, create the greatest politico-moral force in order to triumph over the enemy, and fulfil at all costs both the goals set for each period and the final aims of the revolution.
Said Lenin:
“In the final analysis, victory in any war depends on the spirit animating the masses that spill their own blood on the field of battle… The realization by the masses of the causes and aims of the war is of tremendous importance and ensures victory.”(1)
True to this teaching, in the conduct of people’s war, our Party has always set itself this essential goal: to inculcate upon the masses its general line and revolutionary tasks, the political aim of the war, to continually carry out a political mobilization of the masses and to reinforce the politico-moral factor of the revolutionary war.
The politico-moral strength in a war is first and foremost determined by the revolutionary line, the political aim of the war. The revolutionary line of our Party and the political aim of the war reflect the law of evolution of history, the profound aspirations of our people, in the first place of the worker-peasant masses. Once this line has permeated the masses it arouses determination and firm will, and becomes a powerful motive force of the revolutionary war. In the course of the war, our Party has patiently and systematically inculcated the revolutionary line and tasks and the aim of the war upon its members, the army, the people and taught them to correctly assess the relation of forces in presence, to see the trend of evolution and grasp the character of the revolutionary war, a protracted and arduous but certainly victorious one. It has unceasingly intensified political education and ideological guidance among the army and the people, enhanced their class and national consciousness, patriotism, love for the new regime – the people’s democratic regime and the socialist regime – and proletarian internationalism. It has popularized the great truth expressed by President Ho Chi Minh – “Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom” – and his determination to fight – “Rather sacrifice everything than lose our independence and fall back into slavery.” It has exalted complete dedication to the Fatherland. It has constantly struggled against deviations first of all right deviations, in particular any wavering in face of an arduous and protracted war.
The Party has succeeded in cultivating and enhancing revolutionary heroism among all Vietnamese. Brought to its highest point, collective heroism has become a new virtue for millions of people whether in the army or among the people, at the front-line and in the rear, in all combat positions, in all fields of revolutionary war.
Vietnamese revolutionary heroism is the association of the revolutionary nature of the working class with our fine national traditions. It consists of courage and complete dedication; it spurs one to face any force, danger or difficulty; enhanced by intelligence and skill, it enables one to devise revolutionary courses of action, appropriate forms of struggle, and efficient combat methods so as to defeat the enemy in all fields. In the praise he bestowed on the people’s armed forces – a praise which could be bestowed on our entire people – President Ho Chi Minh thus defined revolutionary heroism: “To strive to fulfil any task, overcome any difficulty, and defeat any enemy.”
Vietnamese revolutionary heroism reflects the firm will of our people to gain independence and freedom, and to safeguard the achievements of the revolution. Our people, who have suffered untold miseries under the old regime, are resolved to fight to the end to wrest back and defend the independence and freedom brought them by the new regime.
Vietnamese revolutionary heroism is the product of profound education combined with daily training in theory and ideology, of revolutionary thoughts and feelings. It vividly expresses perfect awareness of the revolutionary tasks and the aim of the war, ardent patriotism, deep hatred of the enemy, determination to fight and win, unshakable faith in the Party and President Ho Chi Minh, confidence in the might and the heroic traditions of the nation and the working class and in the combat capacity of both the collective and the individual.
Vietnamese revolutionary heroism reflects the immense moral strength of our people, of our nation, of the Vietnamese living in a new era and under a new social regime, and fighting a bitter combat to defend the Fatherland.
Our war methods and military art full of boldness and intelligence have taken shape and developed in the practice of the momentous struggle waged by millions of new men animated by revolutionary enthusiasm. Only by relying on revolutionary heroism and giving it full scope can our war methods and military art be translated into revolutionary deeds of the masses and bring about positive results. The striking military feats of our people and armed forces, both on the frontline and in the rear, stem from Vietnamese revolutionary heroism, a fine result of the political mobilization, the ideological education and the forming of the new man by our Party.
2. To mobilize all the potential of people’s war, intensify the war while gradually fulfilling the tasks of the revolution, strengthen the factors of victory in order to bring the war to final victory.
