ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with various aspects of the system of agricultural organization adopted in communist Vietnam. This system has changed over time, and has posed a number of distinct problems to the foreign analyst. The basic model-the collective farm-is derived from Soviet experience, but has been greatly modified. For this there are many reasons, perhaps the most important of which are: first, the extremely low level of socio-economic development in Vietnam prior to the Revolution; second, the quite different technical conditions of production involved in rice cultivation (see Fforde, 1988) compared with those in the Soviet Union; third, the important cultural and historical legacies with which the Vietnamese confronted the various difficulties posed by collectivization in particular and the construction of socialism in general; fourth, the extended period of war that lasted intermittently from the Declaration of Independence in 1945 to national reunification in 1975. Since then, violence has continued intermittently as a result of international tensions surrounding the Cambodia question, and since 1979 the Vietnamese military presence in that country. The period of open warfare with China during 1979 was followed by intermittent armed conflicts on the SinoVietnamese border.
