Rise to power (1925–1945) The Communist Party of Vietnam traces its history back to 1925, when
Nguyen Ai Quoc (later Ho Chi Minh) established the
Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League (), commonly shortened to the Youth League (). The Youth League's goal was to end the colonial occupation of Vietnam by France. The group sought political and social objectives—national independence and the redistribution of land to working peasants. The Youth League's purpose was to prepare the masses for a revolutionary armed struggle against the French occupation. His efforts in laying the groundwork for the party was financially supported by the
Comintern. In 1928 the headquarters of the Youth League in Canton (present-day
Guangdong), China, were destroyed by the
Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) and the group was forced underground. This led to a national breakdown within the Youth League, which indirectly led to a split. On 17 June 1929, more than 20 delegates from cells throughout the
Tonkin (northern) region held a conference in
Hanoi, where they declared the dissolution of Youth League and the establishment of a new organization called the
Communist Party of Indochina (). The other faction of the Youth League, based in the
Cochinchina (southern) region of the country, held a conference in
Saigon and declared themselves the
Communist Party of Annam () in late 1929. The two parties spent the rest of 1929 engaged in polemics against one another in an attempt to gain a position of hegemony over the radical Vietnamese liberation movement. A third Vietnamese communist group which did not originate from the Youth League emerged around this time in the
Annam (central) region, calling itself the
Communist League of Indochina (). The Communist League of Indochina had its roots in another national liberation group which had existed in parallel with the Youth League, and saw itself as a rival to the latter. The Communist Party of Indochina and Communist Party of Annam, together with individual members of the Communist League of Indochina, merged to form a united communist organization called the Communist Party of Vietnam (), founded by Ho Chi Minh at a "Unification Conference" held in
Wah Yan College in
Kowloon,
British Hong Kong, from 3–7 February 1930. At a later conference, per the request of the Comintern, the party changed its name to the
Indochinese Communist Party (), often abbreviated as ICP. During its first five years of existence, the ICP attained a membership of about 1,500 and had a large contingent of sympathizers. Despite the group's small size, it exerted an influence in a turbulent Vietnamese social climate. Poor harvests in 1929 and 1930 and an onerous burden of debt served to radicalize many peasants. In the industrial city of
Vinh,
May Day demonstrations were organized by ICP activists, which gained critical mass when the families of the semi-peasant workers joined the demonstrations to express their dissatisfaction with the economic circumstances they faced. As three May Day marches grew into mass rallies, French colonial authorities moved in to quash what they perceived to be dangerous peasant revolts. Government forces fired upon the crowds, killing dozens and enraging the population. In response, councils were organized in villages in an effort to govern themselves locally. Repression by the colonial authorities began in the autumn of 1931; around 1,300 people were eventually killed by the French and many more were imprisoned or deported as government authority was reasserted and the ICP was effectively wiped out in the region. General Secretary Tran Phu and a number of Central Committee members were arrested or killed.
Lê Hồng Phong was assigned by the Comintern to restore the movement. The party was restored in 1935, and Lê Hồng Phong was elected its general secretary. In 1936,
Hà Huy Tập was appointed general secretary instead of Lê Hồng Phong, who returned to the country to restore the Central Committee. In the mid 1930s the party was forced publicly to abandon much of its opposition to French colonialism as Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin cared more about strengthening a left-inclined government in France. Ho Chi Minh was also removed from the party leadership in the early 1930s. Ho Chi Minh was criticized within the party and by the Communist International for his use of nationalism as a means. The French colonial apparatus in Vietnam was disrupted during
World War II. The fall of France to
Nazi Germany in June 1940 and the subsequent collaboration of
Vichy France with the Axis powers of Germany and Japan served to delegitimize French claims of sovereignty. The European war made colonial governance from France impossible and Indochina was occupied by Japanese forces. As a result, the communists also sought the opportunity to establish a grassroots organization throughout most of the country. At the beginning of the war, the ICP instructed its members to go into hiding in the countryside. Despite this, more than 2,000 party members, including many of its leaders, were rounded up and arrested. Party activists were particularly hard hit in the southern region of
Cochinchina, where the previously strong organization was wiped out by arrests and killings. After an uprising in Cochinchina in 1940, most of the Central Committee, including Nguyễn Văn Cừ (general secretary) and Hà Huy Tập, were arrested and killed, and Lê Hồng Phong was deported to
Côn Đảo and later died. A new party leadership, which included
Trường Chinh,
Phạm Văn Đồng, and
Võ Nguyên Giáp emerged. Together with Ho Chi Minh, these individuals would provide a unified leadership over the next four decades. Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam in February 1941 and established a military-political front known as the League for the Independence of Vietnam (), commonly known as the
Viet Minh (). The Viet Minh was a broad organization that included many political parties, military groups, religious organizations and other factions who sought independence for Vietnam. The Viet Minh was heavily influenced by the leadership of the ICP. It was the most uncompromising fighting force against the Japanese occupation and gained popular recognition and legitimacy in an environment that would become a political vacuum. Despite its position as the core of the Viet Minh, the ICP remained very small throughout the war, with an estimated membership of between 2,000 and 3,000 in 1944. In May 1945, the Viet Minh started to operate in the Tonkin provinces bordering China no longer under the banner of the Viet Cach, a pro-Chinese nationalist organization in exile founded in 1942 of which they were then a member.
