CONFIDENTIAL
TRUONG CHINH
President of Council of State.
Member of CPV Politburo (ranks No 2).
President of National Defence Council.
Member of National Assembly for Hanoi.
Born 1908 in Nam Dinh Province (North Vietnam).
His real name is Dang Xuan Khu. Truong Chinh means "long march". Chinh's family were prominent in the Vietnamese nationalist movement. He was thrown out of school in 1928 for political agitation, and in 1930 he became a founder member of the Indochinese Communist Party. Arrested in 1931 and imprisoned until 1936, when he was released by the French Popular Front Government. Worked as a Party propagandist in Hanoi until 1939, when he fled to China with Vo Nguyen Giap (qv), and joined Ho Chi Minh in exile. Became Secretary-General of the Party in 1941 and played a key role in the development of the Party.
Stage-managed the second Party congress in 1951 (the Party had gone underground in 1945 in order to emphasise the Viet-Minh's nationalist credentials, but in 1951 the Party resumed its overt role under the name of the Vietnamese Workers' Party. Lao and Cambodian elements of the ICP had meanwhile begun to assume a supposedly independent existence).
Chinh developed a great admiration for Chinese-style communism and agrarian reform which he tried to apply in Vietnam. The agrarian reform campaign of 1955-56 was carried out in North Vietnam in a bloodly and ruthless manner, which led to peasant uprisings in certain provinces. Ho Chi Minh was obliged to ditch Chinh as Secretary-General. He publicly confessed to grave errors, but remained a member of the Politburo. Once matters had calmed down once again, he became the Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the National Scientific Board in 1958. In 1960 he was appointed Chairman of the National Assembly Standing Committee, a post he held until July 1981. He ranks number 2 in the Politburo.
In 1976 he was appointed chairman of the Committee to draft a new Constitution for the SRV which was finally adopted in December 1980.
In July 1981 he was given the job of President of the Council of State, a post created under the new Constitution which brings together the former functions of the President (Head of State) and the Chairman of the National Assembly Standing Committee. At the same time he became President of the National Defence Council, having been a member since 1971.
Chinh has clearly recovered from his errors in the 1950s. He commands a considerable following among Party cadres, who see him as a man of integrity, competent, modest in his life-style and unwilling to accept the Russian embrace without reservations. (Le Duan has been criticised on all these scores). Chinh's power has grown since 1981. Although there is much speculation about his supposedly pro-Chinese leanings and his dogmatic 'Maoist' ideas, he is now said to be fully in agreement with the latest measures of economic liberalisation, and recently told a Western (pro-Communist) journalist that collectivisation in the South would take "at least 20 years".
Truong Chinh is the Party theoretician. His ideological writings are voluminous. He is, however, neither original nor gifted. Despite a beatific face, he is ruthless, and to judge from his record, something of a fanatic. (Since 1976 at least he has been Chairman of the Central Committee Department for Research on Party Ministry).
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CONFIDENTIAL
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