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??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Này Nhân dân ơi đứng lên đạp đổ cộng sản bạo tàn lưu manh, Giệt Đảng CSVN giải phóng thành
đô ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
-- (CHXHCN_ Là Nhà Tieu@Đảng CSVN.org), November 21, 2004
Vietnam: A Visit to Uncle Ho
By Ron Emmons
I stood at the corner of Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi, waiting to be escorted through the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, resting place of Vietnam’s greatest hero. I wasn’t quite sure why I was standing there – I had never willingly gone to gaze at a corpse before. I was in Vietnam on holiday, and was trying to avoid all reminders of the inexpressible horrors that swept through the country during the 20th century. I wanted to focus on the dramatic landscapes, the colourful minority groups and scenes of everyday life.
But it wasn’t easy. The museums were full of war wreckage; the pith helmets so popular among locals looked like the headgear of people still living in constant fear of an air raid; just strolling through the parks had brought me face to face with bullet-scarred missile launchers. My resolve to ignore the past had evaporated. I knew about the inestimable role Ho Chi Minh had played in shaping the modern country, and I was curious to see the patriotic looks on the faces of Vietnamese visitors, for whom such a visit was a pilgrimage.
Perhaps I also wanted to test my own reaction to the experience. Thirty years earlier, along with Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh had been a hero of mine when I was a student radical in my native England, disillusioned with the lack of caring in so-called democratic societies. Later, I became embarrassed about my waving of the little red book as I learned about some of Mao’s catastrophic decisions. Yet the frail image of Ho Chi Minh had always seemed benign and as I prepared to face him, I felt I was about to enter the presence of someone more than human.
The life of ‘Uncle Ho’, as he is affectionately known to his people, does read like a Hollywood epic. Born of humble origins in a village near Vinh under the name Nguyen Sinh Cung, he sailed to Europe as a galley boy in 1911 when he was only 21. He spent time in Paris, London and the United States doing a variety of jobs, such as waiter, pastry chef and photo-retoucher. While living in Paris, he was swept up in the fervour of the Russian Revolution, and saw communism as the solution to Vietnam’s subjection by colonial powers, so in 1924 he went to Moscow for training.
Aware that he could be arrested in many countries for expounding his radical views, he changed his name and appearance regularly, and little is known of his actions over the next few years. He moved from country to country like a spy in a novel, spending time in China, Thailand (where he lived as a monk for a while) and Hong Kong, constantly trying to co-ordinate efforts to secure Vietnam’s independence from the French. In 1941 Ho Chi Minh, whose name means ‘bringer of light’, slipped back into Vietnam and founded the Vietminh Front which would eventually bring about complete independence in 1975, though he himself died in 1969, before he could witness the re-unification of the country.
The escort arrived in a crisp white uniform with a small group of visitors and beckoned me to join them. We walked along a red carpet sheltered by a simple awning until we were opposite the entrance to the stark and sombre mausoleum. Then we executed a sharp left and passed under the gaze of guards who were checking us for hands in pockets, smoking, immodest attire, talking or any other behaviour which might be construed as disrespectful. We continued on through a huge pile of wreaths and into the dark, cool confines of the marble interior.
Still I felt uneasy about the approaching encounter. Uncle Ho specifically requested to be cremated, but the authorities were intent on giving him the same treatment accorded to Lenin and Mao. This involved a secret process devised by the Russians to preserve Lenin, requiring special chemicals and a year’s work to complete. Even then, the body is sent back to Russia every year for ‘touching up’.
Ho was politically correct in his opinion. Communism, like Buddhism, takes a pragmatic view of death, and professes cremation as the most practical way of dealing with corpses. Cemeteries take up a lot of space, and of course if everyone buried their dead, there would be no room left for the living. Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum occupies an enormous space in the heart of a city of three million people. I imagined his small, bony face might bear a gruff expression of displeasure.
We were marched up a gently-sloping ramp, scrutinized at every step by the stony gazes of the guards, to the dim display chamber. The silence seemed absolute; even our timid footsteps were absorbed by the thick-piled carpet. We were led down one side, past the feet, and along the other side of a glass-walled casket containing the mortal remains of the man. Spotlights picked out his face and hands, calmly crossed on his chest. Rather than looking annoyed, the face emanated the beatific, contented expression of a Buddha. He looked pale, rather understandably, and his grey hair was so thin it was almost invisible. It could have been a good wax copy, but the sanctimonious atmosphere told me it wasn’t.
I knew we were not supposed to pause as we passed through the chamber, but I had to freeze momentarily in mid-step as I passed his head to allow the moment to sink in. No doubt Vietnamese visitors looked on those features more as those of a deity than a man. That was not my experience. Instead I saw him somehow as an old friend who reminded me of my youth – he looked like one of those dishevelled, bohemian-looking characters I had hung out with at rock concerts long ago. Like Ho, we had sought to uproot what we saw as a derelict social system by dropping out of the rat race and living in communes. Unlike Ho, our actions had changed nothing.
