A TIME FOR CHANGE

 A TIME FOR CHANGE

By Van Nguyen

  The conformist leadership with Party Secretary-general Le Duan, obsessed with ideological dogmas, had striven in vain all through the two five-year economic periods (1976-1985) to remedy the ailing economy and stabilize political instability. In 1985, Hanoi declared that it had completed the period of people’s democracy and paved the way for building socialism. To pursue the goal, it pronounced to accede to demands for a socialist transformation, politically and economically. In September 1985, Hanoi took a general consensus of private industry and business enterprises, changed the currency, and dispossessed the capital which was still in the hands of entrepreneurs and businessmen. The People’s Council of Ho Chi Minh City selected Third District for a pilot case. A large number of small manufacturing establishments and trade businesses were in operation readily served at hand easy-to-access conditions for study and investigation.

Attempts were made to change the course of the existing failed centralism economy as carried out by Prime Minister Pham Van Dong and his cabinet ministers. To the distress of the regime, after ten years in operation, it brought the country’s economy to a standstill. To effect change in conformity with pressing needs of “renovation” under the pressure of economic depression and political unrest, Hanoi, again, revised its ambitious intention. It stopped short its plans for socialist transformation and worked headlong for “economic renovation.” This economic process was ideologically interpreted as the by-passing period to socialism. Its ultimate goal was to transform Vietnam into a Communist country.           

On June 2, 1986, the Chairman of the State Council Truong Chinh decided to dismiss from key positions the highest cadres who failed in their responsibility to redress the corrupt bureaucracy and ailing economy of the country.  The chairman had, nevertheless, seemed no conceive no clear vision of the renovation that was in full swing in the USSR.  He made his official visit to the USSR. On August 12, 1986, he had a conference with Party Secretary-general Mikhail Gorbachev.  In November 1986, he came to Moscow to attend the conferences of world top Communist party leaders and the COMECON.

    After cautious preparations, and under the pressure of the situation following the passing away of Party Secretary–general Le Duan, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, on December 18, 1985, elected Nguyen Van Linh, Party-secretary of Ho Chi Minh City, to Party Secretary-general. Nguyen was believed to have been entrusted with power to carry out a policy modeled on Mikhail Gorbachev's plans of renovation of the economy and restructuring the administration Upon assuming his functions, Secretary-general repeated his venerable Ho Chi Minh's gesture,   using the pen name XYZ during the Resistance War to rectify cadres and officials’ errors in their conduct of public affairs. Nguyen used his initials NVL in the official press to popularize his ideas and ideas about "renovation." In this endeavor, the press was encouraged to engage in the revelations of the errors and mistakes in the conduct public services as well as the flaws found with State agencies or setbacks entangled in government's programs.

    “Doi Moi” (renovation) was officially adopted at the Seventh Party Congress in mid-December 1986. The socialist economy was to be substituted by some forms of market economy –“market socialism.” Plans would be carried out to promote intricate changes from collectivism, State-controlled economy, to economic openness, opening up the door to welcome non-communist countries. Insurmountable difficulties were still problematic impediments, nevertheless. The burning failures of the five-year plan (1976-1980) and erroneous administrative, economic and financial measures (1981-1985) farfetched the Communist Party to carry out  the policy of “doi moi,”  Cleavage and internal conflict emerged as the regime moved into the new era.. 

    Nguyen Van Linh, showed himself the champion of openness in the fashion of Mikhail Gorbachev. At a conference in Hanoi on October 1987, Nguyen recommended writers, artists, and the intellectuals of the country to tell the truth, to fight against authoritarianism, and corruption. He had two days for debate on an ideological examination on the role of the arts with the intelligentsia. He opened his heart and vowed to devote himself to then “unbinding the arts.” He recommended the regime's journalists and writers not to deface reality, to tell openly and truthfully. The secretary-general set examples himself in action. He published on the daily “Nhan Dan” (The People) a series of articles entitled "Things that have to be done right now." He revised and denounced “negative phenomena." He gave the journalists and writers “carte blanche” to perform their tasks. A breeze of “democratization” fanned in the arts circle, enlivening inspiration for many journalists and writers to engage in the battle for "renovation.”

