The Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm Affair, 1956–1960

In February 1956, Nikita Khruschev’s ‘Secret Speech’ at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), which condemned the cult of personality and excesses of the Stalinist period, sent shockwaves across the Communist world. This speech ultimately resulted in a sequence of events that contributed to the de-Stalinisation process, which include risings in Poland and Hungary and the Hundred Flowers Movement in Maoist China. North Vietnam, officially known as the Democratic Republic of Việt Nam (DRV), was no exception. Between 1956 and 1958, Hồ Chí Minh and other leaders of the ruling Vietnamese Workers Party (VWP) was engulfed in the Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm affair, which took its name from two journals respectively titled Nhân Văn (Humanity) and Giai Phẩm (Masterpieces). This affair and the journals that lent their names to it were led by a group of intellectuals and artists, many of them Party sympathisers, who sought to condemn the corruption and dogmatism of Communist officialdom and advocate for greater degree of intellectual and artistic freedom. While the journals were completely shut down by December 1956, the affair continued for several years with intensification of official crackdown and condemnation, culminating in a landmark trial by 1960. This affair not only operated within the international paradigm of de-Stalinisation in the Communist world and the Cold War but also under the domestic context of the DRV at the time, which was dominated by the after-effects of a violent and erroneous agrarian reform campaign and the issue of national reunification two years after the Geneva Accords of 1954 partitioned Việt Nam into two de facto states, a Communist North in the DRV and an American-backed South in the Republic of Việt Nam (RVN). In the general historiography of the affair, there has been a lack of emphasis on the intertwining of domestic and external developments. Thus, it would be interesting to look at the ways the domestic and external intertwined in the contesting discourses of Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm in the DRV between 1956 and 1958. Through examining existing scholarship and the writings of the period, the purpose of this paper is to further the understanding of the extent to which domestic agenda, particularly the issue of national reunification intertwined with international developments. Furthermore, there will be considerations of less studied aspects of the affair, which include the question of legal reform and gender dimension.

In order to understand how domestic agenda and international events intertwined in the contesting discourses of the Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm affair in the DRV between 1956 and 1958, it is useful to have a general overview of the scholarship on this period. Scholarly treatments of the affair began as early as 1957. The events of the affair and its participants were made public to a wider audience through the volume Trăm hoa đua nở trên đất Bắc (A Hundred Flowers Blooming on Northern Soil) by anti-Communist scholar Hoàng Văn Chí, which was published in 1959 in Saigon, capital of the RVN and whose choice of title reflected the intention to connect with wider events of the same name in Maoist China. Moreover, this was to serve an urban reading public below the seventeenth parallel with the intention of delegitimising the nationalist credentials of Hồ Chí Minh’s regime in the North and exposing its authoritarian communist face in terms of its brutal treatment of intellectuals.[1] For a Western audience, in an article, British scholar of Communism P.J. Honey described the affair as a ‘revolt’ of great scale by North Vietnamese intellectuals, in which the publishing and circulation of journals reflected ‘deep-seated’ popular dissatisfaction with the regime.[2] Within the DRV, the publishing of the compilation of articles and documents Bọn “Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm” trước toà án dư luận (The “Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm” clique facing the court of public opinion) by the state-owned publishing house Sự Thật (Truth) in 1959 also gives a glimpse of official reactions toward the affair during its course, in which the results of official crackdown was lauded as a ‘triumph for patriotism and socialism on the cultural and artistic front’.[3] With the exception of the third one, the former two advocated an interpretation of the event as a large-scale anti-Communist opposition movement during the Cold War. Scholarly treatment of the subject continued into the early 1960s, mostly by Western and anti-communist Vietnamese writers, which continued to push this Cold War narrative. One example is the political and military analysis of the two Vietnamese states, the DRV and RVN, by French-American journalist Bernard Fall. Here, he drew comparisons between the affair with its Hundred Flowers counterpart in China, at which he argued the former was more explosive and more violent than the latter.[4] From a Vietnamese anti-Communist perspective, the historical survey of North Vietnam also by Hoàng Văn Chí, which was written in English, intended to inform an international audience of the reality of Communist rule in North Vietnam. In this work, he summarised the affair as a relative period of freedom of expression, in which Communism was criticised in the same manner as the Catholic Church had been by French Enlightenment thinker Voltaire centuries earlier, putting the affair’s participants firmly in a Western intellectual camp, blending with Confucian and Vietnamese literary traditions.[5] Here, both scholarships continued to push an interpretation of a mass revolt of the intellectual class, whose lifestyles and ideals ran in contrast with Communist authoritarianism and dogmatism. Besides those, scholarship of the affair was pushed to the side for several decades as a result of the intensification of the American military commitment in Việt Nam for the remainder of the 1960s and 1970s.

