Le Duan

Lê Duẩn was a Vietnamese communist politician. He rose in the party hierarchy in the late 1950s and became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam (VCP) at the 3rd National Congress in 1960. When Ho Chi Minh died in 1969, he consolidated power to become the undisputed leader of North Vietnam. Upon defeating South Vietnam in the Second Indochina War in 1975, he subsequently ruled the newly unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam from 1976 until his death in 1986.