Hanoi: Ven do Thanh pho - NVN Land Reform Revisit
From: Michael Digregorio
Date: Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 12:20 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear all,
If anyone is interested in the the contemporary land reform movement known as urbanization, my essay with Francois Carlet Soulages is up on Hanoi: Public City in Vietnamese. http://hanoi.org.vn/publiccity/vi/2011/02/ha-noi-ven-do-thanh-pho/
I will put the English and Vietnamese version in the public city library after new year for anyone interested in printing this out for use in classes.
This summer, I will also have an article in the International Development Planning Review on this issue, focused however on the way rural people are adapting to and interpreting these changes. That paper is a longer version of the report I made in a public hearing of the Hanoi Master Plan Committee, and later to a private session of the Social Affairs Committee of the National Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In the National Assembly session I warned skeptical assembly members that without adequate support for local level planning in the the villages of Ha Tay that are now being surrounded by new towns, these villages could one day become the slums of the new city being developed there. The next day, my comments appeared from the mouth of one of those assembly members on VOV radio. That report and warning was summarized in the Urban Planning Magazine, Ðô Th? .
And, by the way, Hanoi:PublicCity, which is often critical of development policies, is supported by the Vietnam Urban Planning and Development Association and hosted on Hanoi's public wiki, www.Hanoi.org. Free of charge. And free of supervision.
VUPDA also joined with many of us in a very open, public protest against construction of a hotel inside Thong Nhat Park. And won. Despite the fact that the developers - Hanoi TOSERCO [state company], Vinacapital [Canadian investment firm], and Accor Asia Pacific [global corporation] - had already dug the foundations and invested 14 million USD. On the recommendations of VUPDA, they were offered two other plots next to similar park in western hanoi. They refused, and bid for the old alcohol factory off Hoa Ma street. The city agreed to allow them to build a hotel there, but no office and shopping complex due to traffic issues. There are a couple of schools nearby. They went ballistic and are now trying to sue the city for 80 million USD in compensation for anticipated lost revenues. That's hutzpah. Bravo for the capitalists.
Thus ends my words of support for the proletarian dictatorship. Or whatever you want to call it.
Happy new year.
Of the cat.
Or the rabbit.
Or maybe a wild cat that doesn't look like a rabbit, but got a haircut yesterday by a fella named Harvey.
Mike
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From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 1:12 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Cheers Mike. A small hurrah for the proletarian dictatorship ;)
I do have the feeling that the Vietnamese have actually moved on during the last 36 years.
Melanie
--
Melanie Beresford
Associate Dean Research
Associate Professor in Economics
Faculty of Business & Economics
Macquarie University, NSW 2109
Australia
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From: Hoang t. Dieu-Hien
Date: Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 10:00 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thank you for this post.
Cheers to those who have moved on, the collectives and the individuals. To those who have not, I disagree, but understand the pain they have endured.
On the threshold of a new year, may we all able to transform the pain of the past to positive energy for the future.
Die^.u-Hie^`n
--
Hoang t. Dieu-Hien
Lecturer/Fieldwork Coordinator
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From: phuxuan700@gmail.com
Date: Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 5:42 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Die^.u-Hie^`n,
Since you are a very kind and nice lady, I'd like to share a few friendly words with you.
The Vietnam War was a tragedy where millions of people suffered. More than 30 years after the war end, many people still have strong feelings about what they went through.
That is a reality.
Like you, I do hope their inner wound would be healed with time.
It is, however, a bit off mark if we are to assume that any critic of Hanoi from overseas Vietnamese is holding on to the past!
A case in point: My memory of the war was rather limited due to my young age and where my family lived prior to the April 30th incident.
My relatives were from both sides of the war and most of them were treated fairly well. The name of one of my relatives is even used for a street name to honor his contribution during the resistance against the French.
About myself, without that incident, I might not have the opportunity to be at where I am.
From that standpoint alone, without any other considerations, I should have been "grateful" to the VCP for "giving" me a chance to fulfill my childhood dream.
My view, critic or not, therefore, is not due to past pain or "personal vendetta"; it comes from my principles, my love for Vietnam and my knowledge of what is going on inside that country, based on facts, not hearsay.
Last but not the least, chuc mung mot nam Tan Mao voi moi su tot lanh, cho ca nhan va cho dat nuoc!
