Portrait of a Combatant

3Class was a key element in a candidate’s selection, so village cadres chose people from the lower ranks of society who were classified as “landless, poor, or middle peasants”.6 The average peasant, however, usually associated personal magnetism with the ability to attain material success. Many local authorities thus chose middle peasants rather than the landless or the poor since they had a greater chance of inspiring others to follow them. The candidate’s respectability played an important role. The emulation fighter should be admired by his peers and reflect the dynamism and youthfulness of the regime. In areas where ideology had not yet taken hold, the government chose middle-aged men and women (30–45 years old). In Nguyên Bình district (Cao Bằng), more than half of the emulation fighters were older than 30. Elsewhere, however, the “young” (20–30 years old) were still the privileged target for selection committees. In Thuận Thành (Hà Bắc) and Quỳnh Lưu (Nghệ An), for example, 75 per cent of emulation fighters were from that age group. Official documents confirm that the average age of recruitment was between 20 and 30 years old. Since anyone up to the age of 30 could join the Patriotic Youth, youth was clearly an important criterion for anyone aspiring to the title of emulation fighter.

4As a representative of the lower classes, the emulation fighter had to illustrate the benefits of popular education and continued training. Government propaganda often emphasised his lack of education in order to high-light its own role as tutor to the nation. The emulation fighter was a man of the people, and the government relied on those who had been excluded from the educational system of the old regime. Most had spent only a few years at school when they were young, and many of them learned to read and write while in the people’s army. They usually had no more than a primary education when the government selected them as models for their peers.7

5The National Emulation Committee recommended that candidates be chosen from outside the ranks of the VWP.8 In the early 1950s, the percentage of Party members who became emulation fighters was still low. Less than 15 per cent of the people I interviewed in the districts of Nguyên Bình, Thuận Thành, and Quỳnh Lưu had been members of the Party before receiving their title. The government expected these outstanding workers to have acted valiantly for national resistance, but they did not gain automatic entry into the Party — even if the process was undeniably accelerated. Three-quarters of them, however, joined the VWP within three years of being selected. Nevertheless, many candidates failed to meet the expectations set for them during an initial probationary period. The title itself did not necessarily favour admission to the Party but padded a candidate’s résumé.

6Following an appointment, the government offered additional training to the honourees to improve their “political, technical and cultural levels to secure their place at the heart of their community”. In 1952–53, the National Emulation Committee suggested its local branches follow a four-point programme: require emulation fighters to take political training courses; help them study political documents; offer additional training courses on general culture (usually just a matter of basic literacy classes);9 and lastly, coach them on public speaking so that they could address the local government and mass organisations.10 In the year following an appointment, the emulation fighter had to sign up for political and cultural training.11 Reports from the Ministry of Culture frequently lamented the “extremely weak theoretical competence” of the candidates.12 In 1956, the Ministry of Education estimated that more than 3.4 million people in North Vietnam were illiterate. In most communes, groups of cultural cadres offered weekly courses on general culture and political training (each one lasting two-and-a-half hours) to their outstanding workers and peasants. For most of them it was their first exposure to organised education.

The Emulation Fighter and the Commune

7In the North Vietnamese countryside, the agricultural emulation fighter represented the “new order”. In November 1950, the National Emulation Committee established a number of criteria for those seeking nomination. The candidate had to: be active in more than one field of production (farming and animal husbandry, etc.); help increase yield and production; apply technical innovations; show great initiative and have a sense of responsibility that would allow him to coordinate community projects guaranteeing increased production and real savings.13 The new government wanted the agricultural emulation fighter to be a pillar in the reorganisation of the Vietnamese village.

8In the beginning, provincial People’s Committees chose a certain number of “test communes” or a particular experimental zone in its juris-diction. The Bureau of Emulation and the Peasants’ Association then took over the operation. Groups of emulation cadres were sent to meet with villagers; until 1955, itinerant cadres were regularly accompanied by Chinese advisors.14 Upon arrival, they had to explain to the people how they could take part in the movement, for example, by joining mass organisations such as the Patriotic Youth, Peasants’ Associations, Association of the Mothers of Combatants, senior citizens’ groups, etc., which could nominate them on their behalf. In Diễn Sơn district (Nghệ An), the first emulation campaign in 1948 led to the creation of new structures for ideological training within the commune: 50 cells of the Peasants’ Association, each with 12–15 families, and 108 production groups, each with 5–8 families, were created in the 6 hamlets within the commune.15 In 1950–51, emulation teams sent by the provincial People’s Committee relied on these groups to spread the principles of emulation and its proper use in order to select outstanding workers. They explained to the people what they had to do to obtain the new patriotic title, and itinerant cadres recounted the exploits of outstanding combatants from other provinces. Many people, however, still did not understand the movement. Some villages, for example, posted slogans that said “Emulation for a beautiful wife”. The novelty of the operation required some explanation.

