Tôn Đức Thắng

Tôn Đức Thắng (August 20, 1888 – March 30, 1980) was the second and last president of North Vietnam and the first president of the reunified Vietnam under the leadership of General Secretary Lê Duẩn. The position of president is ceremonial and Thắng was never a major policymaker or even a member of the Politburo, Vietnam's ruling council. He served as president, initially of North Vietnam from September 2, 1969, and later of a united Vietnam, until his death in 1980.

In this Vietnamese name, the family name is Tôn. According to Vietnamese custom, this person should properly be referred to by the given name Thắng.

Tôn Đức Thắng
1st President of Vietnam
In office 2 July 1976 – 30 March 1980
Preceded by	Himself as President of North Vietnam Nguyen Huu Tho (as Head of State of Republic of South Vietnam)
Succeeded by	Trường Chinh Nguyễn Hữu Thọ (acting)
2nd President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
In office 2 September 1969 – 2 July 1976
Preceded by	Ho Chi Minh
Succeeded by	Post abolished
Chairman of the National Assembly
In office 20 September 1955 – 15 July 1960
Preceded by	Bui Bang Doan
Succeeded by	Trường Chinh
Personal details
Born	(1888-08-20)August 20, 1888 Long Xuyên, An Giang, French Indochina
Died	March 30, 1980(1980-03-30) (aged 91) Hanoi, Vietnam
Political party	Communist Party of Vietnam
Spouse(s)	Doan Thi Dau
Awards	Gold Star Order

Tôn Đức Thắng was a key Vietnamese nationalist and Communist political figure, was chairman of the National Assembly's Standing Committee 1955–1960 and served as the vice president to Hồ Chí Minh from 1960 to 1969. He died at the age of 91, he was the oldest head of a state with the title "president" (subsequently surpassed by Hastings Banda).

Early life

Tôn Đức Thắng was born to Tôn Văn Đề and Nguyễn Thị Di on Ông Hô Island along the Mekong River, roughly four kilometres from Long Xuyên, the capital of An Giang Province .[1] From 1897 to 1901, Thắng received his education in Chinese script, history and philosophy from a private tutor in Long Xuyên. This tutor, an anti-colonialist, carried a heavy influence on the early development of Thắng’s political beliefs .[1] Afterwards, he learned French at an elementary school in Long Xuyên. Thắng lived with his parents until 1906, when he moved to Saigon.[2]

In 1919, in the Black Sea when he was with the French Navy, Thắng claimed to participate in a plot with fellow sailors to turn over the French armored cruiser Waldeck-Rousseau to the enemy Bolshevik revolutionaries. He continued to participate in rebellious activities against the French, was member of Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth Association since 1927; and in 1929, he was imprisoned by the French at Sai Gon, deported to Côn Sơn Prison. He remained there until 1945 and immediately rose again into the public eye. After Hồ Chí Minh’s Viet Minh came into power in August 1945, Thắng became the member Cochinchina Party Committee of CPV, member Administration Resistance Committee of Cochinchina and since 1946, the presiding member of the National Assembly. In 1947, he became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

Alternative version of events

Christoph Giebel, Associate Professor of International Studies and History at the University of Washington and author of the book, Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism|Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism: Ton Duc Thang and the Politics of History and Memory, relates the basic outline of the mutiny and determines from his examination of historical evidence, such as ship logs, that Thắng did not participate in a mutiny on a French ship sent to the Black Sea in 1919 to help defeat Bolsheviks, those fabricated story that linked Vietnamese communism with the October Revolution in Russia and recounted across the Communist world in the 1950s. Giebel highlights disagreements over Thắng’s involvement with a Saigon labour union in the 1920s and the naval-yard strike there in 1925.[3][4]

Years with North Vietnam

Becoming a figure

Thắng also served as president of the Lien Viet during the rebellion against the French from 1946 to 1954. However, the organization was dissolved after the Geneva Convention in 1954 which gave the Viet Minh sole control over North Vietnam. Thắng then took over another organization, the Vietnamese Fatherland Front, a Communist pro-government nationalist group. Thắng led the Fatherland Front in its conquest to draw supporters from South Vietnam. He received the Stalin Peace Award in 1955 as a result.

Thắng’s work with trying to win over South Vietnam also helped lead him to becoming the Vice President of North Vietnam under Hồ Chí Minh in 1960. In 1967, when he was still vice president, Thắng won the Lenin Peace Prize, a yearly prize similar to the Nobel Peace Prize, but given out by the Soviet Union. After Hồ Chí Minh's death in 1969, Thắng served as the final president of the independent socialist state of North Vietnam.

Fall of Saigon

With the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, Thắng’s North Vietnam captured the capital of South Vietnam, thus allowing for the future reunification of North Vietnam and South Vietnam as one entity collectively known as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam which was formalized on July 2, 1976. Presently, April 30 is recognized as a public holiday in Vietnam known as Reunification Day, even though it was not until July 2 that the two countries became officially united as one nation.

Tôn Đức Thắng as president of Vietnam

With the end of the Vietnam War and with the South Vietnamese government ousted, Thắng was easily able to keep his control over the unstable new nation during the middle and late 1970s. The unified Vietnam under Thắng experienced early troubles, as political and economic conditions were deteriorating and millions of South Vietnamese were fleeing the country as boat people. As the leader of the united Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Thắng worked hard for several years on a massive reconstruction effort to rebuild both former North and South Vietnam's which were left devastated by years of war which included special projects such as rebuilding the industry, infrastructure, and economy.

