HANOI — Pham Van Dong, one of Vietnam's most prominent revolutionary leaders, died on April 29 at the age of 94.
Born in the central province of Quang Ngai, he began his revolutionary career in 1924 at the age of 18. Two years later he joined the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association, the predecessor of the Vietnam Communist Party, while attending a course in southern China run by party founder Ho Chi Minh.
The French colonial regime jailed Dong in 1929 in Con Dao prison island for his anti-colonial activities in Saigon. Released in 1936, he became part of a crop of revolutionary leaders, along with the likes of the legendary general Vo Nguyen Giap, who joined Ho Chi Minh's Communist Party of Indochina. Together they set up the Vietminh front, which led the resistance against the Japanese imperialist occupation.
Following the August 1945 revolution which established the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), Dong was elected to the first national assembly in January 1946. During his activity on the central front in the war against French colonialism (1946-54), Dong was elected to the central committee of the Communist Party and, in August 1949, became deputy prime minister.
Dong led the Vietnamese delegation to the Geneva peace talks in 1954 following the smashing defeat of French imperialism at the battle of Dien Bien Phu — the anniversary of which was celebrated on May 7. Under pressure from Moscow and Peking, Vietnam agreed to the US-French demand for a temporary partition of Vietnam on the proviso that elections throughout the country be held within two years.
When the US-puppet regime set up in "South Vietnam" reneged on this agreement (because it knew the Communist Party would win the elections hands down), the path towards Vietnam's longest and bloodiest anti-imperialist war, the "American War", was opened.
Dong became prime minister of the DRV in 1955 and remained in that position for 32 years, until 1987, when he retired. The previous year, at the sixth party congress, he and a host of other leaders had retired from the political bureau to make way for a new generation of leaders. It was that congress that launched the current doi moi economic renovation policy.
Dong was awarded the Gold Star Order, Vietnam's highest distinction, and a 60-year party membership medal, along with other awards including the Jose Marti Order from Cuba.
BY MICHAEL KARADJIS