     On October 6, 1987, the Party Secretary-general sat for hours listening to some hundred writers, artists, and members of the intelligentsia, running through the actual situation of the country. It was really “an act of openness” to the audience. The literary critic Nguyen Dang Manh had favorable remark, exclaiming: “In the past, in the meetings with the leaders of the Party and State, it was the leaders who spoke from one end to the other of the matter, or almost all. This time, it is a whole reversal. This unique act is a clear indication of renovation.”  A gesture of friendliness was revealed in the friendliness of the Party secretary-general himself. He listened with enthusiasm and without interruption to “antagonists to the regime.” The young female novelist Duong Thu Huong, the author of the best-seller novel of the year of 1987 "Ben Bo Ao Vong" (Beyond Illusions).expressed views so freely and openly in her speech that she  made the editors of the weekly “Van Nghe” (The Arts) sit up with a start. The audience was an embarrassing an awkward situation that had never happened before. The weekly did not even mention her name in its list of speakers at the meeting in its report later.

    Nguyen Van Linh’s speech was termed as "typically simple and frank," symbolizing a gesture of leniency of a "leader who has experienced trials of oppression under French domination and the restlessness of the age.” During hours later, the Secretary-general satisfied himself with listening to interlocutors with issues he had initiated from the start:  He said: "It seems that from the Liberation of the South (1975) until this day (1987), the arts has been impoverished in thought and expression. Is that true?  What Is that about? If that is false, I will be the first to warm the cockles. If not, why are we at fault, then? Does that come from certain constraints and harsh regulations of censorship imposed on the artists from the high authority above?

   The effects of "renovation" appeared to be exiguous. The country  stil suffered economic depression. At the end of August 1989, a month before the withdrawal of the People’s Army from Kampuchea, Nguyen Van Linh had to acknowledge that the economy was extremely deteriorating. From 1986 to 1990 renovation was at stake.  At the end of August 1989, a month before the People's Army Expeditionary Corps' withdrawal from Kampuchea, Nguyen Van Linh had to acknowledge that the economy deteriorated. Coincidentally, political developments in the Eastern European Communist Bloc worsened and made deep impact on “renovation” in Vietnam. The Chinese students' uprisings in Canton, Shanghai, and Beijing in June 1989; the struggle for freedom and democracy and economic reform in Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania; the demands for economic reforms, political pluralism inside the country exerted increasing political pressure for change on the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

“GLASNOST” AND “PERESTROIKA”

“GLASNOST” AND “PERESTROIKA”

By Van Nguyen

 

Destabilization was in full swing with the ascension to power of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republic (1981-1991). He was a member of the Politburo from 1980.  He was chairman of the Foreign Affairs Commission during the Chernenko administration from 1981 to 1985). He became secretary- general of the Communist Party from 1985 and president of the Supreme Soviet from 1988. An advocate for renovation, he introduced liberal political and economic reforms “glasnost” and “perestroika” inside the union and attempted to halt the arms race abroad. He became head of State in 1989.  In March 1990, he was formally elected to a five-year term as executive president with greater powers. At home, his executed plans for economic and political reforms as conceived.

    Glasnost (openness) defines Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of liberating various political aspects of Soviet life such areas as introducing greater freedom of expression and information and opening up relations with Western countries. Glasnost involved the lifting of bans on books, plays, and films, the release of political dissidents, the tolerance of religious worship, a reappraisal of Soviet history, the encouragement of investigative journalism ton, the uncovering of corruption, and the sanctioning of greater candor in the reporting of social problems and disasters. Journalists‘s rights to access are guaranteed. There is a right to reply. Citizens have the rights to receive information from abroad

 Under legislation adopted in 1990, censorship of mass media is abolished; however, publication of State secrets, calls for the overthrow of the State by force, incitement of national and religious hatred and State interference in people’s private lives are prohibited. In the economic sphere, Mikhail Gorbachev failed to avert a food crisis in the winter of 1990-91 and his desire to preserve a single, centrally-controlled USSR. He restructured the Party and State bureaucracies

He met with resistance from Soviet Baltic republics Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania seeking more independent government systems. In the foreign affairs domain, his achievements gained him reputation.  He was also faced with calls for cession from the Soviet Union and was forced to reconsider his earlier opposition to a multiparty system.  Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. However, his reputation suffered as a result of harsh repression of nationalist demonstrations in the Baltic States in early1991. His peace initiative during the Gulf War during February 1991 gained him a positive stance among Arab leaders.