This was the reality up until the late 1980s, with the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the Communist Party of Việt Nam (CPV) pursuing liberal economic reforms in Đổi Mới (Renovation). These events revitalised scholarly interests in the Nhân Văn — Giai Phẩm affair and increased availability of primary sources, from both Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese perspectives. From a Vietnamese perspective, censorship remains a stumbling block for scholarly discussions within Việt Nam. Thus, the responsibility has fallen within members of the Vietnamese diaspora, many of whom hold critical views of the current Communist government, as seen by the endeavours of France-based literary scholar Thụy Khuê, who interviewed several surviving members of the affair and the Berlin-based blog talawas.org, which electronically transcribed many of the Nhân Văn — Giai Phẩm writings and publications. At the same time, there has been a flood of memoirs by proponents and critics of the affair, one of which is by French-trained legal scholar Nguyễn Mạnh Tường, who fell out of favour with the regime following the crackdown of the affair and an example of Vietnamese samizdat literature. However, as noted by historian Peter Zinoman, much of the newer scholarship continued to portray the affair as a dissident movement, without engaging in in-depth analysis of the textual material of the affair.[6] Zinoman’s revisionist interpretation is useful in understanding the diverse views and limitations of the movement and its rhetoric in a different light as more moderate than previously assumed and sought to be constructive towards a reforming of the Communist system in the DRV along the line of de-Stalinisation rather than outrightly opposing it.[7] On the other hand, there has not been an in-depth analysis of the diverse views presented within the official opposition to the movement either, thus, the volume published by Sự Thật and its contents would be taken into account in the analysis.

Along this line, the aim of this paper is to explore the intertwining of domestic and external forces in the contesting discourses of the Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm affair, particularly regarding the issue of national reunification. Furthermore, as most of the scholarship has primarily focused on the artistic aspects of the movement, there will be consideration of other less-studied facets such as the question of constitutional legal reform and gender dimension amongst others. In order to understand the roles of domestic agenda and international events in shaping the events of the Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm affair, it is important to establish the domestic situations in Việt Nam at the time and the wider international context. In 1954, at the conclusion of the First Indochina War that ended French colonial presence in Việt Nam and as a result of the Geneva Accords in July of the same year, the country was temporarily divided into two administrative zones, a Communist-run North under Hồ Chí Minh and the VWP and an American-backed South under Ngô Đình Diệm. The temporary division was to last for two years with national elections scheduled for mid-1956 to reunify the whole country with Hồ Chí Minh and the Communists predicted to win the vote.[8] However, the establishment of the RVN in the South in a fraudulent referendum in 1955 with Ngô Đình Diệm becoming its first president led to the prospect of elections for 1956 to dim further, especially since both America and Ngô’s government did not sign the Accords from the start.[9] Moreover, by the time the Nhân Văn — Giai Phẩm affair exploded in the DRV, the original deadline had passed. Thus, the issue of national reunification and attitudes toward Ngô’s regime in the South formed a key part of the contesting discourses. At the same time, within the DRV, during this two-year period, radical agrarian reform along Maoist lines in the rural areas was well underway with the aim of redistributing land to landless peasants and liquidating the landlord class through denunciation sessions and ultimately, executions. While agrarian reform succeeded in its aim of land redistribution, it also resulted in wrongful executions of tens of thousands and massive psychological strain upon the rural population, which culminated in a peasant revolt in Hồ Chí Minh’s home province in November 1956 that was eventually brutally suppressed.[10] The excesses of agrarian reform eventually enticed the VWP leadership to publicly apologise and also undertake a massive, albeit ceremonial, “Rectification of Errors Campaign”.[11] It was also under this context that the Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm affair based its rhetorics upon.

On the international front, events in the Soviet Union and China in 1956 allowed for the affair to flourish. Khruschev’s denunciation of Stalin in the ‘Secret Speech’ of February 1956 ignited the de-Stalinisation process across the Communist world, which saw the introduction of liberal measures and domestic upheavals in the Eastern Bloc satellite states, as seen by the uprising in Poznan, Poland in June of the same year, followed by Hungary. Meanwhile, in China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Mao Zedong announced a policy of “Let Flowers of Many Kinds Blossom, Diverse Schools of Thoughts Contend”, better known as the Hundred Flowers Campaign, in which Chinese intellectuals were given space to engage in open debate.[12] Arguably, the influence of Mao’s new policy line was much more strongly felt in the DRV than events in Eastern Europe due to historical and cultural links between the two states, and many policies and practices of the VWP since the early 1950s were directly emulated from or inspired by those of their Chinese counterparts.[13] Simultaneously, many of the Nhân Văn — Giai Phẩm writings openly espoused the ideals of the Chinese Hundred Flowers Campaign and the de-Stalinisation of the Soviet Union. Regardless, the international events of 1956, intertwining with the domestic circumstances, would have allowed the space for the key players of Nhân Văn — Giai Phẩm to operate and exercise their ideas and petitions.

