buro's concern with revitalizing the party. He urged | policy reversal. During the final days of the conflict, the Group to rejuvenate its membership with a greater infusion of younger recruits and to increase the representation of women in its ranks." The results of the 1974 census no doubt reinforced the leadership's commitment to the drive, for it showed that two-thirds of North Vietnam's population of 23,787,375 had been born since 1945.2 The Fall of Saigon there was a revival in North Vietnam of a slogan, "everything for the South," which implied a need for continued sacrifices from the population of the North for the benefit of the people in the South; but DRV assistance will now be directed toward the economic reconstruction of the South-a goal whose achievement, in light of the prostrate and devastated economy of South Vietnam, would appear to demand unremitting emphasis on economic development in the North. Furthermore, the termination of armed hostilities in the South will mean that North Vietnamese youth will increasingly be transferred from military duties to economic construction projects in support of efforts to build socialism in the North. As indicated earlier, most signs during 1973-74 pointed to Hanoi's intention to devote its main energies to internal construction in the North. Even as late as January 1975, most observers held that the Vietnamese Communists envisaged a relatively low level of military activity at least in the immediate Prospects future." But the unexpected and rapid disintegration of the South Vietnamese armed forces in the first months of 1975 confronted the DRV leaders with yet another critical decision with respect to priorities, and they opted to push ahead on the military front in the South." It seems doubtful, however, that Hanoi ever reversed its 1973 decision to accord top priority to construction of the North despite the large number of North Vietnamese troops reportedly in the South during the final collapse of the Saigon regime, for a number of factors considerably reduced the economic costs to the DRV of support for their forces in the South. Aside from the obvious point that the troops would have had to be fed and equipped whether they were in the North or South, these factors included the foreign military aid available to Hanoi, the earlier prepositioning of sufficient military supplies in the South to last up to two years at 1972 levels of fighting," the capture of extensive US military supplies abandoned by Saigon forces, and local logistical support in the South. In the event, the rapidity and decisiveness of the Communist victory obviated the necessity for a major The end of the prolonged struggle to determine the future of South Vietnam has thus removed this difficult and contentious issue from its former position at the top of the political agenda of the DRV leadership. While significant decisions about the speed and methods of reunification of North and 81 See Nhan Dan, Feb. 27, 1974. 82 Ibid., Aug. 30, 1974. 83 In The New York Times, Jan. 15, 1975, for instance, James M. Markham reported that "barring unexpected cracking of the Saigon side, most foreign analysts believe the Communists have set themselves limited though ambitious goals for 1975." 84 Whereas combined DRV-PRG forces in South Vietnam had been estimated at 190,000 men in late 1974, North Vietnam was said to have 275,000 combat troops in South Vietnam at the end of March 1975. Ibid., March 31, 1975. 85 Ibid, May 7, 1974. Women from nearby agricultural production coopera tives help reconstruct the Song Kha Dam in February 1974. -Hagen for ADN/Zentralbild via Eastfoto. South must still be made, the guns-vs.-butter debate has been eclipsed by an all-encompassing drive to rebuild and expand the devastated economies of both North and South and to reassert party and state control in areas of North Vietnamese life that had been neglected politically and administratively during the war years. In light of these concerns, the political evolution of North and South Vietnam will probably proceed along separate tracks for the immediate and foreseeable future." 11 87 In assessing the outlook for the North, it is important to bear in mind that the war years wrought major changes in North Vietnamese society. For example, the number of women in positions of authority has increased dramatically. While acknowledging continuing difficulties in expanding the number of women in leadership positions, Le Duan told the Third Women's Association Congress in February❘ 1974 that there were 50 women on Province Administrative Committees (in 24 provinces), 3,000 women chairmen or vice-chairmen of District and Village Administrative Committees, 130 women managers or deputy managers of enterprises, 1,200 women instructors at the college level, and nearly 7,000 women directors or deputy directors of agricultural cooperatives, and that 42 percent of "industrial workers and state employees were women." Women, to be sure, still do not hold positions of responsibility in proportion to their numbers and contributions to society. Indeed, more than 60 percent of the rural labor force (and nearly 70 percent in some regions) is comprised of women. Moreover, in certain areas there may have been erosion of the wartime gains made by women. In 1973, a detailed study of women in leading party and nonparty positions in one Red River Delta district showed an actual decline in the representation of women in some lower-level positions-notably a halving of women production team leaders." Women's gains in other sectors tended to suggest that this decline probably reflected the fact that in recent years fewer young men had left their villages than had been the case previously. For instance, 86 While it is clear that de facto reunification has already taken place, Huynh Tan Phat, head of South Vietnam's Provisional Revolutionary Government, on July 15, 1975, cabled the United Nations a request for admission into the international organization. As Le Monde commented (July 17, 1975), this indicates that no immediate reunification of the North and South administrations is planned. 