Land reform in North Vietnam (Vietnamese: Cải cách ruộng đất tại miền Bắc Việt Nam, ) was a major campaign by the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) between 1953 and 1956, during the final year of the First Indochina War and its aftermath, when the DRV came to be known as North Vietnam. The goal was to take land from landlords and give it to poor farmers. Influenced by and with direct advisement from China, the reform included land redistribution, rent reduction, and class struggle.
Many landlords were accused of crimes, publicly criticized, imprisoned, or executed. The campaign resulted from and caused further division in rural North Vietnam, and the government later admitted and attempted to rectify its mistakes. In 1956, a "Rectification of Errors" campaign was launched to correct these problems. Despite its violence, the reform changed rural society and helped the government gain control over the countryside.
Background The land reform project in North Vietnam was a product of the complex interplay of internal and external factors. On 9 March 1945, several years after occupation in Indochina, Japan instigated a military coup, overthrew the Vichy French administration in Indochina and established a puppet indigenous government headed by Tran Trong Kim and Bảo Đại. However, five months later, Japan unconditionally surrendered. Taking advantage of the political vacuum, the Viet Minh seized power by launching a nationwide revolution and founding the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; later North Vietnam) in Hanoi on September 2.
Soon after that, Vietnam saw an influx of foreign power. The Kuomintang Chinese armies accepted the surrender of Japan in Vietnam North of the 16th parallel, with the British in the south. Both of them negotiated and facilitated the French return. After negotiations between the Viet Minh and the French broke down, the war between them started from late 1946 until 1954; this is called the First Indochina War (1946–1954).
Throughout the 1940s, the Viet Minh fought solely against the French army. In terms of military capability, the Viet Minh was in a position of clear-cut disadvantage; this did not change until the establishment and involvement of the People's Republic of China.
During this period, the DRV government was dominated by the Viet Minh, who were popular among indigenous political forces; its domestic policy was to unite all possible forces for resistance and an independent war.Nguyễn Xuân Minh. Lịch sử Việt Nam 1945–2000, Nhà Xuất Bản Giáo Dục 2006, p. 20. It also embraced peasants, workers, students and some merchants and intellectuals.William J. Duiker. The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam. Westview special studies on South and Southeast Asia, 1981, p. 107. On 11 November 1945, the ICP declared its dissolution, aiming at downplaying the role of communist ideology by dissolving and forcing the ICP underground to garner more support from the masses.Vietnamese Communist Party online Newspaper, 18 December 2012.
In October 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established the People's Republic of China by winning its political rivalry with the KMT during the Chinese Civil War, which had a major impact on the political landscape of the region in general and Vietnam in particular.郭明. 《中越关系演变四十年》[Four Decade' Evolution of Sino-Vietnamese Relations], 广西人民出版社, 1992 年, pp. 21–22.
From the CCP's perspective, the Chinese revolutionary model was intended to be exported to Asian countries, including Vietnam.King C. Chen. Vietnam and China, 1938–1954. Princeton University Press, 1969, pp. 213–214. Moreover, the increasing influence in its southern periphery was also for national defense and security.Qiang Zhai. China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975. University of North Carolina Press, First Edition, 2000, pp. 20–21. From the perspective of the DRV, communist China was a good ally and paradigm that shared the same ideology and similar approaches to complete the communist revolution. They were glad to conduct a binary revolution at the same time: externally, anti-colonialism; internally, anti-feudalism. Thus, Ho Chi Minh actively sought Chinese aid.King C. Chen. Vietnam and China, 1938–1954. Princeton University Press, 1969, p. 13. Stalin, the Soviet leader and head of the communist world, was also displeased with the Vietnamese communists' temporary suspension of class struggle and urged them to quickly implement land reform. After establishing formal diplomatic relations with the PRC in early 1950, Luo Guibo became the first Chinese ambassador to the DRV, and Chinese aid also flooded into the DRV, the most significant of which was the Chinese advisory group, which was later sent to Northern Vietnam in the same year.
Essentially, Chinese advisory groups had a double mission. The most important one was to provide advice on military affairs. After winning victories in a series of military campaigns, with considerable assistance from August 1950 onward, the DRV not only gradually turned the war situation around but also expanded its controlled areas. This conducive environment facilitated the DRV to carry out its land reform plan.
As a government dominated by the communists, land reform was an integral part of its revolution. After its first trial failed in the 1930s, Vietnamese communists never had a real chance to carry it out, even for a long time after the foundation of the DRV. For the sake of war, communist slogans were even diminished. Instead, they needed support from landowners and landlords. However, Chinese assistance outweighed domestic support from feudal classes, and communism was re-emphasised. The Indochinese party was divided along national lines, and the Vietnamese Workers' Party (VWP) was officially formed in early 1951.Christopher E. Goscha. Going Indochinese: Contesting Concepts of Space and Place in French Indochina. Nordic Inst of Asian Studies; 2nd revised edition, 2012, p. 146. Simultaneously, land reform was put on its agenda. More comprehensive and stricter land policies were formulated, and class struggle was emphasized as inseparable from the military struggle for the first time.
