Mounting tensions
VIETNAM roots of the VCP are incontestable. This means that the VCP is radically different ruled which from parties like those
Poland or East Germany. But it is not a guarantee against bureaucratic degenerabefore Communist tion, "becoming distant from the people", or a general crisis of the regime. The precedents of the Russian, Chinese or Yugoslav Communist Parties are unhappily
Party Congress there to confirm it — all three benefitted from such a legitimacy, and the first among them was moreover armed with a
THE SEVENTH Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party
(VCP) is to be held in May 1991. For a long time, the leadership has been working on the drafting of the preparatory documents. The 9th and 10th plenums of the Central
Committee, held in August and November 1990, were supposed to finalize these documents. Two draft resolutions have been submitted for general discussion'. A new plenum, the 11th, nonetheless had to be convened in January 1991, and it ended on a note of disagreement.
After a six day meeting, only a brief communique was published, announcing that "numerous important ideas had been presented with a view to improving the quality of the draft political report". Which, clearly, means that the initial document has been put into question. The divisions appearing inside the VCP leadership are profound, reflecting a dramatic national and international situation for the regime, as well as the continued erosion of the authority of the party. The
Political Bureau is seeking to smother the movement of democratic reform launched at the previous Congress.
Nonetheless, the echo of events in the USSR and Eastern
Europe is great in Vietnam.
PIERRE ROUSSET
HE 6th Congress of the VCP was
T held in December 1986, under the banner of reform?. The draft political report was rejected and replaced by a more self-critical version.
Nguyen Van Linh, reformer, was elected general secretary.
The key formulae of doi moi (renewal)
and tu duy moi (new thought) corresponded not only to the notion of perestroika
(economic liberalization) but also to that of glasnost (openness). The slogan in vogue was "noi thang noi that"
clearly, speak the truth). The period from
1987 to mid-1988 was one of political and intellectual liberalization4.
However, faced with sharpening internal tensions and the evolution of the world situation, the Political Bureau rapidly moved towards a bureaucratic and repressive response.
It denounced Solidarnosc as the agent of the Polish "counter-revolution", and kept silent on the Tiananmen square massacre of June 1989 in China. It seems to have drawn only conservative lessons
1• Soviet regimes. It is aware that the cessafrom the crisis of the East European and
International Viewpoint #201 • March 4, 1991 tion of aid from the former "brother countries" heralds difficult times, despite a temporary improvement in numerous economic indices. It is conscious also of the fact that the United States has maintained its embargo against Vietnam, despite the withdrawal of the latter's forces from Cambodia.
On July 18, 1988, Nguyen Van Linh himself declared without ambiguity "we reject the demands of those who call for the free existence of several political schools, as is the case in some socialist countries"5 . Since then, the VCP leadership has sought to pursue liberalization on the economic plane while freezing everything on the political plane. It hopes that the VCP can maintain this orientation without provoking the same mass opposition as in Eastern Europe.
It relies on the historic legitimacy of the VCP, which has been won through fierce struggle, in the course of the long fight for national liberation and social revolution - something which sets the VCP apart from most of its European equivalents.
The national, revolutionary and historic programme of socialist democracy considerably superior to anything the Vietnamese have ever had. Today, in Vietnam, the VCP is no longer judged by its past, but by its present action. It is on this terrain that its authority is being contested.
The VCP leadership is combining measures of political repression with economic concessions benefitting certain social sectors. The peasants have been given more facilities to recover the use of collectivized land. The market in agricultural products is essentially free, and private commerce flourishes. When students demonstrated in May 1990, denouncing their conditions of work, funds were immediately freed to meet their demands.
### Reductions in military expenditure
The regime has taken comfort from a certain number of successes in the agrarian, budgetary and monetary fields. Inflation reached 700-1000% in 1988. In 1989, it was brought back to less than 10%. The value of the dong, the Vietnamese unit of currency, has temporarily stabilized against the dollar. Above all, the alignment of the official rate of exchange with that of the free market allowed the halting of the black market in money. Pricing policy was reformed. Transactions in gold were freed up. Military expenditures are being progressively reduced. The Gross National Product has begun to grow again. The most spectacular results have been in the production of
In 1987, Vietnam produced only 15 million tons of rice or rice equivalents. 12% of the population were affected by malnutrition and food shortages. The rectification began in generalization of the "khoan" (the contracts authorizing the expansion of family agriculture, the reforms decided by the 6th Congress of the VCP, the introduction 1. The "Programme for the construction of socialism during the stage of transition" and a text entitled "Strategy of socio-economic development from now to the year 2000 and principle orientations of the five 2. Communiqué of January 14, 1991, cited by Murray Hiebert, Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), January 31,1991. 3. See /V 112, January 26, 1987. 4. Camille Scalabrino, Le Monde Diplomatique, October 1989. 5. Cited by Daniel Hemery and Nguyen Duc Nhuan, Le Monde Diplomatique, October 1989.
