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.