South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam was a country in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of the Cold War after the 1954 division of Vietnam. It first received international recognition in 1949 as the State of Vietnam within the French Union, with its capital at Saigon, before becoming a republic in 1955. South Vietnam was bordered by North Vietnam to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and Thailand across the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest. Its sovereignty was recognized by the United States and 87 other nations, though it failed to gain admission into the United Nations as a result of a Soviet veto in 1957. It was succeeded by the Republic of South Vietnam in 1975. In 1976, the Republic of South Vietnam and North Vietnam merged to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Hồ Chí Minh, colloquially known as Uncle Ho or just Uncle (Bác), and by other aliases and sobriquets, was a Vietnamese communist revolutionary, nationalist, and politician. He served as prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from 1945 to 1955 and as president from 1945 until his death, in 1969. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist, he was the Chairman and First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Vietnam, the predecessor of the current Communist Party of Vietnam.
The Việt Minh was a national independence coalition formed at Pác Bó by Hồ Chí Minh on 19 May 1941. Also known as the Việt Minh Front, it was created by the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) as a national united front to achieve the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
The Viet Cong was an epithet to call the communist movement and united front organization in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Formally organized as and led by the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, it fought under the direction of North Vietnam against the South Vietnamese and United States governments during the Vietnam War. The organization had both guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized and mobilized peasants in the territory the Viet Cong controlled. During the war, communist fighters and some anti-war activists claimed that the Viet Cong was an insurgency indigenous to the South, while the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments portrayed the group as a tool of North Vietnam. It was later conceded by the modern Vietnamese communist leadership that the movement was actually under the North Vietnamese political and military leadership, aiming to unify Vietnam under a single banner.
Hòa Hảo is a Vietnamese new religious movement. It is described either as a syncretistic folk religion or as a sect of Buddhism. It was founded in 1939 by Huỳnh Phú Sổ (1920–1947), who is regarded as a saint by its devotees. It is one of the major religions of Vietnam with between one million and eight million adherents, mostly in the Mekong Delta.
The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), also known as the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), is the founding and sole legal party of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Founded in 1930 by Hồ Chí Minh, the CPV became the ruling party of North Vietnam in 1954 and then all of Vietnam after the collapse of the South Vietnamese government following the Fall of Saigon in 1975. Although it nominally exists alongside the Vietnamese Fatherland Front, it maintains a unitary government and has centralized control over the state, military, and media. The supremacy of the CPV is guaranteed by Article 4 of the national constitution. The Vietnamese public generally refer to the CPV as simply "the Party" or "our Party".
Nguyễn Hữu Thọ was a Vietnamese revolutionary and Chairman of Consultative Council of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam from 6 June 1969 to 2 July 1976, and the Chairman of the National Assembly of Vietnam from 4 July 1981 to 18 June 1987.
Overseas Vietnamese refers to Vietnamese people who live outside Vietnam. There are approximately 5 million overseas Vietnamese, the largest community of whom live in the United States.
Nguyễn Hữu Chánh is the Vietnamese-American founder of anti-communist organization Government of Free Vietnam (GFVN), in which he served as its prime minister.
Nguyễn Tấn Dũng is a Vietnamese politician who served as the Prime Minister of Vietnam from 2006 to 2016. He was confirmed by the National Assembly on 27 June 2006, having been nominated by his predecessor, Phan Văn Khải, who retired from office. At a party congress held in January 2011, Nguyễn Tấn Dũng was ranked 3rd in the hierarchy of the Communist Party of Vietnam, after State President Trương Tấn Sang. Following the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyễn Tấn Dũng was not able to maintain his post in the party and stepped down from his position as Prime Minister on 7 April 2016.
Nguyễn Phú Trọng is a Vietnamese politician who has served as general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam since 2011. As the head of the party's Secretariat, Politburo and Central Military Commission, Trọng is Vietnam's paramount leader. He also previously served as president of Vietnam from 2018 to 2021.
