I Lost My Past (2017)
glineq.blogspot.com
glineq.blogspot.com
Later learned that the former's father was an informant for Ceausescu's secret police (Securitate) - a butcher by profession but a literal snitch for any "anti-communism" behavior of his acquaintances, while the latter's grandfather was an "intellectual" despised by the regime and punished with forbidding anyone in his family from accessing higher education or good jobs.
It is possible the author's family enjoyed such privileges as well without his knowledge.
Generally life in ex YU from in 70s and on was pretty decent. We have better standards now (Slovenia), but some parts have worse living conditions than when they were in YU. And the gap between haves and have not is ever increasing. So author is not alone in what he is thinking.
So we didn't have breadlines and politically charged prison sentences were long gone. Even Miklos Haraszti in 1973 only got a suspended eight months sentence for his book -- twenty years before he would've been executed for it, ten years before it would've been a several years non-suspended sentence. And I was a kid in the 80s which was even milder.
But what I do remember is the hopelessness in the shadows of the prefabricated giant concrete buildings. That there's nothing exciting in the future, that we have no choice in our life that no matter what we do, we will live and die in those meagre surroundings. I have, from the age of 10, every afternoon spent a few hours on extra mathematics so that I can get into an elite school so that I can get into a Western university once I am 18. This was not something my parents hammered into me, this was something I wanted to do, desperately so. I remember telling my mother when I was 9 that I wanted to commit suicide which of course she didn't take seriously and then I made this plan to escape.
I did get into the high school I wanted at 14 but my English wasn't good enough to get into MIT when I was 18 but that was not too bad because by 1993 of course that regime was over and there was hope again. Which, for me, was crushed in 2006 and I filed for a Canadian immigration visa and moved there in 2008.
In Bulgaria the official line is that the country and regime are socialist, which is on the path to communism which everyone should work towards. There were even slogans in factories and other public places about this.
The rest of your story is tragic. I'm sorry you had to live through such times.
The problems about life you've described in your post are still valid today - we the country has become a nearshore colony of western corporation, nothing you do or think up will as an intellectual will actually end up in the ownership of Hungarians. No interesting R&D will ever be conducted here - all the companies that built high-tech things, and all the research institutes collapsed like a house of cards during the 90s, or were bought up and watered down by the West.
The political situation is somewhat similar to the one under Socialism - boy, I do hope you like the the current party, since any meaningful democratic transfer of power seems unlikely in the near future.
The prices and taxes and salaries being what they are, the necessities of a basic, liveable middle-class life - a house, a car, some reserves for financial stability - is a pipe dream for even the educated upper-middle class - barring financial trickery, help from parents or working abroad.
As for the concrete prefabs - while they were not aesthetic I agree - but the urban planning concept that surrounded them meant that they didn't just go up on their own, but they made sure everything - playgrounds, schools, pharmacies, stores was accessible in walking distance. The blocks were also mostly placed far apart enough, that one could get sunlight and breathing space between them.
This is in stark contrast to modern real estate practices, where the goal of the for-profit developer is to buy a plot of land - oftentimes far away from existing city infrastructure, and turn it into as many sellable m^2 as possible, with no regards for liveability or infrastructure load. But no matter since these hovels are more often than not are sold at prices that eclipse the lifetime earnings of your average Hungarian.
The only meaningful improvement I can think of is the ease with which one can move to the West.
In summary, I hardly think the situation's unchanged - but your chief complaint - `hopelessness` - is just as valid as ever.
I do not know where you grew up but the playgrounds were fucking dystopian. Do you remember the ping-pong tables? I do. I remember them all too well. They were raw concrete with a piece of metal for a net, it had holes in , but still. Try to pay ping-pong on a non-at-all smooth surface if you can. I could continue with the slides, the see-saws and all.
As for the schools do not get me started. If you speak Hungarian I wrote down our education journey at https://www.reddit.com/r/hungary/comments/he9c9s/a_mi_t%C3%B... tl;dr: I financed a micro reform school for five long, long years, 2015-2020.
