Đỗ Mười

This is the sighted version that was marked on December 3, 2020. There are still template and file changes that need to be sifted.

Đỗ Mười (Hán Nôm 杜梅; * 2 February 1917 in Dong My; † 1 October 2018 in Hanoi) was a Vietnamese politician. He served as general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) from 1991 to 1997.

Đỗ Mười, son of a North Vietnamese peasant family, joined the Indochinese CP in 1939. In 1941, he was sentenced to ten years in prison by the French colonial authorities. After escaping from Hoa Lo prison, he resumed his illegal activities in 1945 in the capacity of First Secretary of the Hai Dong Provincial Party Committee. In 1951, he became First Secretary of the Ta Ngan Zone Party Committee, then First Secretary of the Haiphong City Party Committee in 1955. Đỗ Mười had been a member of the CC since 1960 and a member of the CPV CC Politburo since 1982.

From 1960 Đỗ Mười also held various government positions: first as Minister of Trade, from 1969 as Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and from 1973 as Minister of Construction.

After 35 years in government service, Đỗ Mười was elected Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in June 1988 (until 1991). In this capacity, he increasingly became a symbol of the conservative forces in the ruling class.

At the CPV's VII Party Congress (24-27 June 1991), a major personnel change took place: Đỗ Mười was elected General Secretary of the CPV, succeeding the then 75-year-old Nguyễn Văn Linh. In this election, seven of the 12 members of the ruling Politburo were replaced, and a similar thing happened in the Party's Central Committee. Like Nguyễn, Đỗ advocated market reforms without fundamentally changing the political system (Đổi mới reforms).

Party officials stressed that Nguyễn resigned for health reasons and was not removed against his will. Đỗ Mười retired at the age of 80. He died in the autumn of 2018 at the age of 101.