The Men Who Made the Victory

For most of the war, Western and South Vietnamese analysts have known little more about the elusive field commander of the Viet Cong than that he called himself Tran Nam Trung. Actually, Nam Trung is a nom de guerre meaning "south central" (after the portion of Indochina more commonly known as South Viet Nam) and has probably been used at various times by at least three commanders, a fact that has caused endless confusion. Even after Tran Van Tra publicly emerged in 1973 as the Communists' top general in the South, many experts were still not sure that he was indeed the shadowy Trung. Last week, as his troops pressed in on Saigon, there was no longer much doubt that Tra and Trung were one. But few Westerners or South Vietnamese knew much more than that about him.

Tra's secretiveness is typical of the architects of the Communist victory. Both to protect relatives in the South from reprisals by the Saigon regime and to avoid becoming the objects of personality cults, the Vietnamese Communists have traditionally disdained publicity about their personal lives or careers. Moreover the precise relationship between the Communist government in the North and the Provisional Revolutionary Government in the South has never been totally clear, though all important decisions seem to be made in Hanoi.

Tra, 57, appears to hold both a North Vietnamese commission as a lieutenant general and the job of Defense Minister in the P.R.G. (the Viet Cong is the fighting arm of the P.R.G.). Apparently he is of peasant origin and has no formal education; in his younger years he worked as a coolie on the railroad in his native Quang Ngai province, which is in central Viet Nam. Recruited by Ho Chi Minn, Tra was a Communist Party agitator against the French colonial government in the 1930s and 1940s.

During World War II, Tra at first led a 200-man guerrilla band near the Laotian border but rose rapidly in the ranks of the Viet Minh, the Communist-led liberation movement. In 1945, as the leader of a Viet Minh force that occupied the imperial capital of Hue, he was quartered in the former French Resident's master bedroom. After the first night, Tra complained that the bed was too soft; he wound up sleeping on the floor. In 1946 Tra became chief of staff of the Viet Minh in central Viet Nam. Not long after the war with the French ended, he was named deputy chief of staff to North Viet Nam's Defense Minister and legendary military strategist, General Vo Nguyen Giap. Tra returned to the South in 1965 to become head of the National Liberation Front's military committee and adopted the pseudonym Nam Trung.

Tra's superior in the military structure is Senior General Van Tien Dung, 57, chief of staff of the North Viet Nam People's Army since 1953. A loyal Giap disciple and master logician, Dung is the youngest member of the Politburo of the ruling Lao Dong (Workers) Party. He was born to a peasant family in Ha Dong province in the North, joined the Communist Party in the 1930s and spent about five years in a French prison before escaping to China in 1944. A year later he took command of Viet Minh forces in the Red River Delta and in 1946 was made responsible for the political indoctrination of all Viet Minh troops. Dong is considered the man most likely to succeed the ailing Giap, who has been treated for cancer in Moscow.

Despite his illness, Giap, 63, is still part of the quadrumvirate that has ruled North Viet Nam since Ho's death in 1969. Although all four members are supposedly equal in rank, the one most often mentioned as the primus inter pares is Le Duan, 66, the shrewd behind-the-scenes mastermind who has been first secretary of the Lao Dong since 1960. Born to a peasant family in Quang Tri province in central Viet Nam, he worked as a railroad clerk and political agitator in his 20s and 30s. Imprisoned during World War II, he became the organizer of Viet Minh guerrilla forces in the South after the war. From 1954 to 1956, he helped organize political subversion against the regime of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Le Duan is generally regarded as the chief architect of Hanoi's unrelenting campaign to take over the South.

His main rival was originally named Dang Xuan Khu but goes by the name of Truong Chinh (meaning "Long March"), in honor of the Red Chinese Long March. Now 66 and the president of the National Assembly, he is the son of a militantly nationalistic teacher in the North's Nam Dinh province. In 1930 he helped found the Indochinese Communist Party, but spent most of the next 15 years in French prisons or in exile in China. During the fight against the French, Chinh directed Viet Minh propaganda and later all intelligence operations. In 1951 he supervised a reorganization of the Viet Minh, from which emerged the Lao Dong, and became secretary-general of the new party. For a time Chinh seemed the likely successor to Ho. But after his attempt to collectivize North Vietnamese farmers failed bloodily in 1956, he was fired from his party post. Probably because of Peking's support, he rebounded, becoming a Vice Premier in 1958 and head of the National Assembly two years later.

The most public member of the collective leadership is Pham Van Dong, 67, North Viet Nam's Premier since 1955. Like Tra, he was born in Quang Ngai province, but he was the son of the Mandarin private secretary to the Emperor Duy Tan. As a student, Dong became active in the nationalist movement, joining Ho Chi Minh in Canton in 1925. Ho was then working as an aide to Soviet Agent Mikhail Borodin, who was an adviser to the Chinese Nationalists. Next year Dong was one of the first Communist agents sent by Ho to organize party cells in Viet Nam. A skillful administrator, Dong acted in effect for years as Ho's deputy. Dong proved to be a tough and uncompromising negotiator at the Fontainebleau conference, where the French and leaders of the Vietnamese liberation movement tried to resolve their differences in 1946. Later Dong led the Viet Minh delegation to the Geneva Conference, where Viet Nam was divided at the 17th parallel in 1954. Dong and Duan are considered proSoviet, while Chinh leans toward Peking.

In the South, Hanoi operates through the Lao Dong's branch, the People's Revolutionary Party. The party dominated the National Liberation Front, which was the revolutionary movement in the South, and now controls the P.R.G., which was set up in 1969. The P.R.G. leadership consists of one nonCommunist, Advisory Council Head Nguyen Huu Tho, 55, who calls himself a neutralist, and three Communists--Tra, President Huynh Tan Phat, 61, and Foreign Minister Mrs. Nguyen Thi Binh, 47.

Tho, a former Saigon lawyer, has been chairman of the N.L.F. since 1960. His main function, however, apparently is to lend credence by his presence to the Communists' claim that the front and the P.R.G. actually are coalitions in which power is shared with nonCommunists. Mrs. Binh was the Viet Cong's chief negotiator in Paris and is one of the movement's most visible and best-publicized representatives. But Western analysts believe that the real power in the P.R.G. is wielded by Phat, a former architect who was the N.L.F.'s vice chairman and chief theoretician, and the mysterious Tra.

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