The Party Purification
By the end of 1950, along with massive military aids from China, socialism of the Maoist style was introduced into North Vietnam. Socialism cannot be achieved without socialist man. Thought reform is the key to this transformation of the country and the people. In conformity with the new policy, party members and cadres were conscripted to chinh huan (correctional training). The Viet Minh, in reality, had adopted this form of indoctrination approved by Mao after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. As a rule, indoctrination was used whenever the Party planned a change of policy, party members and cadres at all levels have to attend. By means of correctional thinking, the Party trains party members and cadres to carry out its new policy.
Correctional training, was, again, in use in Vietnam before the campaign of land reduction (1952). Party members and cadres were selected to attend special political courses, most often organized in the Viet Bac guerrilla Zone. They were trained in the Marxist orthodoxy to reform thought. Through processes of self-purification, they redeem themselves from all faults of the previous life. As they are redeemed under the leadership of the Party, they become true participants in the transformation of the country and the people. Indoctrination of this type kept pace with the Party’s changes of policies. During the Resistance War (1946-1954), indoctrination focused on the cultural battle against French imperialism, Western ideology and democracy, and so on. Indoctrination before Land Reform (1953-54) served the Party’s purpose, to indoctrinate party members and cadres to keenly observe correct attitude towards the Party, well absorb the history of the Communist Party of Vietnam, the correct behavior of a party member or cadre, and theses of Land Reform. During the Land Reform, indoctrination aimed to struggle to eradicate feudalism, the Confucian system of values, and the bourgeoisie with all its modes of life that held contempt against poor peasants.
During either stage of indoctrination, the Party proceeded with caution the purgatory process with which it officially eliminated free-floating and noncommunist elements. By this type of purification, the Party easily got rid of patriotic intellectuals and elements who were passionate participants in the Resistance War but who were unsympathetic with communism. Purification resumed after Land Reform. That was the propitious moment for it to carry out the communization of the country. Parallel to the eradication of tri, Phu, Dia, Hao (intellectuals, rich merchants, landlords, notables), the Party carried out secret plans of purification to eliminate all potential sources of opposition.
In effect, Tri, Phu, Dia Hao were targeted with elimination. Even people in these categories who were most enthusiastic with the Revolution were brought to stand trial before the People’s Court and suffered the death sentence. Cadres and party members who were related to these blood debtors to the people were subjects for investigation for uncommitted behavior and disloyalty to the Party. Suspects in these categories were legally or illegally excluded from the Party.
Party purification during and after Land Reform split the Party. It resulted in the conflict between peasants that became cadres a and hard-core party members whose relatives were falsely or wrongly accused of crimes of treason or enemies to the class of workers. It ever increased after Vo Nguyen Giap, in the name of Party, promised to rectify the errors Even though, 12,000 cadres and party members that were accused with false crimes were still sent to various prisons, and served sentences. Many of them died in grief. Those who were released ever lived in disgrace. Their names were never cleared from crimes and injustices. Were these party members and cadres true blood debtors to the people or simply the victims of purge at the hand of the Party itself?
After Land Reform, to carry out the class struggle and implement the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Party exercised tight control on everyone. Citizens who expressed views and lines of thought that were different from or contrary to the orthodox communism were targeted with repression. The authorities stripped the citizen of all his fundamental human and civil rights. They punished outright any citizen who refused to commit himself to the Party’s official ideology or showed disrespect to its absolute authority. He was regarded as a traitor or reactionary, and, as a result, he was subjected to punishment and prison penalty. The objects of repression were the elements the four dangerous categories, namely, the intellectuals the rich merchants, the landlords and the notables. Included in the list of reactionaries were high file and rank cadres in the People’s Army and administration who survived the Land Reform.
