The Hanoi versus NLF/VC thesis - a request for substantiation

I have heard anecdotal, broad brush commentary over the years that the interests of South Vietnamese Communist and Communist adjacent revolutionaries, the National Liberation Front, aka, VC, and the interest of the North Vietnamese state, were not in perfect alignment and that in many cases their interests were violently opposed, that it was convenient for the North Vietnamese Hanoi government to have the NLF/VC movement face massive attrition fighting South Vietnam and the Americans and this allowed Hanoi and its northern based vision, system and personnel to control and enjoy the fruits of victory and Vietnamese unification.

Significantly, I have heard this from people who both are fans of the NLF/VC, and people who think that a non-communist victory in South Vietnam would have been better at almost any cost.

But while I've heard this North Vietnam versus VC assertion several times, I've never really seen it illustrated with individual instances, or statistical trends, or even anecdotes or vignettes about VC or NLF cadre in South Vietnam having their positions or authority in the south usurped and taken over by new northern carpetbaggers sent by Hanoi.

In fact, my individual, wikipedia deep perusing of Vietnamese Communist leadership history, seems to indicate a reasonably fair north - south balance existed, started even when the Communists only ruled the north, and continued and improved after Vietnamese unification.

Evidence- North Vietnam's Communist Party Secretary General from 1960, and effective leader and national strategist and policymaker after Ho Chi Minh, was South Vietnam born Le Duan. He remained in charge of the Party until 1986. Pham Van Dong, born in another South Vietnamese province, headed the State apparatus as Prime Minister since 1955, and continued to do so through 1987. They were from northern provinces of South Vietnam. Pham Van Dong's successor as Prime Minister, Pham Hung, was from the Deep South Mekong Delta region, and was an NLF official, commander of Central Office of South Vietnam (COSVN) from 1967 to the end of the war. Within a few years after unification, by 1979, he was Minister of the Interior for the reunited country and in 1987 he was Prime Minister. His successor as Prime Minister, Vo Van Kiet, was also born in the Deep South Mekong Delta region, and was a Communist Party stay-behind guy in the south after the French war, never regrouping to the north, - so a quintessential NLF/VC man, and was the first Communist ruler of Saigon after liberation in 1975. He was PM through most of the 1990s.

Now of course the Party leader is even more important in a Communist country. So Le Duan, a southerner who regrouped north, and then led the conquest of the south died in 1986 - the choice of his successor is relevant. It was Truong Chinh, a northerner. Who served a grand total of 6 months in 1986 - the Konstantin Chernenko of Vietnam. Nguyen Van Linh, also northern born, was successor as General Secretary. However, nearly all of his party work was in the south as Sec Gen of the Workers Party in the South and Deputy COSVN. Linh's successor, Đỗ Mười, who served for most of the 90s, was born in the north and mainly served in the north.
 
The biggest indicator of regional line variance and independent bases of nomenklatura power and thus interests was the VWP in the south _preceeding_ the general line of the VWP in starting hostilities against the Diem comprador cliques’ government. Largely because they were being executed, resented this, and resented the slow perambulation of the general line of the VWP for revolutionary class war.

The second indicator is that the VWP in the north was beholden generally to the post Red River land reform campaign accomodation with the rural working class in the north. In the south the VWP was beholden to a much more revolutionary rural working class who had not reached an accommodation with predominantly Catholic comprador landlords. The VWP in the south had to listen to workers who wanted more now with guns and who could finger them and their entire supply apparatus if they fucked up.

This schism was significant but not to the point of the VWP having fundamental issues of the general line. More: Tet was meant to work; disposing of revolutionaries was an unexpected benefit not an intention.
 
Again, it's up to the writer to spell it out. If they want a schism between the "northern" and "southern" communists? Fine, but it's up to them to deliver a convincing argument and story telling, something much more substantial than "they are just [beep], of course they have a schism"

Sam has a reasonable argument right above me
 
My favourite key moments for a hard split are, by time:

1) 1946 Organised southern trots*1
2) Northern Development Line Wins: 1957 Southern Go it alone
3) 1959 Southern Go It Alone causes "Runctions" north
4) 1965 no US intervention Southern Done it Alone (This is the **only** scenario AFAICT which can get you an RVN (Democratic) governed by a VWP(Southern Line)).
5) Everything We Know About the Khe Sahn action and Tet Offensive Historically was Wrong: instead of Giap being forced into a pre-planned hopeless offensive; the VWP(DRVN) actually sought to destroy the VWP(NFL)
6) Tantric Provisional Revolutionary Government Into the 1990s when America Collapses
7) 1976 a year of living dangerously

Almost all of these lead to a People's Front of Vietnam / Vietnam People's Front situation. (Not pictured, the Popular People's Front, as he is face down in a drainage ditch.)

yours,
Sam R.

*1 The class may laugh.
 
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