And the hopelessness is no longer valid because you can leave. Also: you should.
I needed to re-learn what sort of foods I like or not because I was eating such crap for the first half of my life. You can buy much higher quality food and in much bigger selection. There are restaurants worth going to. Life really did get better.
It seems that we're on a sociological plateau.
In a capitalist society and with very little money he experienced a shock at first but over time he did very well.
Going back for visiting after the Iron Curtain fell he was considered someone like a traitor or something by the people that remained there. Most of them were nostalgic of the communist regime.
It is easy to understand, first the people that loved freedom or autonomy either left or were just exterminated. The people that remained were like sheep with zero personal initiative that needed constantly someone leading them telling them what to do.
Then suddenly the System collapses and they are told to live by their own means. They are old(and old dogs can't learn new tricks) and there is no people around that can show them as they were exterminated, or institutions, or examples to copy.
Countries like the US were created mostly by people that could not stand being told what to do in their original European countries. That makes not only the structures in the US but their genetics as well.
In communist countries people with initiative were exterminated and that not only affected their economic and political structures, but their genetics as well, they did not passed their genes to a new generation.
Probably because of my genes I am entrepreneur today. It is not for everyone as there is not such a thing as "safety".
Of course not everyone was thrown into prison, or stood in breadlines. Experiences depended on your relative social standing under the old regime and how that social standing was viewed under the new regime. The revolution for the laborers, but the most successful labors? Blood enemies of the people.
Plenty of people were born into relative privilege under the communist system. Children who quietly got to go to foreign universities, while their parents talked about the need for the lower classes to sacrifice their children for the revolution. Those same children who now run very successful businesses thanks to their family connections.
And there was the flip side, which the author doesn’t like the focus on. The ones who were successful businessmen or even farmers but after the revolution thrown into prison as “dangerous counter revolutionaries”. Or the families of that person who had to pay penance for their bloodlines sins - their children denied an education. Of course the assets stripped from the family were given to the “people”, the the most generous portion reserved for those most loyal to the revolution.
You just described the situation everywhere, Communist or Capitalist or Whateverist system.
I don't think it's fair to characterize the people the author talks about as children raised under privileged circumstances necessarily. Many working class people, mothers who had plenty of support in raising kids, people who enjoyed relatively egalitarian and free education for the first time and so on have legitimately good memories, and are today some of the most dissatisfied with the state of affairs. In particular the role of women seems to have been mostly lost. When the East had already granted reproductive rights, women in the West got abortions in the Netherlands.
This is generally written off as "Ostalgie" (pun on nostalgia) in exactly the same way the author describes.
what they are actually missing is the lost great times when they were able to feel being so high above the others
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Socialist_Fed...
He still arrested opponents and operated a secret police force who dealt with dissident voices though, so hey.
Everything is a trade-off and this is certainly part of the price we pay to have full shelves.
The author feels their past was lost, but many of us are furious our futures were stolen.
By allowing ourselves to be fed a picture of unavoidable grimness behind the iron curtain, we become more susceptible to believing that a lack of such grimness in our own lives means all is well.
I think we need to strive to protect this nuance and preserve memories such as those the author shares. History and the worlds are not cookie cutter fairy tales were everything is either all good or all bad.
https://twitter.com/BrankoMilan/status/1470492667884851202
So to summarize (leaving Stalin etc out, in order not to complicate matters further) we have the average per capita income in "Euroasia" growing at:
1.6% pa during the last ~30y of Tsarism
2.1% pa during 18y of Brezhnev's "stagnation"
0.8% pa during 30y of "new capitalism".
I guess like the author it depends also where exactly in China/Yougoslavia you live(d), as Im sure a migrant miner in the north doesnt have the same experience as an electronics trader in the south.
