CRISIS AND RENOVATION

CRISIS AND RENOVATION

By Van Nguyen

   On September23, 1976, Vice-Premier Nguyen Duy Trinh, in the declaration on the policy on the trade and industry in the South, maintained that the government set forth a strategy to found  a socialist economy for the whole country, erasing step-by-step the differences of each region, promoting economic bases for a self-sufficiency economy, redistributing the labor forces, creating a fair distribution that guarantees the welfare of the people, especially the working class, and eliminating all forms of injustice and dishonest and illegal practices. In the following years, the economy was nevertheless increasingly stagnant. Shortages of agricultural products and industrial productions of daily commodities remained major problems.  Until the end of the 1970’s, an inhabitant in Hanoi would dream if he could be in possession of a radio on permission. Trade and Industry reforms in the South were without predicament.

   In 1980, two decades on the path of socialism, the population in Hanoi still survived on State ration tickets operated by general goods stores and regulated by the State subsidies system. People had to sit in line in front the store from early morning for food rations. It was real joy if one could get some portions of rice of quality. Worm-eaten rice was sold to ordinary people at State rice stores, and rice of good quality was provided for cadres at special stores. Goods and commodities were scarce. Superior cadres and party leaders were supplied with large portions, goods, and commodities of best qualities by the super State trading stores on Ton Dan Street.  State trading stores flourished but the economy deteriorated.  By 1970, the ideal dream of the inhabitants in Hanoi was to be in possession of a bicycle, a ventilator, and a pair of plastic sandals.

Agricultural productions were staggering after consecutive programs of agrarian reforms. Means of production were still rudimentary, and the methods were far behind the times. Modes of management were rigidly carried out with the new laws, rules, and regulations that mostly were impractical, unpopular, and unreasonable. During the early stages of Land Reform (1953), attempts were made to requisition the lands and properties of landlords. Article 4, Chapter II of Decree No. 197 SL of Dec. 10, 1953 stipulated that “only lands, livestock, and agricultural implements will be liable for requisition, and other property will be exempt.”  Nevertheless, the landlord and his family were forced to leave their house without possessions. Different forms of confiscation were applied to landlords of all categories, French colonialists, traitors, reactionaries, and non-reactionaries. Confiscation was total for the first category, might be total or partial for the second, and with redemption for the third. Application of the third form of confiscation nevertheless existed on paper. 

The results published in a communiqué relating to the Hanoi suburban area by the Land Reform Committee announced that the oppressed peasants had confiscated or requisitioned from the landowning class 20,482 mau (18,220 acres) of rice-fields, 511 animals, 6,150 agricultural implements, 1,032 houses, and 346,903 kgs of foodstuffs.  They had also compelled landlords to pay back as excesses of land-rent 155,o69 kgs of paddy, and 6,429,950 $VN dong. All these had been shared between 24,690 landless peasants and poor worker families, comprising 98,113 people. On the average each landless peasant received 2 sao 9 thuoc (0.205 acres).  However it was small, the gift of more than 2 sao was a treasure to a landless peasant or poor worker.

The moment of joy soon dissipated. The agrarian reforms failed “to satisfy the need for land for those whose benefit of the allegedly had undertaken. It was able to give 15 million landless and poor peasant’s family’s slightly more than one acre each. Welcome as these gifts were, they were not enough to turn the poor peasants into enthusiastic supporters of the regime. On the contrary, the injustices and atrocities produced widespread resentment, on rest and openly rebellion (Butteinger, 1968:424).

The State imposed new progressive agricultural taxes on the lands the peasants received from the State. They were two and three times higher than the taxes they had previously paid. Other measures gradually conditioned them to adapt themselves to a pattern of life they had never experienced.  

  Following the repression of the peasants in Nghe An Province and the oppression against the intellectuals in Hanoi, the Vietnamese Workers’ Party carried out its policy of collectivization.  Agricultural communes were established in the countryside to appropriate and redistribute land of the “landlords” and “rich peasants” categories of the population.  The peasants were organized to work in collective farms for the State, from farming to building roads. After harvest, the peasant was given only one fourth of the crop. The other three fourths went to tax payment, the Trade Office, the National Bank and other State agencies. Every cooperative member was not starving but undernourished. He remained miserable as he had ever been. Having no incentive and individual profit, the peasant grew reluctant and careless in their work. The production decreased. As a result, the Communists were successful in destroying the class of exploiting landlords but were faced with serious economic problems. Of most significance, they could only condition with force the peasants to adapt to the Communist pattern of life.  

