History of Vietnam (1945–present)
[1] In 1986, the Communist Party of Vietnam changed its economic policy and began a series of reforms to the private sector and to the economy through what is known as Đổi Mới, a political movement primarily led by Prime Minister Võ Văn Kiệt.
[2][3] The British commander in Southeast Asia, Lord Louis Mountbatten, sent 20,000 troops of the 20th Indian division to occupy Saigon under General Douglas Gracey who landed in southern Vietnam on 6 September 1945, disarming the Japanese and restoring order.
[citation needed] The Việt Minh force grew significantly with China's assistance and in 1954, under the command of General Võ Nguyên Giáp, launched a major siege against French bases in Điện Biên Phủ.
The Việt Minh force surprised Western military experts with their use of primitive means to move artillery pieces and supplies up the mountains surrounding Điện Biên Phủ, giving them a decisive advantage.
[citation needed] The Geneva Conference of 1954 ended France's colonial presence in Vietnam and partitioned the country into two states at the 17th parallel pending unification on the basis of internationally supervised free elections.
The tension was not resolved, and on August 21, the ARVN Special Forces loyal to his brother and chief adviser Ngô Đình Nhu and commanded by Lê Quang Tung raided Buddhist pagodas across the country, leaving a death toll estimated to range into the hundreds.
On November 1, 1963, with the planning and backing of the CIA and the Kennedy administration,[12] South Vietnamese generals led by Dương Văn Minh engineered a coup d'état and overthrew Ngô Đình Diệm, killing both him and his brother Nhu.
However, under Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Union picked up the pace of aid and provided North Vietnam with heavy weapons, such as T-54 tanks, artillery, MIG fighter planes, surface-to-air missiles etc.
Many of the executed victims had relations with the South Vietnamese government or the US, or part of social groups that were considered enemies to the Viet Cong, like Catholics, business owners and intellectuals (Thảm Sát Tết Mậu Thân).
In the months following the Tet Offensive, an American unit massacred civilian villagers, suspected to be sheltering Viet Cong guerillas, in the hamlet of My Lai in Central Vietnam, causing an uproar in protest around the world.
In early 1975, North Vietnamese military led by General Văn Tiến Dũng launched a massive attack against the Central Highland province of Buôn Mê Thuột.
President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu ordered the moving of all troops from the Central Highland to the coastal areas, as with shrinking American aid, South Vietnamese forces could not afford to spread too thin.
However, due to lack of experience and logistics for such a large troop movement in such a short time, the whole South Vietnamese 2nd Corps got bogged down on narrow mountain roads, flooded with thousands of civilian refugees, and was decimated by ambushes along the way.
Communist infiltrators in the South tried to work out political deals to let Dương Văn Minh ascend to the Presidency, with the hope that he would prevent a last stand, a destructive battle for Saigon.
In a famous case, a South Vietnamese pilot, with his wife and children aboard a small Cessna plane, landed safely without a tailhook on the aircraft carrier USS Midway.
Due to a combination of factors including trade embargoes, exceptional floods, material shortages and peasant resistance, the Mekong Delta, once a world-class rice-producing area, was threatened with famine.
[citation needed] In foreign relations, the SRVN became increasingly aligned with the Soviet Union by both joining the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), and signing a Friendship Pact, which was in fact a military alliance.
Any negative comments toward the Party, the government, Uncle Ho, or anything related to Communism might earn the person the tag of Phản Động (Reactionary), with consequences ranging from being harassed by police, expelled from school or workplace, to being sent to prison.
[citation needed] Despite the defeat of South Vietnam, there was no serious demobilization of the Vietnamese People's Army, which remained one of Asia's largest militaries at over one million troops, or sign that warfare was coming to an end anytime soon.
A large Chinese force invaded the Vietnamese border area, but with China still suffering the effects of the Cultural Revolution, the People's Liberation Army was seriously deficient in training, equipment, and communications.
Some high-ranking officials of the Heng Samrin regime in the early 1980s resisted Vietnamese control, resulting in a purge that removed Pen Sovan, prime minister and general secretary of the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party.
Despite repeated overtures to the United States, attempts to reestablish diplomatic relation were hampered by the question of missing US soldiers from the war and President Ronald Reagan's vocal hostility towards the country's principle benefactor in Moscow.
In a 1981 interview with American journalist Stanley Karnow, Premier Phạm Văn Đồng remarked "Yes, we defeated the United States, but now we are a poor undeveloped nation and barely have enough to eat.
"[citation needed] Compounding all this was the complete failure of the Five-Year Plan adopted in 1976, as Vietnam remained one of the world's poorest countries with a per-capita GDP of less than US$300 and almost totally dependent on Soviet aid, which reached as much as US$3 billion a year by 1982.
This rejuvenation campaign was nonetheless diminished by the fact that the country's three most powerful individuals, Lê Duẩn, Phạm Văn Đồng, and President Trường Chinh, showed no sign of stepping down any time soon despite their combined age of 226 and clearly failing health (all of them visited Moscow for medical treatment during 1982).
Upon their accession, the country's new leadership denounced their geriatric predecessors for "utterly failing to improve the people's living standards, check corruption, or instill a more flexible, non-dogmatic outlook on life.
Although communist governments in Eastern Europe were collapsing in 1989, Vietnam was kept comparatively isolated from these events due to its poverty and geographical distance and a few small pro-democracy protests in Hanoi were quickly suppressed.
Soon after the Paris Agreement on Cambodia resolved the conflict in October 1991,[21] however, Vietnam established or reestablished diplomatic and economic relations with most of Western Europe, and several Asian countries.
[24] In June 2005, a high-level Vietnamese delegation, led by Prime Minister Phan Văn Khải, visited the United States and met with their U.S. counterparts, including President George W.
Although the leadership was presiding over a period of rapid economic growth, official corruption and a widening gap between urban wealth and rural poverty remained stubborn problems that were eroding the VCP's authority.
