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Vietnam POLITICAL CULTURE
Vietnam's political culture has been determined by a number
of factors of which communism is but the latest. The country's
political tradition is one of applying borrowed ideas to
indigenous conditions. In many ways, Marxism-Leninism simply
represents a new language in which to express old but consistent
cultural orientations and inclinations. Vietnam's political
processes, therefore, incorporate as much from the national
mythology as from the pragmatic concerns engendered by current
issues.
The major influences on Vietnamese political culture were of
Chinese origin. Vietnam's political institutions were forged by
1,000 years of Chinese rule (111 B.C. to A.D. 939). The ancient
Chinese system, based on Confucianism, established a political
center surrounded by loyal subjects. The Confucians stressed the
importance of the village, endowing it with autonomy but clearly
defining its relationship to the center. Those who ruled did so
with the "mandate of heaven." Although they were not themselves
considered divine, they ruled by divine right by reason of their
virtue, which was manifested in moral righteousness and
compassion for the welfare of the people. A monarch possessing
these traits received the unconditional loyalty of his subjects.
Selection of bureaucratic officials was on the basis of civil
service examinations rather than heredity, and government
institutions were viewed simply as conduits for the superior
wisdom of the rulers
(see The Social System
, ch. 2).
The Vietnamese adopted this political system rather than one
belonging to their Southeast Asian neighbors, whose rulers were
identified as gods. Nevertheless, Vietnamese interpretations of
the system differed from those of the Chinese both in the degree
of loyalty extended to a ruler and in the nature of the
relationship between the institutions of government and the men
who ruled. In Vietnam, loyalty to a monarch was conditional upon
his success in defending national territory. A history of Chinese
domination had sensitized the Vietnamese to the importance of
retaining their territorial integrity. In China, territorial
control did not arouse the same degree of fervor. In interpreting
the role of government institutions, Vietnamese beliefs also
conflicted with Confucian theory. Whereas the Confucians held
that institutions were necessarily subordinate to the virtuous
ruler, Vietnamese practice held the opposite to be true.
Institutions were endowed with a certain innate authority over
the individual, a trait manifested in the Vietnamese penchant for
creating complex and redundant institutions. Despite Confucian
influence, Vietnamese practice demonstrated a faith in
administrative structures and in legalist approaches to political
problems that was distinctly Vietnamese, not Confucianist.
Nevertheless, Confucian traits were still discernible in
Vietnam in the mid-1980s. To begin with, many of the first-
generation communist leaders came from scholar-official
backgrounds and were well-versed in the traditional requisites of
"talent and virtue" (tai duc) necessary for leadership. Ho
Chi Minh's father was a Confucian scholar, and Vo Nguyen Giap and
the brothers Le Duc Tho and Mai Chi Tho were from scholarly
families. They cultivated an image of being incorruptible and
effective administrators as well as moral leaders. The
relationship between the government and the governed was also
deliberately structured to parallel the Confucian system. Like
the Confucians, leaders of the highly centralized Vietnamese
ccommunist government stressed the importance of the village and
clearly defined its relationship to the center.
In this link between ruler and subjects, the Confucian and
communist systems appeared to co-exist more readily among the
disciplined peasants of the North than among their reputedly
fractious brethren in the South, where the influence of India and
France outweighed that of China. Searching for reasons to explain
the phenomenon, some observers have suggested that the greater
difficulty encountered in transforming Vietnam's southern
provinces into a communist society stemmed, in part, from this
region's having been the least Sinicized. In addition, Southeast
Asian influences in South Vietnam, such as Theravada Buddhism,
had created a cultural climate in which relations with a distant
center of authority were a norm
(see Religion
, ch. 2). Moreover,
the South's political systems had tended to isolate the center,
in both symbolic and physical terms, from the majority of the
people, who had no clear means of access to their government. The
South had also been the first to fall to the French, who had
extended their influence there by establishing colonial rule. In
the North, however, the French had maintained only a protectorate
and had allowed a measure of self-government. As a result, French
influence in the North was less than in the South and represented
a smaller obstacle to the imposition of communism.
The influence of modern China, and particularly the doctrines
of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party, on Vietnamese
political culture is a more complicated issue. Vietnamese
leaders, including Ho Chi Minh, spent time in China, but they had
formed their impressions of communism in Paris and Moscow and
through Moscow-directed Comintern connections. The success of the
Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949, however, inspired the
Vietnamese communists to continue their own revolution. It also
enabled them to do so by introducing the People's Republic of
China as a critical source of material support. The Second
National Party Congress, held in 1951, reflected renewed
determination to push ahead with party objectives, including
reconstruction of the society to achieve communist aims and land
reform.