87 See Hoc Tap, March 1974, p. 17. 88 See Dam Mai, "The Training and Development of Female Cadres in Donghung District," ibid., May 1973, pp. 57-63. there was a high ratio of women in party and other training schools." The generational problem has compounded the difficulties of bringing women into village leadership positions. One district survey revealed that 70-80 percent of the party committee cadres at village level were over 40 years old, leaving a wide age disparity between the older male cadres and the younger new female cadres." On balance, however, women appear to have registered significant gains in North Vietnam, and while many servicemen will be released to participate in economic construction in coming months, these gains are not likely to be reversed. In addition, the drafting at the height of the war of members of groups previously deemed unsuitable for military service-notably ethnic minorities and Catholics seems to have helped to integrate thece groups more fully into national life. Demobilized servicemen from ethnic minority regions have been returning to their home areas and replacing some of the ethnic Vietnamese cadres there," and this trend appears likely to continue. The contributions of Catholics to the war effort have also probably somewhat alleviated the distrust that non-Christian Vietnamese previously felt toward them. Moreover, the hardships that the Catholics shared with their non-Catholic countrymen seem to have bound them. more closely to the majority community." 89 lbid. 90 Reported in Nhan Dan, May 14, 1974. 91 A minorities district with a history of dissidence during the early years of the regime affords a good illustration of what has been happening in this regard. Returning minority servicemen from the district gradually took the place of ethnic Vietnamese in the border patrol and thus became a link between the local community and the central government. See ibid., March 18, 1974. Education, of course, is even more important as an instrument of integration, and a Nhan Dan editorial of Dec. 15, 1973, suggests that impressive results have been achieved with respect to education in the highland (largely minorities) regions. 92 Evidence of the attitudes of Catholics in the North and of their reaction to the bombing and the destruction of churches there comes from the accounts of foreign visitors to the North. A liberal Catholic periodical in Saigon published a collection of this testimony (with accompanying pictures) in 1972. See Doi Dien, No. 40, Oct. 17, 1972. During the same year, a group of nuns abducted from Quangtri during the DRV-PRG spring offensive was taken on a tour of the North (though not allowed unmonitored exchanges of views with Northern Catholics), and they returned to the South "impressed" and even "shaken" by the "high morale and didication of the Northerners, the iron discipline that governs the lives of the North Vietnamese, and the fact that the Roman Catholic Church, as far as they could tell, still functions in the North." See Christian Science Monitor (Boston), Aug. 9, 1972. (According to knowledgeable American journalists, the testimony of the nuns had a profound impact on South Vietnamese Catholics, though Church officials prohibited public discussion of their impressions.) (cont. on p. 52) Significant problems, however, continue to exist. The dislocations produced by the war and the heavy bombing gave rise to a deterioration in social conduct, especially among children and youth. Profiteering, corruption, and other social ills common to war-ravaged societies emerged in some places. There was an erosion of collective management of agriculture and an increase in private farming—a state of affairs that the regime apparently tolerated as a necessary temporary expedient to keep output It should be pointed out here that a major factor in guaranteeing the position of the Church in the North has been the importance of the Catholics in South Vietnam in the political struggle there. The role of Northern Catholics in reconciling Southern Catholics to a revolutionary regime that many of them had opposed is illustrated by a visit of Catholics from Hatinh Province (in the North) to Catholics in Quangtri Province (in the South) at the end of 1973, after the cease-fire signed in Paris earlier in the year. See Nhan Dan, Dec. 28, 1973. 