But, I dont think it's that much worse than life in the U.S. even if it's certainly not far better. People who have no stake and a lot of comfort will care a lot about abstractions like freedom of speech on twitter reaching millions with aggressive opinions, but that's not so important: you can already discuss everything you want in private and the trend is sloooowly towards realizing we'll need public feedback in politics.
Just the way the communists reacted to the HK elections is interesting: they watered down the challenge, certainly, but then they sang and sang the praises of elections... well then, does that mean as long as the candidates proclaim their communist purity on the mainland, we could also vote there for the executive or legislative powers?
EDIT: whomever downvoted might want to look up political parties in China
You can criticize the government, as long it’s about something that doesn’t threaten their hold on power. That’s true about most “freedoms” in China. If it doesn’t threaten the CCP, you’ll likely be admonished at most, and if you acquiesce, left alone.
But I’d you cross the line (and you will be warned), you won’t be tolerated.
And for the vast majority this is fine as long as they can put food on the table and their children have a future.
1) US: has a two-party system, the "left" and the "right". Most democracies have the political power concentrated in just two parties - the "socialists" and the "conservatives", even though some minor contenders may exist on the scene and the main parties compete in bribing them so they can ensure majority.
The two parties hate each other's guts and compete for resources (how much they will divert to their own pocket) but both know very well that the show must go on, so don't count on anything but a shallow surface-level "competition" between them. If the system really is in danger of changing and they might lose their grip, they won't hesitate to leave aside their differences and unite in their common goal of ensuring long term self-preservation.
2) Communist system has a two-party system: the "party" and the "police". The communist party and the secret police mirror exactly the deep antagony between the two parties of the democratic two-party system and also their just as deep complicity when it comes to long term continuity.
It's just a matter of time until #2 realizes the only thing separating #1 from them is apparent legitimacy. Some level of oppressiveness is required for #2 and that's consuming resources, while #1 has the advantage that it frees those resources since they no longer have to force people in accepting the system but can tell them "you are free to make your own choice". So if and when those freely elected turn out to be the exact copy of the people they "replaced" you are free to f*k off and vote again next time, like that would change anything.
But it is hard for me to talk about personal experiences of someone. Like my grandfather was talking about regime during WWII that collaborated with Nazi Germany. How things were suddenly better for them even if they were not actively participating. While father, mother and sister of my other grandfather were killed by the same regime.
There's a reason why in scientific discussion anecdotal evidence is dismissed. There's no singular canonical experience that people in Yugoslavia share. Also, people can live a very oblivious normal life without knowing all the darks secrets of a system.
And yet, of course, the upper echelons lived very well. They had palaces, anything they wanted was imported for them from the West, even if not allowed for the average citizen. Certainly, they didn't complain about their villages being gassed, or their sons being tortured to death by the sociopath son of the dictator.
But saying "there's no singular canonical experience" feels very strange in that regard, because there was, but with a few exceptions.
That does not mean Saddam wasn't a psychopath and a brutal oppressor. The fact he did those things are enough to condemn him as the evil dictator he was. There's no need to erase other experiences.
When talking about how "people in a country" live, you look at the average person. You don't say "but the King and his ministers live differently, we shouldn't erase their experiences". The inner circle always lives differently from the masses, but by definition, they are very few. Look at the lives of the many, not the few.
And regarding Iraq: during Saddam's reign about a quarter of a million people were murdered or disappeared. There's a good chance that the majority of Iraqis did have someone in their family affected, though it might not have been their son, but a cousin or nephew.
This need to see suffering as universal to be valid is problematic, because very few atrocities affect a large portion of a population. That most don't does not jvalidate them.
Another ~100k Kurds and Shiite Arabs were killed during the '91 uprisings. Together, they make up more than half of the population.
Unless Saddam was super surgical (#heWasnt), they were affected. Unless of course, by "personally affected", you mean they personally did die. But that would be a very strange idea.
In any case you're the one mong goalposts here - this started with simply making the point that it's unread jable to assume a single experience captures the experience of a people.
