Democratic Republic of Vietnam The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN), also known as North Vietnam, was founded by Ho Chi Minh and was recognized by China and the USSR in 1950. In 1954 after the defeat of France at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, France formally recognized the DRV and the country was partitioned in two. North Vietnam was a Communist State, the first in South-East Asia.
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. 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 1955 and 1956, agragrian reforms were attempted. In the process, tens of thousands of landowners were publicly denounced as "landlords" and executed. In 1959, the Vietnamese Communist Party secretly decided to help the war effort in the South, despite enormous costs. A literary movement (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 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 the People's Republic of China and fought against the United States and South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The People's Republic of China helped to support the government during the war; for example, on August 7, 1967 the PRC agreed to give North Vietnam an undisclosed amount of aid in the form of a grant.
With the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces in April 30, 1975, political authority within South Vietnam was taken by the Communist-backed Republic of South Vietnam. 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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