Lenin said:
“Victory in war goes to the side whose people has greater reserves, greater sources of strength and greater endurance”.(2)
In our wars of liberation, we always “pit a small force against a bigger one” and “defeat an enemy superior in manpower”. To secure victory we must build a strength superior to that of the adversary, oppose the strength of our entire people, of our entire nation, to that of the expeditionary corps of the imperialist aggressors; on the basis of a political mobilization of the nation, our Party pays particular attention to mobilizing all the potential of people’s war and fostering the factors of its victory.
In the war of resistance against the French colonialists, President Ho Chi Minh pointed out: “The key to victory is to cement and broaden the national united front, consolidate the worker-peasant alliance and people’s power, reinforce and build up the army, strengthen the Party and its leadership in all fields.” In the present war of resistance against American aggression, he again said: “Our Party’s line and policy are judicious. Our people are united and of one mind, our army’s heroism is matchless. Moreover, we enjoy the devoted assistance of the fraternal socialist countries and the wholehearted support of our friends in all continents. We will win, the US aggressors will be defeated.”(3) That is a comprehensive epitome of the factors and conditions guaranteeing victory for our revolutionary war in the present time.
Our Party has endeavoured to build and develop all these factors in a systematic way so as to give our nation the biggest strength possible and to win broad and active support from the world’s peoples.
With an eye to this aim, our Party addresses itself in particular to this fundamental problem: judiciously to determine the relation between the intensification of the revolutionary war and the gradual achievement of the revolutionary tasks right in the course of the war.
For our Party, revolutionary war is the most decisive means to ensure the realization of the strategic tasks of the revolution in the conditions of an imperialist aggression and counter-revolutionary war aimed at sabotaging our people’s revolutionary cause. Hence, only by fully grasping the political aims of the war, by resolutely struggling until victory and overthrowing the yoke of the imperialists and their lackeys, can the fundamental objectives of the revolution be achieved. On the other hand, in order to consolidate and build up the revolutionary forces, foster the factors of victory and develop the forces of war in all fields, our Party has led our people in accordance with the requirements of each period to make them step by step realize the tasks of the revolution in the course of the war.
In the war of resistance against the French colonialists, our Party laid down the policy of “jointly carrying out fighting and national construction”, implementing President Ho Chi Minh’s instruction to combat famine, illiteracy and foreign aggression at the same time. To foster and develop our people’s strength in the war of resistance, in particular that of the peasantry which constitutes the bulk of our forces, we undertook democratic reforms and realized our Party’s agrarian policy step by step before mobilizing the masses for a systematic reduction of land rent and for land reform. This was a correct and creative policy.
When the American imperialists extended the war to the North of our country, our Party put forward the policy of waging a war of resistance while carrying on socialist building. Adapting our economy to the conditions of the war so as to intensify our economic and military potential and stabilize the people’s living conditions, we made use of the superiority of the socialist regime in all fields to foil the US war of destruction and fulfil our duties of the rear-base towards the great Southern frontline. This was another correct and creative policy.
In the liberated areas of South Viet Nam, under the leadership of the National Front for Liberation and the Provisional Revolutionary Government, our people have struggled heroically, wrested back and defended the achievements of the revolution, fought the enemy while building a new life, and ensured for our people the right to be masters in all fields: political, economic and cultural...
These measures have created a firm political and economic basis on which to foster our people’s strength, cement the worker peasant alliance (between the working class and the toiling peasants in the national-democratic revolution, between the working class and the co-operator peasants in the socialist revolution), strengthen people’s power, consolidate the national united front, boost the combat skill of our people’s armed forces, consolidate and strengthen the leadership of our Party.
To combine the intensification of the war of resistance with the gradual realization of the revolutionary tasks also means to combine the strengthening of the frontline with the consolidation of the rearbase, to combine the struggle against the enemy with the building and development of our own forces in order to grow ever stronger while fighting.
The gradual realization of the revolutionary tasks right in the course of the war is also a fundamental measure to foster and bring into full play the politicomoral strength of the masses, exalt Vietnamese revolutionary heroism, and integrate it into the new mode of production, the new social regime of which our people are the masters.
