|
Marr, David G. (2013). Vietnam: State, War, and Revolution (1945–1946) (From Indochina to Vietnam: Revolution and War in a Global Perspective) University of California Press. Kindle Edition. pp. 445-450:
ICP Leaders Outside the Government
Throughout the Pacific War, Trường Chinh had wielded a sharp pen in underground publications, assessing international and domestic trends, criticizing local party groups for left or right deviations, and forecasting revolutionary opportunities. Immediately after arriving in Hanoi in late August 1945, Trường Chinh located a printing press and expanded publication of Cờ Giải Phóng (Liberation Flag), which the masthead proudly pronounced to be the official organ of the ICP. Now able to reach a much wider audience than before, Trường Chinh reaffirmed the ICP as both the party of workers and the “vanguard leading all the people.” The DRV government was “in the hands of the people.” Juxtaposing these two statements, readers might well conclude that the ICP controlled the government. By contrast, Hồ Chí Minh insisted repeatedly that his provisional government was subordinate to no party, and was instead eager to involve any group prepared to struggle for Vietnamese independence, freedom, and happiness. In these statements in Cờ Giải Phóng, Trường Chinh appeared to contradict the policy enunciated in May 1941 by which the ICP operated from within Việt Minh organizations and kept its own network secret. Ironically he had earlier criticized the southern “Vanguard” group of the party for asserting its ICP identity publicly. Elsewhere this policy difference was being played out with flags: some cells flew the ICP hammer-and-sickle banner side by side with the Việt Minh’s yellow star on a red field; others kept the hammer and sickle under wraps, as had been the case in the northern border region and most Red River delta provinces before August. One confidential ICP formulation spoke of the need to demarcate more sharply the responsibilities of comrades working undercover or in public, and admitted that the party had yet to penetrate many Việt Minh groups and government bureaus. Trường Chinh condemned workers who took direct control of enterprises without authorization, or who agitated for pay hikes to offset rampant inflation. Much additional sacrifice would be required before the revolution brought the “happy rewards of a new life.” In particular he threatened, “Don’t allow the Trotskyist gang to dupe you into making excessive demands that cannot be resolved yet.” In early October 1945, Trường Chinh escalated his attack on alleged Trotskyists, accusing them of wartime collaboration with the Japanese, extreme left opposition to talks with the British in Saigon, and totally unreasonable economic demands in Hanoi. Asserting that “some people” urged cooperation with Trotskyists, Trường Chinh instead demanded their elimination. By late October, ICP “honor squads” were busy killing alleged Trotskyists in Nam Bộ, including several denounced by name in Trường Chinh’s article. As for the north, where no one had identified publicly with the Fourth International for years, Trường Chinh used the Trotskyist epithet to menace any other group which claimed to represent the working class. Young laborers must have been mystified at being tarred with the name of an assassinated Jewish Ukrainian revolutionary, yet older veterans of 1930s political disputes understood the gravity of being accused in this way by an ICP that now possessed firearms. When it became apparent in mid-September that General Douglas Gracey, the British commander in Saigon, had no intention of recognizing the DRV-affiliated Southern Provisional Executive Committee, the ICP’s entire pro-Allied strategy was thrown into disarray. Confidentially, Trường Chinh had long predicted that Great Britain would uphold French “reactionary” interests, yet now that it was happening he was silent on what should be done. After violence exploded across Saigon on 23 September, Trường Chinh in Hanoi accused the British of betraying their promises, deceiving the Vietnamese people, and “going contrary to Allied goals.” He concluded: “The Vietnamese people, the Indochinese people, will sacrifice their last drop of blood to defend the country (đất nước) and defend the rights to freedom and independence they have so recently won back from the hands of the Japanese-French fascists.” While Trường Chinh was staking out publicly the vanguard role of the ICP, other senior members of the party assumed a range of confidential troubleshooting assignments. Hoàng Quốc Việt went to Saigon to try to resolve party divisions and take part in talks with the British. Nguyễn Lương Bằng, one of Hồ Chí Minh’s original recruits in Canton in 1925, took charge of presidential security. Vũ Đình