In terms of the origin of the Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm movement, most scholars agreed that its foundation was laid upon from as early as 1954, essentially immediately at the conclusion of the First Indochina War and the takeover of the North by the VWP. Between 1954 and 1955, a movement led by soldier-poet Trần Dần and other artists and intellectuals attached to the People’s Army agitated for greater creative freedom in opposition to the socialist realism imposed by the Party, within the military, expressed in a 32-point draft proposal presented to General Nguyễn Chí Thanh, whom immediately dismissed it.[14] This event coincided with the persecution of intellectual Hu Feng by the CCP in China around the same period. However, the link between these events remain in dispute, despite it is known Trần Dần did undergo a two-month study tour in China around late 1954, but there is no concrete evidence of him being influenced by the case of Hu Feng. While this sequence of events, which occurred within an important institution and a source of legitimacy for the VWP, provided a catalyst for the movement, however, it was the domestic circumstances and international events of 1956 that defined the discourses of the movement at its high point and later years. As mentioned before, the errors of agrarian reform and question of national reunification, coupled with political developments across the Communist bloc in 1956, provided necessary environment for a thaw in the political and intellectual environment of the DRV, partly via the patronage of the VWP, though reluctantly, and partly at the intellectuals and artists’ own initiatives. This can be seen by an officially sanctioned conference held by the Literature and Arts Association in August 1956, in which over three hundred intellectuals working in the capital Hà Nội attended and used this occasion to take full advantage of new liberal ‘winds’ that were blowing across the Communist world and the embrace of a more tolerant attitude from the Party leadership.[15] These changes were not only present in the literary world, but also extended to different facets of public intellectual life, which included the judicial and legislative system. As noted by Christopher Goscha, coinciding with the public acknowledgement of the excesses and abuses of agrarian reform from the Party, there were calls for judicial reforms in the form of establishing independent legal code and drafting of a constitution that guarantees individual liberties and strengthens the legislative and judiciary branches.[16] In addition to the domestic traumas of agrarian reform, international factors also played a role. In the memoir of French-trained and DRV-based lawyer Nguyễn Mạnh Tường, he described a highly theoretical dialogue between him and liberal-minded judicial experts from Communist Czechoslovakia in a working session following a Congress of the left-wing Association of Democratic Jurists in Brussels, Belgium in 1956 to which he was the head of the DRV delegation and one of the main aims of the delegation was to extract a resolution on the issue of national reunification of Việt Nam on the DRV’s terms.[17] The lengthy dialogue critiques the current state of the judicial system and legal profession across the Communist world, which are subjected to the arbitrary wills of the ruling Communist Parties.[18] Thus, it was agreed upon between both parties on the need for greater independence of the Bar Association and the Bench as ‘pillars of democracy’.[19] This conversation is interesting in terms of the international context of de-Stalinisation across the Communis bloc allowing for such conversations to take place and an example of transnational dialogues on possible reforms to the Communist system. Furthermore, it is possible that this dialogue would have strengthened Tường’s convictions in domestic constitutional reforms, in combination with the after effects of failed policy measures in the DRV. At the same time, since this memoir was written at least thirty years after this dialogue took place, it can be argued that its details were probably exaggerated especially since the author became disillusioned with the regime in his later years. Nevertheless, it is still useful as evidence for conversations that were happening in the DRV and the Communist world in general.