Calvin Thai
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From: Hoang t. Dieu-Hien
Date: Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 11:21 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Calvin,
Thank you for your kind words.
I made no assumption about holding on to the past and being a critic of the Vietnamese government. Far from it. Most people I know who have moved on, inside and outside of Viet Nam, have many criticisms of the Vietnamese government. There is much to criticize.
Furthermore, I do not equate being critical of the Vietnamese government with a desire to replace it. The Vietnamese people are much more complex than pro-communism and anti-communism, or pro-Vietnamese government and anti-Vietnamese government. As stated elsewhere, there are many shades of grey. Also, I agree with what was stated earlier on this list, that the decision on the form of government in Viet Nam should rest with the people who live inside Viet Nam, permanently.
There is another clarification I would like to make. Please do not mistake a disagreement to the method of reasoning to mean a statement of support of, or against, the Vietnamese government. Those are two distinct issues. A dispute of the credibility of an evidence is just that: are the bases upon which the evidence was claimed sound? Whether the perpetrators committed atrocious actions or whether the victims suffered are distinct issues from whether the evidence is credible.
To reciprocate your disclosure: I grew up in the South during the war. My memories of the war are vivid. I lived under the current government in Viet Nam during its darkest times immediately after the end of the war and later. I and my loved ones have suffered much during and after the war. We still do as a consequence of the war and its aftermath. Some of the wounds have never healed. We just learn to live with the pain, but sometimes it still seems unbearable. I cannot change the past. So I focus on making constructive and positive contributions for the future. And, I grieve, very deeply, when I watch loved ones suffer from that old festering wound.
As you can see, one should not assume. There is no black and white.
With hope of peace and healing for the future,
Die^.u-Hie^`n
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From: phuxuan700@gmail.com <phuxuan700@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 8:16 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thanks for your clarification, Die^.u-Hie^`n.
Most, if not all, people I have regular contact with, do not live in the past.
In almost two decades, many of us have been involved in projects lending a helping hand in Vietnam; if not moving on, we can’t work efficiently and effectively.
As I recall, the first time I posted a critic of Hanoi, some list members said something like my “anti-communist” view belonged in “OC-Little Saigon” community, not in Vsg!
I wrote on the list last week, “If VCP leadership is to place national interests above all (as they have claimed in the past 60 plus years), they must give people the right to choose leaders and provide a check and balance system”.
Recently I also said to a friend teaching at VNU, “In a free and fair election, if VCP candidates win the majority, do not be surprised to find out that I am among the first people sending VCP my congratulations!”
Which group should I fit in then, “anti-communist” or “anti-Vietnamese-government” ?
With a significant growth of internet users in Vietnam in the past 5 years, the Vietnamese people have been able to see a more complete picture of what the country is facing.
Vietnam’s current issues remind me of an old math problem – the leaking tank.
Overseas Vietnamese’s effort to help rebuild Vietnam can be likened to the one filling a half-full water tank that has leaks.
Since the war's end, VCP has asked people inside and outside of the country do their best to "fill up the tank".
Thousands and thousands of people, Vietnamese and friends of Vietnam, have responded to the call, out of their love for Vietnam.
What has VCP leadership done in the mean time ? They are standing by, catching water from leaks or even poking more holes in the tank:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/firm-bribed-bank-chief-20110123-1a17j.html
Worse, for those who care to bring up the "leakage" problem, VCP has some special treatment set aside for them, under the name of "stability":
http://en.vietnamplus.vn/Home/Cu-Huy-Ha-Vu-arrested-for-antiState-propaganda/201011/13698.vnplus
If water filling rate is equal or smaller than water leakage rate, would people ever be able to fill up the tank ?
What should people do then, continuing their business as usual in pouring more water into the leaking tank and expecting miracle to happen ?
(By the way, history and math were my favorite subjects when I was a kid! ?)
To fix Vietnam's problems, genuine and significant changes must take place.
While the main force to drive these changes must come from the within, I still remember what another friend, a VCP member whose father died fighting against the US during the Linebacker II air campaign (aka "tran Dien Bien Phu tren khong"), told me : "For the future of Vietnam, we need you [intellectual diaspora] to stand by us, speak up for us on issues when and where our voice can not be heard".
