ABSTRACT
The Vietnam Workers Party (VWP)1 pulled off a remarkable feat during the years of the Vietnam War. The party presented a united, if not monolithic, façade to the outside world. This public unity only occasionally cracked enough to allow Western intelligence experts to speculate on rivalries among the top leadership. The belief in the Vietnamese leadership’s unity grew more firm in the years after 1975, as what had earlier been thought of as the Party’s pro-Chinese wing united with the ‘pro-Soviet’ faction to oppose Chinese policy in Indochina and combat the Khmer Rouge. From 1954 until 1990, there were only two major crises which resulted in expulsions from the Politburo: the correction of the errors of Land Reform in late 1956, and the break with China, which led to Hoang Van Hoan’s demotion in 1976.2
The persona of Ho Chi Minh has been a key to the public image of the Vietnamese Party. He came to symbolise the ardent nationalism of the Vietnamese communists, who were exhorted to emulate his simple, self-denying lifestyle. In the West both left-and right-wing commentators accepted the idea that Ho was the supreme leader of his Party, in the image of Mao Zedong or Kim Il Sung. The current Vietnamese leadership has clung to this image of Ho, as a way of legitimising its current monopoly on power. From the time of the Party’s founding congress in 1930 until the Tet offensive of 1968, he has been pictured, not only as the personification of virtue, but as the ultimate arbiter of all disagreements. The demonisation of Ho by the right wing of the overseas Vietnamese community in America is the mirror image of this phenomenon.