Nevertheless you've provided nothing to justify the idea that Saddam's purges affected anywhere close to a majority of the population, even if that is itself a distraction.
However, most Americans don't need to fear for their lives by the police, and most Iraqis aren't Kurds. Most Iraqis weren't gassed or tortured either.
You can't twist the narrative to pretend that the situation of the abused minorities are what the majority of the population experienced. Yes, they were living under their dictator's regime and no they were probably none too happy about the atrocities occurring, but that doesn't mean they didn't have a normal life outside that.
In the US police kill less than 1,000 per year. Most are white people, many justifiably. So let’s overestimate and say 25% of those are murder. (Clearly not, but work with me). So 250 per year in a country of 350M.
When the Kurds were gassed, a singular event, 3,000-5,000 people were killed. Random people, shelled by the Iraqi military for no reason other than living in the same place as rebellious Kurds. Iraq had a population of 16M at the time.
Those are clearly two VERY different situation you’re trying to draw a parallel between.
I do agree that these events don’t define the life of the general population.
You just read a blog post of a personal anecdote. What were you expecting? A dissertation?
Because it doesn't feed the research machine!
One anecdote is dismissed. Ten anecdotes are collected to start grifting for grants. And one hundred anecdotes gives you Empiricism (TM)!
I've come to value anecdotes as a marker of "something is there." To throw them away completely is foolish. Have you read most research papers being pumped out? The methodologies are always flawed (dare I say, biased; ha!) towards favorable results (or atleast I hope. Some of the methodologies I've seen for biological research are so stupid, I refuse to believe someone came up with them in good faith).
One anecdote should point us in a direction but it's not enough to prove anything.
AKA "there is a grain of joke in every joke".
Not everything is bigger in Texas but this is a clear marker on some aspects of Texans self-perception. Which was exported so successfully it's now known not only in all other states but in other states too.
"They would soon see, that criminal means once tolerated are soon preferred. They present a shorter cut to the object than through the highway of the moral virtues. Justifying perfidy and murder for public benefit, public benefit would soon becomethe pretext, and perfidy and murder the end; until rapacity, malice, revenge, and fear more dreadful than revenge, could satiate their insatiable appetites. Such must be the consequences of losing in the splendour of these triumphs of the rights of men, all natural sense of wrong and right."
However i think the author is talking more about the smaller Eastern European communist countries in general ( Yugoslavia, East Germany are mentioned), not the Soviet Union.
I'll also point out that:
- The imperialistic part of the USA is the socialist part of USA (which does exist and gets larger every day).
- Empires are not economically profitable as a whole, only a few people profit.
If you mean the army, it’s not socialist. The workers don’t have democratic control over the means of production. It’s just a planned economy, plenty of those exist in dictatorships of the bourgeoisie (like Amazon).
Of course, in properly-functioning capitalist systems, you can and should fight and Ally with the megacorps with start-ups. In socialist countries...
Interesting to consider, as sort of a tolerance paradox.
EDIT: to clarify, this foreign policy was not considered "imperialism" at that time.
That was a jarring phrase that helped underscore the great divide between East and West.
However for the rest you're on point. South Vietnam was a fake regime propped up by the French initially and then the US, had no legitimacy, wasn't democratic ( which could have been a saving grace for it) and was in US-backed violation of the Geneva conference. That's not to say there weren't anti-communists in Vietnam, they were just a small minority (Ho Chi Minh had very strong support in the North, which was more populous).
The communists certainly had strong support in the North (they had secured power and purged any opposing elements, including within their party). They also had support in the south, but were forced to infiltrate hundreds of thousands over the war to sustain a fighting force as they weren’t able to grow it organically in the South (also shown during the 1968 Tet Offensive where no population center or military unit “flipped” to the communist side).
OP said the North was “right” because the South was X,Y,Z.
I countered with “the North also did X,Y,Z.”, thus countering their claims that the North was somehow “more pure or righteous”.