An Internal Conflict
There was change in the strategy of the Soviet leadership after the Moscow Congress of November 1960. The ultimate goal of world communization is kept intact. It is achieved with proletarian revolution throughout the world. Communism is first built in the Soviet Union then in other socialist countries. The support for Communist movements in the world and the struggle for independence in developing countries is crucial. However, the Soviet Union and other socialist countries will strive to build the world into a happier and more peaceful commune with solid mass production through achievements in science and technology. Together, they will defeat capitalism in production through mobilizing the class of workers in capitalist countries to achieve proletarian revolution. The class struggle is achieved through economic competition and a world in peace.
The Chinese strategy concerns pinpoint war and peace as well. The key dialectic is that contradiction always exists in this world. If war is generated, the revolution will easily win victory. As long as imperialism exists, the world is always at war. The hope for peace is only a vain dream. Hence, proletarian dictatorship contradicts with imperialism, the proletariat with the imperialists, the imperialists with the peoples in the colonies, and the countries in the imperialist system with the countries in the socialist system. Imperialism must then be destroyed, and it can only be destroyed with war. A war against the Americans is therefore unavoidable. And, China holds no fears for it. With these convictions, China denounces the Soviet Union’s strategy as an expression of fear --fear of the United States and of an atomic war.
Conflict as regard the choice between the two strategies split the leadership of the Vietnamese Workers’ Party. It was apparent after the IV Congress of Party Central Committee (the IX Party Congress, 1963), and purges ensued as years went by.
The Purges
The purges resulted from the differences in viewpoint within the Party leadership and the pro-Soviet wing and the adherents and the pro-Chinese’s one. While Ho Chi Minh stayed neutral, his key comrades disintegrated themselves into three camps, the free-floating elements, the pro-Soviet party under the umbrella of Vo Nguyen Giap and the pro-Chinese clique with Le Dus Tho at the head. Included in the pro-Soviet group were Le Liem, Nguyen Vinh, Bui Cong Trung, and Ung Van Khiem. Recognized among the second group were Nguyen Khanh Toan, Tran Duc Huy, and Ha Huy Giap. The vast majority of party members adopted China’s position. The key dialectic is that the Americans are imperialist aggressors. Out of fear, the Soviet Union lost confidence in the cause of communism It became a revisionist, and thus a traitor to the revolution. Those party members who took side with the Soviet Union were regarded as revisionists and anti-Party elements.
Resolution 9 (1963) came into force. The Commission on the Examinations on Revisionism and Anti-party Action under the direct supervision of the Politburo was established. The organ was headed by Le Duc Tho, who was vested full authority to examine and judge all anti-Party elements, the henchmen of imperialism and all possible counterrevolutionary sources. It exercised power and applied suppressive measures on party members in the pro-Soviet wing. Within a short time, four distinguished party members were excluded from the Party: They were Ung Van Khiem, Foreign Affairs Minister; Nguyen Van Vinn, Vice-minister of the National Defense Ministry; Bui Cong Trung, Vice-chairman of the State Commission of Sciences; and Le Liem, Vice-minister of the Culture Ministry. Those who were suspected as revisionists were arrested: They were Colonel Le Trong Nghia, Department Chief, Department 5, National Defense Ministry; General Dang Kim Giang; Vu Dinh Huynh, and his son, the writer Vu Thu Hien; Pham Ky Van, vice editor-in-chief of the Party-owned review for ideology; Pham Viet, vice editor-in-chief of the journal Hanoi and his wifeNguyen hi Ngoc Lan, Rnglish instructor; Nguyen Kien Giand, social scientist; Pham The Van, M.D.; Colonel Hoang The Dung, Acting editor-in-chief of the Part-owned Journal Nhan Dan; Luu Dong, jounalist; Tran Dinh, journalist; Major Tran Thu, journalist; Major Dang Dinh Can, Mai Luan, journalist; Nguyen Gia Loc, social scientist; Phung Van My, social scientist; and Vu Huy Cuong, performance arts director, and many others.