The blossoming in different aspects of the DRV’s public intellectual life by mid-to-late 1956 and the debates it generated culminated in the publication of several independent journals within the space of three months, two of which lent their names to define the overall period and arguably the most influential. These included Nhân Văn (Humanities) and Giai Phẩm (Masterpieces) along with other such as Trăm Hoa (Hundred Flowers), Tập san phê bình (Criticism Newsletter), Sáng tạo (Creativity), and Đất mới (New Terrain), which was operated by university students.[20] Furthermore, the tolerance of opposing views in the state-owned media also contributed to this period of relative liberalisation in the DRV. For the purpose of this paper and availability of sources, only the content of the former two will be examined closely. In terms of content, Giai Phẩm deals more with the literary and artistic aspects of the movement, while Nhân Văn offers more general socio-political commentary with Đất mới serving as a forum for university students. On another note, as a whole, these journals cover a wide range of topics, including freedom, democracy, dogmatism, corruption, de-Stalinisation, Marxism-Leninism, the situation in the South amongst others.[21] In particular, the issue of national reunification and attitudes toward the RVN in the South was one of the central themes of the contesting discourses of these journals and their critics. This is visible in both content and the language employed. This can be seen in the inaugural issue of Nhân Văn, in an interview conducted with Nguyễn Mạnh Tường on the issue of extending democracy and freedom, when responding to the question on the shortcomings in the facilitation of democracy by the Party, the interview subject argued for a link between the strengthening of popular democracy in the DRV and the peaceful struggle for national reunification, which was also the official policy of the VWP following the Geneva Accords.[22] One should be aware that ‘democracy’ or ‘freedom’ in this context are articulated within a Marxist-Leninist framework and without any challenge to the VWP’s leadership, as argued by some scholars. Along this line, this issue also saw the first of many articles with the title Địa ngục miền Nam (Hell in the South), which feature criticisms of a satirical tone toward the different aspects of the regime of Ngô Đình Diệm in the South. The first of many of these pieces was an attack on the regime’s cultural policy and its incompetence in eliminating illiteracy, which indirectly contrast itself with the achievements of the North on those fronts as the aim of national reunification espoused by many of the journals’ participants was to be on the DRV’s terms.[23]

As pointed out by scholars such as Zinoman, the moderate and reformist tone of the journals was due to the fact that many of its contributors were veterans of the anti-French resistance, thus sympathetic to the regime, and even Party cadres themselves. Hence it was in their interests to agitate for change without crossing official lines and integrate themselves in the greater goals of building socialism in the North and national reunification.

Continuing looking at the journals, one could see the intertwining of domestic and international events, particularly alluding to the internationalisation of the Chinese Hundred Flowers Movement, as in a contribution to the second issue of Nhân Văn by Trần Duy. Here, there are references to Marxist-Leninist discourse on arts and literature as an ideological basis for the Hundred Flowers Movement, from there, the author articulates the revolutionary Vietnamese artist’s role as ‘to struggle for independence and unification under the banners of proletarianism’ and simultaneously, criticises political dogmatism in the leadership of the arts which contradicts Marx’s teachings.[24] Here is an entanglement of the domestic agenda of national reunification and external ideological awareness in the discourse to advocate greater artistic and literary freedom. This intertwining also can be seen in the movement’s response to their critics, in which in an editorial by Nguyễn Chương in the state-owned newspaper Nhân dân (People) criticised Nhân Văn for focusing more on attacking the regime than its enemies, which was addressed in a response by the latter, of which they defending themselves as merely critiquing shortcomings that are harmful to the people and the Revolution, while claiming parity in their attacks on the US-Diệm clique, referring to the US-backed regime in the South.[25] As mentioned above, the external example of the de-Stalinisation resulted from Khruschev’s speech at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU provided inspiration within domestic context for the journals’ contributors, as seen in French-trained Marxist philosopher Trần Đức Thảo’s contribution in the third issue, in which he invoked the Soviet example to demand the VWP to rectify its errors, as were committed during agrarian reform which could be exploited by enemy forces and develop “democratic freedoms”, to which Shawn Mchale described as ‘imbued with a utopian flavor’.[26]Adding to that, the author firmly places the domestic progress of the DRV in the elimination of bureaucracy, factionalism and cult of personality as part of building socialism, as well expanding ‘forms of freedom’ in terms of successful emulation of the external Soviet example, which would be beneficial to the domestic agenda of national reunification.[27] Therefore, this melange of the domestic and external allows the journals to take a moderate and constructive stance without challenging the VWP’s leadership and with the purpose of strengthening the DRV against its rivals in the struggle for national reunification on the former’s terms. This sentiment is expressed in an address to the readers in the same issue, as the editors of Nhân Văn proclaim they are firmly placed under the VWP and the government of the DRV in the fight for national reunification and true democracy whilst expressing its will to expose all ‘plots of sabotage’ by the US-Diệm ‘lackeys’ and internal enemies within the ranks.[28] The theme of national reunification, in combination with international dynamics, continued to be present in the remaining issues with view to legitimise the DRV and delegitimise the RVN as an instrument of US intervention simultaneously. This can be seen in a protest to increased US military presence in southern Việt Nam, which aims to expose the ‘hypocrisy’ of Ngô Đình Diệm in terms of ‘selling out’ the country to ‘US imperialists’, while describing the situation in the DRV as ‘damaging’ but full of ‘prospects’, this serves a dual purpose of condemning the RVN whilst arguing for rectification of errors and expansion of democratic freedoms as essential to the consolidation of the regime in the North and national reunification via peaceful means.[29] On a more literary note, the publishing of the poem Nhất định thắng (Victory at all cost) by Trần Dần in a re-printing of the Spring edition of Giai Phẩm, which was previously suspended before the advent of de-Stalinisation, shares many of the same ideas. There are passages in the poem that take note of the deteriorating state of the DRV, particularly the capital Hà Nội following its liberation and at the same time, lampoon Ngô Đình Diệm and his regime as a Khuyển Ưng of America, a metaphor from Vietnamese classics that refer to someone’s lackey, and whom is bent on splitting up the country, thus expresses belief in final victory for the DRV.[30] There, one could see the domestic contextualisation of the international Cold War the discourses of the journals and it is important to notice these details were omitted from previous scholarly work on the affair, especially those composed in the Cold War years of the 1950s and 1960s.