Yet nearly thirty years after the fulfillment of Ho’s dream, Vietnam was turning into the kind of corrupt and unequal society that Ho struggled so hard to avoid. I wondered what he would make of it all if he could come for a walk around town with me. He might not be impressed by the mausoleum, but he would probably approve of the purposeful bustle on the streets and the faithful renovation of historic buildings in the city. He might even approve of the new 20- storey blocks of exclusive offices and residences, but whether he would approve of the visible gap between rich and poor, I am not so sure.
All these changes are the results of the ‘doi moi’ (new thinking) policy which has been in effect for the last decade, allowing traders to operate in the free market. Ho would have surely been disappointed to be sitting next to me on the plane when I arrived in the country; my first impression of Vietnam was a Pepsi advert splashed across the side of a shuttle bus. After centuries of valiantly fighting off invaders by land, sea and air, Vietnam had finally succumbed to western influences.
Ho would surely have agreed that the Russian model of communism was not all it was once cracked up to be. But then again where would he look for guidance, to feel that rush of enthusiasm and optimism he felt in Paris almost a century ago? I doubt he’d be impressed by the USA’s growing role as the world’s self-elected police force, nor would he find much solace in the protracted battles for independence that continue on all continents, not to mention the occasional terrorist attack. Uncle Ho would probably have been happy to get back in the casket. I almost wanted to hop in with him.
I felt strangely exhausted as I emerged from the enormous tomb into the late-morning glare and squatted on the steps. It was only 11 a.m., and I had a list of half a dozen other places I wanted to visit that day, but nothing seemed relevant any more. Wet spots brightened the speckled marble at my feet, and I glanced up to see a tropical storm about to dump itself on me.
-- (DrX@CarịTra.com), November 21, 2004.
The place that Nguyên Sinh Cung was trained to be international communist spy for mother Russia ( The USSR ), was not a system all Russian People wished to live in [ No hope, No future ]. To many Vietnameses Nguyên Sinh Cung with Alias Ho Chi Minh was a traitor who traded VietNam's Independence and Liberty to the International Communist Empire.
Uphill climb
Former Soviet republics face daunting task in shadow of Cold War By Vladislav Zubok
It is impossible to disentangle the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The same conciliatory, integrationist, non-violent policies of Mikhail Gorbachev that contributed so much to the peaceful end of the global confrontation were bound to lead, in the atmosphere of the deepening economic and political crisis of 1990-91, to a disintegration of the union.
At the time this disintegration was a happy occasion for some, particularly Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians, who had been forced into the U.S.S.R. in 1940, and, paradoxically, for radical Russian intellectuals and democratic politicians. The latter believed that liberation from communism and the empire would catapult a new Russia to the ranks of prosperous democratic societies.
Instead, with notable exception of the Baltics, which have almost overcome the economic consequences of the communist era, all other parts of the former Soviet Union have gone through a period of severe economic, social and political crisis and degradation. For most of them it is not over yet. As Gorbachev predicted when he tried to conjure the genie of nationalist separatism back into the bottle, the parts did not become better off than their former whole.
The fragmentation led to stupendous amounts of economic and cultural losses, not to mention millions of ethnic refugees. Previous calamities on a similar scope happened in Europe only as a result of the two world wars.
All across the former U.S.S.R., the picture is depressing and bleak. Belarus is a dictatorship headed by a demagogue, economically dependent on the Russian Federation. Ukraine is a pseudo-democratic oligarchy with inept leadership and problematic identity. The trans- Caucasian states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan have just resurfaced from bloody ethnic wars with tattered economies. Huge Kazakhstan and the Central Asian states of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan are ruled by secular authoritarian regimes with hefty support of multinational corporations. They are trying hard to stem the tide of ethnic and clan hatred that has already buried their fifth Central Asian sister, Tajikistan.
For all these losses, these sovereign states and their greedy nationalistic elites are universally against restoration of the Soviet Union. In a new geopolitical vacuum they prefer to strike alliances with distant, rich and developed powers (the United States, Germany, Japan) or not-so-distant regional powers (the Scandinavian countries, Poland, Turkey), rather than with the Russian Federation, which, they fear, would inevitably lord over them.
Nowhere else were the losses and gains as the result of the end of the Cold War so high as in Russia itself. On one hand, Russians gained political liberties at home, relatively free media, availability of consumer goods and open borders to the world that they had rarely (probably never) enjoyed in their long history. As a result, tens of millions of Russians traveled to other countries, read and watched what they wanted, practiced religions and fashioned their lives otherwise according to their abilities and desires.
However, the legacy of the old Soviet economy and work ethic did not disappear. Instead, it only became aggravated with the post-Cold War/post-Soviet collapse and the misguided, inept and corrupt "democratic" leadership. Russia's road was strewn with failures.