The Case of Revisionists
Decades later, on August 28, 1993, Hoang Minh Chinh, who was Secretary-general of the Democratic Party of Vietnam, registered with the highest government and Party institutions- the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme Organ of Procurators, and the Ninth Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam-- his petition against the so-called "Opposition to the Party Case." However, the answer was "no comment," and his petition gradually fell into oblivion. Again, hazardous incidents happened after the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam. A number of high-ranking officers including generals and lieutenant generals were assassinated. Doubts were raised as to whether the Party was the culprit.
The fact is that within a short time and under almost similar circumstances, two generals, Hoang Van Thai and Le Trong Tan, suffered accidental deaths --assumedly for being poisoned. According to a general’s and his wife’s accounts (1987), General Hoang Van Thai said to his wife while he was dying: "They kill me!" Several months after the Sixth Congress, two other lieutenant generals, Dinh Duc Thien and Tran Binh died of doubtful deaths. Rumors were that General Dinh Duc Thien died in an automobile accident. Party cadres and his relatives believed that the general was accidentally shot while he was hunting wild animals in the Cuc Phuong Forest (Ninh Binh Province). Still, public opinion ran the doubt that he was killed by an influential relative. Dinh Duc Thien, whose real name is Phan Dinh Dinh, is a junior brother of the influential Politburo member Le Duc Tho, whose real name is Phan Dinh Khai. General Tran Binh was shot in Third District of Ho Chi Ninh City. Several days later, his son was shot in the same area (Nguyen Ho, 1993; 41).
A Poet in Revolt: Nguyen Chi Thien
In the purges of revisionists that followed the Nhan Van Affair, the Party manipulated "the stick and carrots approach" to divide the intellectuals. Quite a few of them had gradually reconciled with their lot. The Party successfully disintegrated the whole mass of intellectuals of Hanoi. However, it failed to quiet down Nguyen Chi Thien. Nguyen was born in 1939. He lived in Haiphong then went to school in Hanoi. A student at the French Lycee Albert Sarraut in Hanoi, he was back to Haiphong after the Viet Minh.s takeover of Hanoi in 1954. Nguyen Chi Thien, having been fascinated by ideas and thoughts in the articles in Nhan Van, prepared to publish the magazine Vi Dan (For the People). He was arrested. The reason was simple. The Haiphong security police could not stand having a daring youth who declared that there was no freedom in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The authorities would have him to stand trial in a justice court. Nevertheless they could not produce evidence of a crime.
Nguyen Chi Thien was incarcerated for the first time in 1961. He was released three years later. Resilient, the poet went on expressing his free will, which cost him 12 years in prison, from 1963 to 1977. The poet experienced all kinds of ill-treatment in one prison after another in North Vietnam. Being an enemy to the regime, he spent over half of his life in prison. His latest arrest was in April 1979 when he penetrated the British Embassy Hanoi and gave his selected collection of poems Hoa Dia Nguc (The Flowers from Hell) to a British diplomat.
Nguyen Chi Thien’s poems exposed real situations and images of acute physical and mental pains from hopelessness, anguish, and wrath of man under dictatorial totalitarian rule. Hunger pervades. Life is so miserable (I Have Passed by, 1959). Independence, Liberty, and Happiness were mere slogan and vain dreams as people still go hungry (Independence, Liberty, Happiness, 1960), and mind and heart suffer anxiety in darkness (I have lived, 1961). The criminal is so real: the red yellow star flag (The Criminal, 1962). Unrestrained, the poet blames himself. He is so stupid: To listen to the Communists (I Want to Live, 1962). He wishes he could live as a free man (Until when, 1963). The country has suffered so many calamities under the rule of robbers of freedom (My Country, 1971). The Communist Party of Vietnam is instrumental in the hands of the Russians and the Chinese. The Vietnamese Communists are only a gangster mob. They are the weapons of arrests. (The Party, 1973). Young generations will ever suffer. Stand up to overthrow the regime, even with violence (Don’t Be Afraid, 1975).
The poet was back to prison. He never received a trial. He was released due to international pressure on November 15, 1991.
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