Coming back to the issue of legal reforms, as mentioned before, there were greater calls for legal and constitutional reforms following public acknowledgment of errors and conversations between Nguyễn Mạnh Tường with liberal jurists from the Eastern bloc. As identified by Goscha, by late 1956, during this period of relative liberalisation in the DRV, a group of National Assembly deputies joined liberal-minded lawyers and intellectuals such as Tường and Party member Nguyễn Hữu Đang to collaborate on proposals for constitutional reform.[31] Despite the lack of available evidence on their inner workings, it still can be argued one of the central questions discussed is which foreign constitutional models to consult. Considering the political context of the DRV, it can be assumed that such models would come from within the Communist world. An article in the final issue of Nhân Văn by Đang compares the DRV Constitution of 1946 that was suspended at the onset of the First Indochina War with that of the 1954 Constitution of the People’s Republic of China in how they guarantee ‘democratic freedoms’.[32] The premise of the discussion is centered around whether the DRV should wait until reunification with the South to decide on a new unitary Constitution or to draft a provisional one for the North in the lead-up to reunification.[33] What is interesting is that the author actually argues the Communist Chinese one is more extensive in terms of guaranteeing democratic rights in terms of the role of government is to provide the necessary ‘material conditions’ for citizens to fully enjoy their democratic rights and thus, more appropriate to the conditions of the DRV than the ‘bourgeois’ 1946 edition.[34] At the same time, cultural links and historical emulation of Chinese models would have played a role. Thus, one could see the intertwining of international development with domestic imperatives. Besides the Chinese example, other foreign models were on offer and one could see alternative proposals in the third volume of the Autumn edition of Giai Phẩm, which features one of its few non-literary contributions in a Vietnamese translation of an article by Yugoslav academic Jovan Djordjevic on the political structure of Communist Yugoslavia, with an introduction by Nguyễn Mạnh Tường. Here, the constitutional example of Yugoslavia is evoked, with its emphasis on the right to ‘self-management’ at different levels of society and thus, offering an alternative path to socialist development.[35] There, the use of Yugoslavia as an example reflects the changing attitudes within the Communist world toward Yugoslavia, which was previously excluded from the Eastern Bloc as a result of the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, at the initiative of the Soviet Union following de-Stalinisation. Thus, international developments and domestic imperatives facilitated the conditions allowed for such examples to be brought into consideration. At the same time, it is difficult to say whether these models were brought up in the debates within the National Assembly when it convened in December 1956.