Russia failed to revive a moribund economy. Instead, the economy has continued to shrink -- by 70 percent in industries and 50 percent in agriculture since 1990 -- without any silver lining in sight. The state debt more than doubled since the Soviet times, up to $200 billion. In August 1998 the Russian financial system, supported by an irresponsible pyramid scheme of state bonds, collapsed. The government defaulted on the sovereign debt; the ruble became devalued by more than three times; the prices of Russian securities shrunk by 10 times.
Russia failed to produce new concepts. This, combined with continuing overregulation and punitive taxation, left social services, education and public communications in Russia in a state of continuing degradation. With some exceptions (such as Moscow), Russia lives off the old Soviet systems of transportation, education and health without investing in them.
It also failed to create a new entrepreneurial and civic-conscious middle class. Instead, there is a class of oligarchs -- greedy and corrupt "new Russians." This class divided Russia's immense riches in a (sometimes murderous) competition with a "mafia" of organized crime and corrupt high officials -- a mafia that gobbles resources of the country and hides the profits in "offshore" companies abroad. The oligarchs' contempt for their fellow countrymen was matched by their ruthlessness. Their grip on Russia's economy seemed to be unshakable, at least until the August 1998 crisis weakened their grip considerably. As a result, the "capital flight" from Russia in the 1990s was between $50 billion to $230 billion
Russia failed to make life for a majority of its citizens better and happier. True, there is no fear of war or nuclear extinction. But most of the people live lives of stress, economic hardship, insecurity and unpredictability. People over 40 have no prospects of getting a decent job. The life expectancy of males has sunk to the level at the end of the previous century. Forty percent of them will probably never live to be 60. Women are much sturdier, but their social standing (the upper class is an exception) has become worse, not better than in Soviet times.
Today, like in late Soviet years, many well-educated youths dream of emigration, and many less-educated young people degenerate into a mob: an alcoholic, drug-addicted mob without a sense of purpose in life. Some of them join the ranks of neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, Russia- first movements. A vast majority of Russians see their new post- communist illusions and hopes for a decent life going down the drain.
Russia failed to create a new democratic state system based on law and reasonable division of responsibility between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. True, elections are held regularly and in a democratic manner. But there is still no large democratic political party in the country that could oppose the massive Russian Communist Party. Russian courts are without resources and have little impact on civic and business life. President Boris Yeltsin's constitution of 1993 gives him almost unchecked powers. But ironically, sickness and alcoholism reduced the exercise of those powers into bouts of "shake-ups" of the increasingly paralyzed government.
Russia failed to find its post-Soviet identity and place in the world. Yeltsin's request to invent a "Russian idea" was a sad travesty, but, in reality, the political mainstream had to borrow its great power -- nationalistic language -- from the communist opposition. By 1995 the conciliatory and integrationist pro-Western foreign policy of Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Andrei Kozyrev, Russian foreign minister from 1990 to 1995, was under severe criticism.
Most of the Russian elite today view the Russian Federation as the "rump U.S.S.R." or the "rump Russia" -- with troubling parallels to the present-day Yugoslavia. NATO's expansion, U.S. military action against Yugoslavia and Iraq, and Western activities against Russian commercial and political interests everywhere, particularly in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Central Asia, have contributed to growing Russian anti-Americanism.
Recently, U.S.-Russian relations grew so tense that Gorbachev had to issue a friendly warning against an American "superiority complex." The United States acted recently, he said, as if Russia no longer existed. "The U.S. has declared itself the winner in the Cold War. This concept could take you too far," Gorbachev said. Today a majority of the Russian elite seems to believe that the United States has been taking advantage of Russia's weakness. And a growing segment has become convinced that the Cold War is not over -- that the West wants to destroy Russia.
In the past nine years a large chunk of ordinary Russian citizens has voted against the return of Communists to power, fearing a threat to their new political liberties and expressing disgust with the legacy of Stalinism and Cold War militarism and imperial overstretch. However, with the next presidential election in 2000 approaching fast, many may re-evaluate their political allegiances and support a Communist candidate.
The Communist Party of Russia is riddled with factionalism and may not be suitable as a base for future governments. But members of its centrist establishment have already become part of the new cabinet of Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, and this trend will likely continue.
With all these depressing trends, what are the tidings of the future? Could Russia be like a Weimar Germany, i.e. a transitional state on the way to an aggressive, authoritarian dictatorship? Could it collapse and fragment as Yugoslavia has done? None of these scenarios is likely.
Most sober Russian estimations now coincide with gloomy Western assessments: It will take a very long time, and better luck with political leadership, before Russia will be able to enjoy fully the "peace bonus" for its role in the end of the Cold War.
Zubok, a COLD WAR series consultant, is a senior fellow at the National Security Archive in Washington and an expert on Soviet and Russian Cold War issues.
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-- (|||||A|||@LLL.com), November 21, 2004.
LENIN and The RED TERRORS
-- (|||||A|||@LLL.com), November 21, 2004.