How could I turn my back on what I have known or turn a deaf ear on such request from a friend ?
On the method of reasoning, I am not quite sure in which case you referred to.
We sometimes review data collected at hundreds of thousands of miles away, after traveling through a vast space. Credibility of data or “evidence”, therefore, is extremely critical to us.
To a certain extent, I’ve applied the same "scrutiny" when dealing with other kinds of data, whether it is about Vietnam human trafficking or Mekong river water shortage issue.
A case in point: We just had a discussion about land reform victims.
In my humble opinion, a human life wasted is one too many. My interest is not in "one" single hard number or in reliving the past; it is in how close to the truth one can get.
Based on Edwin Moise’s work, several list members are inclined to go with the estimate of 3,000-15,0000 victims executed.
Based on Dang Phong’s work, the figure is 26,000 victims out of a pool of 172,000 landlords, or roughly 2% out of the total 5% landlords (per "Van kien Dang Toan tap", v. 17 (1956), p. 426.)
Even though Dang did not say how he arrived at that number, instead of quickly tossing it out as invalid or unreliable, we should consider what could really be behind the data provided.
Dang gave rather good references in his books. While he did not reveal the source of “evil” landlord ("dia chu ac on") count, I have no doubt that in his position and with his passion, Dang tried his best to address a key historical question. Did Dang use classified information from VCP archives in his answer ?
Others can say such approach does not meet high standard of academic reseach. According to Western criteria, that might well be the case.
Unfortunately, Dang did not live and work in the West; as a scholar, he did not have the freedom and protection from the law as his counterparts in the West do!
Last but not the least, I would like to share a short note from Moise in 2002:
“ The information that is available today, about the land reform in North Vietnam, is more plentiful and more reliable than the information that was available when I wrote this book. It is now apparent that I was seriously wrong on one issue: the question of Chinese influence. I argued, at the end of Chapter 11, that reports that Chinese advisers had pushed the Vietnamese into erroneous land reform policies must be mistaken, since the record of land reform in China from 1949 to 1953 made it plain that the Chinese knew better than to make those mistakes. The logic still makes sense to me, but the conclusion was wrong. Chinese advisers did push the Vietnamese into making mistakes that the Chinese had not made in the most recent years of their own land reform. I still don't really know why. One possibility is that fairly sophisticated Chinese land reform policies got "dumbed down" in the process of translation and transmission to the Vietnamese.
On page 217, I say that President Richard Nixon estimated that 500,000 people had been executed during the North Vietnamese land reform, and that another 500,000 had died in slave labor camps. My source was the account of Nixon's news conference of July 27, 1972, that appeared the following day in the New York Times. The New York Times had apparently had a typo; what Nixon had actually said was that 50,000 had been executed and 500,000 had died in slave labor camps.”
http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/edmoise/landbook.html
This is a rather long post of mine!
As always, I appreciate any comments from the list.
After all, one of my favorite saying remains, "I may disagree with what you say but I will defend to death your right to say it" (Evelyn Beatrice Hall on Voltaire).
Best,
Calvin Thai
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From: Nghia Vo
Date: Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 11:10 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Xuan,
1. It is time you get it out of your system.
Just stick to the truth.
As an educator and researcher, you need to come as close to the truth as possible.
Forget about the deniers, they are the ones who live in the old PAST, trying to protect a rotten regime. From Tunis to Vietnam, history has shown us that a corrupt regime cannot go very far.
2. I like your idea of comparing Vietnam to a leaking tank. The Viet Kieu--by pumping billions of dollars into Vietnam's economy every year and by doing humanitarian work for the poor and underprivileged in Vietnam--have moved a long way. They are building the infrastructure for a new, more open, transparent, and compassionate Vietnam that takes care of the underprileged instead stuffing all the goodies in the VCP's pockets.
How long can they pump into a leaking boat is the question.
Will the VCP worsen the condition by "poking more holes" in the tank?
3. There are good people and reformers in Vietnam. Reform will come from inside Vietnam. The Viet Kieu have their new identity abroad. They just "stand by us [the locals], speak up for us on issues when and where our voice cannot be heard."
Best,
Nghia
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From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 9:48 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Calvin,
"26,000 victims" - does he mean dead or does this number include people who lost everything and were sent to work breaking rocks in the apatite mine?