Left opposition The party, particularly in the south, was rivalled by other nationalist and left-wing groups, notably
Trotskyist organisations. In November 1931, dissidents emerging from within the party formed the October Left Opposition () around the clandestine journal '''' (October). These included Hồ Hữu Tường and
Phan Văn Hùm who, protesting a leadership of "Moscow trainees", had formed an Indochinese group within the Communist League (), the French section of the International
Left Opposition, in Paris in July 1930. Once considered "the theoretician of the Vietnamese contingent in Moscow", Tường was calling for a new "mass-based" party arising directly "out of the struggle of the real struggle of the proletariat of the cities and countryside". Tường was joined in endorsing
Leon Trotsky's doctrines of "
proletarian internationalism" and of "
permanent revolution" by
Tạ Thu Thâu of the Annamite Independence Party (). Rejecting (in the wake of the
Shanghai massacre) the Comintern's "Kuomintang line", Thâu argued against a nationalist accommodation with the indigenous bourgeoisie and for immediate "proletarian socialist revolution". Recognizing the Trotskyists' relative strength in organizing Saigon's factories and waterfront, the ICP cells in the city maintained a unique pact with the Trotskyists for four years in the mid-1930s. The two groups published a common paper,
La Lutte ("The Struggle"), and presented joint "workers' lists" for Saigon municipal and colonial-council elections. After they rallied in August 1945 with other non-Communist forces demanding arms against the French, the Trotskyists were systematically hunted down and eliminated by their former party collaborators under the direction of Tran Van Giau, a fate shared by large numbers of
Caodaists, independent nationalists and their families.
First Indochina War (1945–1954) In March 1945, Japan
overthrew the French colonial regime in Indochina, and the Vietnamese Emperor
Bao Dai declared "independence." However, by August 1945, Japan had surrendered to the Allies. Taking advantage of the power vacuum, the Viet Minh
launched mass protests, leading to
Bao Dai's abdication on the 25th. Ho Chi Minh later became Chairman of the Provisional Government (Prime Minister of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam) on 28 August 1945 and issued a
Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on September 2. Although he convinced Emperor
Bảo Đại to abdicate, his government was not recognized by any country. He repeatedly petitioned American President
Harry S. Truman for support for Vietnamese independence, citing the
Atlantic Charter, but Truman did not respond due to his anti-communist stance. After the successful establishment of an independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam in
Hanoi, Vietnam was occupied by Kuomintang forces in the north and Anglo-French forces in the south. As an effort to alleviate the fears of a communist takeover, the ICP was officially dissolved and was downgraded to the "
Institute for Studying Marxism in Indochina" () in November 1945. In fact, the party still operated. However, this did not eliminate
tensions between communists and nationalists due to the monopoly of Viet Minh. The
First Indochina War between the Viet Minh and France broke out in late 1946, ending their negotiations. In practice, the Viet Minh became the leading force in the struggle against the French
neo-colonialists and their anti-communist sympathizers. After being recognized by
Communist China and the
USSR in January 1950, the Viet Minh demonstrated a stance of
class struggle of
communism. The ICP was ostensibly dissolved, but its core was still functioning. According to the United States'
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), membership in the Viet Minh grew to about 400,000 members by 1950. In 1951, during the war for independence, the officially dissolved Indochinese Communist Party was officially re-established and renamed the '''Worker's Party of Vietnam''' (), often abbreviated as the WPV. The Soviet Union of
Stalin was unhappy with the Vietnamese communists' displays of neutrality in relations between communist and capitalist blocs, their pretense of dissolving the party, and their failure to implement land reform in the past, despite Hồ Chí Minh's explanation that these were only temporary tactics in