of long term (15 year) contracts giving guarantees to peasants, investment in irrigation and relatively
Vietnam became the third exporter of rice in the world, behind the United States and Thailand - this against a veritable trade barrage constructed by the US government in defense of its own farmers. In 1990 it produced 21.5 million tons, a record figure. Significant regional contrasts continue to exist. The province of Nghe-Tinh, poor, situated in Central Vietnam, has been affected by famine. Infant malnutrition has not been eradicated. 90% of the export capacities come in fact from the rich Mekong Delta, in the south. But the Red River delta, in the north, has nonetheless attained self sufficiency.
### Incentives for foreign investment
Vietnam has promulgated a law on foreign investments said to be the least restrictive in Asia. It has created free trade zones, despite the fact that the balance sheet of such zones in other countries is far from positive. Recently, more foreign capital has been attracted to Viet-
The chief areas concerned are off-shore oil exploration, agriculture and marine products. US capitalists are still placed outside the game by the embargo decreed by their government against The Europeans (British, Finnish) account for the lion's share, followed by the Asiatics (Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India, South Korea,
Shell (Anglo-Dutch), British Petroleum and Total (French) are all involved. The export of coal could also perhaps be stimulated by the increase in oil prices. Late in the day though it is, the economic isolation of Vietnam is decreasing. But the US veto still forbids the interunfreezing development aid.
The administration denies that it is pursuing a policy of unrestrained liberalization. Nho Bha Thanh, president of the Union of Women, a lawyer who participated in the elaboration of the law on foreign investments, has said: "We do not want the anarchy that we see in the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe... I see terrible problems of unemployment"8. However, the financial rectification took the end of an austerity plan which camed Vietnam the felicitations of the International Monetary Fund. There is a great contrast between the social layers which have benefited from the reforms (peasants, traders) and those who have seen their incomes eroded — the wage earners indexed against price rises (workers and employees, civil servants and teachers, managers).
Unemployment is a major problem. Numerous Vietnamese emigré workers in Eastern Europe and the Middle East -16,000 of them in Iraq - have been expelled or deprived of resources, or have confronted an unbridled racism in the former "brother countries'?. The army is partially demobilized. Many civil servants have been dismissed to reduce the weight of a bloated administration. New generations of youth are arriving masse on the labour market.
Numerous state enterprises have gone bankrupt, deprived of traditional subsidies, subject to the competition of the new private sector, massive imports of cheap consumer from China) and smuggling which takes on considerable proportions. With the autonomy accorded to production units, market relations are developing between
The share of the state economic sector has fallen. The other sectors (private, family, collective workshops and small cooperatives) represent 90% of the production of rice, 56% of coffee, almost 100% of fruit, vegetables and eggs, and 50% of industrial products.
Public services such as health and education are deteriorating. Medicines and school materials are insufficient. As to obliged to take on other work in order to make a living. The cost of housing is rising. Some of the principal social gains of revolution, like health care, are being put into question. For the first time, the regime has also introduced a progressive tax on income.
