Saturday, November 16, 2019, 19:51 (GMT+7)
The General Political Department of the Vietnam People’s Army determinedly defends the Party’s ideological foundation

On December 22nd 2019, our Military will celebrate its 75th founding anniversary while our country will hold celebrations to mark the 30th anniversary of the All-People National Defence Festive Day. On this occasion, we will look back on the hard but glorious history of the heroic Vietnam People’s Army under the Party’s leadership.

As an integral part of our Military, over the past 75 years, the General Political Department (GPD) of the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA) has fulfilled its glorious mission and function as the core force in building a politically strong VPA - the most important basis for improving our VPA’s combat strength and making it invincible. In the process of construction, development, and maturity, our VPA has always had within itself the nature of the working class, the people, and the nation, kept its absolute faith in and flexibly applied Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh’s ideology on the military-defence work, the military build-up, and the Homeland defence, thereby firmly protecting the Party’s ideological foundation within the Military.

As an office in charge of strategically couselling and directing the party and political work, while enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the party and political work and performing various missions, the GPD has always taken fundamental measures to direct the struggle for defending the Party’s ideological foundation within the VPA and achieved significant initial results. Due attention has been paid to the work of political education and ideological orientation, which has helped render cadres and soldiers fully aware of the hostile forces’ nature, plots, and artifices, remain their revolutionary vigilance, and cement their faith in the goal of national independence and socialism. At the same time, the GPD has advised the Central Military Commission (CMC) and the Ministry of National Defence (MND) on measures for fighting against the hostile, wrong viewpoints and making the VPA strong politically, absolutely loyal to the Homeland, the Party and the people, and capable of undertaking and fulfilling all assigned tasks.

First of all, the GPD has advised the CMC on helping the Party Central Committee to establish, consolidate, and complete the mechanism for the Party’s leadership over the VPA

The GPD plays an important role in counselling the establishment, consolidation, and completion of the mechanism for the Party’s leadership over the VPA, which contributes to upholding the Party’s absolute, direct leadership over the VPA, ensuring that the VPA is really “a military organization of the Party” with “a sound political path,” readily sacrifice and fight for national independence, socialism, and the people’s happiness. That has been proved by resolutions, such as the Party Central Committee’s Resolution 38/NQ-TW, dated October 20th 1948, on “the Party’s organization and system within the VPA,” the Resolution 07-NQ/TW, dated May 20th 1952, on “the Party’s organization within the main military force,” the 5th Politburo’s Resolution 07-NQ/TW, dated December 15th 1982, on “renewing and completing the mechanism for the Party’s leadership over the VPA and national defence cause and executing the one-commander regime within the VPA,” the 5th Politburo’s Resolution 27-NQ/TW, dated July 4th 1985, on “continuing to consolidate the mechanism for the Party’s leadership over the VPA and national defence cause,” and the 9th Politburo’s Resolution 51-NQ/TW, dated July 20th 2005, on “continuing to complete the mechanism for the Party’s leadership and executing the one-commander regime in line with the commissar and political commissar regime within the VPA.” The GPD has made great contributions to completing the mechanism for the Party’s leadership over the VPA, maintaining the principle for building a revolutionary VPA, putting the party and political work in order, ensuring that this work is really the “soul and lifeblood” of our VPA and provides the firmest basis for protecting the Party’s ideological foundation within the VPA. Thanks to the mechanism for the Party’s leadership, the system of military organizations have been gradually completed and operated smoothly in accordance with each period’s task requirements; the party organizations’ leadership and combativeness have improved; commands’ efficiency has been consolidated; commissars’ role in political affairs has been encouraged; the quality and effectiveness of the party and political work have been raised as the basis for the entire VPA to fulfil all missions and deserve to be a loyal, reliable political and combat force of our Party, State, and people.