Moscow in February 1950. They opposed France's granting of independence and unity to the
State of Vietnam of anti-communist nationalists as an
associated state within the
French Union in June 1949. China supported the Viet Minh and the US supported the French Union. At Stalin's urging, the Vietnamese communists implemented
land reform under Chinese model and the control from Chinese advisors in 1953, even though they had not yet defeated the French. The First Indochina War against French Union forces lasted until July 1954, two months after the big Viet Minh victory at the
Battle of Điện Biên Phủ. Vietnam was partitioned at 17th parallel following the
1954 Geneva Conference, with the communists ruling the northern half of the country. Already in the late stages of the First Indochina War the party's Marxist ideologues had been coming to believe that their party, in its pursuit of national independence, had lost sight of its real Marxist purpose of guiding class struggle, pitting the workers and peasants against the bourgeoisie and the landlords. They launched a campaign to promote personnel with a background in class struggle, at the cost of communists whose claims to authority were based on their leadership in the resistance against the French. This campaign was launched in some areas in 1953; it had its greatest impact in 1955 and 1956.
Vietnam War (1955–1975) At the second party congress it was decided that the Communist Party would be split into three; one party for each of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. However, in an official note it said that the "Vietnamese party reserves the right to supervise the activities of its brother parties in Cambodia and Laos". The
Khmer People's Revolutionary Party was established in April 1951 and the
Lao People's Party was formed four years later on 22 March 1955. The third party congress, held in Hanoi in 1960, formalized the tasks of constructing socialism in what was by then
North Vietnam, or the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), and committed the party to the "liberation" of South Vietnam. In the south, the
United States supported an anti-communist state, the
Republic of Vietnam (RVN), successor of the
State of Vietnam, established in October 1955. In 1960, North Vietnam established a military-political front in the south called the
National Liberation Front of Southern Vietnam () or NLF for short. American soldiers commonly referred to the NLF as the Viet Cong () or VC for short. As
part of the
Cold War and due to
conflicts between two Vietnamese states, the
Vietnam War (or Second Indochina War) happened between the communists which included the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong), and the anti-communists which included the United States, the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) and their allies, such as
Australia,
South Korea, and
Thailand. The communists received support from the
People's Republic of China and the
Soviet Union. The war lasted from 1960 to 1975 and spilled over into Laos and Cambodia. The
Cambodian Civil War broke out between the communist
Khmer Rouge and
GRUNK, and the pro-American
Khmer Republic. The
Laotian Civil War broke out between the communist
Pathet Lao and the pro-American
Kingdom of Laos. The Cambodian and Laotian communists received training and support from the
North Vietnam and NLF. During the war the Worker's Party of Vietnam also established its sub-branch in the south called the
People's Revolutionary Party of South Vietnam (), which aimed to lead the NLF. After the withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam and later the
collapse of the RVN on 30 April 1975, Vietnam was
de facto unified under the leadership of the communists and the South was under the
Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (PRG), leading to formal reunification under the communist
Socialist Republic on 2 July 1976. At the fourth party congress in December 1976, the Workers' Party of Vietnam merged with the People's Revolutionary Party of South Vietnam to create the Communist Party of Vietnam (), commonly abbreviated as CPV. The party explained that the merger and name change was made in light of the "strengthened
proletariat dictatorship, the development of the leadership of the
working class... a worker-peasant alliance".
