Appeal for National Resistance - its historical and epochal significance

 After the success of the August Revolution of 1945, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam - the first democratic state in Southeast Asia was established, opening up a new era of independence, freedom, and happiness for our people. However, our people’s peace didn’t exist for long as French colonialists came back to invade our country again with their allied imperial nations’ support. They unilaterally nullified all agreements, including the Preliminary Agreement, dated March 6th, 1946 and the Provisional Agreement, dated September 14th, 1946, while increasing their military activities to sabotage our country’s peace.

With our nation’s humanistic tradition and burning desire for peace, our Party and President Ho Chi Minh expressed goodwill and appeasement as much as possible to avoid further bloodshed and spare more time for national construction. “But the more we make concessions, the more the French colonialists encroach on us because they want to take over our country again.” At that crucial moment of the nation, on the evening of December 19th, 1946, President Ho Chi Minh issued the Appeal for National Resistance. As a proclamation of the nation, the Appeal is our people and country’s shining symbol of patriotism, unity, indomitable will, and spirit of “sacrificing for the Homeland” in Ho Chi Minh era.

Patriotism is a valuable tradition of our people and they all clearly understand the significance of independence and freedom and the price to gain independence and freedom. Therefore, our people have never bent the knee to ferocious enemies; they have always been determined to “mobilise all their physical and mental strength and sacrifice their lives and property” and even “their last drop of blood” to safeguard independence as evidenced by the Appeal for National Resistance and the Declaration of Independence on September 2nd, 1945.

The Appeal for National Resistance by President Ho Chi Minh

In response to President Ho Chi Minh’s Appeal, troops and citizens of our capital city and localities across the country rose up as one against the French invasion. The strength of the all-people unity against enemies once again flared up in the early days of national resistance. That laid a foundation for our military and people to conduct an all-people, comprehensive, prolonged, self-dependent resistance war, implement the Party’s guidelines on both national resistance and construction, make up the victory of Dien Bien Phu that “resounded across five continents, shook the globe,” and ended the resistance war against the French, win the resistance war against the US, gloriously fulfil the struggle for national liberation, and bring our country to a new era of socialism.

National resistance as the first victorious general war expressed our Party and President Ho Chi Minh’s sound, creative guidelines, leadership, and direction; it was typical of the art of mobilising forces and promoting the all-people strength in the Vietnamese people’s warfare.

75 years have elapsed, but the Appeal for National Resistance has always been in each Vietnamese citizen’s mind as a milestone in the heroic national history. That event of both historic and epochal significance has provided us with a lot of valuable lessons for today’s Homeland construction and protection.

In the upcoming time, although peace, cooperation, and development will still be the mainstream, the situation in the world and the region will have rapid, complex developments together with unpredictable detriments to stability. COVID-19 will be complicated with new variants and negatively impact on socio-economic development of many countries worldwide. As for our country, in addition to difficulties and challenges caused by the pandemic, hostile forces will enhance their “peaceful evolution” strategy and encourage “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” from within. Destabilising factors in East Sea will continue to be increased and there may be new changes. Our people’s national construction and protection cause has new development and new higher, more complex requirements.

Therefore, the entire Party, military, and people should grasp Resolution of the 13th National Party Congress, remain steadfast in the goal of national independence and socialism, bring into play political resolve, and synchronously, comprehensively step up national renewal for the sake of “wealthy people, strong nation, democracy, equality, and civilisation.”

In the short term, emphasis should be placed on repelling the COVID-19 pandemic and fostering socio-economic development as the “dual goal.” In this regard, socio-economic development must play a central role, the Party building must act as a key step, culture must serve as the society’s spiritual foundation, and defence-security consolidation must be seen as a crucial, routine mission.

The Party’s leadership plays a decisive role in all victories of the Vietnamese revolution. Hence, we must continue making the Party strong in terms of politics, ideology, morality, organisation, and personnel, improving the Party’s leading and ruling capacity, and building a comprehensively strong, pure political system and a compact, efficient State. In addition, it is necessary to bring into play the synergy of the whole nation combined with the strength of the times, actively, proactively integrate Vietnam into the world, and raise the effectiveness of international cooperation for the country’s rapid, sustainable development.

To meet the requirements set by the Homeland protection, we must keep grasping the Party’s viewpoints on resolutely, persistently fighting to safeguard national independence, sovereignty, unification, and territorial integrity, protect the Party, the State, the people, and the socialist regime, maintain a peaceful environment, proactively prevent risks of war and conflict from afar, and foil the hostile forces’ plots and artifices. Besides, great importance should be attached to building a revolutionary, regular, elite, gradually modern Vietnam People’s Army (VPA), with a number of services, corps, and forces moving straight to modernity as the basis for building a revolutionary, regular, elite, modern VPA capable of playing a core role in firmly protecting the Homeland in any situation.

The 75th Anniversary of the National Resistance Day (December 19th, 1946 - December 19th, 2021) gives us a chance to reaffirm this event’s historical and epochal significance. Lessons learnt from the Appeal for National Resistance remain valid forever and have been continuously applied to fuel our Party, VPA, and people’s national renewal, construction, and protection in the new period.