Peasant mobilization and anti‐colonial struggle in Vietnam: The rent reduction campaign of 1953

Abstract

While Vietnam seems to present an unusually successful case of coordination of national liberation struggle and peasant revolution, the relationship between these two aspects of the movement has been very complex, and the national and class struggles have had contradictory as well as complementary aspects. Following a summary of two poles of a debate on the topic within the Vietnamese communist movement in the 1930s and 40s, the article analyses in detail the relationship between the independence struggle and social revolution during 1953, the year in which the Communist Party systematically introduced mass mobilization for class struggle for the first time during the national liberation war.