ABSTRACT
The Agrarian Reform Law of December 1953 constitutes the basic legislation governing the first phase of North Vietnamese land reform. In the villages three separate organs, the Executive Committee of the Peasants' Association, the Special Land Reform Tribunals and the land reform cadres, carried through the reform. The land reform they were carrying out there was pragmatic rather than centrally-conceived. Land reform ironically became the tool for destroying the free peasant economy it had been designed to create, a tactical blunder which restored, rather than controlled, the landlord-tenant relationship, thus favouring, rather than averting, revolution. The 1968 Tet Offensive having portended unacceptably high American combat losses, the idea of a major land reform revived. Land wealth came rapidly into the hands of absentee landlords, especially in the south, and the customary claims of individuals and communes to land and produce were annulled.