9Once a first selection was made within production units and the hamlet, the commune held a conference with all exemplary workers from their jurisdiction. Official documents specified that this step should be done by popular vote, but people were usually happy to accept whatever the authorities (emulation cadres, the local Party cell, etc.) proposed, since they were “in the know”. Nguyễn Thị Nhờ, a peasant from the village of Ngũ Thái (Thuận Thành) tells of how this first selection phase was not very well understood in his commune: “The first time, not many candidates were chosen from the hamlets. The people didn’t understand why. Some people started to cry when they found out they had not been chosen.”16

10On 21 January 1954, 12 outstanding peasants, 3 teachers, and 4 civic workers were brought together by the commune of Diễn Sơn (Nghệ An). Throughout the morning, the president of the commune and the Party secretary explained what the Party meant by “new heroism” and outlined the course of the emulation movement. They stressed the brilliant prospects that awaited future emulation fighters. In the afternoon, the peasants were invited to talk “in a relaxed atmosphere” about their performance in their production groups. It was quite a challenge for these men and women who were not used to speaking in public. At the end of the meeting, local cadres reviewed the performance of each candidate and wrote a short individual biography before sending the files to the provincial emulation committee (via the administrative committee of the district), which had the final word. Writing the official biography of an outstanding worker was an important step, and the meeting often gave rise to animated discussions. Candidates who were literate sometimes brought along a draft, which was then collectively discussed and then rewritten by the local emulation authority or, in his absence (which was most often the case), by the communal Party secretary.17 In principle, each commune had to nominate one or two candidates for the title of emulation fighter. The commune awarded a certificate of “exemplary worker” to those who failed to make the cut.18 Before the conference began, campaign organisers made the newly benighted patriots promise they would spread the movement within their families, neighbourhoods, hamlets, and production groups. The operation at the village level was then complete. They then had to wait three or four weeks for provincial authorities to announce which peasants would receive the title of emulation fighter. In practice, however, provincial opposition to communal recommendations was extremely rare.

11Several weeks after this stage in the campaign, a conference was organised in the provincial seat.19 The meeting always began with a general review of the emulation movement in the jurisdiction. Speakers encouraged the audience to “persevere in their efforts to eradicate weak-nesses in the movement”. After the introduction, provincial cadres gave the floor to that day’s heroes, dressed up for the occasion. The stories suc-ceeded each other in a steady rhythm as the candidates took to the stage to read the résumé of their performance. The crowd of officials erupted in applause. When one sector, production unit, or commune had too many nominees, one of them was designated to speak for the group. After the presentations, a provincial cadre handed out the certificates of emulation fighter. They came with a small badge and a payment in kind, a financial bonus equal to a third or half of the average monthly salary, and a small gift (clothing, fabric, a toy, alcohol, a flashlight, photos of political leaders, patriotic literature, etc.). A photographer was on hand to capture the emotion of the glorious day. And finally, the new “distinguished children of the province” were invited to a banquet organised in their honour.

12The newly decorated peasant or cadre’s return to his village was the next important step. The emulation fighter would carefully unfurl his new certificate next to the Party secretary (or a village cadre, if there was no secretary), and the communal government invited him to a banquet with representatives of the collective. When possible, a feast with plenty of food and rice wine was held for the new honouree. Trần Văn Chiến recalls the huge get-together organised by the Communal Hall in his honour when he returned to his village of Nguyệt Đức (Thuận Thành) in January 1954: “At some point somebody asked me to take the place of honour, and then cadres read the details of my performance and everybody cheered for me.”20 After another ceremony held by the People’s Committee, the new emulation fighter was congratulated by the members of his work unit, who paid their respects in the name of the collective. Then the new local hero had to speak before his friends, neighbours, and family. His prestige was important to the village. Mass organisations discussed his life story, he was asked to lead informal talks, and his photo was posted in government offices, cooperatives, or the cultural centre. The emulation fighter was no longer an anonymous subject but had become the object of conversation; word of mouth and official meetings elevated him to a special status within the village. They had to use this tactic sparingly, however, since the value of this new patriotic honour also depended on its rarity. It was an honour for the entire collective if a child of the village received recognition by the province. In the early 1950s there were still very few agricultural emulation fighters in North Vietnam, but a decade later the situation was quite different.

A New Local Elite?

