SEPTEMBER 1966 HOC TAP EDITORIAL 'LET US STEP UP THEORY-FORMULATING TASK OF THE PARTY'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01720R000500040033-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 10, 2004
• Sequence Number: 33
• Publication Date: October 19, 1966
• Content Type: MF

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9 October 1966
EMORANDUM FOR
DIRECTOR
T; September 1966 Hoe Tap Editorial "Let Us Stop Up Theory-
Formulating Task of the Party"
1. This editorial is significant in several respects, doubly so
because Hoc Tap is the Lao Dong party's official theoretical journal and
anything appearing therein can be read as an authoritative party stater, .eent.
First, the editorial includes the most blatant official admission I have
ever seen of the fact that for 36 years the Vim. eesee Communist party
has struggled to acquire political control of Vietnam and althou
tactics have often been adjusted to circumstances these tactical shifts
have all been aimed at an unswerving strategic jetcttve. The editorial
makes quite explicit that frorr. its inception the party intended, in
accordance with sound Leninist doctrine, to take control of the "bourgeois
democratic revolution" in order to create a socialist (i. ee. , Con iaunist)
2. The editorial also Includes the closest thing I have seen to an
explicit Communist admission that the National Liberation Front is their
creature and one of their tactical devices. (The key sentences bearing
on the above points are quoted in full in this memorandum's annex.) The
editorial also acknowledges that the struggle in Vietnwu -. to a single struggle,
directed by the party, intended to "develop socialism in the north, liberate
the south, and advance toward reunifying the Fatherland". This phraseology
is not new but acquires additional meaning in light of the parallel comments
noted above.
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the editorial goes on to add issrediately that the party nust
uggtee against "doge mation and sectarianism", and adds that it
k to restore and strengthen the "unity and unanimity of the inter-
mist and proteta is i*te gatiosr.alisin"". 'T'hese words are
to is anything 6Wslap Chinese.
4. The main object of the editorial is to vindicate the "creeativit
e Vielmsn-,ooe party. This too to a doctrine the Chinese would not
3. The editorial is also interesting because it is easily read
(indeed, it is hard not to road) as anti. Chinese. Marx is quoted, but
never Mao. Neither China nor any Chinese leader Is explicitly u. entioned.
The editorial does say that in li ht of the Vietnamese party's "responsi-
bility to our working class ... ... Its responsibility to the inter-
national Communist and workers movement", it has the duty "to partici-
pate actively in the struggle to defend the lucidity of Marxism-Leninism
against r,visioaiora, which is the principal danger". In the same sentence,
national Cov r uaist n overeat and of the socialist care p, on the basis of
hard to road
creativity and are too slavishly prone to follow foreign examples. V e
cannot be sure just who these erring brethren may be, but in the context
of the whole piece I rather suspect Truoug Chinh and his pro-Chinese
followers are the people referred to.
singles out "erroneous" comrades who apparently doubt the party's
find congenial under present circumstances. Furtheermoree, the article
in the current struggle in the south, however, does vindicate part of the
appreciation on which present U. S. policy is based.
suggesting a softer Vietnamese line. The admission of the party
S. There to nothing in the editorial to give as aid and conAfort by
George A. Carver, Jr.
Special Assistant for Viete.?ese Affairs
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