Land Reform and Land Reform Errors in North Vietnam

Abstract

T HE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC of Vietnam (DRV) carried out a large land reform campaign between 1953 and 1956.* On the surface it was a program to abolish landlordism and place the land in the hands of peasant smallholders, paving the way for a later transition to cooperative farming. Considered simply in this light, the land reform was quite successful. In fact, however, it had been a struggle not only for economic, but also for political power in the countryside, and in this respect the results were much less fortunate. The campaign was basically completed in July 1956. Over the next few months the Lao Dong (Workers') Party discovered that it had been committing disastrous errors. By the end of October these errors were being discussed at length in the newspapers, and the General Secretary of the Party, Truong Chinh, was forced to announce his resignation. A campaign to undo some of the excesses of the land reform lasted for more than a year thereafter. Although these excesses have long been known outside Vietnam, their nature and extent have been widely misunderstood and often misrepresented. Serious study (by western scholars) of the land reform, which began only a few years ago, must rely mainly on DRV sources, particularly the Hanoi newspaper Nhan Dan. This is not only because the anti-Communist materials on land reform which used to come from Saigon are of low quality but because the North Vietnamese sources are extremely informative. While there were some aspects of the land reform on which the Hanoi press kept silent, on others it gave a great deal of intelligent analysis, and was sometimes extraordinarily candid in discussing errors and failures. Nationally, the land reform occurred in waves, in each of which a number of villages underwent land reform more or less simultane-