Soviet Union withdraws its
In these conditions, the social crisis could deepen in the medium term. Corruption is significant, fed by an important parallel economy. Some thousands cadres have been expelled from the CP for this. Drugs and prostitution are again social curses. Moreover, the recent economic gains could be rapidly
A series of financial scandals have broken out, starting from March 1990, reviving inflation. The USSR, for its part, is withdrawing strategically from the
VIETNAM peninsula. It is abandoning the use of the aeronaval base of Cam Ranh and ending, this year, the privileged commercial contracts which linked it to Vietnam. Parallel to this, the VCP has symbolically downgraded the level of its relations with Moscow, by suppressing the special section of the Central Committee charged with following this key element of its internation-
The consequences of the Soviet withdrawal will be heavy. The level of aid will fall by 50% in 1991, and continue to fall imports must be paid for in hard cash, at world market prices. Export contracts with the European "brother countries" are less and less significant. In 1989, the USSR accounted for 100% of Vietnam's imports of oil (Vietnam does not possess refining facilities), 90% for steel, 80% for cotton, and 80% for fertilizers. Moscow's new policy could then contribute very directly to a renewed inflation, increased unemployment, a growth of the trade deficit, and the reduction of foreign currency reserves, and could consequently discourage western investors. Economic rectification faces
The Vietnamese leadership now recognizes that the period opening up is going to be very difficult. But the fragility of the Vietnamese economic rectification has been at the heart of the polemics opened by the triumphalist and repressive position adopted in March 1990 by the 8th plenum of the CC. The daily paper of the Patriotic Front said that there "could not be stability when the democratic rights of unemployment increases instead of falling, when social differences accentuate themselves and social justice is ridiculed, when scarce resources are invested in 6. Murray Heibert, FEER, May 10, 1990; Camille 7. See IV 196, December 10, 1990. 8. Cited by Tim Shorock, La Brèche, December 27, 1990. 9. See on this subject the dossier printed in Chroniques Vietnamiennes, no. 8-9, Spring-Summer 1990. 10. According to the International Herald Tribune, August 20, 1990. Cried by Phong Quang, Doan Ket (Panis), no. 423, 11 11. Dinh Hieu, in Dai Doàn Kèt, no. 20, May 9, 1990. May 1990. March 4, 1991 • #201 International Viewpoint
VIETNAM non-productive sectors, layer of people live in insolent luxury through fraud, corruption, shady currency deals, smuggling of and export quota imported merchandise, [...] when officials with established responsibilities risk no more than deferred sentences, when the cadres in whom the people no longer have confidence continue to be named to new posts, when education, health and social security continue to where except in the conferences and colloquies... "'i
À lively opposition is expressing itself on the question of the democracy inside the party and its peripheral organizations, administration (para) Communist press. It is this which the administration wants above all to
During the summer of 1988, the Socialist and Democratic Parties - satellites of the CP which in 40 years of existence have never yet shown any insubordina-
— were dissolved. Their newspapers, in which numerous Communist intellectuals expressed themselves freely enough, have disappeared: To Quoc (Country)
and Doc Lap (Independence).
Concerted attack on press
What is taking place is a concerted attack on the freedom of even the Communist press. Nguyen Ngoc, editor in chief of the review Van Nghe (Letters and
Arts), has been dismissed. Xuan Cang, editor in chief of the trade union daily Lao
Dong (Labour), has been replaced. To
Hoa, editor in chief of the Saigon daily
Gai Phong, has been made to retire. The writer Bui Minh Quoc, editor in chief of the review Lang Bian, has been expelled from the CP.
In Ho Chi Minh City, Tuoi Tre (Youth) has been asked to moderate its tone. In Hue, the Song Hung (The River of Perfumes), has been forbidden from publication for "administrative" reasons. Other newspapers disappearing. Tran Do, a member of the CC and a general at the historic battle of Dien Bien Phu, has been relieved of his responsibilities in the commission of cultural and
Duong Thu Huong, a writer and a Communist who volunteered, during the war against the US, to work in one of the most heavily bombed provinces of Vietnam, has been expelled from the CP. Ques-
March 1990 by the Central Commission of the organization, she did not hide her opinions. "There is nobody in the Political Bureau today who is capable of responding to the aspirations of the people. No more could one find there people able to assure the transition, to help change the course of history [...] If the state and the party do not undertake true 12 and radical reforms [...] then it is certain that blood will flow. The decades of rancInternational Viewpoint #201 • March 4, 1991 repression, the weight of the bureaucracy, oppressive and omnipresent, the despair of the masses (and particularly the youth) before the future, their demand to live at last as it is necessary to live, their hopes raised by the news coming from abroad (and which can no longer be stopped)... all this renders disorder
"Our people has spilled too much of its blood, it is necessary at all costs to spare it pointless suffering. This country is everywhere sown with cemeteries. Let us not add more to this spectacle of desolation".
The spectre of the Chinese repression at Tiananmen Square in June 1989 haunts numerous militants in Vietnam. It is con-
VCP leaders, according to Camille Scalabrino, but never in public. Ta Ba Tang, a representative of the Veterans' Club of South Vietnam, denouncing the blocking of political reforms, noted that "Tiananmen must serve as a warning to the party in showing that it is on a dangerous orientation"'3.
Crisis of pro-Hanoi diaspora organizations
The policy of normalization struck also the "Viet kieu patriots", the Vietnamese of the diaspora favourable to the regime. On January 22, 1990, some 34 members and leaders of associations of Vietnamese abroad made public a "Letter addressed to the leaders of Vietnam, to the Vietnamese of the interior and overseas on the restructuring of the political institutions".
"In the space of seven months, the bloody repression in China and the fall of the Ceaucescu dictatorship have shown the total bankruptcy of a certain model of socialism, established by Stalin in the Soviet Union in the 1930s [...] To avoid our country's falling into the tragedy of Tiananmen and Bucharest, it is necessary above all to recognize that the profound crisis with which Vietnam wrestles today cannot be resolved by repression or violence, but by appropriate political meth-
The signatories called on "the current leaders of Vietnam, who have contributed so much to the cause of independence and of national unity, to undertake without delay a restructuring of the existing politi-
1. Through separating effectively the party apparatus from all the institutions of the state, returning to the latter the totality of judicial, executive and legislative powers, so that no individual, no organization can place themselves above the state or interfere in its functioning.
2. Through installing a pluralist democracy which will genuinely guarantee the security of individuals, as well as freedom of expression, information, meeting, association, formation of political parties, [all Vietnamese without distinction being able] through free elections, to control the direction of the state.
3. Immediately, through opening a sincere dialogue with the whole of civil society, [...] to build the bases of a regime which genuinely emanates from the peo-
The "Letter" only presents the essential elements of any democratic reform of a regime in transition to socialism. But it challenges the traditional conception of the VCP, according to which the "party leads", whereas the state contents itself to "administer" society, whilst the people exercises (how?) its "right as collective
In place of "sincere dialogue", the regime has had recourse to retaliation. Certain signatories have seen themselves forbidden entry to Vietnam until 1995, the year 2000, or permanently! The accusation of anti-communism has been branAccording to an internal bulletin for VCP members in Hanoi, two of the signatories are even participants in an "international seeking to overthrow the socialist state"'.
In March 1989, the 7th plenum of the Central Committee in its majority condemned "pluralism" as well as any notion of a "counterweight" to its power. It reaffirmed the constitutional leading role of the VCP — defending thus the regime of the single party and the monopoly exercised by the bureaucracy on political life. On the 60th anniversary of the creation of the VCP, the general secretary Nguyen Van Linh reiterated this point of view, affirming that in Vietnam "apart from the Communist Party, no party representing any class, any social layer, is in a position to assume this [leading] role...In the conditions of Vietnam today and tomorrow, there exists no objective necessity for the creation of opposition parties 16.
Dramatic impact of East German events
To the notion of the single party corresponds that of internal monolithism, of solidarity of leadership circles which must settle their differences between themselves, without any appeal to the members or the population. But the pressure of events in 1989 was too strong for 12. See Phong Quang, Doàn Kèt, no. 414-415, JuneJuly 1989 and no. 417, October 1989 13. The virtually complete text of the replies of Duong Thu Huong is reproduced in French in Doàn Kèt, no. 425, July-August 1990. Camille Scalabrino, op. cit. Ta Ba Tang is cited by Nick Malloni, FEER, March 29, 14. This "letter" is reproduced in Chroniques Vietnamiennes, no. 8-9. On the beginning of the crisis in the organizations of the "viet kieu patriots" abroad, see the article of Hoang Giang in Chroniques Vietnamiennes no. 6-7, Autumn-Winter 1989. At the end of June, this letter had received 650 signatures. 15. See Tran Minh in Doàn Kèt, no.424, June 1990. 16. Cited by Phong Quang, Doàn Kèt, no.421, Febru17. Doàn Kèt, no. 420, January 1990.
the tensions not to appear in broad daylight. The collapse of the East German
Stalinist regime was certainly felt in a dramatic fashion - the GDR had almost a model. For the 7th plenum of the
CC, the events in Eastern Europe only the product of an imperialist conspiracy.
This position becoming untenable, the Political Bureau had to adopt, on December 3, a resolution which made the "brother parties" responsible for the crisis, provoked "firstly" by the policy of "the leadership of the party [...] which gravely violated socialist democracy [...] refused to take into account the role of the people". Other errors having been committed, the "nonantagonistic contradictions born in the socialist countries [...] became antagonistic"17
Quang Dao, president of the National Assembly and member of the Executive Bureau of the CC, came back to this question in a meeting organized by the review Dai Doàn Kèt. Concerning the USSR, he judged erroneous the following orientations:
1. The abandonment of the NEP (New Economic Policy) at the end of the 1920s;
2. The installation of a totalitarian regime: "In place of the dictatorship of class, (exercised by) the whole of the working people, was substituted the dictatorship exercised by the party in the name of the workers. It is the party which decides everything. In reality, it is not even the party, but a party committee and sometimes a group of people, indeed a single person. The result is a totalitarian regime based on privileges, a regime which has produced a layer of privileged leaders exercising power above the people, a regime of social injustice which impels the people towards revolt".
3. "There has not been a correct consciousness concerning the relationship between the party and the regime ..] After the conquest of power, the party [becamel bureaucratized".
Harsh picture of state of
Communist Party
In concluding his analysis, Le Quang Dao drew a very severe picture of the state of the VCP itself, judging that, because of corruption in particular, #30% of party members deserve to be thrown out, 50% have committed no major faults justifying their expulsion, but they serve no particular use. In the period before the conquest of power, we had a theory of the construction of the party. After gaining power, we no longer have it".
In December 1988 a member of the
Political Bureau, Tran Xuan Bach, publicly attacked the line of the leadership, saying that "those who hide and block information from circulating are the last of the old fashioned. It is necessary to give all the information so that each can
"It is unthinkable that Asia will experience stability whilst Eastern Europe is boiling over [...] All the socialist counprogress, know great contradictions; they must break the shackles of the Nobody can reassure himself in thinking himself sheltered. You can pride yourself one day on being above the melee, and be overthrown the next".
He affirmed that it is necessary to know how to "walk on two legs" and to follow a policy of both economic and political reform. "We must ask the pardon of Marx for having deformed his doctrine. We have chosen a model [of development] and this model is none other than a com[Maoist]. The question today is to find a means of abandoning these two dogmatic models"'18. As the price of his indiscipline, Tran Xuan Bach was dismissed from all his functions by the 8th plenum of the CC, in March 1990.
The Vietnamese leadership is, by all the evidence, the theater of intense internal
Reflecting the struggles of clans and factions, they nonetheless touch on true divergences of orientation. What is happening in Eastern Europe and the shows that they must not be
The crisis is smouldering in Vietnam and it is still very difficult to predict how the different components of the apparatus are going to face up to it. The secrecy of the deliberations facilitates the various toings and froings. Nguyen Van Linh, yesterday spokesperson of the reformers. is today an ultra of normalization.
Tran Xuan Bach, today a quasidissident, was a protege of Le Duc Tho, recently deceased and considered as the arch-conservative. Only some govern-
VIETNAM mental personalities, like Vo Nguyen
Giap, Minister of Defence, and Nguyen
Co Tach, Minister of Foreign Affairs, have the reputation of having been, in these last years, "reformers" quence. Both must moreover regularly face up to strong bureaucratic pressures.
However, the evolution of the orientations and the relations of forces inside the ruling apparatus of the VCP is less fundamental than the reawakening of "civil society" itself.
According to Phong Quang, ond quarter of 1989 has seen the emeraffirmation - of the forums of civil society. "The key event was without doubt the 5th Congress of the Union of Writers of Vietnam which met at the end of October, in the midst of the 7th plenum and the Union of Journalists. Some 400 writers (three quarters members of the Party, and all employees of the socialist state) stood up with an astonishing dexterity to 12 members of the central committee (six of them on the Political Bureau), who had come in force to impose the new leadership of the union, and even the platform of the congress! All these feudal manoeuvres were rejected, to the very great joy of the people of Hanoi who followed, hour by hour, the progress of this assembly [.]"
"We are witnessing the emergence of [...] a multiplicity of clubs; the Club of the Union of the Associations of Sciences and Techniques in Hanoi, that of the Veterans of the Resistance of Ho Chi Minh City and the provinces, and, at the beginning of January, the Committee of Liaison of the former leaders of the student movement of the south"19. Club of resistance veterans formed
The Club of the Veterans of the Resistance of the South has around 4000 members. At a rally in September 1989, it attracted up to 6000 people. Founded by former fighters of unimpeachable record, it has taken up numerous popular criticisms of the regime. In January 1990, notably, it organized a meeting at which 600 people participated, where numerous questions were discussed like the situation in Eastern Europe and the policy of reforms.