There was an awful lot of stuff on top of people's wardrobes and under beds. Dang Phong was an assiduous collector of such neglected caches. He was very well connected (and quite well protected), so I think the numbers might be quite reliable.
cheers,
Melanie
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From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 10:28 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
And as somebody else pointed out the expression of an intent to kill does not mean that all were actually killed.
Melanie
On 8 February 2011 17:18, phuxuan700@gmail.com wrote:
Melanie et al,
As shown previously by Steve Denney, per May 4, 1953 Politburo directive:
"The punishment of reactionary and evil landlords
a. In this campaign, [we] must execute [xu tu] a number of reactionary or evil landlords. In our current situation, the number of executions is fixed in principle at the ratio of one per one thousand people of the total population in the free areas. This ratio will be controlled by the leadership and applied to the rent and interest reduction campaign this year and next year; this does not mean that the ratio will apply only to this year, nor does it mean that every village will execute landlords according to this ratio. (Thus, there may be communes that execute three or four people and others that execute only one or none at all)."
(See "Van kien Dang Toan tap", v. 14 (1953), nxb Chinh tri Quoc gia, 2001, pp. 201-206).
There were 5 different phases of land reform from late 1952 to mid 1956.
Per Politburo report at the 10th Central Committee meeting, from August to October 1956, most mistakes were made in phase 4 and 5, after May 4, 1953 Politburo directive.
Out of more than 10 million heads from 3,314 communes, 5.86% was classified as landlords (or more than 500,000 heads). These huge figures come from VCP official documents. (See "Van kien Dang Toan tap", v. 17 (1956), pp. 425-428, and also Vo Chi Cong's memoirs, pp. 143-145; Vo was a land reform team leader in 1954, and later Politburo member/SRV President).
Page 85 in Dang's book shows a statistic of 26,453 "evil" landlords ("dia chu ac on"), 82,777 landlords, 586 resistance landlords, 62,192 rich peasants for a total of 172,000 landlords.
Based on 1953 Politburo directive, this means 26,453 executions.
Since the total in Dang's statistic covers less than 2% as part of the 5.86% mentioned in "Van kien Dang", one question remains on whether the number represents a specific area or a specific period in the land reform campaign ?
Best,
Calvin
------------------------
From: phuxuan700@gmail.com
Date: Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 8:01 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Since I was out of town in the last several days, I could not verify a few things until returning home yesterday. I am sorry for the late response!
The discussion is moved to a new thread because it is not related to the original subject.
When you said, "somebody else pointed out the expression of an intent to kill does not mean that all were actually killed", I wonder whether they referred to the paragraphs on pages 202-203 of Moise's book ?
While such scenario is possible, it is not quite convincing to connect lack of news on execution in the press to execution not taking place.
Unless there is reliable data to back it up, the number of "evil" landlords being spared from execution can fall into the same category as the number of people committed suicides or died while doing hard labor due to the land reform campaign.
There is no doubt that "Land Reform in China and North Vietnam" was well researched and well written. It has served as an authority on Vietnam's land reform study in more than 25 years.
With new material surfacing in the past 5-plus years, it is about time to take a fresh look at some critical points raised in the book, i.e. the estimate of 3,000-15,000 executions, the role of Chinese advisors, etc.
Based on "Van kien Dang Toan tap", v. 14 (1953), v. 17 (1956), Dang Phong's research, Vo Chi Cong's memoirs, etc., we have learned the following:
1. Five land reform phases were carried out from late 1952 to mid 1956, affecting more than 10,000,000 heads in 3,314 communes in North Vietnam.
2. An execution ratio was set at 0.1% of the population for "evil" landlords. Commune leadership was to determine the appropriate ratio.
3. Chinese advisors played a significant role in the land reform campaign; they set a limit of 5% landlords per commune. The final landlord ratio came up to 5.86% of the population, or more than 580,000 heads.
4. Serious mistakes were made mostly in phase 4 and 5.
5. Dang provides statistics of 26,453 "evil" landlords ("dia chu ac on"), 82,777 landlords, 586 resistance landlords, 62,192 rich peasants for a total of 172,000 landlords (or about 1.7% of the population).