On the other hand, the French and American-sponsored State of Vietnam (later South Vietnam) emerged in 1949 and was recognized by Western powers. Particularly after the Bao Dai interval, the DRV faced a competent rival regime which contested its monopolistic representation of the Vietnamese people. In this situation, Truong Chinh, in his report to the party Congress in 1951, pointed out that as soon as the Bao Dai regime was set up, the landlord class aligned itself with the State of Vietnam.Ngoc-luu Nguyen. Peasants, Party and Revolution the Politics of Agrarian Transformation in Northern Vietnam 1930–1975, pp. 255–256.
Excepting international and domestic political factors, as Bernard B. Fall pointed out, land reform was also necessary for economic reasons. 90 per cent of the population lived by agriculture, but the problem was the enormous population pressure put upon the relatively small fertile areas. In the Red River delta, 9 million people were crowded into an area of 5790 square miles.Bernard B. Fall. The Viet-Minh Regime: Government and Administration in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Institute of Pacific Relations, 1956, p. 118. The majority of the population under the DRV were peasants but did not have land to till, which was an unjust situation.Ngoc-luu Nguyen. Peasants, Party and Revolution the Politics of Agrarian Transformation in Northern Vietnam 1930–1975, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1987, p. 257.
After the end of WWII in Indochina, people suffered greatly from famine and a lack of sufficient food due to ongoing conflict. Improving their welfare would consolidate the Viet Minh's regime by garnering more support. Collective ownership as a palliative to landlessness has been a century-old practice throughout Vietnam, and individuals were deprived of rice fields and had to turn to communal land for support.Bernard B. Fall. The Viet-Minh Regime: Government and Administration in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Institute of Pacific Relations, 1956, p. 118.
In Vietnam, there is a saying called "Phép Vua Thua Lệ Làng", literally meaning that the emperor is secondary to village customs and implicitly indicating that national rule at the village level was giving way to autonomous rule by the village itself. This was also true for the DRV government; their influence at the grassroots level was relatively weak. Land reform served as a good way to cement its power at the grassroots level.
Implementation Land reform in North Vietnam was a grand project. At first, it was a relatively mild campaign; later, it radicalized and had serious consequences. When the top leaders noticed the side effects, they tried to rectify the errors caused.
Pre-1953 communist land policy in DRV
Social revolution is part of the Communist Party-led revolution. However, for a long time, the regime failed to grasp the essential tasks of the Vietnamese national democratic revolution, placing too much emphasis on unity with landlords in the interest of national resistance, and paid little attention to the peasants and land issues.Nguyen Ngoc-luu. Peasants, Party and Revolution the Politics of Agrarian Transformation in Northern Vietnam 1930–1975, pp. 257–258. A more mild reform was adopted: landlords agreed to decrease the land rent, and the peasants still needed to pay rent, but with a lower rate. The land rent reduction was formulated in July 1949.J. Price Gittinger. Communist Land Policy in North Viet Nam. Far Eastern Survey, Vol. 28, No. 8 (Aug., 1959), pp. 113–126. The failure to initially implement land reform was one of the reasons why Stalin was unhappy with the Vietnamese communists. To ensure the support of the Soviet Union, which agreed to let China directly help in the war, the Vietnamese Communist Party decided to carry out land reform even before they defeated the French.
All pre-1953 policies had failed to break through the landlords' economic and political power and to serve the interests of the peasants. According to VWP's mouthpiece Nhan Dan, even landlords were allowed to join the party, which somehow dominated the party chapters in many areas.Nguyen, Ngoc-luu. Peasants, Party and Revolution the Politics of Agrarian Transformation in Northern Vietnam 1930–1975, pp. 258–259. DRV gradually abandoned its former policy toward landlords and peasants. From 14 to 23 November 1953, VWP organized a national conference, in which anti-feudalism was given much emphasis. The most important change was that a new approach was adopted, which was mass mobilization for class struggle.
Land reform constituted two successive campaigns: the land rent reduction campaign (1953–1954) and the land reform campaign proper (1954–1956). The first campaign included eight waves and the second had five waves.Lê Quỳnh Nga. Quan điểm tiến hành cải cách ruộng đất ở Việt Nam trong những năm 1945–1956 qua các nghị quyết Trung Ương Đảng [The VCP's Views of the Land Reform Process Seen from the Resolutions of the Party Central Committee 1945–1956]. See: http://www.hids.hochiminhcity.gov.vn/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=ab315600-73a5-4c2b-b062-f7966e824087&groupId=13025. According to Hoang Van Chi, who was a former member of DRV and fled to South Vietnam in the mid-1950s, these two campaigns had but one purpose, namely the liquidation of the landowning class and the subsequent establishment of a proletarian dictatorship in the countryside. The only notable difference between them was the degree of violence and the nature of the wealth confiscated.Hoàng Văn Chí. From Colonialism to Communism: A Case History of North Vietnam. London: Pall Mall, 1964, p. 162.
Land Rent Reduction Campaign