As mentioned before, this period of intellectual and cultural liberalisation did not last long, with the journals completely shut down by authorities by December 1956. Between 1957 and 1958, there was a conservative backlash and intensification of media attacks against the Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm movement, with many of its participants eventually suffered from professional and personal downfalls. This was made possible by an international U-turn, with the successful suppression of the Hungarian Revolution and the Anti-Rightist Campaign in China beginning from July 1957, with the latter leaving a stronger impression on the VWP leadership.[36] At the same time, the official criticisms, particularly those published in 1958 reflected a wide range of views. Within the criticisms of individual members of Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm, the tone tended to be relatively restrained for the male members with the arguably harshest words toward the sole female participant of the movement, the journalist and writer Thụy An. In an article published in Nhân dân, dated April 1958, which was titled ‘The Devious Witch: Thụy An’ (Con phù thủy xảo quyệt: Thụy An), the subject in question was referred to as an ‘espionage witch’ (gián điệp phù thủy), with focus on her wartime activities and her relationship with an official in the RVN, which intended to paint her as a collaborator and international agent as she previously never directly participated in the Resistance, unlike the other members.[37] One could see the usage of highly gendered language, in which the subject is referred to as a ‘witch’ several times, which conjured the image of a woman as a seducing and spell-binding influence towards vulnerable men. Once could see the intertwining of the domestic and external in the employment of gendered language. As noticed by Thụy Khuê in probably the only comprehensive account of An’s life and works, even though Thụy An did not contribute to any of the journals, however, she maintained a strong and supportive influence for many younger members of the movement, especially introducing them to Western arts and literature, which could be considered highly undesirable by the regime in the building of a decolonised socialist society.[38] At the same time, she was amongst the only members to be publically arrested and tried by 1960 with the rest suffered relatively mild state-sanctioned retribution ranging from professional demotion to manual labour in the countryside.[39] The only presence of the only female participant at this trial would have symbolised the intention of the VWP to control the female bodies in both the domestic and public sphere in the new socialist order. At the same time, the anxiety surrounding the closeted homosexuality of pro-VWP literary figure Xuân Diệu, which was disapproved by both the Party and members of Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm also contributed to his relatively restraint position during the affair.[40] However, the gender dimension of the affair constitutes a significant gap in the historiography of the affair, especially in relation to the intertwining of domestic circumstances and international developments within the contesting discourses and thus deserves greater scholarly attention.

Between 1956 and 1958, as a result of domestic turbulences and external developments in the Communist world in the form of de-Stalinisation in the Eastern Bloc and the Hundred Flowers Movement in China, the leadership of the DRV and the ruling VWP was engulfed in Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm affair, in which a group of intellectuals and artists condemned ideological dogmatism and demanded greater extension of freedom and rights, albeit within a Marxist-Leninist framework, through their journals. Through examining previous historiography and the writings of the period, one could see to a great extent, the dynamic intertwining of domestic agenda of national reunification and building socialism and external developments in the wider Communist world in the contesting discourses of the affair. Beyond the literary and artistic aspects, there were other prominent issues that formed a wider debate such as the question of legal and constitutional reform in the DRV and consideration of a gender dimension. Thus, hopefully, the historicisation of the affair and its materials would contribute to greater understanding of the international history of Communism.

[1] Hoàng Văn Chí, Trăm hoa đua nở trên đất Bắc (A Hundred Flowers Blooming on Northern Soil) (Saigon: Mặt Trận Bảo Vệ Tự Do Văn Hóa- The Front for the Defence of Cultural Freedom, 1959), 4.

[2] P. J. H., “Revolt of the Intellectuals in North Vietnam,” The World Today 13, no. 6 (Jun., 1957): 260.

[3] Đặng Thái Mai et al., Bọn “Nhân Văn — Giai Phẩm” trước toà án dư luận (The “Nhân Văn — Giai Phẩm” clique facing the court of public opinion) (Hanoi: Sự Thật- Truth, 1959), 5.

[4] Bernard B. Fall, The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis (London: Pall Mall Press, 1963), 188.

[5] Hoàng Văn Chí, From Colonialism to Communism: A Case History of North Vietnam (London: Pall Mall Press, 1964), 236.

[6] Peter Zinoman, “Nhân Văn — Giai Phẩm and Vietnamese “Reform Communism” in 1950s: A Revionist Interpretation,” Journal of Cold War Studies 13, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 61–62.

[7] Zinoman, “Nhân Văn — Giai Phẩm,” 65.

[8] Christopher Goscha, Vietnam: A New History (New York: Basic Books, 2016), 270–272.

[9] Goscha, Vietnam, 290.

[10] Ibid, 294–295.

[11] Ibid, 295.

[12] Lại Nguyên Ân and Alec Holcombe, “The Heart and Mind of the Poet Xuân Diệu: 1954–1958,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 5, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 32.

[13] Yinghong Cheng, “Beyond Moscow-Centric Interpretation: An Examination of the China Connection in Eastern Europe and North Vietnam during the Era of De-Stalinization,” Journal of World History 15, no. 4 (Dec., 2004): 503–504.

[14] Thụy Khuê, Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm và vấn đề Nguyễn Ái Quốc (Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm and the Nguyễn Ái Quốc question), (Virginia: Tiếng Quê Hương, 2012), 23.

[15] Lại and Holcombe, “The Heart and Mind,” 33.

[16] Goscha, Vietnam, 296.

