THE LAND REFORMS (1952-1956)

　

Theses for Land Reform

As soon as the Communist Party of Indochina was founded (1930), the Communists assigned themselves to the fulfillment of the twofold fundamental task, to abolish feudalism and French imperialism and to gain national independence. In support of this task, they vowed to carry out such theses as to requisition all lands belonging to foreign and local landowners and to the Church and to give them to middle and poor peasants. Nevertheless, these theses were mere rhetoric. The Communist Party of Indochina was only a small group. It was far inferior in the party organization and popular confidence as compared to the prestigious Viet Quoc (National Party of Vietnam). Its efforts largely concentrated on the propaganda for its cause and the enlargement for party membership.

In 1939, the Popular Movement in France was in full swing, The Communists in Indochina had significant activities. Having successfully infiltrated other revolutionary and political national parties with their men, they reactivated their task and sought popular support. They drummed up their a program of social justice with multiple purposes, working hard for an Indochina Conference to demand for better human condition and inspiring a class struggle to realize the confiscation of the possessions of the French imperialists and Vietnamese traitors, the reduction of rents and rates of interests, and the redistribution of communal lands to the peasants.

During the war of resistance (1946-54), the conflict of the war required national union. The question of land reform was apparently negated. However, in 1948, the Communist Party of Indochina reaffirmed the fundamental task of land reform. One of its measures was to "gradually limit, by reforms, the exploitation by feudal landowners (for instance, by reducing land rent), at the same time, to bring about changes in the system of land ownership. Caution was made as regards members of the Lien Viet (National United Front). Measures taken should not be harmful. In January of the same year, the Party laid down concrete measures for implementation its agrarian policy such as to reduce land rents by 25%, abolish all supplementary rents and redistribute communal lands. Notwithstanding, in May 1950, the Communist administration issued a decree ordering the confiscation of those lands that were distributed to poor peasants who would be exempted from tax for the first three years (Tran Phuong, 1965: 167-174)

The Campaign for Rent Reduction

Before the battle of Dien Bien Phu ended (mid-1954), the Vietnamese Workers’ Party, the reincarnation of the Communist Party of Indochina, had launched a skysplitting and earthshaking campaign of political struggle paving the way for the land reform (1953-1956). This campaign was preceded by two others. They served a twofold aim: First. it was destined to implement the previously adopted Chinese tax system --to impose on the peasantry a heavier tax; and, second, to prepare a preliminary wave of terror to liquidate all dangerous reactionary elements.

The land reform itself proceeded in two separate campaigns, the land rent reduction and the land reform. The land rent reduction began in February 1953 and lasted two weeks. In the countryside, the villagers were called for a meeting to be informed of and discuss about the taxes. The purpose, in reality, was to question the taxpayers who had evaded taxes or had not paid them duly. They were forced to disclose anyone who had incited them not to pay the taxes. Worse still, they were tortured to declare the reactionary political party to which they had belonged. In practice, the chairman of the meeting had already had on hands the list of names of the individuals the Party considered as reactionary elements in the village. He was even, at times, prompted to mention those names. (Quite a few of chairmen of this type were illiterate). He who avowed his crimes, that is, to declare what the Party wanted him to do, was immediately set free.

The Persecution

The Party launched successive operations of political struggle. Reactionary elements on the black list were arrested, tortured. and even killed Survivors from operations of terror were detained for further investigation. A few weeks later, the security police pronounced without proof and evidence that they were truly the traitors or dangerous elements of certain clandestine organizations working for the French. The political struggle was uptight. The local authority had to report the number of traitors as required. There were at least three to five individuals in each village who attributed as traitors and dangerous elements. Many of them were either tortured to death. Others killed themselves out of humiliation. The former Cabinet Minister Dang Van Huong was among the victims. He was not tortured to death, but his brother was. Dang Van Huong and his wife hanged themselves afterwards. Dang Van Huong was the father of Colonel Dang Van Viet, who led the troops of the People’s Army to defeat the French troops at the battle of Cao Bang - Lang Son.

Terrorism

Terror plagued the countryside. The authorities in the provinces were to submit to the central government a list of typical reactionary elements consisting of a landlord, a Buddhist monk, a Catholic priest, a laureate Confucian scholar, and a mandarin and to prepare to bring them to stand trial in open military courts of justice. In the Thanh Hoa province, for instance, the top landlord Nguyen Huu Ngoc and the Buddhist monk Thich Tue Chieu were given the death sentence. The Catholic priest Mai Ba Nhac and two compradors were sentenced to 15 years of forced labor. The old mandarin Ha Van Ngoan and the laureate scholar Le Trong Nhi did not appear before court: they died in prison (Hoang Van Chi, 137-150).

Terror campaigns disguised as a political struggle ensued. This political struggle, however, was only the prelude to the performance of the agrarian reform that took place two years after the Dien Bien Phu victory (1956). In fact, during the Resistance War (1946-1954), the Communist Party of Indochina had ever maintained its approaches to land and education and thoughts reforms. Party members and cadres were instructed not only to do away the landlords but also to blot out all vestiges of French imperialism and Western democratic values and culture. These approaches were developed into theories and methods of reasoning destined to level up the elimination of the Western democratic ideology on private ownership and replace it with the Marxist ideology and, later, the Maoist ideology on the class, the class struggle, and the class ownership of the economy.

The Land Reform

The land reform began in 1953, but the campaign for what was named by Mao as "the overthrow of the political power and influence of the landowning class and the notables and men of letters" practically started at the end of 1952. During the first Congress of the Vietnamese Workers’ Party, November 14-26, 1953, the party members and cadres were particularly instilled to adopt the methods of application, which were modeled on the ones the Chinese Communists had executed in 1948. Implanted in the party members’ and cadres’ minds were the compass thoughts: "The old regime is a regime of exploitation; the Vietnamese landlords are always the collaborators with the French imperialists, and they are to be destroyed."

Prelude to the Deluge

Following the defeat of the French army at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, he French troops withdrew from the outlining provinces of the Red River delta --Phat Diem, Bui Chu, Nam Dinh, Ninh Binh, and Phu Ly --to protect the Capital, Hanoi, the seaport, Haiphong, and Route V connecting the two cities. The Viet Minh, aware of a popular revolt, changed their tactics. They showed compassion to the people in the newly-liberated areas. and stopped short their operations of land reform. In practice, in many parishes, the Catholics were persecuted for practicing their faith or because of their anti-Communist stance.

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Almost as soon as the [1954] truce became effective, the Catholic bishops entered a test of power with the Viet Minh, using their self-defense forces to back the Democratic Republic of Vietnam occupation. The response was predictably ruthless. Catholic villages were attacked by the People’s Army. In two instances, inhabitants reportedly were massacred, churches were burned, church property confiscated, priests tortured or jailed. and heavy taxes levied on Church lands or buildings. Among the consequences of this violence was a Catholic propaganda campaign against the Viet Minh, -- the Virgin-had-gone-South- and mass migration of whole parishes (Pentagon Papers, 1972:12).

The Vietnamese Workers’ Party, indeed, had to wait until the Communist troops took over Haiphong, the city of last hope, from which people could escape to the South, and resume their work. Series of fierce operations to denounce crimes were performed in the plains of the Red River. The aftermath was terrible. Traitors were tried, detained, or executed, and their properties were confiscated. In the suburbs of Hanoi alone, 1,032 families, which was 4% of the population, were classified as reactionary traitors.

The Laws and the Practices

Article 4 of Chapter 2 of the Decree 197/SL, promulgated on December 19, 1953, stipulated that only superfluous cultivated land, cattle, and farm implements were all confiscated. Nevertheless innocent landowners and their families were thrown out of their houses. The Decree on the Protection of the Freedom of Conscience promulgated on June 4, 1955, stipulated that "the Government shall guarantee the freedom of conscience and freedom of worship of the people. Nobody is allowed to infringe these freedoms (Article 1, Chapter I)" that "churches, temples, pagodas, sanctums, religious institutes, and articles of worship belonging to any religion shall be protected by law (Article 6, Chapter I," and that "in the process of land reform, a part of land property owned by religious groups which was requisitioned by the Government either with or without reparations for distributions to peasants, shall be left to the church, pagoda, or sanctum concerned in an area large enough to ensure the performance of worship and to provide for living conditions for priests and religious dignitaries in order them to carry out their religious activities (Article 10, Chapter III)." Nevertheless, Geniuses and saints were ridiculed; priests and dignitaries were executed; and seminarians and nuns were forced to return home. Communal houses, churches, temples, and pagodas were destroyed or turned into offices, classrooms, or granaries. Neighbors spied on one another. Landowners and their family members were mocked, beaten, or killed without mercy.

The Campaign of Land Reform

The campaign of land reform served a political purpose. General Le Thiet Hung of the Vietnamese People’s Army reported in the magazine Cuu Chien Binh (Veteran Fighters) in September 1991 that it was Ho Chi Minh who initiated and executed the orders to carry out the campaigns of crime revelations and denunciations of landlords. He applied all the experiences in agrarian reforms he had accumulated from Stalin during his stay in the Soviet Union and the maneuvers for crimes revelations and denunciations from Mao during the years 1924-1927 in Hunan when he served as a secret agent for the Soviet Union. Contrary to the common belief that Ho had applied the methods he had learned from the agrarian reform from the brother Chinese Communists, Ho didn’t apply them literally. He practically modified them. He set up norms for his plan of actions, adjusting the reality to the actual situation to achieve his purpose.

Indeed, when carrying out the programs of land reform in Hunan, the Chinese Communists were still not in power. They did not have an administration of their own. The operations were performed at a small scale. It was until the Chinese Koumintang applied the strategy "to ally with Russia and tolerate the Chinese Communists" that the Chinese Communists had a chance to instigate the uprising. Ho had returned to Russia before that time. There were some principles and pieces of advice from the Chinese advisers, but the initiatives were his.

As a matter of fact, when launching the operations of land reform in North Vietnam, the Vietnamese Communists were in power. They seized the entire administration, and, as a result, the Party and State directed the people’s uprising. In this way They easily shifted full responsibility on the masses for the appropriation of the property of the landlords, the killing of innocent people, and the destruction of the material establishments and cultural values of the entire people at he base. Subversive activities with hatred and violence ensued and expanded.

The campaigns of crimes revelations and denunciations began to take place at the end of 1952. However, it was not until December 20, 1953 when Ho Chi Minh convened a special meeting of the National Assembly to discuss the land reform policy and to pass the laws for land reforms that the true campaigns for land reform were carried out. Ho Chi Minh, under his secret name DIN, in his article in the magazine Vi Hoa Binh Lau Dai, Vi Dan Chu Nhan Dan (For a Lasting Peace, for a People’s Democracy) on August 21, 1953 published a summary of the developments of the land reforms as follows:

"The order was issued. Last May, under the leadership of the Party and after cautious deliberate preparations, the peasants had a conference. More than 200 representatives were present. They carefully studied the directives from the Party and the decrees of the Government on the new policy of land reform. They traced out a plan of actions to practically reduce taxes and rates of interests. They decided to begin work in a number of areas then gradually expand the movement according to the oil-blotting spot approach.

When the conference ended, the representatives were divided into two battalions. These battalions went directly to the villages in two different directions. Each battalion was then divided into teams. Each team was composed of 12 to 15 people, and each team was in charge of a designated village. Every member of the team must firmly observe the internal regulations. One of them regulates the three do’s together: live in the poor peasant’s family (live together), share meals with them (eat together), and 3) help them with their work (work together).

The team continued their work-plan through different phases. They visited poor peasants and talked with them. They studied the situations in the village and explained to them the roots of their poverty. They discussed with them the way to struggle. They explained to them the Party and Government’s policy of land reform. They selected active people among the peasants. In the meetings, they encouraged poor peasants to speak out the the landlords’ acts of oppression and exploitation they had suffered. They aroused their hatred and indignation against the pack of landlords. They set up a provisional committee of peasants consisting of the peasants from the agricultural commune. This committee also included those active peasants who had already been selected. This committee would direct the movement and carry out the policy of land reform. When these tasks had been performed, they organized a meeting. They brought the landlords who had committed crimes against the peasants to the meeting. Having had evidence in hand, the peasants publicly accused them of their crimes."