Building and upholding the VPA’s working class nature

This is the core issue on building a politically strong VPA and making it always steadfast in defending the Party’s ideological foundation. Reality has shown that if any ruling political party wants to keep a firm hold of the Military, it has to ensure that the Military has within itself the nature of that political party and keep its faith in the benefit and ideological foundation of that party. Since its inception, our VPA has been a new-style army having within itself the working class nature, fighting for the goal and ideal of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV). However, the VPA’s working class nature has not developed by itself; it has been led, built, and orientated by our Party. Thus, the lax building of the working class nature means the Party’s lax leadership over the VPA. Over the past 75 years, the GPD has advised the Party Central Committee and the CMC on leading and directly directing the whole VPA to pay due regard to building the VPA’s working class nature and ensuring that the VPA would always fight for the revolutionary goal and political guidelines of the CPV, consider Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh’s ideology as its political foundation and the lodestar for all of its actions, stay close to the people, and that it would be organized under the principles in line with our Party’s ideology and political, military and organizational guidelines.

Directly directing and counselling the building of pure, strong organizations

The VPA’s strength is created by its personnel, organization, weapons, equipment, task performance, with the political expertise and strength playing the central role. The VPA’s synergy will be transformed into the politico-spiritual strength in specific situations, circumstances, and tasks by promoting the effectiveness of the party organizations, commands, and mass organizations in each unit. Our VPA’s political strength greatly and mainly depends on its organizations’ purity and strength. Thus, building pure, strong organizations within each office and unit and in the entire Military is always a task of paramount importance to making the VPA politically strong.

Fully aware of that importance, the GPD has advised the CMC on various measures for consolidating and enhancing the leadership capacity and combativeness of all-level party committees and organizations within the whole Military and aligning the building of pure, strong party organizations with that of comprehensively strong offices and units and excellently strong mass organizations. As a result, despite the situation’s complex developments and the requirements set by the tasks of national liberation and Homeland protection, the VPA’s Party Organization has always been politically, ideologically, and organizationally strong and played a vanguard role in combating “peaceful evolution” in the ideological and cultural fields. The GPD has effectively executed the leadership mechanisms to ensure the Party’s absolute, direct leadership over the VPA. It has strictly adhered to the principle of democratic centralism; self-criticism and criticism have been heightened; a sense of unity within each office and unit has been maintained; cadres and party members have always had political zeal, overcome all difficulties and hardships, readily undertaken and successfully fulfilled all assigned tasks, thereby deserving to be the reliable force of our Party, State, and people. At the same time, it has unceasingly cemented the military-civilian unity, promoted the fine nature of “Uncle Ho’s soldiers,” and actively taken part in building politico-social bases and maintaining the country’s political stability.

Directing and counselling the work of political education and ideological orientation within the VPA

The work of political education and ideological orientation within the Military is a component of the Party’s ideological work and a central field of the party and political work, directly maintaining and strengthening the Party’s leadership over the VPA, deciding our VPA’s strength, maturity, and glorious victories. As an office in charge of the political and ideological education work within the entire Military, the GPD has always focused on improving political cadres, commissars, and political commissars’ capability in directing and counselling this work and especially enhancing their capacity to study, detect, and propose the strategic issues on the work of political and ideological education for the Military’s cadres and soldiers. Thus, due attention has been paid to orientating cadres and soldiers’ ideology against the sensitive, complex issues, raising their political zeal and responsibility in the performance of their task, ensuring that in all conditions and circumstances, the Military’s cadres and soldiers will always have political zeal, keep their absolute faith in the Party, Homeland, and people, readily undertake and successfully fulfil every assigned task. One of the most notable lessons on directing the work of political and ideological education drawn by the GPD is that the work of political education, task introduction, and ideological orientation must be one step ahead. For example, in the battle of Dien Bien Phu, the GPD dispatched its envoys to all units to cooperate with their cadres in dealing with difficulties in troops’ daily and spiritual life and rendering troops fully aware of the combat motto of “being active, proactive, mobile, and flexible” and the combat strategy to shift from “rapid fight, rapid victory” to “steady fight, steady advance.” Consequently, confusion, puzzlement, negativity, scepticism, doubt about our victory, overestimation of the enemy, and rightist tendency were gradually pushed away while the combat morale of cadres and soldiers was restored, thereby creating the synergy for gaining the victory of Dien Bien Phu “resounding across five continents, shaking the globe.” This lesson now remains valuable and the GPD should continue studying and applying it to building a revolutionary, regular, seasoned, gradually modern VPA capable of meeting the requirements set by the Homeland construction and defence in the new period. Our VPA’s 75-year process of construction, combat, and maturity has proved the importance of the political and ideological education work to making our troops absolutely loyal to the Homeland, Party, and people, steadfast in the Party’s ideological foundation and leadership, and determined to overcome all hardships and successfully fulfil their assigned tasks.