In the economic sphere, from 1987, Gorbachev pressed for his wide-ranging domestic economic and political programs of restructuring, “Perestroika.”  The term was first proposed at the 26^th Party Congress in 1979 and actively promoted by Gorbachev himself from 1985. In the economic sphere, perestroika was conceived as involving “the switching on to track of intensive development “by automation and improved labor efficiency.”  It specifically evolved to attend increasingly to market indicators and incentives 0f a gradual dismantlement of the Stalinist central-planning system.  Decision-making authority was devolved to self-financing enterprises. A form of “market socialism” came into being.

As the Soviet economy disintegrated during 1991, his political strength declined. Gorbachev was able to counter a short-lived coup in the winter of that year and regained some stature by helping to coven the Middle East peace conference in Spain in November 1991. Soviet might nevertheless gradually deteriorated following successive violent political developments leading to the collapse of the Eastern Europe Bloc in the later years of the 1980’s.

     A New Vision

“Glasnost,” Kien Van noted, “is the catchword for the new openness about problems in the Soviet Union and the greater tolerance of dissent. Gorbachev has allowed the Soviet press to publish exposes about the failures of and corruption in the Soviet system. He has brought Andrei Sakharov back from internal exile and has released a few other prominent dissidents. He has increased the number of Jews allowed to emigrate and has given exit visas to Soviet citizens divided from their spouses in the West. All these steps have been widely hailed in the West. These developments are significant and represent a welcome change from the past. But we should always remember that the literal translation of the “glasnost” is "transparence." Repression remains the keystone of the Soviet system. While fewer than 100 political dissidents have been released, another 40,000 still languish in prison camps. While more criticism of the system is permitted, it is all officially sanctioned criticism. It is no accident that those who are criticized under Glasnost never argue back.” (Kien Van. Doan Ket, February 1988, No.38pp.44-49).

In the views of Richard Nixon, “Gorbachev's purpose is three-fold. He wants to create a more favorable attitude toward the Soviet Union in the West in order to facilitate his pursuit of more important goals, agreements on trade and arms control. He wants to use Glasnost to weed out his political opponents. He wants to create a new spirit among intellectuals and particularly young people in the Soviet Union. Glanost is a small price to pay.

Gorbachev's speeches overflow with praise to democracy. But what he means by democracy is different from what we mean by it. He wants to open up the system; he wants to encourage people to step forth with new ideas; but his has no intention of relinquishing any of the power and prerogatives of the Communist Party. There is no real democratization outside the party. He wants to shake up the system to get it moving again. But it will not lead to anything remotely resembling a Western democracy.

This slogan for economic reform literally means restructuring. Gorbachev has spoken in sweeping terms about this program. He has called for the dismantling of much of the central planning apparatus. He has endorsed the idea of joint ventures with private Western firms. He has proposed giving greater decision-making power to factory managers. He has pushed for allowing some opportunities for very small enterprises to make private profit. But he has so far achieved little. The day-to-day workings in the Soviet Union still run by the dictates of the old regime. That Gorbachev seeks to take a new approach to Soviet problems does not mean that he rejects the basic premises of his system. He believes that the system is fundamentally sound but needs to be made more effective. We must remind ourselves that the reforms themselves tell us nothing about Gorbachev's intentions. Their purpose is not to move the Soviet Union toward more freedom at home or a less aggressive abroad, but rather to make the Communist system work better. He wants the system to be more efficient, not less Communist (Richard Nixon, 1989: 39-40).