3. To build and consolidate the organization of the Party’s leadership from top to bottom, in the people’s armed forces and in all other mass organizations, in the armed struggle as well as in the political, economic and cultural struggles. To ensure an all-sided, centralized and unified leadership of the Party in war.
The leadership of the Party is the essential factor of victory; that is true and necessary for the war as a whole as well as for each locality and each aspect of the struggle. In our revolutionary war, we fight with the global strength of revolutionary violence, using all available methods, fighting the enemy wherever he is, and carrying out at the same time combat and building. That is why in this protracted war of resistance our Party must create and perfect the organization of its leadership from top to bottom, in the people’s armed forces and in all other forces, on the military front and on all other fronts, in order to meet this requirement: wherever there is mass struggle, there must be all-inclusive, centralized and unified leadership by the Party.
Our Party has built and consolidated the organization of its leadership from the Central Committee down to the committees of various theatres of operations, provinces, districts and villages. In the regular army, the Party organization goes from the Central Military Committee down to the company cells. At the same time, our Party has defined the relationship between the Party organizations in the army and those in the localities, thus ensuring its centralized and unified leadership over all forces, in all fields, in each locality and in the whole country.
In the countryside, the village is the basic unit of people’s war with the Party organization and its committee as its staff. In the present struggle against US aggression as in the war of resistance against the French colonialists, we succeeded in making each village a fortress and each Party cell a staff of people’s war. On the one hand, the Party organization in the village leads the population in the erection of defence works, intensification of guerilla warfare and political struggle, protection of the inhabitants, winning and maintenance of revolutionary power, coordination of local military activities with those of the regular army; on the other hand, it leads the population in developing production, building a new life, consolidating the rear-bases, supplying the frontline in manpower and material resources. The Party’s political line and all concrete measures laid down by the Central Committee find their application in the village. Without the firm and dynamic leadership of the Party basic organization, there cannot be a powerful and lasting resistance movement against aggression.
In order to bring people’s war to a successful end, the leadership of the Party at all levels must be all-sided.
It must cover all fields, chiefly armed struggle, political struggle and agitation work among enemy soldiers, the building of our military, political and economic forces, as well as the consolidation of the people’s right to be master of the country. Protracted wars have raised our Party’s organizational capacity. Its organizations at all levels have acquired much experience in this domain, thus ensuring concrete guidance over the manifold tasks of struggle and national construction, and realizing an all-sided, centralized and unified leadership of the Party over people’s war. All this gives people’s war the greatest efficacy and strength in each locality.
Since the August Revolution, our Party has held power. Political power under the leadership of the Party is, for it and for the people, the most important instrument to organize and wage revolutionary war. Our Party has unceasingly strengthened its leadership over the people’s armed forces, the people’s power, the national united front, at all levels, and brought into full play their role and their action. Only by so doing can we ensure on the organizational plane a general mobilization of the forces of the entire people, a mobilization of the whole nation to fight the aggressor.
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To strengthen its leadership during the war, the Party must train and temper its cadres and members, consolidate its cells and constantly improve their work.
Cadres and members must propagate the Party’s political line and the concrete measures laid down by the Party, and educate and organize the masses so that they understand them and carry them out. Therefore, their training and fostering constitute a key-problem to ensure the undivided leadership of the Party during the war, a fundamental task of its building. We must constantly have a sufficient body of qualified cadres capable of meeting the requirements of leadership in the course of the war. We must actively enlarge the Party membership in order to strengthen its leadership in all places and guide the masses on all fronts.
In the training and fostering of Party cadres and members, the essential task is to heighten their class spirit and vanguard character. First of all, they must firmly stick to the working class stand and be imbued with Marxism-Leninism, ardent patriotism, a thoroughly revolutionary spirit, a steadfast will to fight and stand ready to sacrifice themselves for national liberation and the communist ideal; they must constantly be in the van of the class struggle and the national liberation struggle.