Huỳnh, assistant to the president, had charge of the appointments book, while Bằng’s staff tried to conduct prior background checks on visitors, a job rendered more difficult by Hồ’s insistence on meeting people from all walks of life. Bằng arranged for Hồ to sleep at multiple buildings around Hanoi, and requisitioned three different automobiles to transport the president. Such precautions were not whimsical, given the covert and sometimes violent struggle taking place between ICP and Vietnam Nationalist Party operatives. Bằng was also senior member of the Tổng Bộ Việt Minh (Việt Minh General Headquarters), and managed ICP finances. Clearly Bằng enjoyed respect inside the ICP for his proletarian origins, his long incarceration, and his personal probity, but he was not known for imagination or intellect. Trần Đăng Ninh, who had escaped prison alongside Nguyễn Lương Bằng in 1943, led party efforts starting in early September 1945 to reorganize what remained of the colonial Sûreté and to bring under ICP control scores of Việt Minh “honor squads” and self-styled secret investigation units in the north. In November, he was assigned to coordinate political relations with, and undercover operations against, the Nationalist Party. President Hồ also dispatched Ninh to make initial contact with Bishop Lê Hữu Từ in Phát Diệm. Soon Ninh obtained wide powers to investigate other sensitive issues and implement solutions on the spot, in the manner of commissioners of the republic during the French Revolution. He smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, spoke bluntly, was proud of his working-class origins, but defensive about his lack of education. Ninh preferred to function in the background, collecting information tenaciously, which made him both admired and feared among ICP insiders. Trần Quốc Hoàn, another former organizer inside Sơn La prison, was given the job of building up the ICP’s covert intelligence and counterintelligence capacities in the Hanoi area. Beginning with his own Hanoi assassination squad created during the summer of 1945, Hoàn added comrades from prison and some eager teenage volunteers. He also had underworld connections. One of Hoàn’s first successes was to recruit female operators at the Hanoi telephone exchange to listen in on conversations and report. Hoàn also convinced an attractive seventeen-year-old member of the Women’s National Salvation Association to lure an aide of Nguyễn Hải Thần, head of the Vietnam Revolutionary League, into circumstances where he could be grabbed by male agents and kidnapped. Because the agents failed to administer a sufficient dose of chloroform, the aide escaped, but not before Hoàn’s young female spy had made off with his pistol and briefcase full of documents. Hoàn inserted agents among Vietnamese laborers employed by the French military, some of whom were discovered and tortured. The head of Hoàn’s spy ring inside the French-occupied Citadel was run over and killed by a jeep, with the French soldier-driver insisting to authorities that it was an accident. Hoàn developed a reputation for meticulous planning and a fascination with any technology that might serve his operations. Meanwhile, far to the south, Phạm Hùng was taking up security and investigation responsibilities similar to those of his northern comrades, but in far more chaotic circumstances. Hùng and up to two hundred other ICP inmates had managed to make it from Côn Sơn island prison to Sóc Trăng on the mainland on 23 September 1945, the same day that fighting broke out in Saigon between British-French forces and DRV adherents. A senior southern ICP member, Nguyễn Văn Nguyễn, escorted Hùng to the Saigon suburbs and explained his immediate assignment: to command a regional police group made up of former Sûreté employees, Vanguard Youth, and ICP members dedicated to eliminating alleged counterrevolutionaries but now fragmented and widely disbursed. Hùng recruited some of his Côn Sơn comrades to lead new bureau contingents among young workers and Saigon’s underworld, then gradually convinced prior members to accept his authority as well. Lightly armed teams manned checkpoints, issued travel permits, confiscated money, detained suspects, executed condemned prisoners, and undertook assassination missions. A number of prisoners who had been marched out of Saigon were eventually moved to distant Cà Mau peninsula to keep them from French rescue. By late 1946, Phạm Hùng possessed an effective police hierarchy, now titled the Southern Public Security Bureau (Nha Công An Nam Bộ). However, he did not enjoy a monopoly: the Bình Xuyên, Cao Đài, and Hòa Hảo retained their own security units. And Nguyễn Bình, commander of DRV forces in the Military Region 7 (eastern delta), insisted on managing his own security