13The new heroes may have gained prestige, but did they attain any real power within their communes? In many areas in the 1950s–60s they did not actually have much real influence. Outside of the industrialised areas, which produced so many “new men” that their prestige was somewhat diluted (such as in Tĩnh Túc in Cao Bằng province, where the Kim Loan company alone elected at least 50 distinguished workers per session), less developed regions were slow to accept these new mid-level honorary positions. In the Red Yáo village of Vũ Nông (Nguyên Bình, Cao Bằng), for example, Triệu Thùng Chòi was the only emulation fighter to receive the award between 1951 to 1965. He believes that the “new hero” saw no increase in prestige or status because the local people failed to grasp the implications or felt somehow excluded:

The villagers were not very interested, and didn’t understand the real meaning of the title anyway. Some of them did come up to meet me and ask me questions about it, but in the end it didn’t change anything for them, they didn’t really know what it was all about. From what they understood, being chosen as an emulation fighter meant you had to leave your home and family. This made them afraid, and to be honest, nobody really wanted it.21

14The emulation fighter’s entrance into the village value system was concretely experienced as a rise in professional and social status. His connections with political leaders strengthened his image and legitimacy with the villagers. The DRV paid special attention to the hierarchy of honours.22 The emergence of a new mid-level honorary position destabilised the traditional social balance within the community to some degree, but this was not due solely to the title of emulation fighter. Every award also implied a collective shift. Sometimes the government preferred to select its outstanding citizens from among powerful and respected families. Indeed, the National Emulation Committee had suggested that the award be given to influential people within the commune. In the village of Thuận Thành (Hà Bắc), for example, the peasant Nguyễn Văn Hợp told me that his status in the community did not change at all following his decoration as it merely confirmed his superior social status.

15Consequently, can we really speak of the emergence of a new local elite in North Vietnam? The DRV had made a point of focusing its efforts on people who had previously been excluded from power. The emulation fighter and his family now received both the interest and esteem of their friends and neighbours. One popular saying goes: “A bowl of rice with the entire village is better than a feast at home.” Everyone benefited from the prestige of this official honour, and traditionally they had always respected the notion of the reward. An entire lineage would be proud to have one of its members honoured by the government. They could be proud to have been chosen over their neighbours and to have attracted the attention of those in power, which legitimised their actions. The family’s reputation in the community was enhanced by visits from local cadres, annual gifts, or the new honouree’s participation in local meetings and events. Sometimes neighbours would drop by to seek information, or just out of respect for the honour made to the village, which further solidified the new hero’s symbolic position within the community. A moral and pedagogic responsibility fell on the newly elect. People now came to them for advice on making their lives a little bit easier. The new outstanding citizen was often summoned by production groups to raise the spirit of collective solidarity, and the most articulate ones had to spread the spirit of emulation. With this political responsibility, the “common man” found himself thrust into the centre of a new symbolic space.23 In Linh Xá (Thuận Thành, Hà Bắc), the prestige conferred upon young Nguyễn Như Nguyện forced him to play a central role during ritual ceremonies: “Since I was an emulation fighter, they asked me to speak at funerals and marriages in the village, even though I was still quite young.”24 Moral and patriotic pride, as well as the promise of elevated status, seduced many villagers who were eager for respectability. The neighbours, friends, and relatives of a new awardee could also try their hand at winning with the help of the latter’s reference or introduction. The structures of mass mobilisation were very good at manipulating the psycho-cultural mechanisms of the people. The State sparked an organisational disorder within the commune, creating the need for social reciprocity that facilitated its conquest for hearts and minds.

16In Vietnam, appealing to individual interest is not a sign of ideological weakness but shows the ingenuity of DRV strategy. On patriotic holidays, government authorities on each level, along with Party leaders and mass organisations, renewed this social pact by distributing gifts to outstanding citizens. They stressed the importance of practical application. The State asked that particular attention be paid to “progressivist workers”,25 and made the patriotic gift a nationwide practice. People’s Committees had their cadres hand out gifts to the “vanguard families” in their district during patriotic holidays. For Tết (Vietnamese New Year), 1 May, and Independence Day (2 September), soldiers’ families, veterans, workers and outstanding peasants were given a small cash bonus drawn from collections taken up during the year. This of course was “terrible for those families who got nothing, who thought it was deeply unfair. Material things got the people excited, and sometimes, we must admit, that was the motivation behind the mass engagement hiding behind all the grandiose words.”26 Families who were blessed by these rewards cast dishonour on those who were not.