Maybe it is whataboutism, but that seems appropriate when someone is trying to claim superiority to another?
It kind of was though. It was created temporarily until elections are held by a treaty over fears the communists will have control over all of Vietnam ( they would have), and existed solely due to direct and heavy American support. It wasn't a country based on self-determination or anything of the like.
And I suppose you could say the same about the American Rebellion. It never would have succeeded without support from the French. Does that mean the fledgling Continental Congress wasn’t a real country?
Today Vietnam and China having mostly-capitalist economies so what was really the purpose of their revolutions?
The CCP's primary claim to legitimacy is that they kicked out the Japanese. They were a little late to get to kick out the Manchus.
The US policy in Vietnam boiled down to one thing: body count. US only real measure of success was how many Vietcong/PAVN they killed; and because they had no way of telling the difference -- nor did they care much -- this effectively meant "kill as many Vietnamese as possible" (they were encouraged to consider any casualty as VC, overrepresenting their numbers). And to top it out, they engaged in massive forced resettlement, pillage, rape, destroyed foliage and the ecosystem, and poisoned the land.
Think about it.
Americans living in Vietnam claim the Vietnamese don't hate them. Even ex veterans visiting the country report this. That's pretty amazing all things considered.
I mean we’re nearly 50 years past their victory? When are they going to “enact the American rights Ho Chi Minh showed so much admiration for”?
They delivered on independence from colonial powers, and on gaining self determination. No small feat!
I'm not sure what you believe they promised.
Vietnam was devastated as a country. The land itself, and the people. Countless Vietnamese were killed, far more than whatever the US lost in the war. The US did a number on them, the effects of which are still felt. It's a wonder these days they don't hate America (which by all accounts they don't).
Initial admiration for US values naturally fell once the US waged war on them, and within Vietnam leadership the hardliners gained power. Being attacked tends to give voice to the hardliners and sideline the "liberals".
It's a matter of record Ho Chi Minh initially admired the US and expected their support. It's a matter of record the US feared he would win the elections and so they cancelled them. You can argue till you're blue in the face, those two facts will remain.
You’re doing an awful lot of hand waving to explain why Vietnam still doesn’t enact the freedom “they admire so much”. Your claim that Ho Chi Minh’s “disappointment from lack of US support” is the reason why Vietnamese still don’t have those rights rings pretty hollow.
> Ho Chi Minh admired the US
Which is a matter of public record.
> his government exacted brutal land reforms even the hardliners had to call out as “going too far”.
This has nothing to do with anything. Please try not to sidetrack the conversation: the Viet Minh and its successors were fighting a struggle of independence, the US could have been their ally but instead chose to turn against them and trash their country, while propping up a dictator so bad they later gave the greenlight for its removal (and whooopsie, his "accidental" assassination). Not to speak of the appalling Phoenix Program assassination campaign whose subtle tactics included, by the admission of its practitioners, listening to tips about alleged VC, knocking on the door, then wasting whoever answered it.
Doesn't seem so freedom loving to me!
> Your claim that Ho Chi Minh’s “disappointment from lack of US support” is the reason why Vietnamese still don’t have those rights rings pretty hollow.
Who knows what would have happened had the US supported Vietnam's anti colonial struggles instead of siding with their oppressors. It couldn't have been worse than the unmitigated disaster the US conducted.
You’re missing my point entirely. Ho Chi Minh claimed he admired the US’ freedoms. Then once the North was established, his government enacted brutal land reforms that even the communists said went too far.
What I’m saying is words are cheap and Ho Chi Minh never admired the US’ freedoms (maybe theoretically?), they were just empty words to try and get a powerful ally on his side.
That’s clearly a factual statement when you realize the VCP has zero intention, even today, of giving the people of Vietnam the same freedoms you claim Ho Chi Minh so admired, almost 60 years after taking power over all of Vietnam.
