The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), also known as the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), is the founding and sole legal party of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Founded in 1930 by Hồ Chí Minh, the CPV became the ruling party of North Vietnam in 1954 and then all of Vietnam after the collapse of the South Vietnamese government following the Fall of Saigon in 1975. Although it nominally exists alongside the Vietnamese Fatherland Front, it maintains a unitary government and has centralized control over the state, military, and media. The supremacy of the CPV is guaranteed by Article 4 of the national constitution. The Vietnamese public generally refer to the CPV as simply "the Party" () or "our Party" ().
The CPV is organized on the basis of democratic centralism, a principle conceived by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. The highest institution of the CPV is the party's National Congress, which elects the Central Committee. The Central Committee is the supreme organ on party affairs in between party congresses. After a party congress, the Central Committee elects the Politburo and Secretariat, and appoints the First Secretary, the highest party office. In between sessions of the Central Committee, the Politburo is the supreme organ on party affairs. However, it can only implement decisions based on the policies which have been approved in advance by either the Central Committee or the party's National Congress. , the 12th Politburo has 19 members. The current party leader is Nguyễn Phú Trọng, who holds the titles of General Secretary of the Central Committee and Secretary of the Central Military Commission.
The CPV is committed to communism and participates in the annual International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties. The party is also known for its advocacy of what it calls a "socialist-oriented market economy", as well as Hồ Chí Minh Thought, which combines Marxism–Leninism, Vietnamese philosophy, ideas from the French Revolution, and Hồ Chí Minh's personal beliefs. The CPV implemented a command economy in Vietnam before introducing economic reforms, known as , in 1986. The party aligned with the Soviet Union and its allies during the Cold War.
History
Rise to power (1925–1945) The Communist Party of Vietnam traces its history back to 1925, when Hồ Chí Minh established the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League (), commonly shortened to the Youth League (). The Youth League's goal was to end the colonial occupation of Vietnam by France. The group sought political and social objectives—national independence and the redistribution of land to working peasants. The Youth League's purpose was to prepare the masses for a revolutionary armed struggle against the French occupation. His efforts in laying the groundwork for the party was financially supported by the Comintern.
In 1928 the headquarters of the Youth League in Canton (present-day Guangdong), China, were destroyed by the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) and the group was forced underground. This led to a national breakdown within the Youth League, which indirectly led to a split. On 17 June 1929, more than 20 delegates from cells throughout the Tonkin (northern) region held a conference in Hanoi, where they declared the dissolution of Youth League and the establishment of a new organization called the Communist Party of Indochina (). The other faction of the Youth League, based in the Cochinchina (southern) region of the country, held a conference in Saigon and declared themselves the Communist Party of Annam () in late 1929. The two parties spent the rest of 1929 engaged in polemics against one another in an attempt to gain a position of hegemony over the radical Vietnamese liberation movement. A third Vietnamese communist group which did not originate from the Youth League emerged around this time in the Annam (central) region, calling itself the Communist League of Indochina (). The Communist League of Indochina had its roots in another national liberation group which had existed in parallel with the Youth League, and saw itself as a rival to the latter.