By cross-referencing with data on pages 188-189 of Moise's, Dang's statistics appear to be in line with the first 4 phases, ending on 12/31/55, affecting 4,372,000 heads.
Even though statistics for phase 5, the most radical one, with more than 4.0% landlords, affecting 6,142,000 heads, are currently not available, based on assessment from "Van kien Dang Toan tap", v. 17 (1956), p. 427, it is realistic to assume at least 50,000 heads were classified as "evil" landlords.
The total of more than 76,000 "evil" landlords is closer to the 0.1% execution ratio set by the 1953 Politburo directive. This figure is also closer to Bernard Fall's estimate of 50,000 executions. ("The Two Viet-Nams", p. 156).
Even with complete access to VCP's archives, we may never have the exact number of executions in North Vietnam's land reform campaign in the 1950s.
Out of respect for those who died and out of respect for history, getting closer to the truth is our only goal.
Any comments are welcome.
Best,
Calvin
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From: Walter james Mc intosh
Date: Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 2:26 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Calvin , I would suggest that if someone is looking for the truth , that last place one would want to look would be the VCP archives as the VCP has proved itself quite adept at manilupating statistics right at the source. I n 1964 , I was transcribing NSA tapes of intercepted PAVN anti-aircraft units. It became quite clear that one of the voices in the net was of a political officer raising the number of confirmed hits and downed US aircraft in real time. Then again in the late 70's I became aware of a secret directive to encourage people requesting medical assistence to describe their various ailments with the symptoms of Agent Orange poisoning and reward those who did so by giving them portions of the limited supply of remaining medicines. Hence the original medical log books contain worderful statistical evidence of agent orange poisoning . These comments are not meant in any way to deny that the PAVN Anti-aircraft units did not shoot down a number of aircraft , but rather the Statistics were enhanced at the source for political reasons , same with Agent Orange poisoning - very real but the statistics are quite enhanced for political purposes.
Mac McIntosh
The Lighthouse- Bluff, NZ
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From: <sdenney@library.berkeley.edu>
Date: Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 7:22 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
In terms of understanding policy, I would think the VCP archives and other
official sources from Vietnam would be required reading, even while
recognizing the need to read between the lines and recognizing that what
is said may be deliberately misleading. That would be a general principle
applied to all other nations as well.
Steve Denney
library assistant
UC Berkeley
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 12:04 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Agreed, with the added comment that the secret reports of a land reform cadre team about a particular xa were most likely manipulated in the sense that innocent persons were depicted as hostile counter-revolutionaries but less so in a numerical sense. The system of quotas was certainly prone to distortions of the truth in the respect that cadres felt compelled to fill their quota by any means, but it did not create special incentives to overfulfill the quota by 100 or 200 percent. In contrast, reports on economic production suffered multiple distortions of this kind, because everybody, from the village co-op chairman to the provincial party committee to the Ministry of Agriculture, was interested in presenting a rosy picture and claiming that the plan had been overfulfilled by 100 or 200 percent. We had a joke about such economic statistics in Hungary:
In the agricultural cooperative named Red October, a sow gives birth to four piglets. The cooperative reports to the district council that their sow gave birth to five piglets. The county council reports to the provincial council that the sow of the Red October co-op gave birth to six piglets. The provincial council reports to the Ministry of Agriculture that the sow of the Red October co-op gave birth to seven piglets. Thereupon the Ministry of Agriculture issues the following decree: Of the eight piglets to which the sow of the Red October co-op gave birth, four should be given gratis to the state for export purposes, but the peasants are allowed to keep the remaining ones.
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From: Melanie Beresford <melanie.beresford@mq.edu.au>
Date: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 12:51 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Yes, but the sow actually gave birth to 8 piglets, of which only four were reported to the district.
Melanie
--
Melanie Beresford
Associate Dean Research
Associate Professor in Economics
Faculty of Business & Economics
Macquarie University, NSW 2109
Australia
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From: Thaveeporn Vasavakul
Date: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 12:52 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Some general thoughts for the thread on the DRV land reform.
In English, the terms often seen are “execute” and “executions”. I remember that Gareth Porter, in one of his pamphlet written in response to, Hoang Van Chi (??)’s very first description of land reform, tries to make a distinction between x? t? and x? trí, the former implying death. Given the fact that we may never be able to figure out numbers, would this possible distinction help with the review of the DRV land reform?
