UC Berkeley

This dissertation examines the communist takeover of cities in North Vietnam and some of the most important socio-political transformations that took place in these cities in the 1950s. It aims to do three things. First, it puts into perspective the intricate but understudied relationship between the communist revolution and the city. Second, it aims to critically complicate the way urban takeovers in Vietnam are portrayed in the existing literature and to demonstrate how an understanding of communist takeovers in the 1950s can enrich the larger historiography on modern state formation in general, and communist state formation in particular, in Vietnam. Finally, this dissertation aims to contribute to the growing literature on state-society relations in the early DRV. The dissertation starts with the first takeovers by DRV forces of cities along the Sino-Vietnamese frontier in 1949–1950 and ends in 1958, on the eve of nationalization and agricultural collectivization. Drawing on archival documents, newspapers, literary works, memoirs, and oral histories, this work reconstructs the perspectives and actions of both the communist “liberators” and members of the society “liberated” by Ho Chi Minh’s forces. The general picture that this dissertation paints is that: Vietnamese communists met various difficulties and forms of resistance after taking over urban areas - it took Ho Chi Minh’s government several years to turn North Vietnamese cities into the socialist symbols that they became by the 1960s - but in the process of attempting to reorganize the cities and its population, communist bureaucrats, cadres, and soldiers were also transformed by urban life and culture.