Deposing of the Khmer Rouge

Main articles: Khmer Rouge and Sino-Vietnamese War

Troubles with the newly formed Vietnamese government further progressed in early 1978 when Thắng approached the Soviet Union for help in deposing the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, which was aligned with People's Republic of China (PRC). The situation seemed like a golden opportunity for the Soviet Union because they knew that the Vietnamese army could easily defeat Cambodian forces. A Vietnamese victory would weaken the only aligned nation with the People's Republic of China in Southeast Asia and demonstrate the superiority of being aligned with the Soviet Union. The growing tensions between the PRC and the Soviet Union had drastically escalated the situation in the area. The Soviet Union was anxious about the future outcome of a war by proxy between Vietnam and Cambodia.

On December 25, 1978, after months of growing border conflicts and an influx of Cambodians seeking refuge in Vietnam, the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia. By January 7, 1979, the Vietnamese had easily captured the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, and deposed the Khmer Rouge régime. However, the Soviet Union’s diplomatic victory was short-lived. The PRC was now being backed by the United States, and they increasingly showed signs of being close to war with Vietnam. The Soviets knew that they could not go help the Vietnamese if the PRC decided to invade Vietnam.

Not surprisingly, on February 15, 1979, the People's Republic of China officially announced plans to invade Vietnam, thus ending the crucial and significant Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, which had been signed in 1950. The PRC claimed that the invasion was as a result of mistreatment of ethnic Chinese and the Vietnamese presence on the PRC’s Spratly Islands.

On February 17, a PRC force of about 200,000 troops had crossed into Thắng's country, and they immediately started to invade Vietnamese cities and towns along Vietnam's northern border. Thắng had left an army of 100,000 men to fight off the PRC, and heavy casualties were reported from both sides. With the Chinese not wanting to linger in Vietnam any longer, they started to move out of the country less than a month later, on March 16. China’s early exit from the country drew up much confusion to who was the victor of the Sino-Vietnamese War. Thắng proclaimed that Vietnam had won the war, while his counterpart in China, Ye Jianying, proclaimed a Chinese victory. However, one thing is sure about the Sino-Vietnamese War’s outcome: Thắng’s Vietnam was able to successfully depose the Khmer Rouge from power in Cambodia.

Death and legacy

Tôn Đức Thắng died on March 30, 1980, in Hanoi, a little more than a year after the conclusion of the Sino-Vietnamese War, at the age of 91 from a heart seizure and respiratory failure. He was the oldest ever president of a country in the world. He was succeeded by one of his vice presidents, Nguyễn Hữu Thọ. He is buried in Mai Dịch Cemetery in the section reserved for the graves of government leaders and famous revolutionaries.[5] Even though Thắng had been the first president of the reunited Socialist Republic of Vietnam, he has not attained the same reverence as his predecessor, Hồ Chí Minh, had received from the Vietnamese people. Thắng served as the nation’s leader during the pivotal time when North Vietnam and South Vietnam were reunified as one. However, it was also a time when the country showed signs of exhaustion from 30 years of wars, with the Vietnam People's Army engaged in a long, costly war in Cambodia and Northern border. The economy collapsed in the wake of a failed attempt to collectivize the southern economy, some key party members such as Bùi Tín and Hoàng Văn Hoan defected. It was under his rule that Vietnam survived the subsidy period. Later in 1986, the Sixth Party's Congress passed the Renovation policy which recognized the failure of collectivization and liberalized the economy, opening a new chapter in Vietnam's history.[6]

See also

• Sino-Soviet border conflict
• History of Vietnam
• Tôn Đức Thắng University
• Vietnam War

Notes

1. Giebel, Christoph (2004). Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism: Ton Duc Thang and the Politics of History and Memory. Seattle: University of Washington Press. p. 168. ISBN 0-295-98429-5.
2. Giebel, p14.
3. "Trường hợp ông Tôn Đức Thắng". BBC (in Vietnamese). 2003-09-05. Retrieved 2007-12-08.
4. Christoph Giebel (2004). Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism. University of Washington Press. ISBN 0-295-98429-5.
5. Christina Schwenkel - The American War in Contemporary Vietnam: Transnational ... - Page 218 2009 "As stated, this practice is generally not found in war cemeteries in contemporary Vietnam, with two important exceptions: Hanoi's Mai Dịch Cemetery, which contains the hierarchically arranged graves of government leaders and other famous revolutionaries, including Phạm Văn Đồng, Lê Duẩn, and Tôn Đức Thắng. A separate section of the cemetery is reserved for common martyrs who ..."
6. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-01-21. Retrieved 2013-06-20.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)

References

• Ton Duc Thang Infoplease
• Ton Duc Thang Encyclopædia Britannica
• Ton Duc Thang HighBeam Encyclopedia
• Kelley, Liam, Book review: Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism: Ton Duc Thang and the Politics of History and Memory Canadian Journal of History, Autumn 2006

External links

• Đại học Tôn Đức Thắng (Tôn Đức Thắng University)
• Interview: Christoph Giebel on BBC
• Kelley, Liam, Book review: Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism: Ton Duc Thang and the Politics of History and Memory Canadian Journal of History, Autumn 2006

Preceded by Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress Zhu De

The oldest current head of state July 6, 1976 – March 30, 1980

Succeeded by President of Italy Alessandro Pertini

Political offices
Preceded by Ho Chi Minh	President of North Vietnam 1969–1976	Succeeded by Post abolished
Preceded by Nguyễn Hữu Thọ as Chairman of the Consultative Council of South Vietnam Himself as President of North Vietnam	President of Vietnam 1976–1980	Succeeded by Nguyễn Hữu Thọ