17In 1961, the Party’s political journal Học tập (Studies) stressed the “need for material disinterest” in matters of popular motivation.27 By rewarding an outstanding citizen for his good and loyal service, the State was not only bestowing its favours on an isolated individual but on the members of a family, a lineage, or a generation. Financial incentive and the patriotic gifts were a way for government representatives to rebalance the contractual relationship with their communities. Anyone who received a gift had to respond with a counter-gift, though not more than what they had received. A balance within the social exchange was achieved by the distribution of “parallel sentences” (a classical Vietnamese literary style involving two matching verses), certificates, diplomas, and orders of merit. Gift-giving was a rite, and had been an essential strategy for kings and emperors for centuries. The distribution of food, goods, or titles conferred upon the “representative of heaven” the loyalty of his subjects. At the end of a war, kings would offer their officers silk or cotton robes. The more a ruler gave, the more he asserted his authority. DVR policy was thus totally in line with this time-honoured tradition. A gift from the central government required a commitment by the recipient, especially if the latter was from low social origins. This principle ensured the cohesion of the group. The government’s gift paid off by securing the unfailing loyalty of the contractant. The peasant thus offered himself up in a patriotic communion.

18The various certificates of good conduct also brought access (in theory, temporary) to social assistance normally reserved for the most deserving families.28 Some outstanding citizens were also offered trips in return for their service. In 1962, for example, Đàm Thị Thuỷ, a worker from the tin mine at Tĩnh Túc, was invited to Hanoi to visit the Văn Hô Exposition Centre. Given his background, this was a great honour for the young man. Lastly, the regime granted certain exemptions to some emulation fighters. In 1958, an official document stated that “heads of families who received a decoration or honorary title or resistance medal” could be exempted — in theory, non-transmittable — from certain days of mandatory civic labour.29 On this level, the title of emulation fighter conferred concrete favours upon the recipient. He gained real access to the decision-makers within local government, and some did not hesitate to take advantage of it. All of these material incentives raise a difficult issue: the commodification of the new heroism. Revolutionary morality should theoretically oppose the monetisation of patriotic exemplarity. The DRV skirted this issue by broadening the idea of gift/counter-gift — the emulation fighter’s material gain was simply a legitimate homage from the collective to its best subjects. In no case should it seem like a tool of “petit-bourgeois, capitalist” greed.

19Nevertheless, the title of emulation fighter had the material result of raising the recipient’s salary or monthly wages:

In the 1950s–60s, to be named an emulation fighter was already a big reward for a peasant. Beyond the personal prestige they always acquired, it also meant real financial gain, a step up in their wages, and especially a promotion in their professional pay scale and sometimes access to foreign goods at the government-owned shops.30

20The title of exemplarity was thus not only symbolic, but carried with it a variety of material gains. As a tool for mobilisation, it handily tapped into the common quest for financial advancement to ensure the people’s allegiance. Undoubtedly, the itinerant cadres and their Chinese advisors had to cope with the pressures of family solidarity. A Vietnamese proverb states that “when someone receives the title of mandarin, his whole family line benefits.” The anthropologist Christine White wrote about the importance of family lineage in Vietnam in her article about the ideological changes brought about by agrarian reform.31 Our interviews were also very revealing on this score:

21Each village has two or three powerful families. They are often members of the Party, so frequently everything was discussed within the family. Little has changed, in fact. Each lineage has its supporters, and the choices made by those in power followed this traditional logic. The elected official chose men from his lineage. The Party tried to combat this by sending in men from outside, but often this didn’t go well. This also happened in the local emulation committees. Everything was decided by vote, so the most senior communist of the village decided to appoint members of his own lineage to the local Party cell.32

22Agrarian reform teams tried to fight against the weight of family ties while they visited a village, but old habits usually took over after they left.

23In the towns of Thuận Thành (Hà Bắc) and Quỳnh Lưu (Nghệ An), more than two-thirds of those who received titles came from the most powerful lineages of their village. Their emulation fighters had family members in key positions within the local government (president of the commune, communal party secretary, security attaché, and head of the cooperative).33 I have already mentioned the importance of the intermediary, “the presenter”, in the nomination process. The writer Nguyễn Khắc Trường brings up this issue in her novel Ghosts and Men (Mảnh đất lắm người nhiều ma [1991]): “And if I wasn’t a Party member, how could I have kept my job as president of the cooperative six or seven years running? And how do you think the young people of our lineage got admitted to the Party? If it wasn’t for me, they would still be waiting!”34 The strength of family ties may have been shaken up by agrarian reform, but they were eventually able to adapt to the new socio-political context. Class competed poorly against family, and had to adapt. There might have been a reconstruction of social relationships centred around loyalty and the political merits of exemplary men from the community, but it could never totally do away with the traditional role of lineage within a village.