network. Hùng also tried to end the bickering between “Vanguard” and “Liberation” elements of the party, without much success. Hùng and some other Côn Sơn prison returnees accepted the authority of Trường Chinh as ICP secretary general, but this meant little in the absence of a reliable, confidential means of communication with Hanoi. Lê Đức Thọ, another former inmate of Sơn La prison, took responsibility in Hanoi in early September 1945 for screening the past performance of ICP members and recommending job assignments. Thọ had access to French police files compiled on Vietnamese political prisoners, which probably included reports indicating how much sensitive information ICP detainees had divulged under interrogation and often torture. French files sometimes revealed which ICP members had routinely informed on their comrades, which now made them marked men. On the other hand, comrades who had broken under torture were not necessarily exposed. To do this rigorously would have sparked bitter recriminations and destroyed the myth of heroic refusals even unto death, which already was being projected in party publications. Keeping this information secret also gave Thọ power over those comrades who feared that their “weakness” might be divulged. Even those who had revealed nothing sensitive under interrogation could not know what other prisoners or informants had said about them to the French. The urgent need to appoint party members to reconstituted provincial ICP committees (tỉnh uỷ), government offices, and provincial administrative committees probably meant that Thọ had no time to scrutinize every relevant French file in advance. It was Thọ who gave Hồ Chí Minh the names of three young ICP members from whom to choose his personal secretary. Background investigations and the practice of compiling personal histories (lý lịch) on each party member would soon become ubiquitous. During 1946, Thọ also found time to contribute articles to ICP and Việt Minh periodicals, and to lecture at party training courses. ICP members possessing recent prison experience were held in awe among the Vietnamese population at large, an awe which the party turned to propaganda advantage beginning with the August 1945 insurrection. Within the party, individuals who had befriended each other behind bars often maintained contact and provided mutual support in later years. Alumni of Sơn La prison became the single most important leadership group within the party for decades to come. In March 1945, the French warden of Sơn La had promoted this concordance when he released two hundred political prisoners before the arrival of a Japanese Army contingent from the delta. Former prisoners of Côn Sơn island became the second most significant leadership group, although many of those arriving on the mainland in late September had to scatter throughout the Mekong delta and fend for themselves for many months. Extended prison experience did not automatically produce party leaders. Some former inmates had been broken physically or mentally. Others found it impossible to shift from a clannish, conspiratorial environment to working with a wide range of people in a relatively open climate of meetings, public speeches, class lectures, and newspaper articles. Still others sought revenge for savageries endured behind bars. With the early outbreak of fighting in the south, these individuals gravitated to security groups scattered around the Mekong delta, where their proclivity for conspiracy and violent retribution often was considered a virtue. Available sources make no mention of any ICP
Standing Bureau meeting in Hanoi during September or October 1945,
an extraordinary absence considering the aim of Trường Chinh and
others to strengthen party control over the DRV state. 30 There was
the problem that Hồ Chí Minh’s leadership group from the Việt Bắc
hills needed to be represented alongside the existing bureau that
Trường Chinh had led for several years in the Red River delta. ICP
representatives from central and southern Vietnam would also have to
be incorporated. Hồ Chí Minh conducted his activities at the Bắc Bộ
Phủ (Northern Region Office), relying on a small team of party and
nonparty lieutenants to help him evaluate events, make decisions,
and monitor implementation across a wide range of organizations.
Trường Chinh had access to the president’s office, but was not
involved in day-to-day affairs. He met routinely with senior ICP
members active in the central government and provincial party
committees. Trường Chinh listened to foreign news broadcasts
assiduously, read the daily papers, and factored all this
information into his analyses of Vietnam’s current circumstances and
future prospects. Besides publishing Cờ Giải Phóng, he was
composing a major ICP policy statement.
|