North Vietnam's Party Congress

Extract

“This is an historic event of great significance in the political life of the Vietnam Workers' Party and people. With incomparable feelings of joy, we warmly congratulate the conference on its important achievements.” So ran the editorial in the Jen-min Jih-pao (People's Daily) on the morning of September 12, although—unless the Chinese are a nation of masochists, which I refuse to believe—it is hard to discover the reason for this jubilation, for China had just suffered her most humiliating defeat to date in the ideological war she is waging against the Soviet Union. The occasion was the Third Congress of the Vietnam Lao-Dong, or Workers', Party, which met in Hanoi from September 5 to 10. Since it was the first such congress for nine years, the Vietnamese Communists had spared neither trouble nor expense to make it a resounding success. Official delegations from the fraternal parties of eleven Communist states attended, together with representatives from Communist parties of seven non-Communist countries and fraternal diplomats stationed in Hanoi. The date of the congress had been carefully fixed so that proceedings would open three days after North Vietnam's National Day, and the foreign visitors had been invited to come a few days early to sample the delights of this celebration too.