Re: Digest for vietnam-old-hacks@googlegroups.com - 3 updates in 3 topics

[Dawson]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2025 at 3:13 AM <vietnam-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

vietnam-...@googlegroups.com

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A Stalinesque Vietnam?

Carl Robinson <robinso...@gmail.com>: Sep 23 09:07AM +1000 Here's my latest view on how I see Vietnam. A lot of people are scared right now.

Yes, nice piece, good read. I  have thought for a very long time that far too many "Experts" take the convenient course and forget -- if they even know, which is questionable -- that the Vietnam Communist Party was created in 1930  by the Comintern. Sure, it was presented to Uncle Ho, but the Party never varied from that root. And neither did Ho Chi Minh. You can try to make an argument that Ho Chi Minh was really a nationalist fighting for his country blah blah blah and so forth and so on, but I don't accept that version of the story.

I wouldn't call To Lam or his predecessors "Uncle Joe" but the Party and the Party's policies and Vietnam's fate always has been Soviet and Stalinist. The VCP never paid any tribute to Marx and Lenin, but called itself Stalinistr a both the best of times and the worst of times. Vietnam might not be Soviet/Russian but it has unfailingly for 95 years followed the policies and tactics of Uncle Joe and his successors. Just as one tiny example:  Show To Lam the crime and he will show you the man; or, in these enlightened times, the woman.

Vietnam is not Russia and is not a Russian satellite -- not directly. But the ruling Party was, has been and is Stalinist. I think that is a key to understanding that country, in the past and today. As Carl writes.

There's a great line in The Death of Stalin movie, given by Georgi Malenkov.
No problem... Oops. When I said 'no problem', I meant to say, "No! Problem!".

73