In practice, the peasants were taught how to denounce the landlord’s crimes during the operations of land reform.The purpose was after all to prove to the population that the Party , acting through the Peasants Association, was all-powerful. If the accused admitted to the various charges, that was good, as far as the Party was concerned’ because the denouncers appeared to be truthful and reliable. But, if too many of them denied the accusations, a substantial number of spectators might be inclined to view that the charges were merely invented and groundless. In the latter case, the Party was often obliged by means of threats to force the victims to change his attitude or even to shoot him in order to safeguard its prestige (Hoang Van Chi, 1964:186)

The People’s Court

The traitors were brought to stand trials before a people; s court. Finally. The People’s Court judged them and made decisions. The criminals had to pay back to the peasants the illegal amount of money they had received from the peasants’ land rents and the money that they had exploited and retained from the peasants’ work and returned to them the lands they had dispossessed by cheating, and so on. In the cases where the accused committed other serious crimes, the People’s Court had to give them the death penalty.

"A simple false denouncement is sound enough to reverse the situation of an innocent participant to that of a true culprit. Disaster, disgrace and shame, and death hanged in midair over the head, and, like an overripe fruit on a high twig, would dropped off anytime. Because of this, amid the thunder of tumult from the crowd of villagers, quite a few cries burst into shouts to smother up tears or calm down disquietude or a daze filled with awe that overwhelms one during a storm." (Duong Thu Huong, Thien Duong Mu)

The Agricultural Committee

The power of the agricultural commune, in the words of Mao Tsetung, is absolute. It forbids the landlords to open their mouths. It sweeps away the power and influence of the landlords. That means beating the landlords to the ground and trampling them underfoot. A frightening picture was a scene of a person who was executed by the revolution: Being buried with his head above the ground, the victim has the chance to witness with his own eyes his death. The executioner used a harrow drawn by a buffalo to bush the head of the victim forward and backward until it dropped off. Drum beating,, gong striking, and shouts of acclaim of the revolutionary masses were thundering around. These rituals performed in the People’s Republic of China were repeated in the distant district of Hoang Hoa, Thanh Hoa Province. It is estimated that more than 500,000 people were executed during the land reforms in North Vietnam during the years 1952-1956 (Nguyen Viet, 1992: 12-14).

About 20 villages had carried out the same procedures. The experiences they had gathered were fairly ample. A real form of class struggle of this type raged in the rural areas. It only ended until later when Gorbachev forced the Vietnamese Communists to rectify their errors and excused Ho Chi Minh from dishonesty and wickedness.

A Typical Case

The Sao Mai Student Group, an underground organization operating inside Vietnam (1993) reported that during the first phase of land reform the Communists pushed forward bloody campaigns of terror. Their machinery of propaganda incessantly repeated the trial of the cruelest and most dangerous traitor Cat Hanh Long in Thai Nguyen. This was the first trial in a people’s court that had ever taken place in Vietnam. It opened a purge camouflaged under the "movement of agrarian reforms.

In the early days of July 1993, the portrait of the "cruelest monster Cat Hanh Long" was recreated for the first time on the newspaper. After exposing the hideous truth with arguments that showed great nervousness, the Doanh Nghiep (Business Magazine) published a petition by Cat Hanh Long’s son and daughter-in-law. In it, they displayed with evidence how the homeless children and grandchildren of the family had suffered after the land reform, regardless of the wrong accusations that killed Cat Han Long were acknowledged.

Nguyen Thi Nam alias Cat Hanh Long was one of the most ardent supporters of the Viet Minh movement in the early days of the August uprisings. She had encouraged her children and grandchildren to join the Viet Minh to operate revolutionary activities clandestinely. She contributed with wealth and work to the Viet Minh cause. She engaged herself in campaigns of fundraising for the Viet Minh. encouraging fellow merchants to buy Viet Minh bonds with which the rViet Minh could amass tons of salt, rice, arms and ammunitions to prepare for the revolution. She engaged herself in the "Weeks foe Gold" campaigns to amass gold for the Ho Chi Minh government. She had tons of copper transported to the khu (secret war zones) to cast ammunitions. She joined the Viet Minh government in the resistance war against the French. She served it in the Movement of Patriotic Women to consolidate the Party’s organization. and in the Party Central Committee as well, to help implement ithe State economy projects (1945-46). She was therefore elected President of Patriotic Women Association of the Inter-zone of Resistance of Viet Bac in Thai Nguyen. She was at the same time a member of the Committee for Patriotic Women in North Vietnam. At the Congress of the Representatives of the Movement of Patriotic Women, the government of Ho Chi Minh gave her a note of recognition.

