Not Your Expected Story

“A Viet Cong Memoir – an Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath,” by Truong Nhu Tang, 1985

Tang was an intellectual culled from the upper ranks of Saigon society under French rule.  He eventually became the Minister of Justice for the National Liberation Front (NLF) and the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) – i.e. a high-level official of the Viet Cong.  This is a revealing story of the brutal war waged by the U.S. and ARVN and the efforts of many south Vietnamese nationalists against them.  But it is also revealing as to the political positions of the NLF and the PRG - which were eventually at odds with those of the “Tonkinese” northern Vietnamese and the Lao Dong (Vietnamese Workers Party.)  Because of this, in 1978 Tang became a ‘boat person’ and ended up in Paris, where he had been educated, first became politically aware and first met Ho Chi Minh.

Very few in the U.S. know this story.  Tang was a supporter of a national and democratic revolution, which was originally the perspective of Ho for the South, and why he joined the NLF while the rest of his family supported the various U.S. sponsored regimes.  One of the highlights of the book is the story of how Tang and the NLF, PRG and COSVN (southern Lao Dong command) lived in the Iron Triangle jungle under heavy B-52 bombardment for years.  And how, during the criminal U.S. bombing of Cambodia, they were forced to go into northern Cambodia with the support of the Prince Sihanouk, who had been ousted.  (Tang actually went to school with Sihanouk for a time.)  The Viet Cong leadership barely survived between pincers from the Cambodian Lon Nol government’s army on the west and an ARVN offensive from the east, but no one was lost. 

Tang always calls many of the cadre from the North or from the local Lao Dong ‘ideologues' - though they were corrected by the top leadership sometimes.   After the military victory in the south in April 1975 by NVA and Viet Cong units, a more harsh and bureaucratic version of ‘democratic unity’ was administered by the Lao Dong.  Tang considered he had been duped, as had the whole NLF leadership.  Anyone reading it from a Trotskyist or other position will recognize the ‘errors’ made by the Lao Dong after the end of the war were because of the influence of the Soviet and Maoist bureaucracy on their training.   

“Re-education” camps that were merely long prison sentences.  Complete shunning of intellectuals, even those in the Party, who questioned affairs.  Cadres seizing wealth.  Dictatorial rule over workers and peasants, with arbitrary arrests for small matters.  A military-style social structure, with one Party giving orders.  The ignoring of mass organizations outside the Party orbit.  The misuse or non-use of various trained people in engineering, agriculture, medicine and other skills. 

Tang and most of the NLF leadership were against taking sides in the Soviet v. China debate that began in the early 1970s.  The Lao Dong came out for the Soviets, though both countries had supplied help to the national liberation struggle.   Tang quotes Ho Chi Minh a lot and maintains that after Ho died, the new leadership failed to follow Ho’s line regarding southern Vietnam. 

Viet Cong at work

To me the key issues beyond national liberation are those of land reform and workers control.  At one point Tang mentions that he didn’t want to touch the land reform subject in his work writing the future laws of south Vietnam, which might ‘alienate peasants.’ Which seems odd given the popularity of land reform to Vietnamese peasants!  For workers, the NLF/PRG program was limited to promoting more generous labor laws, but not nationalization, workers control or a guaranteed job. 

This is a valuable book to anyone who participated in the anti-Vietnam war movement, as I did.  Tang and the NLF/PRG kept a great eye on domestic events in the U.S., which was part of their 3-sided ‘people’s war’ strategy in forcing the U.S. out of Vietnam.  The U.S. itself only relied on one side - military power – and had no idea of why their choice of puppets like Thieu or Diem might undermine their position.  It is especially a window into the more elite, nationalist stratum in Saigon, which also sacrificed to expel the French, the Americans and their Vietnamese puppets.  While ultimately I disagree with his bourgeois views, Tang makes valid points about the type of ‘socialism’ introduced after the April 1975 victory.  That issue is in the ending chapters of the book, so the majority of the book is Tang’s training, then his role in the governmental Viet Cong during the wars.

Other reviews on Viet Nam.  Use blog search box, upper left, on word 'Vietnam' or:  “Kill Anything That Moves,” “Matterhorn,” “The Sympathizer,” “People’s History of the Vietnam War,” “In the Crossfire - Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary,” “Working-Class War,”"Tree of Smoke," "What It Is Like to Go To War," "Ken Burns," "Soldiers in Revolt."

And I bought it at May Day's used/discount section!

Red Frog

April 23, 2019