However bitter the fight over the past decades has proved to be, Party cadres and members have heroically struggled in all circumstances and won deep love and great confidence from the people. Many have laid down their lives for the independence and freedom of the fatherland, for socialism, and for the revolutionary cause of the Party and the people. That is a great pride and a great honour for our Party.
In order to fulfil their tasks, Party cadres and members must be able to lead the masses in fighting and in all other fields of people’s war. Military training becomes an urgent problem for Party cadres and members in the army and in other sectors as well. In the period of preparation for armed uprising, the Central Committee called on our Party cadres and members to follow military training. When the war of resistance against the French colonialists entered its most difficult and arduous phase, the Second Party Congress convened in 1951 decided to promote military training in the entire Party and to mobilize all branches to serve the war of resistance. In the present fight against US aggression, Party cadres and members have rapidly matured and acquired much experience in armed struggle, in communications and transport, and in the various fields of economic, cultural and health development in the conditions of a fierce war.
This body of Party cadres and members trained in a protracted war constitutes for our Party a very valuable asset to bring the resistance to victory and further advance the revolution.
The cell, the basic organization of the Party, has close ties with the masses. It is at the same time the link between the Party and the people, and the leader of the masses in the prosecution of the revolutionary war at the grassroots level, an implacable war at all times and on all fronts. We must step up the activity of the cells, build strong cells in the army and the localities, in the countryside and the towns, on the frontline and in the rear bases, even in the enemyoccupied areas where the bitterest struggles take place. The Party cell is the leading core of the resistance at the grassroots level. Without strong, staunch and able Party cells there cannot be a broad and vigorous upsurge of people’s war on all fronts. In each locality, in each army unit, the cell must constantly ensure efficient leadership, stand firm in all circumstances, guide the fighting and all other activities, thus providing an all-sided, centralized and unified leadership.
We must consolidate the Party cell and improve its work in all fields, pay great importance to the education of its members and the expansion of its membership, to the strengthening of its Committee and the perfecting of its leadership. We must closely link the cell’s task of consolidation with that of leadership to get each locality, each army unit, to fight victoriously and fulfil all other tasks. The cell must carry out its task of leadership in war-time and consolidate itself through this work. During the protracted struggle waged by our Party over the last decades, in all localities, in many army units, on the frontline and in all other fields there have emerged many valiant and dynamic cells, real steel fortresses, worthy leading cores of people’s war at the grassroots level.
Guided by their experience and animated by warm revolutionary feelings, our people have absolute confidence in the Party. They are very proud of our Party and of its great leader, President Ho Chi Minh. The Party is intimately linked to the masses of the people who are closely united around it. Our Party alone can judiciously combine the interests of the class with those of the Vietnamese nation, ally the class factor with the national factor, genuine patriotism with lofty proletarian internationalism, continue our glorious millenary traditions and open for our people the way to a brilliant future. Our Party alone can mobilize to the utmost the forces of our nation and win the greatest support from the world revolution to defeat the imperialist aggressors. Unceasingly to strengthen the leadership of our Party is the essential condition guaranteeing the victory of people’s uprising and people’s war.
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Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom!
Let us hold aloft the glorious banner of President Ho Chi Minh and valiantly march forward to completely defeat the US aggressors!
Within a few decades, our people, our nation, under the leadership of the Party, have won brilliant victories. The era of independence and freedom, the era of socialism has begun. The Ho Chi Minh epoch, the most radiant and glorious one of our nation has just dawned.
All the victories scored by our people originate from the firm and clearsighted leadership, the judicious political and military line of our Party. They are associated with the name of President Ho Chi Minh, the founder, teacher and leader of our Party, the beloved and venerated father of our people’s armed forces.
President Ho Chi Minh is the great leader of our working class and nation, a genial strategist, a national hero, an eminent militant of the international communist movement and national-liberation movement in our epoch. He is “a lofty symbol of genuine patriotism closely combined with proletarian internationalism.”(4) The first Communist to apply MarxismLeninism to the specific conditions of our country, he laid down a bold and creative revolutionary line stamped with a noble spirit of independence, and led our people in their onward march. We take great pride in the revolutionary line worked out by our Party and our President Ho Chi Minh for the national-democratic revolution, the socialist revolution, the people’s war and our international relations. Following that line we shall continue to do our revolutionary duty until total victory.