I still find Christine White’s Cornell thesis on land reform one of the very best in helping us understand the psychology of local participants during that period. If I remember correctly, she started her analysis of the local class structure and the Viet Minh much earlier than 1952 when land reform was launched.
In terms of local political and economic dynamics, from an international perspective, if compared when China’s land reform (cf. Vivienne Shue’s China Peasants in Transition), the VN’s process was “bloody”. But I argued in one of the papers I wrote that compared with China’s Great Leap Forward, Vietnam’s post-land reform collectivization was very slow. From a national perspective, it is fair to suggest that local political and economic dynamics played an important role in determining the degree of rural resistance and violence in the process of agricultural transformation. As we all know, there has been an argument that in the South, land reform took place in both the NLF- and the SRV-occupied areas prior to 1975, making collectivization and class struggle in the South after 1975 very difficult, if not impossible. Hy Van Luong, in one of his books, observed in passing that collectivization did not seem to be a major problem when launched in central VN.
After the DRV’s land reform experience, we have not see any outright use of “xu tu”, have we?
Thaveeporn Vasavakul
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 1:06 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
No, it had only four piglets, but after the cursing peasants delivered the required four piglets to the state, the chairman of the district council told them to give him one as a gift, on the grounds that "if you reported that there were five piglets, there must have been ten.":))
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 1:09 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I most agree with all these observations, with one partial exception: Collectivization must have been quite harsh in 1959-60, because in 1960, a rather serious socio-economic crisis emerged, and a number of National Assembly deputies quite vocally criticized the government's agricultural policies.
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From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 1:13 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I think you will find that Vietnam is not Hungary in that case :)
MB
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 1:32 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Well, if you would have asked some Hungarian villagers to describe with a single word that model co-op member who heroically overfulfilled his quota, never slept under a bush in worktime, and always accurately reported the grain yields, they would have said, without thinking twice,
"Idiot.":))
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From: Thaveeporn Vasavakul
Date: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 5:20 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
There were different "socialist" economic and political moments. (the late George Kahin used to ask when exactly Vietnam became socialist.) I have put the "socialist" economic development of the late 1950s and 1960s in the context of the DRV's policy towards the South [cf. Vietnam: The Changing Models of Legitimation (1995)" and "Vietnam: Sectors, Classes, and the Transformation of a Leninist State" (1999)].
I still revisit Janos Kornai's writings when having chance. It would be great if the VSG has a continuing thread devoted to central planning?
Thaveeporn Vasavakul
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From: phuxuan700@gmail.com
Date: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 5:39 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
A friend of mine not long ago said jokingly that if VCP Politburo were ever to ask the editor-in-chief of Nhan Dan newspaper to add up all the US aircraft reportedly being shot down, they would be surprised and shocked to find out that the PAVN had completely wiped out the entire US airforce at some point in the Vietnam War! :-)
In the past 50-plus years, data has been manipulated for VCP's political purposes in most if not all aspects: economics, education, health, history, etc.
Therefore, as several list members have pointed out, data from VCP archives or related sources should be used with great care.
Dang Phong's statistics (without references) stated that, out of 26,453 "evil" landlords, during the correction period after phase 5 of the land reform campaign in 1956, 20,493 landlords had been found wrongly classified, or an error rate of 77.47%!
Such information is rather rare and does not seem to fit well in VCP's norm of massaging data.
On the 0.1% "evil" landlord ratio mentioned previously, the term used is clear in "Van kien Dang Toan tap", v. 14 (1953), p. 201; it is "x? t?" (death).
Calvin Thai
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 8:56 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Yes, I also mentioned in my article that there were a particularly high number of "wrong" classifications in the coastal areas. Apparently the cadres were pressed to find evil landlords in every xa and by any means possible. We also had a joke about this attitude in Hungary: "If the facts contradict Comrade Nemes [the head of the Institute of Party History], the worse for the facts." On the other hand, the data I found indicated that the regime's most important aim seems to have been to stage about two public trials per every xa, a rate that remained fairly constant during the various waves in 1955 (on which year I found accurate statistics). This guideline probably created a kind of ceiling for executions, since cadres were not interested in staging, say, ten trials per xa, and executions were usually directly related to such trials.
