The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), also known as the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), is the sole legal party of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV). Founded in 1930 by Ho Chi Minh, the CPV dominantly established the government of Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), before becoming the sole ruling party when its state was known as the North Vietnam in 1954 after the First Indochina War and all of Vietnam in 1975 after the Vietnam War.
Although it nominally exists alongside the Vietnam Fatherland Front, it maintains a unitary government and has centralized control over the state, military, and media. The supremacy of the CPV is guaranteed by Article 4 of the national constitution. The Vietnamese public generally refer to the CPV as simply "the Party" () or "our Party" ().
The CPV is organized on the basis of democratic centralism, a principle conceived by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. The highest institution of the CPV is the party's National Congress, which elects the Central Committee (CC). The CC is the supreme organ on party affairs in between party congresses. After a party congress, the CC elects the Politburo and Secretariat, and appoints the general secretary, the highest party office. In between sessions of the CC, the Politburo is the supreme organ on party affairs. However, it can only implement decisions based on the policies which have been approved in advance by either the CC or the party's National Congress. , the 14th Politburo has 19 members.
After World War II, the party, operating through its Viet Minh front, overthrew the monarchy and purged its political rivals. During the Cold War, through its power as the ruling party of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), it fought against the French Union, the United States, and the Western-aligned State of Vietnam and Republic of Vietnam from 1949 to 1975. The DRV was aligned with the Soviet Union, China, and other Eastern-bloc allies. After taking power in all of Vietnam, the party officially unified the country as the Socialist Republic in 1976. The party had implemented a command economy in North Vietnam and later all of Vietnam since 1954, before introducing economic reforms, known as , in 1986. The party is currently known for its advocacy of what it calls a "socialist-oriented market economy" and Ho Chi Minh Thought.
While continuing to officially hold to Marxism–Leninism, some independent analysts have argued that the party's ideological framing shifted following the introduction of the Đổi Mới in 1986, moving from a strict emphasis on classical class struggle toward performance-based economic legitimacy. At the 10th National Party Congress in 2006, the CPV formally amended its statutes to allow party members to engage in private business activities, defining its role as representing the interests of "the working class, the working people, and the entire nation". The party continues to uphold Marxism–Leninism, with state-owned enterprises still dominating over the "commanding heights" of the economy through State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in strategic sectors such as energy, telecommunications, and banking, alongside a centralized state bureaucracy The CPV maintains fraternal ties with global left-wing movements and regularly attends the annual International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties (IMCWP). In 1988, the party became the sole political party in Vietnam when it absorbed its two sister parties, the Socialist Party and the Democratic Party. Domestically and internationally, the party's one-party governance structure faces political opposition from the Vietnamese democracy movement and anti-communists, especially groups among the Vietnamese diaspora.
History
Rise to power (1925–1945) The Communist Party of Vietnam traces its history back to 1925, when Nguyen Ai Quoc (later Ho Chi Minh) established the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League (),
The Youth League's goal was to end the colonial occupation of Vietnam by France. The group sought national independence and the redistribution of land to working peasants. The Youth League's purpose was to prepare the masses for a revolutionary armed struggle against the French occupation. His efforts in laying the groundwork for the party was financially supported by the Comintern.
In 1928 the headquarters of the Youth League in Guangdong, China, were destroyed by the Kuomintang and the group was forced underground. This led to a national breakdown within the Youth League, which indirectly led to a split. On 17 June 1929, more than 20 delegates from cells throughout the Tonkin region held a conference in Hanoi, where they declared the dissolution of Youth League and the establishment of a new organization called the Communist Party of Indochina. The other faction of the League, based in the Cochinchina, held a conference in Saigon and declared themselves the Communist Party of Annam in late 1929.
The two parties spent the rest of 1929 engaged in polemics against one another in an attempt to gain a position of hegemony over the radical Vietnamese liberation movement.
A third Vietnamese communist group which did not originate from the Youth League emerged around this time in the Annam, calling itself the Communist League of Indochina. The Communist League of Indochina had its roots in another national liberation group which had existed in parallel with the Youth League, and saw itself as a rival to the latter.
The Communist Party of Indochina and Communist Party of Annam, together with individual members of the Communist League of Indochina, merged to form the modern Communist Party of Vietnam, founded by Ho Chi Minh in Kowloon, Hong Kong, from 3 February 1930.
At a later conference, per the request of the Comintern, the party changed its name to the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP). During its first five years of existence, the ICP attained a membership of about 1,500 and had a large contingent of supporters. Despite the group's small size, it exerted a huge influence in the nation's turbulent social climate. Consecutive poor harvests in 1929 and 1930, coupled with an onerous debt burden, drove many peasants to radicalism.