And yes, the Phoenix program was effective because it used the same tactics against the communists they used against villages in the South. It's pretty rich seeing the North call out the US and South foe those tactics - truly the pot calling the kettle black.
Let me correct you: it's not "the North". It's called Vietnam and the US waged a war against it (mostly against South Vietnam).
Also, it's the world -- we -- who is appalled at the way the US behaved in Vietnam, including its assassination campaigns, Agent Orange, Napalm, mass murder, etc.
As for what may have happened, unlike you I'm not a mind reader to know what was false or faked. I do know if the US hadn't waged war on Vietnam, things would have been way better, if only because many thousands more Vietnamese would have lived, the country wouldn't have been destroyed and who knows, an unscathed Vietnam might have turned way more sympathetic to the West.
You and people like you are sickening.
The US has a history of this - Castro wooed the US too. His party didn't even describe itself as socialist until years after the US slammed the door in his face and the Soviets didn't. Once the Soviets had bought him, Castro made concession after concession that he could have made to the US instead.
To claim Ho Chi Minh or Castro would have been freedom loving leaders is laughable.
What is a matter of fact is that both attempted to get US support before they turned elsewhere. And that support could have come with strings that might have produced much better outcomes.
Just like it did when Castro turned to the Soviets. He proved he could be bought, but the US was unwilling to buy.
As for Ho, he was more concerned with self determination and anyi-imperialism than the specifics of the resulting regime. US support with strings there too could have avoided millions of dead and gotten a more moderate regime.
In terms of pure numbers of men they certainly contributed less than the Kuomintang, but in terms of overall impact it's close to impossible to say.
Is Vietnam in any way "more independent" today than if the north had lost? It makes sense if you claim to fight the Americans because they're evil capitalists but Vietnam turned around to adopt chinese-style reforms and is now mostly friendly towards the US.
> The CCP's primary claim to legitimacy is that they kicked out the Japanese.
The CCP is in power because they defeated the KMT, but decades later they adopted capitalism and today justify their rule through nationalism.
What's the point of a civil war if you eventually end up adopting most of the other side's policies?
Yes.
> and is now mostly friendly towards the US.
Independence works like that. When you let a country decide instead of forcing by military power, they might even choose to like you -- or at least, not hate you.
The US and Britain are friends and allies in modern times, after all.
There the communists were installed to power by the invading Russian army, even if false revolutionary and liberation histories were made up after the facts.
The few places where there were indeed communists fighting for liberation, i.e. Tito in Yugoslavia or Enver Hoxha in Albania, so they had some legitimacy, were precisely the places which later escaped from being under strict Russian control.
For Yugoslavia and Albania, what you say seems to apply.
There was no “rightful” liberation. It was a civil war in its essence with two opposing groups of Vietnamese fighting for control of a fractured post-colonial state, with plenty of foreign interference/assistance during the whole thing.
In the end the North did a better job (through both smart politics, good PR and internal support/oppression of opposition).
The difference is that with no outside meddling and support, South Vietnam wouldn't have existed or would have existed very briefly until a Communist electoral victory of the whole country. Without the US in Vietnamese affair, there is no North-South war.
And the US didn’t get significantly involved (beyond material support for the French) in Vietnam until the early 1960’s with the help of military advisors. The build up didn’t start until around ‘65 when it was apparent the South would collapse (through a combination of communist subversion but also a lot of in fighting) The South existed as an independent state for a few years - barely, I would agree. But it existed.
It's not your right to decide whether people have free will or not. It's their call. "Deciding" for them is called colonialism.
Ho Chi Minh had huge popular support; precisely what the US feared.
PS: before the US fucked things up, Ho Chi Minh even looked up to them and fully expected their support against the French. That's how bad the US fucked up.
And your comment about “free will” is telling. How much “free will” do the Vietnamese have today?
The only difference is it’s Vietnamese elite that control the masses, not some foreign power.
False. Did you know the Viet Minh initially counted with support from the US? When it was an anti Japanese struggle, of course. Initial US assessments even thought the French should get the fuck out; those sentiments were overruled by others in the US, sadly.
