The 6th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam () (CPV) was held in Ba Đình Hall, Hanoi, between 15 and 18 December 1986. 1,129 delegates represented the party's estimated 1,900,000 members. The Congress occurs once every five years. Preparations for the 6th National Congress began with the 8th plenum of the 5th Central Committee and ended with the 10th plenum, which lasted 19 days. After the 10th plenum, local and provincial party organizations began electing delegates to the Congress as well as updating party documents.
The Congress is noteworthy because of the introduction of economic reforms, labelled Đổi Mới (Renovation), and the election of a new party leadership. The sitting General Secretary, Trường Chinh was not reelected, and Nguyễn Văn Linh took his place. The 6th Politburo, 6th Secretariat and the Control Commission were elected. The Advisory Council to the Central Committee was established, and contained high-ranking officials who had retired at the 6th National Congress. The 6th National Congress emphasized the need to strengthen the socialist mode of production.
Background The 8th plenum and reforms The 8th plenum of the 5th Central Committee (10–17 June 1985)and its antecedents the 6th (3–10 July 1984) and the 7th (11–17 December 1984) plenumsinstructed the party to direct a performance review of its organization, personnel and efficiency. Lê Đức Thọ, head of the Central Organizing Commission, said the party had become "a cumbersome and ponderous mechanism, only marginally efficient, marked by ill-defined responsibilities and poorly divided functions." He further stated that confusion within the party over operational responsibilities between the central party leadership, mass organizations and the state, and between higher and lower party echelons had developed into a serious problem, and that a cynical collective mindset within the party had taken hold and manifested itself through corruption, inflexibility and dishonesty.
The plenum put forward three points to solve the problems alleged by Tho: (1) to get party cadres to focus on technical economic and management responsibilities, (2) cadres were to be organized and get specialized training in economic and administrative fields to reequip them with information on how to run an increasingly complex economy, and (3) engineer a shift in the internal balance of power. In a Nhân Dân (The People) editorial, Lê Đức Thọ stressed the need to go beyond political slogans and remonstration to enhance the level of management skills of party cadres in party-level organizations. Lê Đức Thọ wanted to change the party's role in the economy from that of implementer to one of supervisor. The central leadership faced an obstacle: most party cadres had what the party leadership considered an outdated education from 20 to 30 years ago, while the party lacked young cadres. To solve this problem, the central party leadership began talking about the need to introduce personnel planning, a retirement age, rotation of officials and tenure length for cadres and sensitive posts.
Early in the reform process, the CPV devolved some powers of the party secretaries to the district-level committees. The party planned to decentralize some duties and responsibilities at departmental and sectoral levels while empowering ward-level party organs by strengthening their role in economic planning, market management and public security, and trying to improve the performance of the Control Commission and its lower-level bodies. The party leadership tried to make the cumbersome bureaucracy efficient.
Economic reforms in 1985 led to rampant inflation, and the 9th plenum (mid-December 1985) forced the central leadership to reintroduce rationing in order to reduce the hardships for the poor, while in March 1985 the Council of Ministers legalized limited, small-scale, private enterprise in the handicraft and small industry sectors. The CPV tried to introduce market rules into the Soviet-style planned economy, while stressing the need to control the markets. At this early stage, the party started a discussion on how much state control and economic planning were necessary. On 8 April, the 5th Politburo issued the "Draft Resolution on guaranteeing autonomy to basic economic units", which decreed the implementation of the reform program agreed upon by the 8th plenum. The resolution tried to solve several problems by streamlining the bureaucracy to make it more efficient. However, while the party supported making state-owned enterprises more autonomous, they still sought the abolition of individual trade, i.e., trade not sanctioned by the state. At this stage, the authorities did not seek to alter the duties and responsibilities of central state and party organs.
Preparations Planning for the 6th National Congress began at the 19-day-long 10th plenum of the 5th Central Committee (19 May – 9 June 1986). Lê Duẩn, the General Secretary, gave the opening speech, where he reaffirmed the central party leadership's commitment to reform. The 10th plenum unanimously approved the draft Political Report for the 6th National Congress. Preparations for the Congress began with party congresses at the grass-root and provincial-levels, during which delegates were elected.
