After two and a half years of a steady but low-key campaign of propaganda, subversion and terrorism, Hanoi inaugurated in early 1960 a new phase of sharply stepped-up terrorism and guer- r i l l a warfare extending throughout wide areas of South Vietnam. Reflecting t h i s decision, top-ranking Worth Vietnamese leaders i n January and February began to issue overt appeals inciting the people of South Vietnam to engage in "revolution" to overthrow the Diem regime and "drive out" their US imperialist "enemies." Echoing Peiping's call for armed struggle during the Lenin an- niversary in April, Lao Dong party 1st secretary Le Duan ap- plied this Leninist dictum directly to South Vietnam when he asserted: