A Vietnamese Trotskyist in
W HY did you make your
Strip to Prague? Tens of thousands of Vietnamese workers and students have directly experienced the upheavals in Eastern Europe. It would obviously have been out of the question for we Trotskyists to miss the opportunity to see how these Vietnamese had reacted, and what their conclusions were for their own countries.
• How did you make your con-
We have been exchanging letters with the groups of Vietnamese students who produce Tribune in Prague. It was one of them who met me at the airport, along with a comrade of the Fourth International who lives in Prague.
First of all I had a discussion at the hotel with two students. They were very cautious. They asked what Trotskyists were and what I was doing in Prague. The ice was only broken after a meeting with Petr Uhl, currently head of the Czechoslovak press agency. They told him about their difficulties in the face of rising racism, and I asked Petr how they could be helped. The suspicion then disappeared and I was able to go to where they lived, where I talked with a group of five students, who were between 25 and 35 years old.
• What were the main topics you discussed?
I thought that we would be talking about present-day Vietnam, their situation in Czechoslovakia and their compatriots in France. In fact, I was bombarded with questions about Stalinism, Trotskyism and the reasons for the failure of "really-existing" Socialism. They were very politically aware. Of course we also discussed their situation in Prague. There are some 30,000 Vietnamese in Czechoslovakia, 5,000 of whom have left for West Germany.
After the attacks they suffered six months ago, they have organized to defend themselves.
Things have been more or less calm for the past three months, but now the trouble has started up again. They go out in groups of four or five in case they are attacked.
They are very critical of their Embassy and government, who have done nothing to foster friendly relations with the Czechs and Slovaks; nor do they have any meeting place such as a cultural centre. Hanoi finds them a place and gets a large part of their wages, while Prague uses
### Prague
HA CUONG NGH, a member of the Vietnamese
Trotskyist group which produces the journal
Cahiers Vietnamiennes, spent four days in Prague in November of this year. The Spring/Summer issue of the
Cahiers included a dossier on the situation of
Vietnamese workers in the
Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, who have faced racist attacks. Louis
Couturier asked Ha about
This impressions. them for jobs that Czechs won't do.
• Did you meet any workers?
Yes, in an unexpected, and unplanned, way. One day, I met a Vietnamese who asked me what I was doing there. I said that I was a journalist and wanted to talk to journalists. We chatted and then he took me to a place in the environs of Prague where there is a foreign workers' hostel. Of the 1,000 people there, some 500 are Vietnamese. I talked from 8pm to midnight with a group of seven young building workers. I had with me a case full of documents in Vietnamese - notably Khrushchev's secret speech, with a commentary by the Fourth International. These contacts went more easily than those with the students. They discovered another vision of communism to that which they had known. They asked me many questions about Stalinism and the Trotskyist programme.
They were very friendly and offered to put me up in the hostel - in one of the rooms made free by the flight to West
• They had a front row seat during the events at the end of last year. What were their reactions and had they made any connection with what they had known in Vietnam?
The people I met had lost all confidence in the Vietnamese leadership. They were very much in favour of renewal. They found it hard to understand why the Communist Party, which claims to represent the interests of the workers, has suffered
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
They are anxious and disoriented. Their contracts expire in two years, and they are frightened that they will not be able to find work in Vietnam (they fit central heating boilers).
• What are you planning to do now?
First of all, to keep my promises. I promised to send them magazines from different points of view, as well as novels that they cannot get hold of due to their isola-
Then we will regularly be sending comrades to take part in discussion and education groups. This makes me feel young again. We did this sort of thing at the time of the workers' camps in France, but the cultural level is now much higher - in 1945 the workers were illiterate.
We are going to produce a Vietnamese language supplement to Cahiers Vietnamiennes and probably educational video-
Finally, I must mention that I met by chance the son of an old comrade of mine, who went back to Vietnam in 1952, was arrested by Diem's police in 1965 and died in obscure circumstances during the Tet offensive in 1968. I told him that his father had been a Trotskyist rather than simply a Communist. This was a very moving encounter for both of us. * URSS.
### TCHECOSLOVAQUIE
27
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