The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN), or less commonly, Vietnamese Democratic Republic (Vietnamese: Việt Nam Dân Chủ Cộng Hòa), also known as North Vietnam, was proclaimed by Hồ Chí Minh in Hànội on September 2, 1945 as a provisional government. It was recognized by the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union in 1950. In 1954, after the defeat of France by the Việt Minh at the Battle of Ðiện Biên Phủ and as a result of the Geneva Conference, France began negotiating with the Việt Minh and Việtnam was partitioned by the Demilitarized Zone (or DMZ at the 17th parallel). France turned over power in the northern half of Vietnam to the Việt Minh who then established the DRVN as a true government. Under the Geneva Accord national elections were supposed to be held in both parts of Việtnam in 1956, with the view of unifying the nation. For the transition North Việtnam was established as a socialist state, the first in Southeast Asia. South Việtnam was established in the southern part of the country with its capital at Sàigòn.

Following the partition of the country, there followed a mass exodus of North Vietnamese to the South, many of them Catholics who said that they were persecuted by official North Vietnamese policy. This amounted to one million people out of a population of 13 million.[1] Around the same time an estimated 100,000 people fled South Việtnam for the North. The nation in its first years, with an underdeveloped industrial economy and cut off from the agricultural areas of the South, become repressive and totalitarian. Between 1953 and 1956, agrarian reforms were attempted due to Chinese pressure. In the process, tens of thousands of landowners were publicly denounced as landlords (địa chủ), with their land distributed to those considered loyal to the party. Of the 44,444 landlords, 3939 were tried and 1175 were executed.[2] A literary movement called Nhân văn - Giai phẩm (from the names of the two magazines which started the movement) attempted to encourage the democratization of the country and the free expression of thought. This resulted in a purge in which many intellectuals and writers were sent to reeducation camps because they did not agree with the government.

North Việtnam's capital was Hànội and it was led by a Communist government allied with the Soviet Union and China. During the Second Indochinese War, North Vietnam largely controlled the National Liberation Front of South Việtnam (NLF, also known as the Việt Cộng) who were fighting against the government of South Việtnam, and the United States. From 1965 onwards, both China and the Soviet Union provided huge amounts of aid to North Việtnam for their war effort, in what became known in the West as the Vietnam War. North Việtnam invaded and occupied portions of neighboring Laos and Cambodia. It also supplied weapons to insurgent groups which eventually overthrew the governments of both countries.

With the fall of Sàigòn to North Vietnamese forces on April 30, 1975, political authority within South Việtnam was nominally assumed by the North Vietnamese controlled Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (P.R.G.). But in reality, political authority rested with the North Vietnamese Army. This government merged with North Việtnam on July 2, 1976, to form a single nation called the Socialist Republic of Việtnam (Cộng Hoà Xã Hội Chủ Nghĩa Việt Nam), commonly known as Việt Nam.