Cat Hanh Long was one among the victims who were arbitrarily charged with committing the cruelest and most wicked crimes. They were subject to the most tragic death, even though they were truly those who had supported the Communists in establishing and consolidating the Communist movement. The main reason for their deaths was that they had been so much enthusiastic about the struggle for national salvation but were not aware of the Communists’ ultimate goal. Their political viewpoints were apparently the immediate danger to their cause. To maintain their monopoly of power, the Communists never hesitated to kill them (The Sao Mai Student Group, 1993).

The Rectification of Errors

Owing to the political developments in the Socialist Bloc were the confessions on errors generated. The Vietnamese Workers’ Party unexpectedly admitted it had committed serious errors during the campaigns of land reform. It was Ho Chi Minh himself who procreated these confessions. He declared with tears in his eyes that because of ardent enthusiasm, a number of Party cadres had made mistakes, thus causing mourning to many families of those who were wrongly convicted. Ho Chi Minh solemnly declared to right the wrong to restore citizenship to family members of those who were wrongly convicted of treason, of being reactionaries. He also promised to punish those cadres who committed errors. Ho Viet Thang, vice-minister in charge of land reform resigned from office. Truong Chinh, the Party’s Secretary-general, avowed he had made the most serious mistake. He was removed from office but was nevertheless appointed Chairman of the National Assembly. At the 10th Congress of the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Workers’ Party, Vo Nguyen Giap restated the Party’s errors and failures, regardless of the fact that the peasants had been vested with the mission to carry out the campaigns of land reform. Among other things, the Party admitted that it had attacked the landowning families indiscriminately. It had attacked strongly tribal chiefs, injuring local customs and manners. It had executed too many honest people. It had attacked with violence on a large front, to see enemies everywhere and to resort to terror and torture beyond normal practice. It had taken no consideration to followers of the revolution and participants in the resistance. It had failed to respect the principles of freedom of faith and worship.

The rectification of errors soon sank in oblivion. It drew with it all the tragic incidents into darkness. Over the years, no real incident of rectification had been seen. :Family members of the victims of the massacre during the early years of land reform were not free from the siege by the society They were not able to merge into light from the miserable life comparable to those people who lived at the edge of death. (The Sao Mai Student Group, 1993).

The Land Reform and Its Aftermath

On November 1, 1956, the government announced the release of 12,000 people from prisons and labor camps. However, it was generally believed that between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed, and 50,000 to 100,000 were deported and imprisoned. What the agrarian reforms had failed to accomplish was to satisfy the need for land of those whose benefit the achievement the regime had allegedly undertaken. In fact, it was able to give 1.5 million tenant and poor peasant families slightly more than one acre each. Nevertheless, these gifts were not substantial enough to turn the tenants and poor peasants into enthusiastic supporters of the regime. Furthermore, the injustices and atrocities resulting from false accusation and violence during the land reform produced widespread resentment, unrest, and eventually open rebellion. The brutality of the cadres embittered not only the victims but also those who were lucky enough to have escaped persecution (Joseph Buttinger, 1968: 428).

In the provinces in the Red River delta the masses revolted against the local administration. The Party leadership had to rely on the army to quench the uprisings. During November 1956, the Party’s press conceded that a popular revolt took place in the Quynh Luu District, Nghe An Province, the hometown of Ho Chi Minh. Approximately 20,000 peasants armed with coarse farm implements and staffs fought against the 315 Division. Western observers claimed that about 1,000 peasants were killed or wounded between November 10 and 20, 1956. Several thousand were arrested and deported. In Hanoi, intellectuals stood up in opposition to the party cadres’ haughtiness and corrupt practices of the officialdom. Although their struggle was unsuccessful, it contributed to denouncing the socialist regime’s social injustices and the pernicious political oppression the intellectuals had suffered under the totalitarian dictatorship.