The most well known member of this 18. These two speeches, that of Le Quang Dao and that of Tran Xuan Bach before the Club of the Union of Associations of Sciences and Techniques of Hanoi on December 13, 1989, are reproduced in Chroniques 19. Doàn Kat no. 421. On the Congres of waiters, see 13 Vietnamiennes no. 8-9. also Chroniques Vietnamiennes, no.8-9. March 4, 1991 • #201 International Viewpoint
VIETNAM club was the general Tran Van Tra, an adviser of the leadership. He was coopted, and perhaps neutralized, at the head of a new Association of Veterans constituted on a national scale. In March 1990, the southern Club was subject to intense pressures from the hierarchy of the party. Because of this, the president, Nguyen Ho, and Ta Ba Tang were not reelected to the leadership of the club, and were replaced by non-contestatory elements.
The universities are opening up to international exchanges. Elements the "third force" from the time of the US war [opponents of the US aggression who worked outside the framework of the VCP-led National Liberation Front], pursue their activities, like the priest Chan Tin. The diversity traditional to the south perpetuates itself, with the vitality of the
Buddhist, Catholic and Caodai [a syncretic religious cult which incorporates elements of Buddhism, Confucianism and
Christianity — it has around 2 million adherents]communities. Artistic, literary environmentalist offer divers channels of expression.
In November 1990, it was the turn of
Bui Tin (Than Nin) to cause a scandal during a visit to France, by demanding the convocation of an extraordinary political conference (a constituent assembly). A journalist introduced into the ruling circles, Bui Tin was editor-in-chief of the
Nhan Dan, central organ of the VCP. He was a colonel in the People's Army. With
37 years of service, he participated, in
1954, at the battle of Dien Bien Phu and received, in 1975, the surrender of the
Saigon authorities. He has been a member
Insolent regime of privileges
His "petition" has the merit of highlighting the numerous stakes of the debate. Bui Tin draws a severe picture of 14 International Viewpoint #201 • March 4, 1991 the situation, where "bureaucracy, irresponsibility, egoism, corruption, spread under the insolent reign of privileges and prerogatives". He seeks to define an "overall project to resolve the crisis" currently gripping Vietnam. "We have chosen the road of socialism. This is understood. It was a necessity in the international conditions of the time. Socialism, as it was built in several countries and as it was sketched amongst us, has given some positive results. It gave us of liberation national defence.
"On the other hand, in these countries, like ours, the model realized has also shown its weaknesses, its faults and errors, which prevent the full development of the fundamental principles of socialism. All these countries have thus entered into a grave crisis, as much theoretical as practical. It is clear that one can no longer do as in the past. But how to do otherwise, the question merits being studied, and a solution will be found only with
"In these conditions, it is erroneous to condemn, deny or reject socialism, it is also imprudent and dangerous to pursue the practice of the past, even with more or less important modifications [...] It is convenient in the current time to build an authentically popular democratic regime with a socialist option (of which the content is to be determined) [...] we do not renounce at all the idea of socialism, we socio-economic formation by a high productivity, social justice and well being for all, that socialism, in the conditions of Vietnam, demands a relatively long preparatory period". Advocatand national reconciliation" between Vietnamese and "reconciliation with all countries" he proposed:
1. The convocation of an "extraordinary political conference which brings together representative delegates from all the social components - workers, peasants, intellectuals, artists, ethnic groups, religions, diaspora — with the goal of discussing and adopting a new programme of
2. The election of a "new National
3. The formation of a "government of national reconstruction "20
Bui Tin has been dismissed from his post as editor of Nhan Dan. The leadership demanded his expulsion from the party — which his cell refused to do a first time in January 1991. The BBC broadcasts interviews with him regularly to Vietnam, and these seem to have a considerable popular echo, with tape recordings circulating widely.
The holding of the 7th Congress of the VCP could catalyse all the divergences and tensions which manifest themselves today in Vietnam. The year 1991 will truly be a crucial one for the country. * 20. See Doàn Kèt no. 428, November 1990.
communalism