“It is impossible for Westerners to understand the force of the people’s will to resist, and to continue to resist. The struggle of the people exceeds the imagination. It has astonished us too.”

Pham Van Dong (1906 to 2000)

An architect of Vietnam’s communist revolution, he was prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) from 1955 to 1976 and of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (reunified Vietnam) from 1976 to 1987.