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From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 10:49 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
"If the facts contradict Comrade Nemes [the head of the Institute of Party History], the worse for the facts." I read something very similar in a perfectly serious academic history of the Chicago School of Economics. Substitute the word "theory" for the above Comrade. The author was Mervyn Reder (a professor in the said School), and it was a then unpublished MS in circulation.
I was shocked at the time, but I guess what I mean to say in the context of this thread is that I'm a bit bored with people banging on about how many lies the Communists tell.
cheers,
Melanie
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From: Michael Digregorio
Date: Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 12:11 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Balazs
A wise man once posed a riddle to me regarding the land Reform Movement. He asked, "What is the difference between a humble peasant and a village despot. I searched for a suitable, academic and perhaps structural response in line with his question. But had none.
He replied, "opportunity."
I'll never forget that.
Mike
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From: Michael Digregorio
Date: Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 12:28 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Melanie
Me too. Can we just establish an equation:
Political Power=Big Fat Liar
In varying degrees, with varying consequences, politically motivated lies are a prerogative of the state. Something that Weber missed, though most people have known it for as long as there have been states. And of course, some people know they are lying, but as long as most people don't, the lies remain useful. especially if they are told so often that people begin to believe them.
Examples are too long, tedious and painful to recite.
Mike
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 12:57 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Oh yes, Stiglitz also wrote something similar about how hard-core monetarists are able to ignore the facts even if the latter fly right into their face. Concerning Communist lies, one sometimes wonders how much it was possible for a cadre to know what was really going on. For instance, I read a report about Czechoslovakia in 1952, that is, the worst Stalinist period when falsifications of the truth reached epidemic proportions. An ethnic Hungarian cadre informed a Hungarian diplomat accredited to Bratislava about his latest visit in a big shipyard on the Danube. He said, among others, that several important machines had been seriously damaged by "saboteurs," and from the factual description he gave about the nature of the damage and the resulting delays in production, one could see that (a) the damage must have been quite real and intentionally caused, and (b) the culprits were, in all probability, factory workers who displeased by the constantly raised production norms and knew perfectly well which facility to damage and how to cause a delay. And yet it was again quite natural that the cadres suspected the direct involvement of the imperialist enemy, since they themselves had been busily sabotaging German facilities barely a few years ago, and of course they assumed that the Americans were now doing the same, all the more so because Radio Free Europe liked to publish news about the specific abuses committed by one or another factory manager or party secretary. There was such a mixture of realities and imagination that even now it is extremely difficult to find out what was true, what was untrue, and what the cadres knew to be true or untrue.
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From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 2:40 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Totally Mike. Let's get on with something constructive. I would be happy to read a paper (I mean a whole argument that takes ALL the different data problems into account) that presents new evidence on the death rate during the Land Reform. Thaveeporn,and others before her in published works, pointed out (and this may be disappointing to some) that after their experience in the 1950s the VCP generally stopped killing people for political (non-military) reasons.
I'd like to agree with your equation, stop fighting old battles, and treat VN as a completely normal state - fully of lying politicians.
Melanie
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From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 2:48 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Just like factory workers in the west, who all knew how to strategically insert a spanner into the works! Charlie Chaplin even made a humorous movie about it back in the silent era.
I've been reading a few things lately about so-called 'Arab exceptionalism' - meaning that Arabs were thought to be incapable of democratic impulses (a view promoted by the Israeli state and before that the South African state about the 'kaffirs'). There are quite a few exceptionalisms we need to abolish.
That goes for American exceptionalism too. The US doesn't have a perfect democracy, let alone a wonderful system. Room for improvement all round!
Melanie
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 3:01 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I would slightly modify this statement by confining its validity to the areas which were under firm VCP control, because some of the killings in South Vietnam (particularly the ones committed during the Tet Offensive, in Hue and elsewhere) were more politically than militarily motivated. One of the 1968 reports I saw quoted a Soviet diplomat saying basically that it was of course all right that our Vietnamese comrades had killed the police officers and other local heads of the puppet administration, but they should not have gone so far as to kill their family members as well.:) Still, I do agree with you in that these killings did occur in the context of a war.