24The recomposition of the village elite in North Vietnam is thus a particularly complex issue. Did the exemplary worker or the emulation fighter really help usher in a new local elite? Or was it more a question of heightened resistance by the traditional village hierarchy to the arrival of “reformist types” with conspicuous ties to the central government? Indeed, available statistics show clearly that these certificates were awarded to only a small number of people spread unevenly throughout the country.35 In 1958–59, the production units and communes of Lào Cai province elected 1,441 “vanguard workers”, but the title of emulation fighter was only given to 154 of them, or less than 10 per cent (the percentage is even lower if you consider the total population of 130,000 in 1960).36 Likewise, figures from 1957 on the distribution of emulation fighters per village in Vĩnh Linh province show that it was still a relatively rare honour:

25We must consider what actually became of them and how they were integrated professionally into the organisation of the commune. What jobs did they hold? Did they really serve as a counter-weight to the tenacity of the traditional Vietnamese elite? In the 1950s, the Vietnamese commune was comprised of an administrative apparatus on the communal and village level, an ideological apparatus centred around the local Party cell, an economic sector made up of cooperatives and production groups, mass organisations, and social services for medical care and education.38 In Nghệ An province in 1962, records show that exemplary workers and emulation fighters barely held 20 per cent of the seats in the People’s Assembly.39 At the highest level of the communal hierarchy (party secretary, president of the commune, and head of the cooperative), the percentage is even lower. In the districts of Nguyên Bình, Thuận Thành, and Quỳnh Lưu, just over 5 per cent of the emulation fighters became president of their commune in the year following their election; 8 per cent became communal party secretary, and 11 per cent took over as head of the cooperative.

26Be as it may, reports collected by provincial emulation bureaus in the 1950s show that the title of emulation fighter still led to a quicker ascent up the communal ladder. Indeed, emulation fighters were not only assigned honorary positions but often held more technical positions: head of the production group, security chief, head of the department of economic affairs, chief of cultural affairs and of literacy, leading cadre from the hamlet, accountant for the cooperative, etc. In communes with a weak ideological base, however, emulation fighters were more likely to receive a key position in village government. In Vũ Nông (Nguyên Bình, Cao Bằng), the Red Yao cadre Triệu Thùng Chòi easily became president of the commune, chief of security, and head of the small trade cooperative. In the absence of a traditional local elite, the emulation fighter could become a key player in the modernisation of the village administration.

27Occasionally there were problems with bad behaviour following the election of a “new man”, though such cases were rarely mentioned in official documents. The Interior Ministry asked provincial authorities in charge of emulation to carry out an annual follow-up of “breaches of collective discipline” among the newly elect. “Normally people have great respect for emulation fighters, so it is unacceptable that some of them, after achieving great things and obtaining their title, let themselves go and behave poorly with the people.”40 In Nghệ An province in 1961, of the 3,376 emulation fighters and vanguard workers, 148 were sanctioned for collective indiscipline. Four types of offences were mentioned: poor implementation of the central government’s policies, ill discipline, theft, and distance from the masses.41 Punishment was light, however. Only 7 of the 148 sanctioned were called before the People’s Tribunal, and of these, only 3 were handed harsh sentences.42 Two-thirds of the offenses required only that a warning letter be sent to the Party member. Expulsion or outright dismissal was to be applied in less than a third of offences, the government preferring to demote the offender by one rung in order to reduce his salary.43

28Ultimately, the government rarely punished their “new men”, even though several inspection reports indicated that a number of them did not take their role seriously. They were frequently criticised for not attending official meetings or sharing their experiences adequately with villagers. When one exemplary worker tried to apply himself, he was criticised for “lack of clarity, incoherency, and shyness, which made the audience laugh and damaged his credibility.”44 Some of this was due to a lack of education and a poor understanding of class by the newly elect. While some were reluctant to take on their responsibilities, others seemed to throw themselves into it with a bit too much zeal. In Nghi Lộc (Nghệ An), the district head of emulation criticised some exemplary workers of spending too much time at public meetings since it took them away from their regular jobs.45 Moreover, since participation in events was also remunerated (for participation and transport), he also condemned the potential professionalisation of heroism in the countryside.46

Minorities, Revolutionary Heroism, and Exclusion

29In the 1950s–60s, mobilisation activities were not organised evenly throughout North Vietnam. This was due in part to the poor reception given to the government’s campaigns by ethnic minorities in isolated areas and in provinces with a strong Catholic base. One must remain a bit sceptical, then, regarding the claims of the “enthusiastic participation of the Vietnamese people in the DRV struggle” that the government continues to spout to this day. During the Franco-Việt Minh war, colonial French forces and the communist Vietnamese continually competed for the support of ethnic minorities and the Catholic community.47 The appearance of the new man in North Vietnam basically relied on a community of ethnic Kinh (almost 90 per cent of Vietnamese were Kinh) who were already won over by the ideas of the VWP. The historian Andrew Hardy showed the importance of economic migration in the DRV’s conquest of the nation.48 In the “Red Hills” of North Vietnam, for example, the new man was not easily accepted by the local population.