Effectively performing the task of combating the hostile, wrong viewpoints

The VPA has been established, educated, and trained by the CPV and President Ho Chi Minh, with Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh’s ideology acting as its ideological foundation and the lodestar for all of its actions. Thus, over the past 75 years, the Military has always politically, ideologically, and organizationally strong, clearly expressing the nature of the working class, people, and nation, deserving to be the absolutely loyal, reliable political force of our Party, State, and people, readily undertaking and successfully fulfilling all assigned missions. The hostile forces and political opportunists have stepped up their sabotage plan against the Party’s ideological foundation with various malicious artifices to remove the Party’s leadership and socialism in our country. They have also focused their sabotage on our Military with a view to “depoliticizing” and “civilizing” the VPA and abolishing the Party’s leadership over the Military. To that end, the hostile forces have concentrated on distorting and refuting Marxism-Leninism, Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, the Party’s guidelines, viewpoints, and Political Platform, making our cadres and soldiers gradually stay aloof from the revolution’s goal and ideal, fall into degradation in political ideology, ethics, and lifestyle, “self-evolution” and “self-transformation,” lose their faith in and deny the Party’s absolute, direct leadership over the VPA.

Fully understanding the hostile forces’ plots and artifices, over the years, the GPD has given sound advice to the CMC and the MND and directed the all-level party committees, commands, and political offices to focus on leading, directing, and synchronously adopting measures in terms of organization, force, content, form, and means for enhancing the effectiveness in the defence of the Party’s ideological foundation within the VPA. Top priority has been given to conducting the work of political education and raising cadres and soldiers’ awareness of Marxism-Leninism, Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, the Party’s political and military guidelines, and task of the VPA and their units. Consideration has been given to identifying the hostile forces’ wrong arguments, plots and artifices against the Party’s ideological foundation, and clarifying the everlasting value and scientific, revolutionary nature of Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh’s ideology as well as the goal of national independence and socialism and the path to socialism in Vietnam. The GPD has frequently directed offices and units within the Military to build the core force (the force 47) and organize many activities to engage a large number of cadres and soldiers in the fight against the hostile forces’ plots and artifices. Many websites and blogs of organizations and individuals have made great contributions to the work of information and propagation against the hostile, wrong viewpoints. The military press agencies have actively launched special columns with many highly combative, convincing articles. Grasping the 12th Politburo’s Directive 05-CT/TW and the CMC Standing Board’s Directive 87-CT/QUTW on “studying and emulating Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, ethics, and lifestyle,” offices and units across the VPA have focused their leadership and direction on implementing those documents with various effective, creative approaches. The military press agencies have organized special columns with many articles about Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, ethics, and lifestyle. Notably, the GPD has directed units within the Military to organize the column entitled “Uncle Ho’s teachings on this day” which has made great contributions to transforming Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, ethics, and lifestyle into the solid spiritual foundation within the VPA and the society. The work of propagation, culture and art has been renewed, maintained the Party’s guidelines, stayed close to and opportunely served the political missions of the country and the Military, and better met troops’ cultural and spiritual life. Doing so has contributed to building up the revolutionary ideal, promoting the qualities of “Uncle Ho’s soldiers,” preventing wrong viewpoints and evil information from negatively affecting troops, and maintaining the Party’s ideological foundation within the Military.

At present, the global and regional situation witnesses complex, unpredictable developments; opportunities, difficulties and hardships are intertwined; the hostile forces and political opportunists are stepping up their sabotage plan especially when we are about to hold party congresses at all levels in preparation for the 13th National Party Congress. Amidst flows of complex information and the hostile forces’ plots to depoliticize our VPA, the defence of the Party’s ideological foundation within the Military is a task of urgency which all organizations and forces must thoroughly grasp and effectively execute. To fulfil this task, there should be focalized, uniformed leadership and direction from the CMC, the MND, and the GPD to the system of commands across the VPA. Flexibly applying the lessons on defending the Party’s ideological foundation over the past 75 years, the GPD should continue to direct and counsel offices and units across the Military to well implement the measures as follows.