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 3:13 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Yeah, we need some time to see what sort of political systems will emerge in Tunisia and Egypt, but both cases are extremely important in the sense that the presidents ousted did not represent only themselves but actually two unusually well-entrenched multi-generational autocracies. In Tunisia, this system was created by Bourguiba in the late 1950s; in Egypt, by Nasser in 1952. Despite all the marked differences between the policies of Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak, it must be kept in mind that Sadat was Nasser's vice-president when Nasser died, and Mubarak was Sadat's vice-president when Sadat was assassinated. All three were professional military officers, and now it is the military again in control of the transition process.
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From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 3:34 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
All of which says nothing whatsoever about "the Arabs".
cheers,
Melanie
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 4:00 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
What I meant is these two regimes were, in a certain sense, comparable to the long-term authoritarian and Communist systems in Europe, Latin America and East Asia which came down in the so-called three waves of democratization, and if they ended up so, there may be other regime collapses in the Middle East. I doubt if the Gulf monarchies would face a similar challenge, but the largely secular republican regimes in Algeria and Syria, and possibly also Libya, Jordan and Morocco, may be affected by the domino effect to some extent. The Egyptian and Tunisian middle classes have been traditionally quite influential. In fact, resistance to authoritarian regimes is not a completely novel phenomenon in the Middle East, but in earlier decades, it mostly took other forms, ranging from Islamist mass movements to isolated forms of protest (e.g., students, trade unions, or peasants acting separately) and spontaneous "bread riots." This is something really new what we see here.
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From: Thaveeporn Vasavakul
Date: Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 5:09 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
1. Could VN be considered a normal state in the context of state violence in Southeast Asia ? Reference examples are: political killing in Indonesia in 1965 (with emphasis going to Bali – cf. Geoff Robinson), in Cambodia under Pol Pot in the late 1970s (cf. Ben Kiernan) and in Thailand in 1976 (the October 6 event when “rightists” attacked “leftists”) ++++.
Benedict Anderson has a thought-provoking article “Murder and Progress in Modern Siam” (New Left Review, 199?) which highlights various forms of killings in Thailand in the Cold War era and a movement from killings of “leftists” in the 1960s and 1970s to private killings among local godfathers (chao pho) as a part of their contestation in-between national democratic elections in the 1980s. So, we won’t know for sure whether political killing will stop?
2. I do not have any objection with the “big fat liar” (BFL) approach. I just want to add, for practical policy analysis purposes, that there could be differences between inaccuracies (intentionally or unintentionally) put forth by the state mechine and those put forth by politicians (assuming the distinction is legitimate).
Thaveeporn Vasavakul
From:vsg-bounces@mailman2.u.washington.edu on behalf of Melanie Beresford
Sent: Tue 2/15/2011 5:40 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group
Subject: Re: [Vsg] NVN Land Reform Revisit
Totally Mike. Let's get on with something constructive. I would be happy to read a paper (I mean a whole argument that takes ALL the different data problems into account) that presents new evidence on the death rate during the Land Reform. Thaveeporn,and others before her in published works, pointed out (and this may be disappointing to some) that after their experience in the 1950s the VCP generally stopped killing people for political (non-military) reasons.
I'd like to agree with your equation, stop fighting old battles, and treat VN as a completely normal state - fully of lying politicians.
Melanie
--
Melanie Beresford
Associate Dean Research
Associate Professor in Economics
Faculty of Business & Economics
Macquarie University, NSW 2109
Australia
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From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 6:21 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
As Mike said: "something that Weber missed". The higher you go in the state apparatus, the more political your job becomes. This is true everywhere.
If I have a critique of the BFL theory it is that the 'truth' is not always easy to grasp. Think of poor Gen. Westmoreland explaining how he could win the war with just a few more troops (a 'surge' if you like), when the number in SVN was already 569,000! One man's truth is another woman's fiction and there is no way at all to apply scientific method to the question. That is to say, the question is a political one. In this sense, power tends to monopolise the 'truth'.
cheers,
Melanie
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From: Michael Digregorio
Date: Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 8:21 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Melanie and Thaveeporn
I totally agree.
I can remember the days here when "fulfilling the plan" became a source of systemic inaccuracies.
I was just reacting to a notion that the VCP was somehow exceptional, that the nature of political power was not one of self-preservation, projection of ideals on reality, or manipulation of facts as a means of proving legitimacy to lead.
MIke