[17] Nguyễn Mạnh Tường, Un Excommunié- Hanoi 1954–1991: Procès d’un intellectuel (An Excommunicated- Hanoi 1954–1991: Trial of an Intellectual), trans. BichHop Publishings (Paris: Que Me, 1992), 16.

[18] Nguyễn, Un Excommunié, 22–23.

[19] Ibid, 25.

[20] Zinoman, “Nhân Văn — Giai Phẩm,” 74.

[21] Lại and Holcombe, “The Heart and Mind,”34.

[22] “Chúng tôi phỏng vấn về vấn đề mở rộng tự do và dân chủ- Ý kiến của luật sư Nguyễn Mạnh Tường, Giáo sư Đại học” (Interview on the question of extending freedom and democracy- The opinions of barrister Nguyễn Mạnh Tường, university professor), Nhân Văn, no.1, (September 20, 1956): 1.

[23] “Địa ngục miền Nam” (Hell in the South), Nhân Văn, no.1 (September 20, 1956): 6.

[24] Trần Duy, “Phấn đấu cho trăm hoa đua nở”(Advocating for the Hundred Flowers Campaign), Nhân Văn, no.2 (September 30, 1956): 1.

[25] Hoàng Cầm, Hữu Loan, and Trần Duy, “Chúng tôi cực lực phản đối luận điệu vu cáo chính trị — Trả lời bạn Nguyễn Chương và báo Nhân dân” (We strongly oppose slanderous political rhetorics- In response to Nguyễn Chương and the Nhân dân newspaper), Nhân Văn, no.2 (September 30, 1956): 1.

[26] Shawn McHale, “Vietnamese Marxism, Dissent, and the Politics of Postcolonial Memory: Tran Duc Thao, 1946–1993,” The Journal of Asian Studies 61, no. 1 (Feb., 2002): 16.

[27] Trần Đức Thảo, “Nỗ lực phát triển tự do dân chủ” (Efforts to develop democratic freedoms), Nhân Văn, no. 3 (October 15, 1956): 1–5.

[28] “Mấy lời chân tình gửi bạn đọc: Về dư luận xung quanh Nhân Văn” (A few sincere words to our readers: On public opinion surrounding Nhân Văn), Nhân Văn, no. 3 (October 15, 1956): 5.

[29] “Phản đối đế quốc Mỹ đem quân đội xâm nhậm miền Nam Việt Nam” (Objections to American imperialists’ military invasion of southern Việt Nam),Nhân Văn, no. 4 (November 5, 1956): 1–5.

[30] Trần Dần, “Nhất định thắng” (Victory at all cost), Giai phẩm mùa Xuân (February 1956, reprinted in October): 10.

[31] Goscha, Vietnam, 296.

[32] Nguyễn Hữu Đang, “Hiến pháp Việt Nam năm 1946 và hiến pháp Trung Hoa bảo đảm tự do dân chủ thế nào?” (How do the Vietnamese Constitution of 1946 and Chinese Constitution guarantee democratic freedoms?), Nhân Văn, no. 5 (November 20, 1956): 1.

[33] Nguyễn, “Hiến pháp,” 1.

[34] Ibid, 1.

[35] Jovan Djordjevic, “Chủ nghĩa xã hội và nhà nước tổ chức chính trị của Nam Tư” (Socialism and the state political structure in Yugoslavia), trans. Bùi Quang Đoài, Giai phẩm mùa Thu 1956 — Tập III (Autumn edition, volume III) (November 1956): 54–55.

[36] Zinoman, “Nhân Văn — Giai Phẩm,” 75–77.

[37] Xuân Dung, “Con phù thủy xảo quyệt: Thụy An” (The Devious Witch: Thụy An), Nhân dân, April 23, 1958, in Bọn “Nhân Văn — Giai Phẩm” Trước Toà Án Dư Luận (The “Nhân Văn — Giai Phẩm” Clique Facing The Court of Public Opinion), ed. Đặng Thái Mai (Hanoi: Sự Thật- Truth, 1959), 42–43.

[38] Thụy, Nhân Văn — Giai Phẩm, 207–208.

[39] Zinoman, “Nhân Văn — Giai Phẩm,” 80–81.

[40] Lại and Holcombe, “The Heart and Mind,” 67–68.

Journals/ Newspapers

“Chúng tôi phỏng vấn về vấn đề mở rộng tự do và dân chủ- Ý kiến của luật sư Nguyễn Mạnh Tường, Giáo sư Đại học” (Interview on the question of extending freedom and democracy- The opinions of barrister Nguyễn Mạnh Tường, university professor). Nhân Văn, no.1, (September 20, 1956): 1.

