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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2009
As in many other Communist states (and quite a few non-Communist ones) there is in the DRV (Democratic Republic of [North] Vietnam) a sharp difference between the theoretical and the actual structure of governmental powers.
Article 4 of the DRV Constitution of January 1, 1960, adequately covers the subject of the theoretical source of power in North Vietnam: “All powers of the DRV belong to the people, who exercise them through the intermediary of the National Assembly and of People's Councils at every echelon, elected by it and responsible to it….”
1 It is an often-forgotten fact that until the collapse of the 1947 Foreign Ministers' Conference, there was solid hope that France would turn Communist on short notice, along with all her colonies. Thus, Moscow (while lambasting British and American “colonialism” in India, the Philippines and Malaya) carefully abstained from even mentioning French operations in Indo-China in its propaganda; and at home, the French Communist Party did not break cabinet solidarity when the Blum government submitted credit requests (including $7 million for purchases of weapons in the U.S.A.) for the prosecution of the first year of the Indo-China war. Cf. Fall, B., “Tribulations of a Party Line: The French Communist Party and the Indochina War,” in Foreign Affairs, New York, 04 1955.Google Scholar
2 Fall, B., Le Viet-Minh, Paris, 1960Google Scholar: Armand Colin; also ibid., “North Viet-Nam's New Constitution and Government,” Pacific Affairs, 09 1960.Google Scholar
3 Lao-Dong, Dang, Third National Congress of the Viet-Nam Workers' Party (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1960). Four vols.Google Scholar
4 Ibid., p. 11.
5 Le Viet-Mlnh, op. cit., p. 173.Google Scholar
6 Cf. Lacoature, J. and Devillers, P., Fin d'une guerre—Genève 1954 (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1960).Google Scholar The generally accepted assertion is that the USSR traded North Vietnamese territory against a hope of prying France loose from her Western alliances.
7 To quote but one precise example, a French “Peugeot” bicycle, although at least eight years old by now, fetches a second-hand price that is twice as high as that of a brand-new Czechoslovak bicycle.