Le Duan (7 April 1907 – 10 July 1986) was General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam from 10 September 1960 to 10 July 1986, succeeding Ho Chi Minh and preceding Truong Chinh.
Biography[]
Le Duan was born in Quang Tri, French Indochina in 1907, and he joined Ho Chi Minh's Revolutionary Youth League in 1928 and was a founding member of the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930. A member of its Central Committee since 1939, he was imprisoned from 1940 to 1945 and then organized the party's activities in southern Vietnam. He returned to Hanoi in 1957 as the leading party figure second only to Ho Chi Minh himself. As the latter's health declined during the 1960s, he became the party's most influential figure and de facto leader of North Vietnam. With great diplomatic skill he ensured both Soviet and Chinese support during the Vietnam War, as well as internal party unity in favor of aggressive policies towards South Vietnam. Having won the war in 1975, he continued his aggressive policies, now designed to transform Vietnam into a major regional communist power. This led inevitably to a futile but long-standing conflict with China, which escalated into sporadic violence. Instead of consolidating his own country, riven by decades of war, through building up a peacetime economy and using the skills of the Boat people, he actively intervened in neighboring Laos and Cambodia. Nevertheless, his domination in state and party remained unchallenged, and he died in office in 1986.
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