The Red Soviets of Nghe-Tinh: An Early Communist Rebellion in Vietnam

Abstract

In the early months of 1930, a series of strikes broke out at various spots in French Indochina - at the Phu Rieng rubber plantation near Bien Hoa in Cochin China, at a match factory at Binh Thuy near Vinh in Central Vietnam, and at a textile plant at Nam Dinh in Tonkin. While not exceptionally important in themselves, these strikes can be seen in retrospect as the opening shots in a year of violence and rebellion. By midsummer the discontent had spread from outbreaks in the big industrial centers to the rural areas in Central and South Vietnam, where a series of major peasant revolts broke out against French colonial authority. As governmental authority in the Central provinces of Nghe An and Ha Tinh disintegrated, it was rapidly replaced by village peasant Soviets under communist party leadership. The French responded vigorously to these “Nghe-Tinh Soviets” but it was only several months later, in mid-1931, that order was restored over a battered, exhausted, and resentful peasantry.