The Vietnamese struggle was a struggle of national liberation. Aided from the outside like all resistance organizations, sure -- like the French resistance against the Nazis was. Didn't make France any less real. Imagine if the Allies had partitioned France in two after the war, claimed the last Nazi held parts were to be ruled by Germany's successors or whatever, and that the ensuing fight to reunify France was "a civil war" and that the free (non German) France was "just as artificial".
> I’m not sure what your point is?
That the US sided with colonial powers and against an independence movement. Not their finest hour.
> How much “free will” do the Vietnamese have today?
More than they would have had had the US backed dictatorship won.
Not that it matters: it's not for you to decide. There's no White Man's Burden to send civilization to other countries. Let them have their self determination and arrange their governments how they like.
Above all, don't murder them by the thousands, destroy the countryside and poison their land when you don't like the government they choose.
The US sided with a colonial power and was therefore wrong.
They also destroyed the country in their alleged attempt to "save" it. They were savage about it. Brutal.
Please stop it with the sidetracking attempts. We're talking about Vietnam, whether the US was the aggressor, and whether calling it the liberation of Saigon makes sense.
The liberated themselves from Japanese and then French control, with limited ( some arms) outside help, so that's just false.
They ended up getting rid of the mightiest army in the world, after all.
When the French lost and withdrew, America invaded and was subsequently beaten.
This is not a defence of China or Russia, look at how they are invading Tibet and the Ukraine, but the Vietnamese people weren’t invaded by China or the USSR, they were invaded by the US. South-Vietnam was an American fabrication during its invasion following the post French-Indonesian-war, because the Vietnamese people had a government in Hanoi, the US simply didn’t like it.
After the communist victory at Dien Bien Phu, the French negotiated a peace (without much choice) that forced them to give up the North (where the communists were strongest).
The French slowly disengaged from the South over the next decade leaving a fragile Vietnamese government in the South that had no interest in joining the communists in the North (1 million fled during partition).
The US did back a fractured, unstable government in the South in order to contain communism - I’m not arguing that. But to claim that the country, one that lasted 20 years, wasn’t “real” is just silly.
It’s like saying South Korea isn’t real because the UN backs it’s security and the communists had significant support prior to partition.
They had also been supporting the French with materiel and even limited numbers of advisors during the First Indochina War.
There was a war of national liberation against a colonial power, and the US sided with the colonial power.
Of course Ho Chi Minh would win - there were no free elections in the North (100% of votes went for him!) and substantial support in the South. I wouldn’t call that a fair and free election.
Yes, and I agree the US supported the French materially and with advisors.
But South Vietnam was no longer a colonial power. The French were gone and the Vietnamese called the shots (not without foreign influence, I agree, but similar to the USSR and China influence in the North - you pay the bills you get a say).
But none of that infers the South wasn’t a real country.
False.
The US own internal documents stated they believed Ho Chi Minh held enormous popular support, especially in the countryside.
They cancelled the elections and instead propped up a bloody dictatorship. Nothing natural about the South, it was completely artificial, incompetent, and repressive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940%E2%80%931946_in_French_In...
So are you arguing that South Korea is a “completely artificial, incompetent and repressive” country? It was also a dictatorship after the war for about 20 years. But Vietnam still is today after 50.
No, I'm arguing about Vietnam. Please try not to sidetrack the conversation.
Fact: Ho Chi Minh had huge popular support and would have won general elections, a fact the US didn't like at that stage and so they made sure it didn't happen. Instead, they propped up one of the most brutal dictatorships in the region, one so bad they had to allow its removal and the assassination of their puppet dictator.
They also destroyed South Vietnam, killing villagers, poisoning the land and bombing the hell out of North Vietnam.
And they failed because they were foreign aggressors.
Fact: the US doesn't get to choose the form of government of other countries. When they try to do it by military force, they are invaders and aggressors.
