The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN), or less commonly, Vietnamese Democratic Republic (Vietnamese: Việt Nam Dân Chủ Cộng Hòa), also known as North Vietnam, was proclaimed by Ho Chi Minh in 1945 and was recognized by the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union in 1950. In 1954, after the defeat of France by the Viet Minh at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu,and as a result of the Geneva Conference, France formally recognized the DRV and Vietnam was partitioned in two by the Demilitarised Zone (or DMZ at the 17th parallel). Under the Geneva Accord, national elections were to be held in both parts of Vietnam in 1956, with a view to re-unifying the country. In the interim, North Vietnam was established as a Communist state, the first in Southeast Asia. Non-communist South Vietnam was established in the southern part of the country, with its capital at Saigon.
Following the partition of the country, there followed a mass exodus of North Vietnamese to the South, many of them Catholics who claimed that North Vietnamese policy towards them amounted to persecution. This amounted to one million people out of a population of 13 million [1]. In its early years, the poor nation, cut off from the agricultural areas of the South, is described by many as having become repressive and totalitarian. Between 1953 and 1956, agrarian reforms were attempted. In the process, tens of thousands of landowners were publicly denounced as "landlords" (địa chủ) and executed, with their land distributed to poor peasants. Estimates of executions vary considerably however, some estimate less than 10,000 deaths while others put forward 100,000 or more [2]. In 1959, the Communist Party of Vietnam secretly decided to help the war effort in the South, despite enormous costs. A literary movement called Nhân văn giai phẩm (Humanist arts) attempted to democratize the country and allow people to freely express their thoughts resulted in a purge in which many intellectuals and writers were sent to reeducation camps because they did not agree with the government.
North Vietnam's capital was Hanoi and it was ruled by a Communist government allied with the Soviet Union and China. During the Vietnam War, North Vietnam supported the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF, also known as the Viet Cong) who were fighting against the pro-American government of South Vietnam, and the United States. From 1965 onwards, both China and the Soviet Union provided huge amounts of aid to North Vietnam for their war effort, in what became known as the Vietnam War.
With the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces on April 30, 1975, political authority within South Vietnam was assumed by the Communist-backed Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (P.R.G.). This government merged with North Vietnam on July 2, 1976, to form a single nation called the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, commonly known as Vietnam.
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