The Soviet model, as well, can be discerned in Vietnamese
political practice. In the areas of legal procedure, bureaucratic
practice, and industrial management, the Vietnamese system more
closely resembles the Soviet system than the Chinese. In the late
1950s and early 1960s, VCP leaders were attracted particularly by
advances made in Soviet economic development. In the majority of
cases, however, Vietnamese policies and institutions, rather than
adhering strictly to either Chinese or Soviet models, have tended
to be essentially Vietnamese responses to Vietnamese problems.
Traditional adversarial relationships with neighboring states
have also helped define Vietnam's political culture. The
country's long-standing rifts with Cambodia and China, which
developed into open conflicts in 1978 and 1979 respectively,
suggest the need to view contemporary relationships in historical
perspective
(see Early History;
The Chinese Millennium
, ch. 1;
Foreign Relations
, this ch.). Hanoi's attitude regarding its
relations with these two neighbors is grounded as much in
accustomed patterns of interchange as in current concerns for
national security. It is also firmly based in the Vietnamese
tradition of resistance to foreign rule, which has been a theme
of great appeal to Vietnamese patriots since the time of Chinese
domination. The founding members of the VCP were the dissenting
elite of a colonized country. They were attracted to Marxism-
Leninism not only for its social theories but also because of the
Leninist response to colonial subjugation. Ho himself was
reported to have been more concerned with the problem of French
imperialism than with that of class struggle.
Vietnam's agrarian economy also contributed to its political
culture. As an agricultural people, the Vietnamese lacked an
urban industrial proletariat to carry out their revolution.
Leadership, therefore, necessarily passed into the hands of
scholar-official intellectuals and peasants.
Vietnam's political culture, in turn, has contributed to its
comparative isolation from non-communist states. This isolation
is partially a result of the ideology that has created self-
imposed political barriers with the West, but it is also the
result of the collective mentality of the nation's leadership,
which views itself as set apart from communist as well as
noncommunist nations. This view stems from years of preoccupation
with the struggle for independence and the reunification of the
country. Such an ethnocentric focus on domestic affairs resulted
in a provincial outlook that continued in the late 1980sand was
reinforced by the lack of international experience of many of
Vietnam's leaders whose foreign travel was limited to official
visits to other communist states. In addition, Vietnam's military
victories over reputedly superior military forces, including
those of France, the United States, and, in 1979, China, have
created a sense of arrogance that a wider world view would not
justify.
Communist ideology, particularly as manipulated by the
Vietnamese leadership, has also helped to shape Vietnam's
political culture. The country's communist leaders have been
adept at stressing the continuity of Marxist-Leninist doctrine
with Vietnamese history. The VCP successfully identified
communism with the historical goals of Vietnamese nationalism and
achieved leadership of Vietnam's independence struggle by
accommodating the aspirations of a number of ethnic, religious,
and political groups. The party has presented the myths and
realities of the past in a manner that suggests that they led
naturally to the present. In his writings, Ho Chi Minh used
classical Vietnamese literary allusions to convey a sense of
mystique about the past, and he cultivated the classical
Vietnamese image of a leader who reflected uy tin
(credibility), a charismatic quality combining elements of
compassion, asceticism, and correct demeanor, which legitimized a
leader's claim to authority. The communist regime additionally
promoted the importance of archaeology, popular literature, and
cultural treasures in order to emphasize its ties to Vietnam's
classical traditions. VCP historiography views the French
colonial period (1858-1954) as more an interruption than a part
of Vietnamese history.
Despite the care taken to preserve Vietnamese identity, the
party has hesitated to deviate from Marxist-Leninist doctrine
even when its application resulted in failure. The planned rapid
and total transformation of the South to communism in the 1970s
failed because it was almost entirely ideologically inspired and
did not sufficiently anticipate the scale of economic and social
resistance that such a plan would encounter in the South. This
failure paralleled the failure to collectivize the North rapidly
in the 1950s. In both cases, however, the party maintained that
the predominantly ideological programs had been instituted to
attain nationalist goals and that nationalism had not been
exploited for the purpose of furthering communism.
Vietnam's political culture represents, therefore, the
steadfast survival of what is Vietnamese in the face of a long
history of outside influence; integration of historical political
ideals with an imported communist organizational model has
created a communist identity that is no less Vietnamese.
Data as of December 1987
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