43 years ago, on 30th April 1975, the revolution flag fluttered over Independence Palace – the Southern puppet government’s presidential Palace marking the liberation of Saigon city and the victory of Ho Chi Minh Campaign and the end of our people’s triumphant resistance war against the American imperialists for national salvation. The great 1975 Spring Victory (hereafter the Victory) was not only a historic and epochal victory of Vietnamese peoples in the 20th century, but an immortal heroic epic of people’s war in Ho Chi Minh era. Yet, there still have some implicit and distorted statements on that historic Victory that need to be resolutely negated.

The victory of our peoples’ resistance war against the US for national salvation culminated in the great 1975 Spring Victory, which “went down in national history as one of the most glorious historical pages and a brilliant symbol of revolutionary heroism and human brainpower, and passed into international history as a great feat of arms in the 20th century and a globally significant and profoundly epochal event”. The will of “nothing is more precious than independence and freedom” and peace aspirations and national reunification under the leadership of Vietnamese Communist Party acted as a decisive momentum for delivering the Victory, completely liberating the South and reunifying the country. Under the Party’s leadership, those will and aspirations had been crystallized into enormous national physical and mental strength in the resistance war, leading to the Victory.

Over the past four decades, Vietnamese generations and progressive humankind have been increasingly conscious of the Victory’s symbolic meaning and historical and epochal value on all fronts as well as the sacrifices and sufferings our peoples had to experience for the sake of the Victory, and immensely proud of the Party, President Ho Chi Minh, and the heroic peoples and Army. People around the globe have hailed the Victory as a “triumph of justice, humanity and unparalleled heroism and of shaking the globe”. Simultaneously, the Victory also has had sweeping impacts on global and regional complexion in the future, and made an indelible imprint of an indomitable nation against its foreign invaders on the international arena, heralding the end of superpowers’ repression against nationalism via their power”. That victory, which made history, proved a fact that no power could dominate the heroic peoples. On the 30^th April, 1975, Chinese Party and State leadership sent a congratulatory message to our people, which read “the victory of Vietnamese people unequivocally proves that however small a country is, its people dare to rise up under arms and pit the just war against the unjust, then those people certainly will be able to defeat any foreign aggressor”. It was American people who had to acknowledge the historical truth, and speak highly of unrivalled strength of Vietnamese people “History must considered Vietnamese people to be second to none in terms of human tenacious combativeness and bravery”. That is an indisputable truth.

Still, over the past four decades plus, distortions of the nature of our people’s just resistance war and artifices of twisting, underrating, and negating the meaning and value of the Victory have been posted domestically and internationally on the mass media by hostile forces. They often claim that they regard our people’s historic victory on 30^th April, 1975 as “black April” and “national day of hatred” while falsifying the just nature of our people’s resistance war against the American imperialists for national salvation, stating that this resistance war is a “fratricidal struggle” between the North and the South. When our people gained the Victory, they argued that it could not be a glorious triumph of Vietnam over the US since the latter had shifted its policy, withdrew its troops, cut off aid, and abandoned the Saigon puppet government and its Army. They claim groundlessly that “no sides win or lose this war, and only people suffer from it”, and that our anti-American resistance war was “meaningless, and Vietnamese peoples could have avoided this war”, etc. They even strongly advocate the American act of aggression in the South, claiming “the US does not invade Vietnam but helps it get access to Western civilization,” and that since “the communist North Vietnam occupies and conquers the South, the US must take on responsibility for protecting its ally”, etc. Those are malicious and opposing arguments and blind and irrational prejudice of unobjectively reviewing history amongst some people.

Whenever our people commemorate the Victory, those familiar and distorted arguments spring up like mushrooms. During this time, with a strategy of “small rain lays great dust”, they trumpet opposing and twisted arguments via the mass media, particularly social networks. Overseas hostile forces have colluded with internal political opportunists to propagate and oppose our regime. Empty rhetoric such as “patriotic”, “for people, for nation”, “devoted”, and “respecting historical truths”, etc have been employed more frequently in order to make opposing arguments more convincing; to deceive naive people, and to impact negatively on our people’s ideology, sentiment, and attitude. Those distortions not only render our people from all walks of life unvigilant and prone to misconceptions about the great national resistance war, but weaken people’s confidence in the Party’s leadership and justifiable pride in the Victory.

Up to now, the more unequivocal and obvious the just, humane, and humanitarian nature of our people’s resistance war is, the more unfounded and ridiculous those distortions are. The fact is that historical truths as well as the value and meaning of our people’s resistance war have been increasingly deep-rooted and widespread in the cause of current Homeland construction and protection. Regardless of every distortion they have been deliberately and incrementally employing to twist and deform historical truths, hostile forces themselves are fully aware that they will not be able to reverse those truths.

A Vietnamese country with glorious triumphant resistance wars for national salvation and a firm foothold in extensive global integration and international arena is an “eyesore” in the eyes of hostile forces and political opportunists, whose true artifice is to get rid of it. It turns out that the artifices of hostile forces are intended to not only distort and negate our people’s great victory and brilliant symbol of predominant revolutionary heroism and human brainpower”- the Victory, but oppose the revolutionary cause and the renewal cause of Homeland construction and protection under the leadership of Communist Party of Vietnam. In addition, they find every way to incite hatred and divide our national great unity block, create divisions between domestic Vietnamese people and Vietnamese expatriates, and weaken an enormous source of spiritual momentum in the renewal cause. To make matters worse, they purposefully damage Vietnam’s international relationships, especially growing relations of “looking to the future, prosperity, security, and stability for reciprocal development” between Vietnam and the US as stated by President Barack Obama in front of over 2,000 Vietnamese young people in the Vietnamese National Convention Centre on May 24^th, 2016. Those distortions are intrinsically a malicious artifice of “peaceful evolution” strategy aimed at opposing Vietnam’s revolution by hostile forces. Therefore, we must stay constantly vigilant and determined to foil that strategy.

History must be respected and reviewed in an objective and truthful manner. It is impossible to negate and disparage great sacrifices and losses by many Vietnamese generations, which led to the miraculously victorious resistance wars and the Victory. The historical confrontation between our people and the American imperialists was the fierce one between the aspirations for national independence and socialism and the imperialism. The Victory was a great and glorious triumph of Vietnamese people over foreign aggressors, and the just and humane victory over the unjust and brutal aggression, which is why the international friends called Vietnam “the conscience of the times” with admiration and reverence. Hence, it is impossible to diminish the value and meaning of those victories no matter how cunning and sophisticated those distortions and opposing arguments by hostile forces are.

A significant task falling to our people is that we need to strongly promote the heroic spirit and atmosphere of the Victory in the national renewal cause introduced and led by the Party; making a concerted effort to successfully implement Resolution of the 12^th National Party Congress and building socialism, and firmly safeguarding the Homeland of socialist Vietnam, which serve as a practical vigilance and an obvious answer by our people to all distorted and opposing arguments.

Assoc. Prof. Nguyen Manh Huong, PhD