In the industrial center of Vinh, International Workers' day demonstrations were organized by ICP activists, which gained critical mass when the families of the semi-peasant workers joined the demonstrations to express their dissatisfaction with the economic circumstances they faced.
As three May Day marches grew into mass rallies, French colonial authorities moved in to quash what they perceived to be dangerous peasant revolts. Colonial forces fired upon the crowds, killing dozens and enraging the population. In response, revolutionary councils were organized in villages in an effort to govern themselves locally. Repression by the colonial authorities began in the autumn of 1931; around 1,300 people were eventually killed by the French colonialists and many more were imprisoned or deported as imperial authority was reasserted and the ICP was effectively wiped out in the region.
General Secretary Tran Phu and a number of CC members were arrested or killed. Lê Hồng Phong was then assigned by the Comintern to restore the movement. The party was restored in 1935, and he was elected as its second general secretary. A year later, Hà Huy Tập was appointed general secretary instead, who returned to the country to restore the CC. In the mid 1930s, the party was forced publicly to abandon much of its opposition to French colonialism as Soviet leader Joseph Stalin cared more about strengthening a left-inclined government in France.
Ho Chi Minh was also removed from the party leadership in the early 1930s. He was criticized within the organization and by the Comintern for his use of nationalism as a means to attain national independence.Tinh thần dân tộc ở Chủ tịch Hồ Chí Minh , có dẫn nguồn Hồ Chí Minh - Con người của Sự sống, GS-TS Mạch Quang Thắng, Nhà Xuất bản Chính trị Quốc gia, Hà Nội, 2009
The French colonial apparatus in Vietnam was disrupted during World War II. The fall of France to Nazi Germany in June 1940 and the subsequent collaboration of Vichy France with the Axis powers served to delegitimize French claims of sovereignty. The European war made colonial governance from France impossible and Indochina was occupied by Japanese forces. As a result, the revolutionaries also sought the opportunity to establish a grassroots organization throughout most of the country.
At the beginning of the war, the ICP instructed its cadres to go into hiding in the rural provinces. Despite this, more than 2,000 party members, including many of its leaders, were arrested. Party activists were particularly hard hit in the southern region of Cochinchina, where the previously strong organization was wiped out by arrests and killings.
After an uprising in Cochinchina in 1940, most of the CC, including Nguyễn Văn Cừ (4th general secretary) and Hà Huy Tập, were arrested and executed; Lê Hồng Phong was deported to Côn Đảo and later left to die. A new party leadership, which included Trường Chinh, Phạm Văn Đồng, and Võ Nguyên Giáp emerged. Together with Ho Chi Minh, these revolutionaries would provide a unified leadership over the next four decades.
Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam in February 1941 and established a military-political front known as the League for the Independence of Vietnam, commonly known as the Viet Minh. The Viet Minh was a mass organization that included many political parties, military militias, religious organizations and other factions that sought independence. However, the Viet Minh was heavily influenced by the leadership of the ICP.
It earned popular recognition and legitimacy as the fiercest anti-Japanese fighting force, positioning itself perfectly for the brewing political vacuum. Despite its position as the core of the Viet Minh, the ICP comprised only a minority throughout the war, with an estimated membership of between 2,000 and 3,000 in 1944.
In May 1945, the Viet Minh broke away from the Viet Cach, a pro-Chinese nationalist exile group they had joined after its founding in 1942. No longer under its banner, they began conducting independent operations across the Tonkin provinces bordering China.David G. Marr, Vietnam: State, War, and Revolution (1945–1946), page 410 - 412, California: University of California Press, 2013
Left opposition The party, particularly in the south, was rivalled by other nationalist and left-wing groups, notably Trotskyist organizations. In November 1931, dissidents emerging from within the party formed the October Left Opposition around the clandestine journal .
These included Hồ Hữu Tường and Phan Văn Hùm who, protesting a leadership of "Moscow trainees", had formed an Indochinese group within the Communist League (), the French section of the International Left Opposition, in Paris in July 1930. Once considered "the theoretician of the Vietnamese contingent in Moscow",
Tường was calling for a new "mass-based" party arising directly "out of the struggle of the real struggle of the proletariat of the cities and country". Tường was joined in endorsing Leon Trotsky's doctrines of "proletarian internationalism" and of "permanent revolution" by Tạ Thu Thâu of the Annamite Independence Party.
Rejecting (in the wake of the Shanghai massacre) the Comintern's "Kuomintang line", Thâu argued against a nationalist accommodation with the indigenous bourgeoisie and for immediate "proletarian socialist revolution".
Recognizing the Trotskyists' relative strength in organizing Saigon's factories and waterfront, the ICP cells in the city maintained a unique pact with the Trotskyists for four years in the mid-1930s. The two groups published a common paper, La Lutte, and presented joint "workers' lists" for Saigon municipal and colonial-council elections.