General Secretary Tran Phu and instructions on Party building and rectification

Political platform drafted by comrade Tran Phu, October 1930

Comrade Tran Phu (1904 - 1931) was the first General Secretary of our Party. Throughout his life of active and brilliant revolutionary activities, he played an important role in leading the Vietnamese revolution. As the first General Secretary when our Party was first established, he played a very special role in Party building. Although he died at a young age, his instructions on Party building and rectification made great and important contributions to the Vietnamese revolutionary cause, especially during the period when the Party was first established.

First, building the Party in terms of ideology and theory

Tran Phu was born into a family with a tradition of patriotism, an excellent son of his hometown Ha Tinh with a rich revolutionary tradition. In the context of national loss and home destruction, since he was a student, along with devoting all his mind to studying and improving his knowledge, Tran Phu enthusiastically participated in the "Tu Tien Association" to help each other study and foster the spirit of patriotism.

With youthful enthusiasm, while a teacher in Vinh (in 1925), Tran Phu received the patriotic and revolutionary ideas of Nguyen Ai Quoc, which were spread through secret books and newspapers. Tran Phu participated in founding the Phuc Viet Association (later renamed the Hung Nam Association, Vietnam Revolutionary Party, Tan Viet). In 1926, Tran Phu was sent by the Vietnam Revolutionary Party to Guangzhou to contact the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association, with the core being the Communist League founded and led by comrade Nguyen Ai Quoc, to discuss the unification of the two organizations.

In Guangzhou, Tran Phu attended a political theory training course, was admitted to the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association and sent to the Communist League, then sent back to the country to work. Returning to the country, comrade Tran Phu actively reformed the Vietnam Revolutionary Party according to the guidelines and organization of the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association. Being hunted down by French secret agents, at the request of the organization, Tran Phu returned to Guangzhou.

In the spring of 1927, Tran Phu was sent by Nguyen Ai Quoc to the Soviet Union and studied at the Oriental University. Here, Tran Phu studied and researched the theory of Marxism-Leninism, the history of the world communist and workers' movements, participated in practical activities, exchanged and discussed with communist comrades of fraternal parties on revolutionary, national and colonial issues. Tran Phu became the first Party Secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party at the Oriental University.

After 3 years of studying and training, Tran Phu became one of the Vietnamese revolutionary youths who were fundamentally equipped with the theory of Marxism-Leninism, matured remarkably, and were capable of shouldering the great tasks of the Vietnamese revolution.

In April 1930, when our Party - the Communist Party of Vietnam was newly established on the basis of merging three communist organizations, Tran Phu was sent back to the country by the Communist International and Nguyen Ai Quoc to lead the Vietnamese revolutionary movement as a key cadre of the Party. In July 1930, Tran Phu was added to the provisional Central Executive Committee. At that time, although the revolutionary movement in the country was growing stronger and the revolutionary forces were growing stronger, because the Communist Party had just been established, the most important task at that time was for the Communist Party to complete its historical mission in response to the requirements of the Indochina revolutionary movement, leading the revolution to final victory, the work of building the Party in terms of politics, ideology and organization was being placed with utmost urgency. That heavy task was placed on the shoulders of young Vietnamese communists, including Tran Phu.

Returning to the country, with a fundamental theoretical foundation of Marxism-Leninism, a new revolutionary perspective, and the trust of the Communist International and leader Nguyen Ai Quoc, Tran Phu was assigned the task of drafting important documents to be presented to the First Conference of the Party Central Committee, the most important of which was the draft of the Party's Political Platform. To draft the Political Platform, Tran Phu directly surveyed the revolutionary movement and revolutionary forces in key provinces in the North, both industrially and agriculturally, in Nam Dinh, Hai Phong, Hon Gai and Thai Binh.

On the basis of applying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism, the Communist International line, the ideology of Leader Nguyen Ai Quoc and the world situation, and the reality of the Vietnamese revolution, Tran Phu successfully completed the draft of the Party's Political Platform. In October 1930, the Political Platform was discussed, commented on and approved by the First Conference of the Central Executive Committee held in Hong Kong (China). The Conference also decided to change the name of the Communist Party of Vietnam to the Indochinese Communist Party and comrade Tran Phu was elected as the first General Secretary of the Party.

