A heroic people, the Vietnamese have a very glorious tradition of struggle against foreign invaders. Centuries ago, they had already gained a rich experience in nation-wide insurrection and people’s war against much larger and stronger armies of aggression.
Since the birth of the Vietnamese working class, under the leadership of our Party and striving after the revolutionary goals of national independence, democracy and socialism, our people have further developed the nation’s tradition of struggle against foreign aggression and brought nation-wide insurrection and people’s war to a very high level. Our people have overcome the Japanese fascists and French colonialists; they have defeated and are still defeating the US imperialists, enriching their history with more glorious pages and making worthy contributions to the revolutionary cause of the peoples in Indochina, Southeast Asia and the world.
In the victorious combat against imperialism and colonialism, the brutal aggressive forces of the twentieth century, Viet Nam has become the symbol of indomitable fighting spirit, of creative intelligence, of military skill in the struggle for national salvation, of the invincible power of people’s war. The Vietnamese people’s war has become a great event, a legend of the 20th century. The Vietnamese people have highlighted this shining truth that in our time, a people, even though small, without vast territory, large population or developed economy, but united and determined, having a correct revolutionary line, creatively applying the Marxist-Leninist principle of nation-wide uprising and people’s war to their specific conditions and enjoying the assistance of the socialist camp and progressive mankind, are fully capable of overcoming much bigger and stronger aggressors, including the leading imperialist power, the United States.
While mapping out a correct and creative line for the revolution and revolutionary war in Viet Nam, our Party soon discovered and mastered the laws governing the development of our society and of revolutionary war and revolutionary violence in our country. The essence of the law of revolutionary violence lies in the combination of political and armed forces, of political struggle and armed struggle, insurrection and revolutionary war. In the process of leading the nation-wide insurrection and people’s war, our Party has built up a bloc of national unity based on the worker-peasant alliance and led by the working class; it has organized the political forces of the broad masses, and built up powerful armed forces of the people, which include the armed forces of the masses and the revolutionary army. Our people have creatively made use of all forms of struggle, combining attacks and uprisings, applying a strategy of offensive in all three strategic areas,(1) with a view to destroying the enemy, seizing and maintaining power, overthrowing the rule of colonialism and its lackeys, defeating the aggressive war of imperialism.
This essay deals with the problem of building up the armed forces of the people in insurrection and revolutionary war in our country, one of the essential points of our Party’s military line.
In the process of nation-wide insurrection, people’s war and the building up of national defence by the entire people under the Party’s leadership, our people’s armed forces have come into being, rapidly matured and won glorious victories. Every Vietnamese patriot has risen up to fight the enemy to save the country. Our people have brought to a new level the old national tradition of “everyone a soldier”, organizing both the people’s army and the armed forces of the broad masses which fight everywhere in the country. Today there are millions of fighters in the armed organizations of the masses, hundreds of thousands of fighters in the people’s army, equipped with various kinds of weapons, rudimentary, semi-modern, and modern, skilful combatants, courageous and intelligent, who are fighting selflessly day and night for the independence, freedom and reunification of the fatherland and for socialism, against the leading imperialism of our time, aggressive US imperialism.
Looking back over the rapid growth and the path strewn with glorious victories of our people in general and the people’s armed forces in particular in the fight against the Japanese fascists, French colonialists and US imperialists, we can say that the forces of nation-wide insurrection and people’s war, including both the political and armed forces, are typical of our Party’s success in organizing and building up the total combined forces of the revolutionary masses, of revolutionary violence. We can also say that our people’s armed forces, including the armed forces of the masses and the revolutionary army, organized and led by our Party, are typical of the success in organizing military forces by our people, a small people who in our time have successively defeated three big imperialist powers.
This success is possible because our Party has mastered the full theory of Marxism-Leninism on military organization in armed uprising and revolutionary war, because it has inherited and brought to a new level our people’s tradition of nation-wide resistance and experience in organizing the armed forces during national insurrections and national wars in former times and because it has selectively learned from the experience of the world’s people. Our Party has creatively applied such theory and experience to the practice of insurrection and war in our country, that is to the conditions of a small country facing the strong forces of aggression of imperialism and colonialism, with a view to achieving the goals of our revolution set forth by our Party.
Adhering to the viewpoint of revolutionary violence and people’s war our Party advocates the arming of the broad masses while building up a powerful people’s army, regarding the armed forces of the masses as the foundation of the people’s army, and the people’s army as the core of the armed forces of the masses, in armed insurrection and revolutionary war as well as in national defence by the entire people, in the national liberation war as well as in the war to defend the Fatherland.
Viewing history in concrete development, our Party has, in the course of different periods of revolutionary struggle, successfully solved the problem of arming the masses and building up the people’s army in accordance with the demands of the revolutionary tasks, the kind of enemy it has to fight and the forms of revolutionary struggle in each period based on specific historical conditions in the political, social and economic fields.
At present the Nixon administration, though it has suffered heavy setbacks, is still stubbornly carrying on the strategy of “Vietnamization of the war”, intensifying and expanding the war all over Indochina. Our people in the South, mastering the law of revolutionary war in the new period, are intensifying the armed and political struggles, combining attacks and uprisings in all the three strategic areas and, together with the brotherly peoples of Cambodia and Laos, are determined to shatter the strategy of “Vietnamization of the war”, to shatter the Nixon doctrine over the whole Indochinese battlefield. More than ever before, while developing the political forces and carrying on the political struggle, our people must step up the building up of armed forces and the armed struggle in close combination with other forms of struggle, advancing forward to defeat completely the US aggressors and their stooges, liberating the South, defending the North, proceeding toward national reunification and fulfilling our internationalist duty.
In the course of the struggle to accomplish this primary task of our revolution, we must at the same time lay the basis and map out directions for the long-term building up of the people’s armed forces and for national defence by the entire people, so as to defend our Fatherland firmly and defeat any war of aggression that may be unleashed by any enemy, however strong and well-equipped, who dares to encroach upon our people’s beautiful land, or upon our independence and freedom.
We must find the best way to arm the revolutionary masses and build up the people’s army in order to fulfil the above-mentioned immediate and long-term tasks of our people.
To do so, we must further study Marxist-Leninist principles regarding the military organization of the proletariat, analyse the experience and tradition of our people in organizing the armed forces in the past, and especially gradually sum up our Party’s experience in building up the army and arming the masses during the past forty years or more.
The theory and practice of arming the masses and building up the army is a question of burning interest for the peoples of various nations who are today engaged in the struggle for national independence, democracy and socialism, in face of the policies of violence and brutal war followed by imperialism with US imperialism at its head and in face of the rapid development of ever more modern weapons and means of war in the world.
(1) The highlands, the plains and the urban areas.
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