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 guerrill a warfare extending throughout wide areas of South Vietnam. Reflecting this decision, top-ranking Worth Vietnamese leaders in 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 anniversary in April, Lao Dong party 1st secretary Le Duan applied this Leninist dictum directly to South Vietnam when he asserted: