International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

A leading theoretician in the Vietnamese Communist Party and the head of state of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam from 1981 until 1987, Dang Xuan Khu, as Truong Chinh was originally called, was born February 9, 1907, into a scholar-gentry family in Ha Nam Ninh Province, Vietnam, and grew up in the nearby town of Nam Dinh, where he first came across the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League of Hô Chi Minh . He attended the Lycée Albert Sarraut in Hanoi and took part in demonstrations against the French in 1928, which led to his expulsion from school. Truong Chinh worked as a teacher before joining the Revolutionary League of Hô Chi Minh and, in 1930, its successor, the Indochinese Communist Party. For a while he edited the Communist Party newspaper in Hanoi. Arrested by the French colonial authorities later in 1930, Truong Chinh was held in Son La prison until his release in 1936. In 1941 Truong Chinh was formally appointed first secretary of the Indochinese Communist Party, a position he held until November 1, 1956. During this time he first started using the name Truong Chinh, meaning “Long March,” and he was certainly an admirer of the Chinese Communist Party at the time. In charge of the dissemination of communist doctrine, he worked with General Vo Nguyen Giap in planning the communist strategy that led to their takeover of much of Vietnam. At the time there was a power ... log in or subscribe to read full text