The Personalist Labor Revolutionary Party, often simply called the Cần Lao Party, was a Vietnamese political party, formed in the early 1950s by the President of South Vietnam Ngô Đình Diệm and his brother and adviser Ngô Đình Nhu. Based on mass-organizations and secret networks as effective instruments, the party played a considerable role in creating a political groundwork for Diệm's power and helped him to control all political activities in South Vietnam. The doctrine of the party was ostensibly based on Ngô Đình Nhu's Person Dignity Theory and Emmanuel Mounier's Personalism.
Thuong Nguyen Cuc Foshee is a Vietnamese American who was held without formal charge by the government of Vietnam after her arrest in September 2005 on accusations of plotting to broadcast anti-communist radio messages under the direction of Government of Free Vietnam (GFVN), an anti-government group. She is divorced from GFVN representative Edgar Foshee. Their daughter Elizabeth McCausland, a lawyer, actively campaigned for her mother's freedom politically through United States government officials. Ms. Foshee was ultimately arrested and charged with conducting terrorist activities and went on trial November 10, 2006. She, along with six other defendants, was convicted and sentenced to 15 months with credit for time served.
Đồng Sĩ Nguyên, also spelled Đồng Sỹ Nguyên, other name Nguyễn Hữu Vũ, was a Vietnamese soldier and politician. He was Deputy Prime Minister of Vietnam, a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Vietnam, lieutenant-general of the North Vietnamese Army, and minister of transport of Vietnam. He was born in Quảng Bình Province, home to general Võ Nguyên Giáp and Ngô Đình Diệm, president of the Republic of Vietnam.
Internet censorship in Vietnam prevents access to websites critical of the Vietnamese government, expatriate political parties, and international human rights organizations, among others or anything the Vietnamese government does not agree with. Online police reportedly monitor Internet cafes and cyber dissidents have been imprisoned. Vietnam regulates its citizens' Internet access using both legal and technical means. The government's efforts to regulate, monitor, and provide oversight regarding Internet use has been referred to as a "Bamboo Firewall". However, citizens can usually view, comment and express their opinions civilly on the internet, as long as it does not evoke anti-government movement, political coup and disrupt the social stability of the country.
North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, was a socialist state in Southeast Asia that existed from 1945 to 1976, with formal sovereignty being fully recognized in 1954. A member of the Eastern Bloc, it opposed the French-backed State of Vietnam and later the Western-allied Republic of Vietnam. North Vietnam emerged victorious over South Vietnam in 1975 and ceased to exist the following year when it unified with the south to become the current Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Nguyễn Tiến Trung is a pro-democracy activist in Vietnam. As the founder and leader of the Assembly of Vietnamese Youth for Democracy Trung has been one of the outspoken political dissidents in Vietnam. He was arrested on July 7, 2009, by the public security of Vietnam for allegedly "plotting to overthrow the government of Vietnam." The accusation was persistently rejected domestically and internationally by some Vietnam analysts such as Pham Hong Son and Carl Thayer.
After World War II and the collapse of Vietnam's monarchy, France attempted to re-establish its colonial rule but was ultimately defeated in the First Indo-China War. The Geneva Accords in 1954 partitioned the country temporarily in two with a promise of democratic elections in 1956 to reunite the country. The United States and South Vietnam insisted on United Nations supervision of any election to prevent fraud, which the Soviet Union and North Vietnam refused. North and South Vietnam therefore remained divided until the Vietnam War ended with the Fall of Saigon in 1975.
The following is a list of political organizations and armed forces in Vietnam, since 1912:
Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League, or Thanh Niên for short, was founded by Nguyen Ai Quoc in Guangzhou in the spring of 1925. It is considered as the “first truly Marxist organization in Indochina” and “the beginning of Vietnamese Communism”. With the support of Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang Left, during the period of 1925-1927, the League managed to educate and train a considerable number of Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries, preparing the prominent leadership for the Communist Party of Vietnam and the Vietnamese Revolution. At the time, Vietnam was part of colonial French Indochina.
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United States Army