MONGABAY.COM
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
|
|
Laos
Index
The LPRP has its roots in the Indochinese Communist
Party
(ICP), founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1930. (Ho Chi Minh led
the
struggle for Vietnamese independence and was the president
of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) from 1945
until his
death in 1969.) The ICP, composed entirely of Vietnamese
members in
its early years, formed the Committee for Laos (or a "Lao
section")
in 1936. Only in the mid-1940s did the Vietnamese
communist
revolutionaries step up active recruitment of Laotian
members. In
1946 or early 1947, Kaysone Phomvihan, a law student at
the
University of Hanoi, was recruited, and Nouhak Phoumsavan,
engaged
in a trucking business in Vietnam, joined in 1947.
In February 1951, the Second Congress of the ICP
resolved to
disband the party and to form three separate parties
representing
the three states of Indochina
(see The Pathet Lao
, ch. 1).
However,
it was not until March 22, 1955, at the First Party
Congress, that
Phak Pasason Lao (Lao People's Party--LPP) was formally
proclaimed.
(The name LPRP was adopted at the Second Party Congress in
1972.)
It seems likely that from 1951 to 1955, key Laotian former
members
of the ICP provided leadership for the "resistance"
movement in
Laos, under the tutelage of their Vietnamese senior
partners. In
1956 the LPP founded the Neo Lao Hak Xat (Lao Patriotic
Front--LPF)
the political party of the Pathet Lao
(Lao Nation--see Glossary),
to act as the public mass political organization.
Meanwhile, the
LPP remained clandestine, directing the activities of the
front.
The Vietnamese communists provided critical guidance
and
support to the growing party during the revolutionary
period. They
helped to recruit the leadership of the Laotian communist
movement;
from its inception, the LPRP Political Bureau (Politburo)
was made
up of individuals closely associated with the Vietnamese.
The
Vietnamese furnished facilities and guidance for training
not only
the top leadership but also the entire Laotian communist
movement.
The Vietnamese assigned advisers to the party, as well as
to the
military forces of the LPF. Under the guidance of North
Vietnamese
mentors, LPRP leaders shaped a Marxist-Leninist party,
political
and mass organizations, and an army and a bureaucracy, all
based
upon the North Vietnamese model.
From their perspective, Laotian communists had not
compromised
their legitimacy as a nationalist movement by their
dependence on
Hanoi. During the revolutionary period prior to 1975, when
LPRP
leaders looked to the North Vietnamese for a sense of
overall
direction and cohesion, they found many common interests.
Both
parties faced the same enemies: first France and then the
United
States. They held a similar view of the world and of the
desirable
solution to its problems. In some cases, this affinity was
strengthened by family relations (for example, Kaysone,
whose
Vietnamese father, Luan Phomvihan, had been a secretary to
the
French resident in Savannakhét) or marriage ties
(Souphanouvong and
Nouhak had Vietnamese wives).
Following the First Party Congress, it was seventeen
years
until the Second Party Congress was convened, in February
1972. The
Third Party Congress met ten years later, in April 1982;
the Fourth
Party Congress convened in November 1986, and the Fifth
Party
Congress in March 1991.
Data as of July 1994
|
|