Preparation for the Congress began slowly. According to a Central Organizing Commission conference, the lack of preparations were due to an unidentified number of party grassroots organs failing to prepare their personnel for the Congress, and superior echelons failing to inform lower-level echelons on the status of the Congress. The 5th Secretariat announced the organizing of a Criticism/Self-criticism campaign on 11 March on all party levels to prepare for the Congress. The campaign's main goals were to discipline party committees at the upcoming local party congresses; to assess the party's performance with an emphasis on economics since the 5th National Congress; to contribute to the future reorganization of the party and reassignment of personnel; and to ensure that the drafting of the Congress's resolutions were finished on time and to appoint new local executive committees in light of the requirements to implement reform. The 5th Secretariat published a list of requirements for possible candidates for membership in local executive committees in mid-March 1986, these were: (1) the ability of candidates to understand the economic and managerial skills articulated by the 8th plenum of the 5th Central Committee; (2) the need for young members within the party organization, with an emphasis on appointing officials to provincial-level executive committees in the age group 40–49, while officials aged 30–39 were to be appointed to district and grassroots executive committees; (3) to ensure geographical mobility and flexibility regarding personnel assignments.
District and provincial congresses and conferences
The local congresses preceding the 6th National Congress were far more organized than those held before the 5th National Congress. Unlike the previous Congress, the central party leadership issued instructions and training programs for party cadres on how to organize party congresses and conferences. Certain party cadres were made responsible for tutoring the executive committee directly subordinate to them on the Central Committee's draft Political Report. Local executive committees started convening conferences in early August to study the draft report. These conferences acted as precursors to the village-, municipal-, ward- and enterprise-level Party committee congresses, which started convening in mid-August. By early August, some grassroots-level party organs had begun the election of delegates to the 6th National Congress. At least five provinces had completed preparations for the basic-level party congresses by September, in four of these the basic-level congresses ran until late September.
District-level congresses convened in some provinces in late August, while other provinces started convening them in late September. According to the Vietnamese media, the district-level congresses mostly agreed on basic economic goals and several proposed amendments to the draft Political Report. At the Binh Tri Thien Provincial Party Organization, 250 cadres reportedly made 3,000 suggestions, "including amendments to and revision of the Draft Political Report" and concrete policies which featured prominently in it. The same occurred in the Standing Committee of the Hồ Chí Minh City Party Committee, where leading cadres unanimously approved a program for action and proposed changes to the draft Political Report. The Nha Trang Municipal Party Organization held a day-long conference discussing the Draft Political Report, which ended tepidly; the discussions were extended so that the delegates reached an unenthusiastic "identity of views" (what was discussed is unknown as the media did not state it). While other party conferences criticized the draft Political Report, several others expressed enthusiasm or unanimously supported it. Because the National Assembly failed to issue a draft of the 4th Five-Year Plan, the district-level conferences were forced to discuss mostly local economic aims because they lacked national economic data.
The Cuu Long conference held between 6 and 10 October was the first provincial-level conference to be held. By 22 October, 21 provinces had held provincial-level party conferences. The central party leadership faced less criticism on the draft Political Report and socio-economic policies from provincial-level conferences than from district-level conferences. The provincial-level conferences criticized central policies less and were evasive about critical issues. However, the provincial-level conferences were not completely dormant and scored some minor victories, such as reducing the average age needed to join an executive committee and they adopted a more flexible and efficient mode of planning and organization. As during the district-level conferences, there were certain convocations which attracted attention; the An Giang Party Committee criticized past economic performance, while the Ha Son Binh Congress criticized the irrational management of provincial economic affairs. While these committees criticized past policies or well-known deficiencies, none of them criticized the policies of the central party leadership.
General Secretary Trường Chinh in a speech to the Hồ Chí Minh City Party Organization admitted to "serious shortcomings and mistakes" by the central party leaders in economic leadership, and criticized the imposition of a superstructure on Vietnam's current conditions. Trường Chinh endorsed the program of the 8th plenum of the 5th Central Committee and "new economic concepts", but told the attendees that the 5th Politburo had undertaken a systematic assessment of economic policies, which included the continuation of a mixed economy, the acceptance of private ownership for the foreseeable future, the need to end bureaucratic centralism, and the need for decentralization in economic decision-making. In his speech to the 4th Congress of the Hồ Chí Minh City Party Organization, Nguyễn Văn Linh, a member of the 5th Politburo and 5th Secretariat, endorsed the platforms of the 6th, 7th and 8th plenums of the 5th Central Committee while supporting the conclusion reached at the 10th plenum of the 5th Central Committee. He emphasized several Politburo directives. Phạm Hùng, the Minister of Interior, in his speech to the Cuu Long Provincial Congress said that the reintroduction of the market economy and the renewed acceptance of private ownership would not hurt Vietnam's socialist transformation. To secure Vietnam's socialist credentials, the state would remain dominant to protect Vietnam from the uncontrolled free market. The 11th plenum (17–25 November 1986), the last plenum before the 6th Congress, endorsed the platform for the congress.