30Vietnam has 54 different ethnic minorities, who make up 11 per cent of the total population and whose allegiance has always been a key political stake. In 1947, a Việt Minh document reports the problems encountered in mobilising them:

As far as the minority peoples are concerned, on the one hand it makes sense to buy out the chiefs and mandarins with bonuses. We must have their leaders well in hand. On the other hand, we have to be forceful with the reactionaries. We learned at Lạng Sơn that the more concessions we make to the Nùng, the more they will want. A great many of them followed the bandits. Once we used a firm hand to control them in some areas, they quieted down, and what’s more, some of them even came to give themselves up.49

31For many of these mountain people, the idea of family, race, or clan was much more familiar than the abstract concept of a nation. Of course, the various ethnic groups spread throughout the mountainous areas did not all follow the same trajectory, so one should examine their relationships with the Kinh separately, and over time.50 The Tày, for example (the largest ethnic minority), are very assimilated into Vietnamese culture — their mores, customs, language, and surroundings were often similar to those of the Kinh.51 Conversely, the rites, language, way of life, and cosmology of the mountainous Red Yao minority was quite distinct from the world of the Kinh. The government translated several books into Tày and Nung in the 1950s, but did nothing in Yao. Very few minority peasants knew how to speak Vietnamese. Of the 1,500 inhabitants of the commune of Vũ Nông (Nguyên Bình), only 20 could speak it in 1960; and this was more than in the other villages of the district, such as Yên Lạc, La Thành, Mai Long, Phan Thanh, and Thành Công, each of which were several hours from the district seat by foot. Until the mid-1970s, most of these mountain villages were not targeted by a single act of propaganda. It was obviously not here, then, that the government would find the first exemplary workers and emulation fighters of Cao Bằng province.

32Nestled in the valley, the small town of Tĩnh Túc (Nguyên Bình) was the industrial powerhouse of Cao Bằng, thanks to an open-air tin mine that had been in operation since the 1920s. The DRV decided to make it the showcase of the province’s economic development. With the signing of the new economic partnership between the USSR and the DRV (1955), Soviet engineers and their families began to move into the area. At the time, Tĩnh Túc was composed of 200 Red Yao, White Yao, and Hmong families. When the French were in control of the mine, they did not want to hire locals, claiming that they were incompetent and unable to communicate with the French engineers or their Vietnamese assistants. When operations began again in 1955, the Vietnamese followed the same tack. Before the arrival of the Soviets, authorities moved the inhabitants of this narrow little valley to nearby villages.52 The government claimed that this was because of overpopulation, but it was obviously more concerned about meeting the demands of the Kim Loan mining company. General and agricultural taxes were raised dramatically in an effort to force the minorities out of the valley. Extreme measures were taken, and in just a few months the transfer of the local population was complete. The Yáo, Hmông, and Ngai families relocated to host-villages in the surrounding mountains, and the terrain was set for a new economic resettlement. By the late 1950s, Tĩnh Túc had only 7 families who were neither Kinh nor Tày (3 of them were Hmông) in a population of 6,000. In 1960, the town was finally officially classified as a New Economic Zone; the mine was then recruiting workers and cadres from the entire area (5 years later, 80 per cent of the new economic immigrants were still all from Cao Bằng). The DRV obviously sought their “new men” in the town of Tĩnh Túc, and more specifically within the Kim Loan company, not the ethnic minority community.

