Ukraine: Kiyv City Council stripes Vietnamese communist leader Truong Chinh of honorary citizen title

General Secretary Truong Chinh, December 1986

Ukraine’s Kiyv City Council on May 25 voted unanimously to strip the title of honorary citizen of late General Secretary Truong Chinh of the Communist Party of Vietnam in a vote to strip this title from a series of former leaders of the former Soviet Union including Leonid Brezhnev – General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1964 – 1982).

According to the Voice of Ukraine, the vote took place on the eve of the Kyiv Day celebrations scheduled for May 28. This is the anniversary of the founding of the capital of Ukraine.

Accordingly, the title of honorary citizen was introduced in 1982 and awarded for the first time to the late General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Brezhnev.

The Kyiv City Council considers Brezhnev to have played an important role in suppressing protests in the Warsaw Pact countries, the Afghanistan war in which the Soviet Union was involved from 1979 to 1989, the arms race, and support “revolutionary” regimes in “third world” countries – the name given to developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Vietnam is also on the list of these countries.

Truong Chinh, whose real name is Dang Xuan Khu (1907 – 1988), was one of the leaders of the Communist Party of Vietnam since the 1930s and is said to be loyal to Marxism-Leninism. He was chosen by the Communist Party as General Secretary from 1940 to 1956 and in May 186 after General Secretary Le Duan’s death until December 1986.

According to a number of research papers published by international experts, he was considered a conservative and made mistakes during the period of land reform in Vietnam in the 1950s influenced by the Soviet Union and China. He was appointed Head of the Land Reform Commission in 1953.

It is still unclear how many people died during the Land Reform in Vietnam. There are some expert estimates that this number could account for about 5% of the population in the Northern Vietnam, or about half a million people.

Thoibao.de (Translated)

Kasse animation 7.8.2023