Truong Chinh
Encyclopedia
Hanoi
Hanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...
) was a Vietnamese
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
political leader and theoretician. From 1941 to 1957, he was Vietnam's second-ranked communist leader (after Hồ Chí Minh
Ho Chi Minh
Hồ Chí Minh , born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc, was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader who was prime minister and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam...
). Following the death of Lê Duẩn in 1986, he was briefly Vietnam's top leader.
Xuân Khu joined the Vietnamese Communist Party in the 1930s. He became an admirer of the Chinese
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
communist leader, Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
, and adopted the pseudonym Trường Chinh, which was the Vietnamese cognate
Cognate
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
for Chinese name for Long March
Long March
The Long March was a massive military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Communist Party of China, the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang army. There was not one Long March, but a series of marches, as various Communist armies in the south...
, 長征. In 1941, Trường Chinh became the first secretary of the communist party and thus the party's second ranking leader after Hồ Chí Minh. In the following years, the party fought a war for independence against the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
colonists. The communists gained power in North Vietnam
North Vietnam
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , was a communist state that ruled the northern half of Vietnam from 1954 until 1976 following the Geneva Conference and laid claim to all of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954 during the First Indochina War, during which they controlled pockets of territory throughout...
in 1955, while a non-communist government retained power in South Vietnam
South Vietnam
South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the "State of Vietnam" and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" . Its capital was Saigon...
.
In the 1950s, Trường Chinh undertook land reforms in North Vietnam inspired by Mao. This policy caused many deaths from starvation. Trường Chinh had already been criticized for his unwillingness to agree with other party leaders and for his support of China while other leaders relied on the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
as their role model. The Sino-Soviet split
Sino-Soviet split
In political science, the term Sino–Soviet split denotes the worsening of political and ideologic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the Cold War...
reduced China's influence in Hanoi and Trường Chinh lost the position of first secretary toward the end of 1956. However, he was still seated as the second-ranking leader at the 1957 May Day
May Day
May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....
parade. At the 1958 May Day
May Day
May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....
parade, Lê Duẩn was ranked second, but Trường remained a powerful figure on the Politburo.
Trường Chinh was Chairman of the National Assembly's Standing Committee from 1960 to 1981, and Chairman of the Council of State from 1981 to 1987.
Vietnam was unified in 1975, and Trường Chinh was selected president (a ceremonial position) in 1981. He became general secretary and Vietnam's top leader in July 1986 following Lê Duẩn's death. Trường Chinh came to be receptive to reformists and gradually sided with them after visits to the countryside in 1983, amidst the critical economic conditions facing Vietnam at the time; nevertheless, he was replaced by Nguyễn Văn Linh
Nguyen Van Linh
Nguyễn Văn Linh was a Vietnamese revolutionary and politician. He was the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam from 1986 to 1991 and a political leader of the Vietcong during the Vietnam War...
at the Sixth Party Congress in December 1986, part of a sweeping leadership change that marked the beginning of the Đổi mới (Renovation) period. Trường Chinh resigned as president in 1987 due to ill health and died the following year.
He was Advisor of the Party's Central Committee from December 1986.