Đặng, Thái Mai et al. Bọn “Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm” Trước Toà Án Dư Luận (The “Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm” Clique Facing The Court of Public Opinion). Hanoi: Sự Thật- Truth, 1959.

“Địa ngục miền Nam” (Hell in the South). Nhân Văn, no.1 (September 20, 1956): 6.

H., P. J. “Revolt of the Intellectuals in North Vietnam.” The World Today 13, no. 6 (Jun., 1957): 250–260.

Hoàng, Cầm, Hữu Loan, and Trần Duy. “Chúng tôi cực lực phản đối luận điệu vu cáo chính trị — Trả lời bạn Nguyễn Chương và báo Nhân dân” (We strongly oppose slanderous political rhetorics- In response to Nguyễn Chương and the Nhân dân newspaper). Nhân Văn, no.2 (September 30, 1956): 1.

Jovan Djordjevic, “Chủ nghĩa xã hội và nhà nước tổ chức chính trị của Nam Tư” (Socialism and the state political structure in Yugoslavia). Translated by Bùi Quang Đoài. Giai phẩm mùa Thu 1956 — Tập III (Autumn edition, volume III) (November 1956): 54–55.

“Mấy lời chân tình gửi bạn đọc: Về dư luận xung quanh Nhân Văn” (A few sincere words to our readers: On public opinion surrounding Nhân Văn). Nhân Văn, no. 3 (October 15, 1956): 5.

Nguyễn, Hữu Đang. “Hiến pháp Việt Nam năm 1946 và hiến pháp Trung Hoa bảo đảm tự do dân chủ thế nào?” (How do the Vietnamese Constitution of 1946 and Chinese Constitution guarantee democratic freedoms?). Nhân Văn, no. 5 (November 20, 1956): 1.

“Phản đối đế quốc Mỹ đem quân đội xâm nhậm miền Nam Việt Nam” (Objections to American imperialists’ military invasion of southern Việt Nam). Nhân Văn, no. 4 (November 5, 1956): 1–5.

Trần, Dần. “Nhất định thắng” (Victory at all cost). Giai phẩm mùa Xuân (February 1956, reprinted in October): 10.

Trần, Duy.“Phấn đấu cho trăm hoa đua nở” (Advocating for the Hundred Flowers Campaign). Nhân Văn, no.2 (September 30, 1956): 1.

Trần, Đức Thảo. “Nỗ lực phát triển tự do dân chủ” (Efforts to develop democratic freedoms). Nhân Văn, no. 3 (October 15, 1956): 1–5.

Memoirs

Nguyễn, Mạnh Tường. Un Excommunié- Hanoi 1954–1991: Procès d’un intellectuel (An Excommunicated- Hanoi 1954–1991: Trial of an Intellectual). Translated by BichHop Publishings. Paris: Que Me, 1992.

Other writings

Hoàng, Văn Chí. Trăm hoa đua nở trên đất Bắc (A Hundred Flowers Blooming on Northern Soil). Saigon: Mặt Trận Bảo Vệ Tự Do Văn Hóa- The Front for the Defence of Cultural Freedom, 1959.

– Secondary sources

Cheng, Yinghong. “Between Moscow-Centric Interpretation: An Examination of the China Connection in Eastern Europe and North Vietnam during the Era of De-Stalinization.” Journal of World History 15, no. 4 (Dec., 2004): 487–518.

Fall, Bernard B. The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis. London: Pall Mall Press, 1963.

Goscha, Christopher. Vietnam: A New History. New York: Basic Books, 2016.

Hoàng, Văn Chí. From Colonialism to Communism: A Case History of North Vietnam. London: Pall Mall Press, 1964.

Lại, Nguyên Ân and Alec Holcombe. “The Heart and Mind of the Poet Xuân Diệu: 1954–1958.” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 5, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 1–90.

McHale, Shawn. “Vietnamese Marxism, Dissent, and the Politics of Postcolonial Memory: Tran Duc Thao, 1946–1993.” The Journal of Asian Studies 61, no. 1 (Feb., 2002): 7–31.

Thụy, Khuê. Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm và vấn đề Nguyễn Ái Quốc (Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm and the Nguyễn Ái Quốc question). Virginia: Tiếng Quê Hương-Call of the Homeland, 2012.

Zinoman, Peter. “Nhân Văn — Giai Phẩm” and Vietnamese “Reform Communism” in the 1950s.” Journal of Cold War Studies 13, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 60–100.