First, enhancing the work of education to raise the awareness and responsibility of all organizations, forces, cadres, and soldiers towards the importance and content of the task of protecting the Party’s ideological foundation within the Military, particularly on the ideological and theoretical fronts. It is necessary to adopt measures for identifying the nature, plots, and artifices of the hostile forces in terms of ideology and theory, to unceasingly remain vigilance, and to build up determination to fight against all hostile, wrong viewpoints and protect the Party, State, people, and socialist regime.

Second, assigning the task of fighting against hostile, wrong viewpoints on the ideological and theoretical fronts to all organizations and forces within the Military. Responsibility of all-level party committees, commands, competent offices, and Steering Board 35 for leadership and direction over the defence of the Party’s ideological foundation and the fight against hostile, wrong viewpoints must be clearly expressed. At the same time, it is important to assign the task of defending the Party’s ideological foundation within the Military to the core force and all cadres and soldiers.

Third, strengthening party committees’ direct leadership and direction and commissars and commanders’ uniformed management and operation in the defence of the Party’s ideological foundation within the VPA. Great value should be attached to enhancing the efficiency of the mechanism for the Party’s leadership over the VPA in the ideological and theoretical struggle and combining the building of ideological front with that of really pure, strong party organizations and comprehensively strong offices and units. The entire Military should better execute the 12th Politburo’s Directive, promote the noble qualities of “Uncle Ho’s soldiers,” raise the quality of mass mobilization and policies for the Military and the Military Rear, build excellently strong grass-roots level mass organizations, and well implement the movements and campaigns. Doing so will contribute to safeguarding the Party’s ideological foundation within the Military, maintaining and enhancing the Party’s absolute, direct leadership over the VPA and the national defence cause.

Fourth, further undertaking theoretical researches, studying and anticipating the hostile forces’ plots and artifices in the ideological and theoretical fields, proactively settling new issues, avoiding falling into ideological passivity in all situations. Due regard should be paid to studying and grasping the hostile forces’ plots and artifices, opportunely advising the Party and State on strategies to deal with complex situations and “hot spots” in the defence of the Party’s ideological foundation within the Military, particularly on the ideological and theoretical fronts. In addition, significance should be attached to directing schools, universities, institutions, press agencies, publishers, and mass media within the Military to focus on protecting the Party’s ideological foundation. It is necessary to maintain close cooperation between organizations and forces within the Military and party committees, authorities, and unions from Central to grass-roots levels to create the synergy for maintaining and safeguarding the Party’s ideological foundation within the VPA.

Fifth, correctly identifying and effectively adopting the content and method of protecting the Party’s ideological foundation in accordance with each office and unit’s particularities, function and task. A focus should be placed on combating distortions of Marxism-Leninism, Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, CPV leadership, and goal, ideal, and path to socialism selected by the Party, Uncle Ho, and people. Priority should be given to fighting against the hostile, wrong viewpoints and the exploitation of the issues on democracy, human rights, ethnicity, and religion as well as preventing and foiling the plot to “depoliticize” the VPA. To that end, it is necessary to organize and make the force capable of meeting the requirements set by the defence of the Party’s ideological foundation within the Military, with a focus on building the core force in offices and units as well as the institutes and training centres for social sciences and humanities, and training a contingent of key cadres on the ideological and theoretical fronts. Moreover, great weight should be added to encouraging a large number of cadres and soldiers to fight against the hostile, wrong viewpoints and maintain the Party’s ideological foundation in each unit. At the same time, it is important to build and complete the mechanisms, policies, and regulations for the operation and coordination of the force in charge of defending the Party’s ideological foundation within the VPA.

Theoretically and practically, in any circumstance, it is imperative to safeguard the Party’s ideological foundation within the Military and ensure the Party’s absolute, direct leadership over the VPA. Therefore, the synchronous implementation of the above-mentioned measures will help ensure that our VPA, in any circumstance, will always be the core, most loyal force in the defence of the Party’s ideology, guidelines and viewpoints, the Homeland’s independence, sovereignty, unification, and territorial integrity, and the people and socialist regime.

Le Kha Phieu

Former General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPV

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