'The people's war has brought the revolution to complete victory'

The people's war led the Southern revolution to overcome all difficulties and achieve total victory in 1975.

One of the factors that created the overwhelming strength and decisive victory in the Great Spring Victory of 1975 was the strength of people's war under the leadership of the Party. VOV.VN reporter interviewed Mr. Nguyen Dinh Le - lecturer of the Faculty of History - University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Vietnam National University, Hanoi) about this content.

Saigon people flock to the Independence Palace to welcome the liberation army. Photo: Archive. (Source: VNA)

PV: At all times and in all tasks, the people always play a very important role and can decide the success or failure of the revolution. President Ho Chi Minh once said: having the people means having everything, losing the people means losing everything. How did the Party creatively apply this in the great victory of spring 1975, sir?

Mr. Nguyen Dinh Le:Before President Ho Chi Minh, there were people who talked about the role of the people in history. This has its core origin in historical materialism: The role of the masses is the decisive factor in the development of history.

For the Vietnamese people, this is even more vital. Due to its geopolitics and military, the country has always been in a position to fight against foreign invaders and in fact has been under Chinese rule for thousands of years and foreign occupation for centuries. This means that the institutions and operations of an autonomous state no longer exist. Domination is by foreign powers.

In that context, only the people rising up themselves can liberate the country. This has become a profound characteristic of the Vietnamese people: Knowing how to fight and liberate themselves with the strength of the entire national community.

The great patriots before Nguyen Ai Quoc-Ho Chi Minh understood this. For example, when the country was invaded by French colonialists, the patriots believed that “Fifty million compatriots compete. Fifty thousand other races are included."(In the Overseas Blood Letter by patriot Phan Boi Chau, he emphasized the strength of the entire nation. His opinion was written into this poem by his contemporaries) meaning that the strength of the people will defeat tens of thousands of colonial troops. However, due to the context at that time, the wishes of our predecessors had not been realized, and tens of millions of people had not been mobilized to set out to liberate the nation.

Absorbing the great revolutionary ideology and understanding the invincible strength of the people, President Ho Chi Minh and the entire Party inherited and promoted the strength of the nation. In the conditions of colonial imperialism's brutal suppression of patriots, it was the masses who sheltered and nurtured revolutionary cadres. Without the Party and the Viet Minh, the Vietnamese people certainly could not have gained power in the August Revolution (1945).

During the great resistance war against the US to save the country (1954-1975), the Vietnamese Communists brought to the forefront the experience of the August Revolution in 1945 and the 9-year resistance war against French colonialism to new heights.

The resistance war against the US to save the country of the Vietnamese people took place extremely fiercely and arduously. One of the extremely important issues, an extremely heavy challenge that needed to be answered was: where did the Vietnamese people rise up to fight the US to save the country? In the international context at that time, along with the spirit of the Geneva Agreement (1954), how did the people of the South rise up and were they successful?

In fact, after July 1954, the Saigon government denounced and destroyed communists, causing enormous losses to our compatriots and comrades in the South. Without rising up, the revolutionary force would no longer exist.

It was the compatriots and comrades who stayed in the South who found the solution for the revolution in the South. The revolutionary path for the South outlined in the 1959 Politburo Resolution (still commonly known as Resolution 15) had deep roots in the knowledge and experience of the survival struggle of the people in the South at that time: the revolution was not exported, but the people themselves rose up to overthrow the Saigon regime.

Only a Party with high revolutionary spirit, close to the people, and devoted to the people can determine a scientific and accurate revolutionary path for the struggle to liberate the South and unify the country.

Even the Central Committee's strategic offensive motto of 2 legs, 3 prongs, 3 regions, which directed the revolution in the South, also originated from the practical struggle of the people and revolutionary armed forces in the South. With this extremely precise and profound direction by cadres and party members who closely followed the movement and took the lead in the struggle, the Central Committee summarized it into extremely valuable experience.

This spirit is exactly as V. Lenin once pointed out: "Marxist Parties do not assign any single, definite form to the revolutionary struggle of the masses, but "recognize the most different forms of struggle and do not "invent" those forms, but only generalize, organize, and make conscious the forms of struggle of the revolutionary classes that are spontaneously emerging in the course of the movement.

Such is the fighting power, scientific and revolutionary nature of the Party's line of fighting against the US and saving the country. The invincible people's war has defeated all the schemes of the brutal enemy. And thus brought the Southern revolution through all difficulties to complete victory in 1975.

Saigon people parade to celebrate the city's liberation on May 15, 1975. (Photo: VNA)

PV: In all social activities, we always uphold the slogan for people's lives, for people's interests, but in reality, there are still some places where state management agencies do not really understand the people to gain their trust, leading to people's frustration, don't you think so, sir?

Mr. Nguyen Dinh Le:That's right, so the Party Central Committee has just issued a Resolution to combat negativity within the Party. The General Secretary also regularly reminds us of the struggle to purify the Party, fight against self-evolution and self-degeneration. Certainly, there are many agencies and individuals in management positions who are not doing the right thing, if not going against the will and aspiration to serve the people of the entire Party and of President Ho Chi Minh.

Because as the Central Committee has held a conference to evaluate, a number of party members and officials (and of course related to some functional agencies) have been too negative in harassing people and violating the law.

The founders of Scientific Policy once pointed out: The State was born out of the need to manage society. But it can also easily become a tool to rule society. The wrong behavior of some authorities in some localities will certainly be opposed by public opinion and will certainly be handled by the Party organization and the law.

PV: The lesson of taking the people as the root is the guiding principle that helps us defeat the two enemies, France and the US, culminating in liberating the South and unifying the country. Currently, in the period of national development and international integration, how should that lesson be applied by all levels of government, sir?

Mr. Nguyen Dinh Le:The lesson is not really difficult, but it is quite difficult to learn. President Ho Chi Minh's teaching to party members and cadres is: whatever is beneficial to the people, we must do our best to do it. Whatever is harmful to the people, we must do our best to avoid it.

President Ho Chi Minh was the leader, the founder and trainer of the Communist Party of Vietnam, but he himself came from the people. In the extremely emotional and profound eulogy read by General Secretary Le Duan at President Ho Chi Minh's funeral, he said: Our nation, our people, our country gave birth to President Ho...

Understanding this, it can be said that the Communist Party of Vietnam also comes from the people. Without the Party, there is no successful revolution. But without the people, the organization will lose its fighting strength. Therefore, any individual or organization, at any level, that stands outside or above the interests of the people and the nation is guilty of a crime against the country and its people, and guilty of history.

PV:Thank you sir./.

According to VOV