33It took a similar approach in Quỳnh Lưu district (Nghệ An province). In the 1950s, the western, mountainous part of the district had 150 ethnic Thái families (2 per cent of the total population estimated at 80,000), spread throughout the villages of Quỳnh Thắng, Quỳnh Châu, and Quỳnh Tam.53 These 3 communes were 2 hours from the district seat by horseback (11 km/7 miles). Originally from Hòa Bình and Thanh Hóa province, the Thái had arrived in the early nineteenth century; in 1955 they made up 70 per cent of the minority population of Nghệ An, and so were the second largest ethnic group after the Kinh.54 In the 1950s, Thái families did not take part in the political activities organised by district cadres, in stark contrast to those who lived along the coast or in the central plains. In 1953, a law on ethnic policy advocated “choosing minorities who worked well, then educating and training them to become key cadres of their area”,55 but it was not well implemented on the ground. The three villages of Quỳnh Thắng, Quỳnh Châu, and Quỳnh Tam remained untouched by the government’s mobilisation efforts. Thái households continued to cultivate their own land as always. No-one made a list of landlords. The district decided that it was useless to send an agrarian reform team except to the village of Quỳnh Thắng, where a group of cadres had gone in 1954 before giving up all social reorganisation efforts. It was not until 1959 that Quỳnh Thắng, Quỳnh Châu, and Quỳnh Tam organised their first emulation campaigns, and their brand new agricultural cooperative produced the first exemplary workers. Once again, as in the case of Nguyên Bình, the emulation at Quỳnh Lưu did not focus on the good works of the minority peoples but on the “revolutionary activism” of resettled Kinh immigrants. In the late 1950s, 6,000 Kinh were sent from South Vietnam to ethnic Thái villages, and even more arrived in 1963–64. Once in the majority, these minority people were gradually marginalised in their traditional homeland; many of them moved into even more remote areas.56 With the massive influx of Kinh, mobilisation efforts could now begin. Cooperatives were established in nine hamlets in the commune of Quỳnh Thắng, but “in spite of this, the movement was still extremely weak in the predominantly Thái neighbourhoods”.57

34The minority peoples thus remained relatively untouched by the emulation campaigns; the same was true of the Catholics in North Vietnam. During the Franco-Viet Minh War, Catholics were an important stake for both camps, not only for military purposes but especially regarding ideology and identity.58 The DRV kept the Catholic peasant Hoàng Hanh (from Nghệ An) on the list for the first new heroes at Tuyên Quang in 1952 as part of their global strategy for strengthening national unity. During the Geneva Accords (1954), Clause 14d announced the exchange of populations between the North and South over a period of 300 days. The commissioner for refugees in Saigon estimated that 794,876 Catholics fled the North between 21 July 1954 and 21 May 1955 — about two-thirds of the nation’s total.59 The historian Trần Thị Liên points out that those who stayed often did so less out of deliberate political choice than out of attachment to their homeland, or because they did not have the money to leave. Officially, the DRV espoused a policy of openness and solidarity with its Catholic minority. One critical event — that has since been erased from the history books — left a deep division, however, between the communists and the Catholics, and led to the latter’s refusal to participate in the emulation movement.

35In August 1956, several weeks after the official close of the population exchange between the North and South, requests for permission to leave continued to flood the People’s Committee of Quỳnh Lưu. They were systematically denied by the district cadres, leading to friction between the two camps. In theory, any Catholic who wanted to move needed government authorisation, to avoid “acts of treason”, they claimed, but a tacit solidarity between Catholic villages allowed them to bypass these measures. In 1947–48, Catholics made up more than 10 per cent of the population of Quỳnh Lưu district (6,500 people).60 Despite calls for reconciliation and the government’s promises of goodwill (their resolution of 26 March 1955 and the fundamental law granting religious freedom of 14 June 195561), Catholics continued to head south in large numbers. An account from Quỳnh Thọ reports that 1,728 Catholics (more than 60 per cent of the commune) left their village during this period.62 The Party, however, continued to extol the merits of its Catholic members: the exemplary figures of Nguyễn Thinh and Ngô Thành symbolised the solidarity that still stirred the hearts of the Catholics from Quỳnh Lưu in its struggle against the foreign invader. Following the victory of Ðiện Biên Phủ, the mass exodus of Catholics toward the South was a clear sign that Vietnam was not yet “one great family”, as the government had claimed since the resumption of hostilities in 1946. The Catholic community was basically grouped into four villages in the district: Quỳnh Thanh, Quỳnh Yên, Quỳnh Lâm, and Quỳnh Lộc. Right in the middle of them, however, lay the commune of Quỳnh Đôi, known for the political intransigence of its cadres and its longstanding ties with the central government. The Catholic exodus increased tensions between the communes, and in Quỳnh Đôi, this “flight to the South” was harshly condemned. A former Party secretary of the commune recalls: “In our village the only religion since the August Revolution was the Party. There were no Catholics or Buddhists. It was particularly hard for us to tolerate what was going on in the Catholic villages at the time.”63

