Flag of Vietnam
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (Vietnamese: Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hoà) was the founding, the largest and the most populous constituent republic of the Union of Democratic Republics of Indochina. Founded in 1945 by Hồ Chí Minh, the Vietnamese republic predated the formation of the Indochinese Union (founded in 1955) by 10 years; the Union is often seen as an extension of Vietnam due to the country's economic and political dominance over the other two republics of Laos and Kampuchea. Vietnam's political power within the Indochinese Union was in many ways similar to that of the Russian SFSR within the Soviet Union.
The Vietnamese republics, along with the Lao and Khmer republics, were dissolved in 1980 after the federalization of Indochina, putting the provinces and cities as subnational units directly under a federal government of the modern Federal Republic of Indochina.
Following the dissolution of the member republics and the re-federalization of Indochina as a union of 80 provinces, six cultural regions were formed to preserve the cultural and historical identities of the individual provinces that was hitherto united. The current four cultural regions of Vietnam—Tonkin, Central Coast, Cochinchina and Central Highlands—take on the boundary of the defunct Vietnamese republic.
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