The 1930 Political Platform of the Party drafted by Comrade Tran Phu was an important theoretical document of our Party. The Platform clearly pointed out the purpose, tasks, progress, forces, leadership role of the Communist Party and the strength of international proletarian solidarity of the Indochina revolution. Despite some limitations, the Platform contributed to affirming the correctness of the Vietnamese revolution's line as outlined in the Party's Brief Platform and Brief Strategy to guide the revolutionary movement.

Along with his theoretical contributions through the 1930 Political Platform, as General Secretary of the Party, Comrade Tran Phu paid special attention to the Party's propaganda work. To strengthen the work of political theory education and propaganda, Comrade Tran Phu established the Propaganda Committee and assigned a Standing Committee member to be the Head of the Committee in charge of promoting this work. The Party's propaganda work is a part of the work of Party building in terms of theory and ideology. The promoted propaganda work contributed to promoting the revolutionary movement to develop more and more strongly. At the same time, he also advocated the publication of the Proletarian Flag newspaper - the Party's propaganda agency and the Communist newspaper (the predecessor of the Communist Magazine) - the mouthpiece of the Indochinese Communist Party - to propagate and disseminate the guidelines and policies of the Communist International and the Indochinese Communist Party, mobilize the masses and build revolutionary forces, and promote the revolutionary movement.

Besides building revolutionary theory on the basis of Marxism-Leninism, the Communist International and the practice of the Indochinese revolution, as General Secretary, one of the leading political theorists of the Party, Comrade Tran Phu actively fought and resolutely criticized opportunism, reformism, wavering, compromise, rightist and extremist ideas existing in the Party, causing division in the Party, persistently fought to purify the Party, build the Party into a truly unified organization, a vanguard of the proletariat in accordance with the spirit of the Communist International and the theory of Marxism-Leninism.

Tran Phu relic site in Ha Tinh

Second, building the Party organizationally

Along with the work of Party building in terms of ideology and theory, General Secretary Tran Phu especially attached importance to the work of Party building in terms of organization.

First of all, he pointed out that the Party's organizational rules must be expressed in a profound way as follows: The Indochinese Communist Party is the party of the proletariat, so it must consist of the most advanced workers, and the Party's leaders must be the most outstanding workers; each Party member must be enthusiastic, active, and proactive in participating in the Party's work, must adhere to the Party's organizational principles, and must be absolutely loyal to the communist ideal; the Party must be organized according to iron discipline, and every issue must be discussed freely and democratically by all Party members, but once a decision is made, the principle of the minority obeying the majority must be implemented, and the supreme principle is the interests of the Party and the people; the Party is organized according to the principle of democratic centralism, of course, that is the fundamental principle, and how democratic centralism is implemented depends on the specific historical circumstances in order to bring success to the revolution; the Party organization is built according to the Party member's workplace, not according to the Party member's residence; The Party unifies the leadership of all mass organizations. Without the leadership of the Party, all mass movements and revolutionary movements will have no common direction, will be fragmented and will inevitably lead to disintegration. From the beginning, our Party determined that leading mass organizations in the revolutionary struggle against colonialism and feudalism is the task of the Indochinese Communist Party.

Second, it is to build solidarity and unanimity within the Party, to build the Party into a truly unified and strong organization. The differences in concepts, thoughts, and policies within the Party at the time of transition, merger, and unification of different communist organizations in Indochina at that time were an objective necessity and had many subjective and objective causes. Comrade Tran Phu advocated, on the one hand, trying by all means of propaganda, education, and persuasion, wholeheartedly building solidarity and unity of will and class stance within the Party; on the other hand, resolutely fighting and criticizing against ideas that deviate from the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism, the guidelines and policies of the Communist International, in order to create unity and solidarity within the Party, and to create the combined strength of the Party organization.

At the time when our Party was newly established and still very young, this was clearly a vital requirement of the Party, a very wise and correct policy. During the time when the French colonialists used many different insidious tricks, on the one hand, they carried out an extremely savage and brutal policy of "white" terror; on the other hand, they used dark plots to bribe, entice, and entice opportunistic and traitorous elements to destroy our Party from within. If our Party could not build true unity and consensus within the Party, the organization would fall apart, and the revolutionary movement would be drowned in a sea of ​​blood.

