Indochinese Communist Party

(ICP)

   Founded in 1930 by Ho Chi Minh, the Indochinese Communist Party was largely Vietnamese in composition. It suffered from repression by the French colonial administration in Vietnam until in 1936 a new Popular Front government in France gave greater political freedom and allowed the ICP to organize, propagandize and participate in elections. This ended with the collapse of the Popular Front government and the ICP returned to clandestine activities in 1939. Supported by the Soviet Union the ICP followed the Comintern line of condemning World War II when it broke out in Europe, and then switching to the antifascist united front line in keeping with the Comintern lead. During the war the ICP moved to a strategy of prioritizing national liberation and to this end created a broad front called the League for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh), or Vietminh for short. When the Japanese took over rule of Vietnam the Vietminh engaged in a struggle with them, and with the defeat of Japan abroad by the Allied forces, the Vietminh seized power with Ho Chi Minh declaring the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) on 2 September 1945. Membership of the party rapidly rose from around 5,000 just before the creation of the DRV to 20,000 the following year, and 700,000 by 1950. In 1951 the ICP was renamed the Vietnam Workers’ Party (VWP), and after the division of Vietnam in 1954 the branch of the party in the south renamed itself the People’s Revolutionary Party. After a protracted war the victorious DRV named the newly unified Vietnam the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and the VWP became the Vietnamese Communist Party (Dang Cong San Viet Nam).