You can argue until you're blue in the face, those are the facts.
The North was a brutal dictatorship propped up by China and the USSR.
The South was a brutal dictatorship propped up by the West.
Both had Vietnamese supporters. Again, to dismiss the South as not a real country is just twisting facts. It was a civil war between two Vietnamese factions and the South lost. Those are the facts.
The mythology the North has created around the war (just like every country does) is helped to keep its grip on power but is a gross oversimplification.
And you’re right, the US doesn’t get to choose which government a country has. But neither does Vietnam when it comes to Cambodia or Laos, but hey, they hasn’t stopped them!
Please stop trying to sidetrack the conversation.
> The North was a brutal dictatorship propped up by China and the USSR.
No, it was a nationalist anti colonial government that aimed at the reunification and independence of Vietnam.
> Both had Vietnamese supporters. Again, to dismiss the South as not a real country is just twisting facts
It was an artificial creation imposed upon the Vietnamese by external parties; hence not a real country.
> The mythology the North has created around the war
Oh, there is a mythology alright! There's a whole myth created about this war, mostly by the foreign country that fought it -- to devastating effect to both Vietnam and the invaders who fought in it -- and who claims to be freedom loving and is still trying to heal from the wounds and the nonsense the war it inflicted caused upon thousands. This mythology is necessary in order to reconcile their aspirations to being a beacon of freedom and the fact they acted on the side of colonial oppressors.
> But neither does Vietnam when it comes to Cambodia or Laos, but hey, they hasn’t stopped them
But we are not talking about that, are we? If we were, we could condemn Vietnam's interference with other countries. Regrettably, this was about Vietnam's own struggle for independence and US interference with said independence.
When the US was fighting for its own independence, that's good. When they were stopping and interfering with another country's, that's bad. The same country can act good and bad at times. This was a case when the US was bad.
And torrents of blood.
Americans mourn 58,000 dead, but the NVC lost well north of a million.
It wasn't a civil war, not to begin with at least. The US installed a dictatorship in the South (the dictator they propped up was so bad they ended up greenlighting his removal and "accidental" assassination), with the promise of free elections. When predictions showed Ho Chi Minh would have won the elections in the South by a landslide, they simply cancelled the election.
That's not Vietnamese vs Vietnamese, it's Vietnamese vs colonial power.
In any colonial administration, people cozy with the colonial power will defend it and resent a change, of course.
The US never installed a government in the South. That was the French as a part of the ‘54 Treaty.
And your comment about a “free and fair” election makes me laugh. What do you suppose the vote would have been in the North? 100%? Probably.
Clearly a lot of Vietnamese opposed the communist regime. They lost, despite the support of the US. And the North won, with the support of China and the USSR.
There is not “rightful” winner, just the winner.
Brave words for someone going against the current consensus about the Vietnam war.
Also, please avoid name calling.
The US in effect propped up and backed the dictatorship. They also helped topple it and install successive and increasingly incompetent military dictatorships to replace it. Woo!
> There is not “rightful” winner, just the winner.
Nah, in the case of a national independence movement against colonial oppressors, there's a rightful winner.
Their errors and failures are their own, but they were the right side in that war and the US was the wrong side.
And after 30 years of post-communism there are too few successes to call the end of history a success.
Some recent examples (Iran, Afghanistan) are completely self-made catastrophes, i.e. countries that were democratic, modern, and free and lost that due to foreign (or, let's face it: US-)intervention in the first place.
Same with post-communism. The factors at play here cannot be reduced to "imposing democracy" onto countries. Do you have any idea what 40 years of communism and being an artificial puppet state to a country and its economy? And it's not as if this was after two devastating wars either.
If you take a closer look at Europe you'll soon find out that it's a tad more complex than just the political system. From ethnic tensions to border disputes to geographic complexities there's so much more to it than just whether people are free to vote or not.
their state formation was severely lacking. Just because they had elections doesn't mean they were substantial democracies.