The Communists' Divided Victory

With ringing, self-congratulatory toasts, Ho Chi Minh's successor, Secretary-General Le Duan, 68, last week ended the first Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party since 1960--and the first held in a unified Viet Nam. The six-day meeting in some respects resembled an overblown victory banquet. The 1,008 cadres and 24 fraternal foreign delegations--led by the Soviet Central Committee's Mikhail Suslov--endured no fewer than 55 speeches, including an eight-hour stem-winder by Le Duan. The theme of the Congress--Thong Nhat (national reunification)--was symbolized by the arrival of delegates from the South aboard the inaugural run of the rebuilt Saigon-Hanoi railway. Indeed, not only Thong Nhat was the leitmotiv of the long-winded harangues, but it was visible every day in Hanoi on newly renamed hotels, cafes, streets and the capital's largest park.

But national unity has proved far more difficult to achieve than it first seemed 20 months ago when the victorious Communist T-54s rumbled down the streets of Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City). Although there is little armed resistance in the South, the two Viet Nams remain divided by regional differences and decades of life under radically opposed political systems.

After more than a generation of war, few Southern cadres survived to take over when the Thieu government collapsed. Instead, nearly all bureaucracies, farms and factories are being run by Northerners. Helping keep order are fresh recruits, known contemptuously as Ba Muoi ("30s," meaning opportunists who joined the revolution after April 30). Says a recent exile from Saigon: "The North Vietnamese Army is still viewed as an army of occupation, not liberation." Adds Hoang Troung Tan, a former civil servant who escaped this fall: "The officials treated me and my father like slaves. My father is a fisherman who had to sell his catch to the government at a very low price. All the crops and products are being taken north."

Acknowledging such criticism, Politburo Member Le Due Tho at the Congress attacked party cadres who have been so lacking in devotion as to "degenerate, abuse their powers, commit fraudulent acts, violate the law, bully the masses and so forth." Le Due Tho also lashed out against "corruption, bureaucracy, arbitrariness and autocracy." Some foreign observers thought his wording might be the prelude to a purge.

Cool Relations. Party reform will hardly satisfy Southerners victimized by a draconian plan to resettle 4 million city dwellers in "new economic zones" in the Mekong Delta. According to a new five-year plan, Southerners from the cities will be recruited to reclaim 1 million hectares of rice land and to increase fish and lumber production.

Stimulating agriculture is a key prerequisite, Hanoi believes, for earning the foreign exchange to finance industrial growth. So are continued aid from the Soviet Union and cool, correct relations with the Cambodians and Chinese--who sent greetings but no delegations to the Congress.

Capitalist trade and technology are also welcome, but Viet Nam's leaders aim to develop an economy that matches their military power primarily by their own means. For its skittish Asian neighbors, the tasks Hanoi has set for itself provide some consolation. Winning Southern support and developing the economy are likely to preoccupy Ho's heirs for some years to come.

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