Word: giap
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Politburo Member Truong Chinh, all in their early 60s (see box, page 28). For the immediate future, Ho's title will probably be taken by Vice President Ton Due Thang, an 81-year-old nonentity. Actual power will probably be wielded by the triumvirate?plus Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap...
...more frequently. The aim will remain the same?unifying Viet Nam under Hanoi's control?but the five contenders are likely to differ on the means. Pike believes, for example, that they disagree on the major policy issue confronting Hanoi?how best to win the war in the South. Giap, Dong and Le Duan support the current policy: intensive guerrilla activity interspersed with conventional, regular-force battles or "high points," all aimed at inflicting a decisive victory in the tradition of Dienbienphu. Truong Chinh, clearly influenced by the theories of Mao Tse-tung, favors dropping to a lower level...
...back in China, a temporary ally of the Chinese Nationalists in the battle against Japan. Early in 1941, Ho returned to Viet Nam, then occupied by the Japanese, for the first time in 30 years. He was accompanied by Dong and a young ex-teacher named Vo Nguyen Giap, now the North's military leader. A few months later, Ho founded an independence league called the Viet Minh, and established a base area conveniently near the Chinese border. Ostensibly, the front was intended to lead the anti-Japanese resistance; in fact, it was a sword at the throats...
...worked for a time. But in 1956, when the government tried to force every farmer into a collective, a peasant revolt erupted in his native Nghe An province. Though the policy was almost certainly Ho's, Truong Chinh was made the scapegoat. He lost his post as party leader. Giap denounced him for having "executed too many people" and having "resorted to terror." The agrarian purge was not the only instance of the regime's bloody-mindedness. Immediately after independence was declared in 1945, Ho's officials, bent on eliminating all real or potential opposition, wiped out thousands...
...special distinction among the elite. There are other ties of common background. Many intellectuals fled the North in 1954 when the Communists took over there. Lawyer Tran Ngoc Lieng, one of the leaders of the Progressive Nationalist Force Committee, was a schoolmate of North Vietnamese Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap at the University of Hanoi...