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From: Matt Steinglass <mattsteinglass@gmail.com>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Sat, Feb 9, 2008 at 6:25 PM
Hi,
With the death on February 7 of former leading CPVN ideologist and later leading dissident and Vietnamese Democratic Party head Hoang Minh Chinh, I’m wondering whether anyone knows anything about the extent to which Chinh’s dissident status and disciplining were linked to the Khrushchev thaw. I remember reading that he had been too closely associated with Khrushchevite reformist thinking and that this contributed to his purge at around the same time Khrushchev was ousted, but wondered if anyone were more familiar with the details.
Best,
Matt Steinglass
18 Ngach 1/36 Au Co
Hanoi, Vietnam
+84 4 719-4987 home/fax
+84 4 829-3695 office
+84 904 383 230 mobile
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From: william turley <wturley@siu.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Sat, Feb 9, 2008 at 6:54 PM
Hoang Minh Chinh was among those who in fall 1963 "vacillated" on the question of committing the DRV to full support of the war in the South by writing a background paper for the 9th plenum that pointed out the implications for Vietnam of the Soviet line on peaceful coexistence. For this he earned the opprobrium of Le Duan and friends, who labeled him a revisionist. In 1967 he wrote another paper on "Dogmatism in Vietnam" that landed him in jail, followed by house arrest until war's end. I think it would be fair to say that his sin was not linkage with the "Khrushchev thaw" or with "Khrushchevite reformist thinking" so much as his vigorous argument in favor of prioritizing the consolidation of the North over armed struggle in the South and his critique of the lack of inner-party democracy. It was Le Duan and his ilk who drew the association with Khrushchevism. Just when Chinh became devoted to the ideas he expressed on leaving for the West in 2005 is unclear, but the role of intellectuals such as Chinh in leavening the party's Stalinist instincts is an intriguing one.
Bill Turley
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From: Balazs Szalontai <aoverl@yahoo.co.uk>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Sun, Feb 10, 2008 at 12:16 PM
Dear All,
let me add that the debate that divided the VWP leadership in 1963 was not simply over "peaceful co-existence" and "consolidation of the North" vs. "armed struggle in the South." After all, the armed struggle had started in the South as early as 1959, without creating such dramatic tension within the VWP leadership. What made the situation in 1963 particularly tense was the aggravation of the Sino-Soviet split after the 22nd Congress of the CPSU (1961). Apart from the issue of taking sides with one Communist giant against the other, economic questions were also hotly debated by the North Vietnamese leaders. While Foreign Minister Ung Van Khiem opposed the idea of siding with China against the USSR, Bui Cong Trung disagreed with the Chinese economic conception of "self-reliance" and was more in favor of international economic cooperation within the "socialist camp." This was the context in which HMC wrote his memorandum. At that time, anti-Chinese views were often branded as "Khrushchevite revisionism." His imprisonment in 1967 also seems to have taken place in the context of a larger campaign against "revisionism," but this campaign, unlike the one in 1963, did not coincide with a pro-Chinese, anti-Soviet shift in North Vietnamese foreign policies. On the contrary, Hanoi started to move increasingly closer to Moscow and away from Beijing. It appears as if Le Duan & Le Duc Tho, being hardliners by nature, had wanted to offset their new diplomatic initiative by suppressing the potential pro-Soviet elements within the VWP, i.e., they wanted to prevent the Soviets from using their growing diplomatic influence to interfere in North Vietnamese internal affairs. Castro made quite similar steps in 1968.
All the best,
Dr. Balazs Szalontai
Mongolia International University
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From: Stephen Denney <sdenney@ocf.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Mon, Feb 11, 2008 at 12:13 PM
This doesn't address your question, but an interesting report on Hoang Minh Chinh's relationship to Buddhist dissident Thich Quang Do and his conversion to Buddhism in his last days can be found here:
http://queme.net/eng/news_detail.php?numb=942
- Steve Denney
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