    In the early 1960’s, this system of agricultural communes “was modified to adapt to the one which is destined in the long run, to establish cooperatives. This system would, in turn, be amalgamated into full scale agricultural collectives. At the same time, the government implemented the neo-Stalinist development policy at the macro-economic level, emphasizing the rapid development of heavy industry and, of course, waging increasingly costly war against the American-backed government in the South. Only massive aid from other CMEA countries allowed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to continue these policies, to the point where their armies could invade the South and inflict a humiliating defeat on the American and South Vietnamese Armies, By any objective standard, the economy of North Vietnam in 1975 was at a very low level of economic level (Adam FForde, 1989:14).  

    Hard times persisted subsequent to the “liberation of South. Slow but steady waves of migration of miserable inhabitants from the provinces of the Tonkin Delta moved to the South. Stories about a prosperous South exited the classless peasants in a rush for the land of dream. Supporters of the regime, individuals, families, and small and large groups of people sought to settle in the “royal territories” in the Central Highland under the Bao Dai government (1940-1954), the aggrovilles under the Ngo Dinh Diem government (1954-1963), the lower lands in the eastern provinces, and the southernmost fertile basin of the Bassac River. New settlements were seen in Tung Nghia (Da Lat), Blao, Dzi Linh, Pleiku, Dak Lak, and Ban Me Thuot. Excessive land exploitations of the newcomers pressed hard the indigenous ethnic minorities to move their ancestral habitations farther into the remote uncultivated areas. Giia Kiem (Long Khanh Province), Ho Nai (Bien Hoa Province), and Go Vap (Gia Dinhh Province) whose inhabitants were largely Catholic refugees from the North after the country’s partition in 1954 attracted  Catholics from various parishes in the North. The one time Cai San aggrovile in Long Xuyen was the land of dream of quite a few immigrants from Bui Chu and Nam Dinh parishes. Uncountable immigrants from large provinces and cities such as Thanh Hoa, Thai Binh, and Haiphong sought to make a living in Saigon where they could practice all kinds of trades. Without skills, many of them lived from mouth to hand. It was not a surprise to see bands of beggars trailing visitors for almonds on Tu Do Street and along Dong Khanh Boulevard.    

Bad effects as a result of the economy reforms following the takeover of Saigon led to gradual economic crisis in the South.  In 1978, Do Muoi, in his determination to sweep off the “remnants of imperialist bourgeoisie at their refuge,” established the lop-sided economic system patterned after the system of State trading and manufacturing corporations in the North, upturning the established economic life. The economy of the South soon collapsed following the confiscation of private properties. In the late 1970's and the early 1980's, foods, medicines, and consumer goods were chronically scarce as agriculture, and manufacturing industry steadily came to a standstill. The effects of prolonged war disruptions, corrupt and inept management, and the cost of the military occupation of Cambodia added weight to the crisis The administration was also under pressure to face social ills and problems such as urban unemployment, vocational training, homelessness, the care of orphans, war veterans, and the disabled, the control of epidemics, and the rehabilitation of drug addicts and prostitutes

Hundreds of thousands of families in the cities were forced to resettle in the new barren economic zones. People had to eat horse-feeding grain as the main, instead of rice. Thousands of families of rank and file officials of the old regime, fearful of political suspicion and persecution, left the country in search for security in distant places. Wealthier families sought to leave the country for freedom, risking their lives in small boats floating onto the sea in the hope to be saved by foreign merchant ships. Vietnam, under the eyes of the world, was no longer an enjoyable place to live. It even ceased to be a military power when the uneven battles ended on the China-Vietnam frontiers in 1979.  It truly slid down pitilessly when the war in Kampuchea began to come to a close later on in 1989, the communist rule truly faced serious difficulties and problems economically and politically.