[2] Pham Van Dong is the longest serving Prime Minister of Vietnam, over 30 years from 1955 to 1987 and a student and close associate of Ho Chi Minh.

In 1925, at the age of 18, he joined fellow students to stage a school sit-in to mourn the death of the famous patriotic scholar Phan Chu Trinh.

In 1926, he traveled to Guangzhou in southern China to attend a training course run by Nguyen Ai Quoc (later known as Ho Chi Minh), before being admitted as a member of the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League, or Thanh Niên for short, the predecessor of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV).

He served the term in Poulo Condor Island Prison until 1936, when he was released under the general amnesty granted by the government of the Popular Front in France after its recent electoral successes.

In 1940, he secretly went to China with Võ Nguyên Giáp, joined the Indochinese Communist Party, and was tasked by Ho Chi Minh to build a base at the Vietnam-China border.

Phạm Văn Đồng joined the Indochinese Communist Party in 1940 and then continued to take part in activities led by Ho Chi Minh.

After Ho Chi Minh rose to power during the August Revolution in 1945, Phạm Văn Đồng was appointed minister of finance of the newly established government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), a position he occupied until 1946.

[3] Before he assumed the position of Minister of Finance, on May 31, 1946, he was the head of the delegation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam at Fontainebleau (France) instead of Nguyễn Tường Tam, who did not undertake the task, seeking an independent solution for Indochina.

Ho Chi Minh had suffered several strokes in the early 1960s, causing him to largely retire from the day-to-day management of North Vietnam.

Owing to Ho's absence, Đồng became the face of North Vietnam during the war with the United States, as he was the one who usually spoke to foreign diplomats and journalists.

[7] In general, Phạm Văn Đồng was considered a staunch communist and a great nationalist leader, one of the most faithful disciples of Ho Chi Minh and a major figure in Vietnam's fight for independence and unity.