93 During 1973, after the signing of the Paris agreements, there were frequent complaints about inaccurate statistical work as the DRV tightened the managerial controls it had relaxed during the war years. In late 1973, numerous articles on theft of state property, false reporting, and profiteering appeared. See, for example, ibid., Nov. 5, 1973. An article in Nhan Dan on Nov. 28, 1973, described an instance of the breakdown of school discipline at the height of the war but claimed that it had been restored when urban residential patterns had been restabilized. The following Aug. 7, the same journal summarized a campaign of several months to publicize examples of unacceptable social and economic behavior and offered guidelines on "making an honest living." 94 Ibid., Feb. 13, 1974. 95 Ibid., March 21, 1973. up. Statistical reporting became unreliable in many sectors and at many levels." At the same time, these problems do not appear unmanageable. The North Vietnamese leaders have ended their wartime "great debate" and now seem more unified than ever. In early 1974, Le Duan, after frankly acknowledging the great cost of the war to the DRV but affirming that "we will never regret the price we had to pay," stressed that the moment had come either to quickly rebuild the material foundation for socialism in North Vietnam or to remain in an "immature and destabilized" situation and see the fruits of the DRV's past efforts destroyed, and he warned that the North must "either move forward or fall behind." " Earlier, after the signing of the Paris agreements in 1973, Truong Chinh had reversed his 1969 criticism of Bao-Anh Viet-nam for excessive emphasis on the war and told an audience of film makers that while the war was over, they must still devote great efforts to producing films on the "anti-American struggle." 11 95 Moreover, the fact that since its inception the DRV has survived a prolonged and intensive assault on its institutions, has resolved a critical and potentially divisive debate on national priorities, and now appears to be frankly and realistically addressing its current problems attests to the resilience and dynamism of North Vietnam's political system. Communist Strategy in Laos By Arthur J. Dommen S lince April 5, 1974, Laos has been governed by a coalition government of Communist and non-Communist elements calling itself the Provisional Government of National Union (PGNU). It represents the third effort at coalition government in this country since independence. The first, in 1957-58, lasted eight months. The second, formed on June 23, 1962, came apart in April 1963, when the ministers belonging to the Communist-dominated Lao Patriotic Front (Neo Lao Hak Sat, or NLHS) withdrew and left the capital of Vientiane. Now the third coalition, too, has ceased to exist in everything but name. Events in the spring of 1975 altered the underlying substance of the agreements on which it was based, even though they left the outward physiognomy of the coalition relatively unchanged, much as the events of April 1963 had done. It is the purpose of the present article to describe how the NLHS, through the events of this spring, managed to effect a distinct shift in the balance of political power in its own favor. The article will also briefly examine the backing provided the Laotian Communists by fraternal parties-most particularly those of North Vietnam and the Soviet Union-and the implications of these relationships for the future of the revolution in Laos. Ever since 1954, the year the French Indochina War ended and Laos emerged as an independent state nominally at peace, the Communist Lao People's Party (Phak Pasason Lao-PPL) has basically employed a double-edged strategy in pursuit of its objectives. On the one hand, it has used its Mr. Dommen, who spent many years in Laos as a journalist, is the author of Conflict in Laos: The Politics of Neutralization, rev. ed., 1971. He has a Ph.D. in agricultural economics and currently works for a private consulting firm. military arm, the Pathet Lao, to carve out base areas under its exclusive political and military control. While the size of these areas has varied, the Pathet Lao forces have consistently dominated sizable portions of the mountainous regions of Laos. On the other hand, acting through the NLHS, the Communists without relinquishing their own areas of exclusive control-have from time to time entered into coalition governments with the rightist and neutralist forces controlling the remaining portions of Laos, and by operating there through a panoply of front organizations, they have attempted to bend the non-Communist elements in these governments in a direction favorable to the Communists. In other words, if one looks at Laos as being composed of separate red and white portions, the Communists have used the coalition strategy with a view to expanding the red areas to cover the whole country rather than to achieving a compromise whereby the whole country would become a shade of pink. Historical Background Before examining how this coalition strategy has been applied in the most recent term, it is perhaps useful to review briefly the course of events which led to its earlier failure in 1963, bringing on a decade of resumed armed conflict. Viewed from the Communist perspective, the coalition formed in 1962 failed basically because the efforts of the NLHS to bend the policies of Prime Minister Prince Souvanna Phouma, head of the coalition government, in the direction desired by the Communists were ineffective. This in turn was the result of several factors. In the first place, Souvanna Phouma succeeded in retaining the loyalty of most of his political followers in the "neutralist" faction despite |