Truong Chinh (1909-1988) was secretary general of the Vietnamese Communist political organization and was a pro-Chinese presidential aide. This pro-Chinese orientation was probably a major political liability in a land whose historic foe, for two millennia, was China.

Born on Feb. 15, 1909, in Hanh Thien in what is now northern Vietnam, Truong Chinh was already an anti-French nationalist by his early teens. In 1928, at the age of 19, he joined the Revolutionary Youth League organized 3 years earlier by Ho Chi Minh. Arrested by French authorities for his participation in the student strike of the same year, he was expelled from the Nam Dinh high school but was able to enroll in (and subsequently graduated from) the prestigious Lycée Albert Sarraut in Hanoi.

In 1930 Truong Chinh became a teacher, joining the same year the Indochinese Communist party (founded by Ho in Hong Kong). Coeditor of Sickle and Hammer, one...