ABSTRACT
The local committees of the Communist Party constitute yet another parallel hierarchy, which, in actual fact, controls all the others and has its own cells, committees, and assemblies from the top government ranks to the most humble village. In Article 3, the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam (D.R.V.N.) openly acknowledges the polyethnic character of Viet-Nam, and it is the only Vietnamese regime to realize that mountain tribes of Malayo-Polynesian origin cannot be treated like Vietnamese lowland rice farmers. As in the other polyethnic states of the Soviet bloc, this approach to the minorities problem has gone beyond the realm of theory and has given the D.R.V.N. a competitive advantage over all its neighbors, who persist in a forced-assimilation policy. The relative success of the D.R.V.N.'s minorities policies, particularly in contrast to the policy of outright and total assimilation in the traditional manner practiced in Viet-Nam south of the 17th parallel, is perhaps one of the brighter aspects of the regime.
