Blackwell Reference Online

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Pham Van Dong was a senior member of the Vietnamese Communist Party and prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) from 1955 until 1976. Following the defeat of the US and South Vietnamese, in 1974, Pham Van Dong was chairman of the Council of Ministers of a unified Vietnam until retiring in 1987. Pham Van Dong was born on March 1, 1906, in Duc Tan village, Mo Duc district of Quang Ngai province in central Vietnam. His father was chief secretary to the Vietnamese Emperor Duy Tan. Pham Van Dong attended the National Academy in Hue, and when he was 18 he joined a demonstration organized at the school to mourn the death of Phan Chu Trinh, the eminent anti-colonial scholar. He then went to the University of Hanoi. In 1926 he traveled to Guangzhou (Canton), China, to join the Revolutionary Youth League (RYL) and enrolled in the Whampoa Military Academy for training in the Chinese Nationalist army, then in coalition with the Chinese communists. Soon after, Pham Van Dong returned to Vietnam and served as a member of the RYL's regional committee in the south of the country. In 1931 Pham Van Dong was arrested by French colonial authorities in Vietnam. He was jailed on Poulo Condore Island, and was not freed until the election of the Popular Front government in France in 1936, which gave amnesty to political prisoners. During the late 1930s Pham Van Dong formed ties ... log in or subscribe to read full text