Third, the work of developing the Party. When it was first established, the entire Party had only 30 Party cells with more than 300 Party members. In just over a year later (March 1931), under the leadership of General Secretary Tran Phu, not only did the revolutionary movement in our country enter a new phase of high momentum, but the work of developing the Party also entered a new phase with many achievements. The number of Party members quickly increased to 2,400 comrades and they operated in 250 Party cells. In particular, in the work of developing new Party members, although from many different sources, regardless of origin, the policy of strongly promoting the development of new Party members in the working class was given priority. In addition, the policy of developing the working class in the Party's leadership bodies at all levels was also promoted.

Fourth, build and perfect the Party organization system from the Central to the grassroots. That is a tight and unified system: Central - Regional Party Committee - Provincial Party Committee - District Party Committee and grassroots Party cells. The Indochinese Communist Party was established from the merger of different communist organizations, so each communist organization has a different way of organizing and organizational system. The issue of building the Party into a unified organization according to the top-down system will certainly create unity, strength and increase the Party's strength. This is the first time that our Party's organizational system has been perfected, completed and unified. In particular, General Secretary Tran Phu advocated restoring and consolidating the Regional Party Committee's leadership boards and enhancing the leadership role of the Regional Party Committee in the revolutionary movement of each region and area. In addition, Comrade Tran Phu also promoted the policy of strengthening the construction and consolidation of factory Party cells and Party cells of the working class.

Fifth, early identification of the work of building mass organizations as building revolutionary forces, an important part of Party building work, so this issue received special attention from General Secretary Tran Phu. He and the Standing Committee promptly and quickly directed the building and consolidation of important mass organizations, the large and powerful mass forces of the revolution. These are: Labor Association, Farmers' Association, Women's Association, Youth Association, Student Association, Relief Association, etc.

General Secretary Tran Phu directly took charge of the Red Trade Union. The Red Trade Union was a broad mass organization of workers to gather proletarians to actively fight for the revolution under the leadership of the Communist Party. Thoroughly implementing the Communist International's guiding policy, strengthening the development of the Party among the working class was the top priority, General Secretary Tran Phu promoted the activities and role of the Red Trade Union, promoting the establishment of the Central Trade Union Committee, of which he himself was the Head. This was a timely and correct policy to strengthen the working class nature of the Party in the conditions of a semi-colonial, feudal country, where the masses participating in the revolutionary struggle were mainly the peasantry and other social classes.

Implementing the direction of the Communist International, General Secretary Tran Phu resolutely led the building and establishment of the Communist Youth Union. "Organizing the Communist Youth Union is a task to win over an important part of the proletariat class, an urgent issue that the Party must solve."¹. With the specific and decisive guidance of Comrade Tran Phu and the Party's leadership, the Communist Youth Union was established, developed widely and strongly, and truly became a powerful and pioneering revolutionary force of the Party. This was a vision and an extremely important contribution of General Secretary Tran Phu to the work of Party building when our Party was still in its infancy.

Resolutely promoting the establishment, building and leading of mass organizations right from the Party's founding in order to gather them into an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolutionary force was a strategic vision, a wise and correct policy of General Secretary Tran Phu and the leadership of the Indochinese Communist Party. The history of the Vietnamese revolution over the past century has affirmed that.

Sixth, with the correct, creative and timely guidelines, policies, strategies and tactics in the practical leadership of the Indochinese revolutionary movement, in the Party building in terms of ideology, theory and organization as mentioned above, in just a short time, the Indochinese Communist Party has grown strong, has become an independent entity, the only organization leading the revolution, fully capable and qualified to shoulder the task of leading the Indochinese proletarian revolutionary movement. Therefore, the Indochinese Communist Party has become an independent branch directly under the Communist International, an organic part of the world communist movement. This is both the recognition, affirmation and trust of the Communist International in our Party.

Although his revolutionary life was short and his leadership of the Indochinese Communist Party was not long, with his extraordinary intelligence and unparalleled revolutionary enthusiasm, General Secretary Tran Phu left an indelible mark on the revolutionary cause of Indochina and Vietnam. The excellent ideas on Party building in terms of ideology, theory and organization that the first General Secretary of the Party proposed and led to implement in the 1930s still retain their topicality and revolutionary significance.

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(1) Communist Party of Vietnam: Complete Party Documents, National Political Publishing House, Hanoi, 2005, volume 3, pp.91, 98-99