Ruling party (1976–present) The fourth party congress comprised 1,008 delegates who represented 1,553,500 party members, an estimated three per cent of the Vietnamese population. A new line for socialist construction was approved at the congress, the
Second Five-Year Plan (1976–1980) was approved and several amendments were made to the party's constitution. The party's new line emphasized building socialism domestically and supported socialist expansion internationally. The party's economic goal was to build a strong and prosperous socialist country in 20 years. The economic goals set for the Second Five-Year Plan failed to be implemented, and a heated debate about economic reform took place between the fourth and fifth party congresses. The first was at the sixth Central Committee plenum of the fourth party congress in September 1979, but the most revealing one occurred at the tenth Central Committee plenum of the fourth party congress which lasted from 9 October to 3 November 1981. The plenum adopted a reformist line but was forced to moderate its position when several grassroot party chapters rebelled against its resolution. At the fifth party congress, held in March 1982, General Secretary
Lê Duẩn said the party had to strive to reach two goals; to construct socialism and to protect Vietnam from Chinese aggression, but priority was given to socialist construction. The party leadership acknowledged the failures of the Second Five-Year Plan, claiming that their failure to grasp the economic and social conditions aggravated the country's economic problems. The
Third Five-Year Plan (1981–1985) emphasized the need to improve living conditions and the need for more industrial construction, but agriculture was given top priority. Other points were to improve the deficiencies in central planning, improve economic trade relations with the
COMECON countries,
Laos and
Kampuchea. While Lê Duẩn continued to believe in the goals set in the Third Five-Year Plan, leading members within the Communist Party were losing their trust in the system. It was in this mood that the 1985 price reform was introduced—market prices were introduced, which led to a sudden increase in inflation. By 1985, it became apparent that the Third Five-Year Plan had failed miserably. Attacks against the interests of the well-to-do were part of the Communist ideas of class struggle. The majority of the educated came from well-off families, and the middle and upper classes held education and abilities that were critical to the country's prosperity, but the Communist Party's attitude toward those groups has frequently hampered their effective use of their education and skills. As a result, Vietnam's most pressing needs, such as the rebuilding of a shattered economy and the establishment of long-term economic development, had largely gone unfulfilled. The Communist Party's personnel lacked the skills to tackle these issues, and the Communists' monopolization of power made it impossible for those who did have the skills to put them to use in the decade following the war's end. Vietnam was one of the poorest countries in the world during Lê Duẩn's rule. Lê Duẩn died on 10 July 1986, a few months before the sixth party congress. A
Politburo meeting held between 25 and 30 August 1986, paved the way for more radical reforms; the new reform movement was led by
Trường Chinh. At the sixth party congress,
Nguyễn Văn Linh was elected the new general secretarythis was a victory for the party's old guard reformist wing. The new leadership elected at the Congress would later launch
Đổi Mới and establish the framework for the
socialist-oriented market economy. The economic reforms were initiated alongside a relaxation of state censorship and freedom of expression. The
Chinese Communist Party praised the CPV's economic and political reforms, which continued into the early 2000s. At the seventh party congress in which Nguyễn Văn Linh retired from politics, he reaffirmed the party's and country's commitment to socialism.
Đỗ Mười succeeded Nguyễn Văn Linh as general secretary,
Võ Văn Kiệt, the leading reformist communist, was appointed prime minister and
Lê Đức Anh, was appointed
president. In 1994, four new members were appointed to the
seventh Politburo, all of whom opposed radical reform. At the June 1997 Central Committee meeting, both Lê Đức Anh and Võ Văn Kiệt confirmed their resignations to the ninth National Assembly, which was dissolved in September.
Phan Văn Khải was approved as Võ Văn Kiệt's successor, and the relatively unknown
Trần Đức Lương succeeded Lê Đức Anh as president. At the fourth Central Committee plenum of the eighth party congress,
Lê Khả Phiêu was elected general secretary and Đỗ Mười, Lê Đức Anh and Võ Văn Kiệt officially resigned from politics and were elected Advisory Council of the Central Committee.
Nông Đức Mạnh succeeded Lê Khả Phiêu in 2001 as general secretary. Nông Đức Mạnh held the top spot until the
11th National Congress in 2011, when he was succeeded by
Nguyễn Phú Trọng. Trong is seen as a conservative and closer to China. In 2021, General Secretary of the Communist Party Nguyễn Phú Trọng was re-elected for his third term in office, becoming Vietnam's most powerful leader in decades. However, in July 19th, 2024, Nguyễn Phú Trọng suddenly died while in office. After the death of Nguyễn Phú Trọng,
Tô Lâm took the office as the acting general secretary. On August 3, 2024, Tô Lâm was elected unanimously as the 13th general secretary of the party during the 9th extraordinary plenary session of the
13th National Congress. == Organization ==