36In early September, the situation turned into open conflict. Pro-Catholic villagers and Party supporters clashed: “The reactionary clique took advantage of our policies to pervert the backward Catholics masses, but we put up a strong resistance. The most serious incident involved the commune of Quỳnh Yên, where the Catholic villages of Hà Lang and Cẩm Trương rebelled, creating a kind of Catholic jacquerie [peasants’ revolt in Picardy in 1358].”64 The inhabitants of Quỳnh Đôi and Quỳnh Thanh were furious, and they sent their militia to the corridor between Quỳnh Thanh and the other Catholic villages in order to halt the outflux of villagers. Worried by this eruption of violence, the government sent a regiment of the PAVN. It took them several weeks to restore order, and a number of soldiers were killed. In early October, the army managed to bring the situation under control. The Catholics were once more redistributed through the district. In 1958, only the village of Quỳnh Thanh still had a completely Catholic population; elsewhere, the administration annexed predominantly Catholic hamlets to other non-Catholic communes in the area. The aim was to control and disperse this religious minority.

37A taboo subject in contemporary history, the Catholic jacquerie of 1956 halted the wave of national solidarity imagined by the State. The memory of this event remained vivid within the Catholic community but was partially erased from the collective imagination. The government had been lauding the heroism of the Catholic Hoàng Hanh since 1952 to bring them back to the fold of emulation, but the events of September 1956 made any attempt at reconciliation difficult. There were no campaigns for mass mobilisation within the Catholic bastion of Quỳnh Thanh between 1956 and 1965. There was no question of nominating exemplary workers or emulation fighters. The commune did have structures for ideological mobilisation and mass organisations, but none of the villagers really participated in them. They did not get a Party cell until 1954, and this was placed under the supervision of the Catholic cadre Nguyễn Trương Chính; in 1965 it still had only four members. The government had tried to isolate the rebellious commune rather than integrate it — or at least associate it — with its mobilisation efforts. Contrary to the situation in Quỳnh Trang, the government did not try to include the rebel village in the new zones of economic development. They even abandoned the idea of opening a cultural centre, a people’s library, or a recreation centre. Itinerant cultural groups bypassed the village. The Ministry of Education managed to send a new teacher to their primary school, but the villagers did not hide their defiance and rarely sent their children to attend: “Why go to school when we’re just going to end up tending water buffalo …?” 65

38The situation was different in the village of Quỳnh Lộc. The commune was one-third Catholic in the late 1950s and had launched its first emulation campaign in 1951. The People’s Committee had, however, chosen to exclude Catholics. Until 1965, none were elected as emulation fighters or even exemplary workers, even though Quỳnh Lộc had the first Catholic cooperative in the district. But fear still ran high among non-Catholics, who wondered if “these men who sprinkle water on their heads aren’t actually enemy spies”.66 Since 1953, the commune of Sơn Hải had 50 Catholic families in one of its hamlets, and local authorities tried without much success to launch a “Hoàng Hanh movement”. But in Sơn Hải, as elsewhere, “the villagers of Catholic faith didn’t participate much in mass organisations. With the approach of war, they couldn’t even become soldiers because everyone was afraid they were traitors.”67 Until 1965, some Catholic villagers managed to become members of the cooperative or of fishermen’s groups from the commune, but the local government was still wary and preferred not to award them with a title of exemplarity. In theory, a predominantly Catholic hamlet could be represented in the local government by one of their own. This was the case in Song Ngọc (Quỳnh Ngọc commune), which was under the leadership of the peasant Quang Phúc from 1945 to 1965, but this was rare, especially after the arrival of agrarian reform teams. Trần Chất Hiền, a Catholic, was Vice President of the commune of Minh Châu until the team decided to relieve him of his duties in 1955. Of the 18 communes in Quỳnh Lưu, only Quỳnh Giang (which was one-quarter Catholic in 1960) saw a Catholic peasant awarded the title of emulation fighter.68 In other areas, both official statistics and collective memory confirm the presence of strong religious intolerance.

39For the common people of Vietnam, the emulation fighter represented primarily the belief in a reform of the old order, regardless of the modest place that he finally assumed within society. A product of the illusion of patriotic rhetoric, he would never be totally free from the daily toil and strife of his existence. Thus, the title of emulation fighter offered its bearer less a way to compete with a local elite that was often deeply rooted within the local landscape, than access to new mid-level positions created by the DRV. Those who won patriotic awards really experienced an undeniable rise in their social status; never, however, did these awards lead to a serious questioning of traditional hierarchies. In any case, government cadres had no desire to see a new local elite acquire more power than they should. And in the end, were not those who held real power afraid of the emergence of a potential rival to their influence on the nation?