President Ho Chi Minh is “the symbol of what is the finest in the Vietnamese nation”, of her bravery and dauntlessness throughout four thousand years of history; he is also the symbol of the thoroughly revolutionary spirit of the working class. He reminded us that “Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom”, that we should “Rather sacrifice everything than lose our independence and fall back into slavery”. He also said:
“Only socialism and communism can liberate the oppressed peoples and toilers the world over”.(5)
That is a truth borne out by the protracted struggle of our nation for her liberation, a truth of our epoch, the epoch in which the working class is the genuine leader of the struggle for national liberation and opens the way to socialism. That shows the indomitable spirit of our nation, the unshakable determination of our people. The ideology inculcated by President Ho Chi Minh is a strong motive force which has inspired our people to surmount all trials and wrest back their independence and freedom at all costs.
President Ho Chi Minh told us:
“Even though our people’s struggle against US aggression, for national salvation may have to go through more hardships and sacrifices, we are bound to win total victory. This is a certainty”.(6)
The struggle against US aggression, the greatest war of resistance of our nation, is a bitter test of strength between the most revolutionary forces and the most reactionary ones in the present epoch. Our people’s victory is a common victory of the revolutionary forces and progressive peoples throughout the world. To fight the US aggressors until total victory is our sacred national task and at the same time our noble international duty.
The US imperialists have suffered heavy setbacks and are heading for inevitable defeat. However, they still persist in their aggression in South Viet Nam and their odious role as international gendarme. Nixon’s statements and policy since he took office have revealed these designs and this obduracy. By the “Vietnamization” of the war, Washington continues to seek a military solution and to secure a position of strength. “Johnson’s war” has become “Nixon’s war”. The Nixon administration goes ever deeper into its military venture in Viet Nam. That is a challenge to our people, to the revolutionary and peace forces throughout the world and at the same time to American progressive people.
Our people checked the neo-colonialist policy carried out by the US imperialists in South Viet Nam through support to the Ngo Dinh Diem fascist regime. We beat them in the “special war”. We have also foiled their “limited war” right at the highest rung of their escalation. How can the US imperialists, now in a phase of decline and failure, hope to win by prolonging their aggressive war, withdrawing their troops by driblets and reverting to a revamped “special war”?
The US aggressors have been perpetrating monstrous crimes against our people. They have committed so many savage massacres, so many Ba Lang Ans and Son Mys, so many new Oradours and Lidices in the South of our country! They are the most barbarous fascists, the Huns of the 20th century.
Nurturing an implacable hatred for the aggressors and the traitors, our Southern fellow-countrymen and the Liberation Army under the leadership of the NFL and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Viet Nam, are determined more than ever to thwart all their bellicose designs so as to gain independence and freedom and advance towards the peaceful reunification of the country.
Our Party, our army and our people are resolved to put into effect the oath of honour they have taken, faithful to the sacred memory of President Ho Chi Minh: “For ever to carry aloft the banner of national independence, to fight and defeat the US aggressors, to liberate the South, defend the North, and reunify the country in fulfilment of his wishes.”(7) They will carry on to the end, until total victory, the fight against the US imperialists to contribute to the building of a peaceful, reunified, independent, democratic and prosperous Viet Nam.
We will win!
Hanoi, December 1969
(1) V.I. Lenin: Collected Works, Vol. 31, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, p. 137.
(2) V.I. Lenin: Collected Works, Vol. 30, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, p. 74.
(3) Speech on the anniversary day of the founding of the People’s Army and the launching of the nation-wide war of resistance, 1967.
(4) Last tribute of the Central Committee of the Viet Nam Workers’ Party at the solemn obsequies of President Ho Chi Minh.
(5) “The Path Which Led Me to Leninism”.
(6) President Ho Chi Minh’s Testament.
(7) Last tribute of the Central Committee of the Viet Nam Workers’ Party at the solemn obsequies of President Ho Chi Minh.