The Nhân văn – Giai phẩm (Vietnamese: Phong trào Nhân văn – Giai phẩm) was a cultural and political movement in North Vietnam from 1955 to early 1957. Two periodicals were established during that time, Nhân văn (Vietnamese: [ɲən van], Humanities) and Giai phẩm (Vietnamese: [zaːj fə᷉m], Masterpieces), many issues of which were published demanding freedom of speech, creativity and human rights. Following a loosening of political restrictions with some similarities to the Chinese Hundred Flowers Campaign, there was a hardening of attitudes. After those two major journals were closed down, their associates were imprisoned or reeducated. Authors affiliated with the Nhân văn–Giai phẩm movement were condemned by the government as "reactionary".
Historical Contexts
1954 Geneva Accords
The 1954 Geneva Accords marked the end of anti-French struggle and provided the Viet Minh with prestige and authority in Northern half of Vietnam. After the close of the Geneva Conference, the Vietnamese Workers' Party (VWP) faced two fundamental tasks: to reconstruct the north and to unify the south. To rebuild the north, the VWP leadership continued to look to China for assistance and China immediately began to offer aid to help the DRV. But the reconstruction efforts in the DRV following the First Indochina War underwent many trials and tribulations. The 1954 Geneva Accords on Nhan Van-Giai Pham facilitated enormous emigration from the north to the south from July 1954 to May 1955.
The Rise of de-Stalinization
The key global preludes of Nhan Van-Giai Pham affair may be located in the ups and downs of reform and repression that dominated political life in the Eastern Bloc and China throughout the turbulent years of the 1950s. Most significant was the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, the rise of currents of de-Stalinization promoted by political elites, and the growth of agitation throughout the Eastern bloc on the part of workers, intellectuals, and students. This course was the so-called Liberalization, which accelerated in the wake of Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech denouncing the crimes of Stalin in Feb 1956. The uprisings in Eastern bloc later that year brought this era of high de-Stalinization which inspired and stimulated not only the Soviet bloc, but many intellectuals within Chinese and North Vietnamese state-party.
Impact of the imitation from Chinese models
During the Cold War, the Sino-Soviet relations and conflicts in ideology greatly complicated North Vietnam's reconstruction after the First indochina War and the path toward reunification. By the 1950s, Hanoi faced two different modes of revolution: peaceful reunification (peaceful coexistence) through socialist development of the North and violent reunification through a struggle for liberation in the South, due to the separate revolutionary ideology between Moscow and Beijing. For North Vietnam, the close connection, promoted by geographical, historical and cultural links with China, was much deeper than those with the Soviet Union. In this context, Vietnamese developments in the era of de-Stalinization had more connections with China than with the USSR. However, the Soviet Union continued to be considered by the Vietnamese communists as the ideological center of the world communist movement.
After the cancellation of prescribed 1956 nationwide election, both Beijing and Moscow encouraged Hanoi to continue its political and economic reconstruction within the North. While Chinese influence in the North Vietnamese political reforms should be considered in a totally different light. Three in particular political movements were causing widespread discontent in North Vietnam which were all resulted from DRV's imitation of the Chinese model, including the rectification campaign, the land reform and the correction of errors.
In 1950s, Ho Chi Minh made an official visit to China to sign a military aid agreement with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership in Beijing. With the introduction of Chinese military aid came the massive influx of Chinese-styled institutions, reforms and advisors. A massive organizational rectification campaign was launched to study the Chinese 1942 Yan'an campaign, and thousands of cadres were purged. Almost at the same time, a two-phase land reform campaign modeled on China's was also put into action from 1953 to 1956. This alarmed many intellectuals because most had ties to the landlord classes more or less. Since many intellectuals were labeled "class enemies", a new label of "progressive personalities" was created for them if they voluntarily surrendered all their property to the state, in addition to serving the revolution. The twin notorious movements of the rectification campaign and the land reform cause serious damage not only on old structures in the village but on the party apparatus, which might have sowed chaos.
In August 1956, the party admitted serious problems with the land reform, and it launched a period of "rectification of errors" in October the same year. Nevertheless, official acknowledgement of land reform errors could not prevent, or perhaps generated further discord in the countryside, such as a violent peasant rebellion in Nghe An province in November 1956. Although the chaos occurred in the countryside, the whole country was in disorder. Many urban intellectuals who had been mobilized by the party to participate in the campaigns stoked the atmosphere of dissent in North Vietnam. Moreover, the fact that those series of movements were inspired by Maoist that stimulated other unpopular policies of the new regime that contributed to a belief that the Vietnamese revolution was a misplaced enthusiasm for the Chinese model.
Hundred Flowers Movement in China
Both China and North Vietnam were influenced by the currents of de-Stalinization during that time, while the North Vietnamese case suggests a more direct influence from China. With the criticism of de-Stalinization by Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) pursued a high key official campaign against independent intellectuals such as Hu Feng in 1955. But, in a stunning reversal, it launched the famous liberal Hundred Flowers movement the following year with the eulogizing of Mao Zedong himself. Following a year during which intellectuals were encouraged to air in public grievances about the party and its policies, the CCP abruptly reversed course again. In 1957, it shut down the Hundred Flowers movement and launched an "anti-rightist campaign" designed to root out and punish intellectuals who had exposed themselves during the previous year.
Same way in North Vietnam, a Vietnamese intellectual Tran Dan was inspired and encouraged by Hu Feng and published Nhan Van magazine in 1955. Then the party was aware of the close connection between Tran Dan and Hu Feng, and it should not be a surprise that when Tran Dan was purged and arrested in February 1956, six months after Hu Feng was imprisoned, the rationale for some cadres involved in the arrest was "China has Hu Feng, perhaps we also have a Hu Feng." Tran Dan's arrest marked the start of Nhan Van Giai Pham affair.
Nhân Văn and Giai phẩm Journals
Nhân Văn journal, 1955-1956
The official address of the Nhân Văn ("humanities") paper was 27 Hang Khay, Hanoi. Its editor was Phan Khôi, and its secretary was Tran Duy. The Nhân Văn group consisted of the dissident North Vietnamese intellectuals from 1955–58. This group was led by Phan Khôi, a revolutionary from Quảng Nam. Most of these intellectuals had participated in the movement against French colonialism. After the first phase of land reform, they became disillusioned and started a political movement demanding political freedom and democracy.
Giai phẩm Mùa xuân journal, 1956
The first edition of Giai Pham Mùa xuân ("Works of Spring"), also edited by Phan Khôi, was published in March, 1956. By December 1956, they had published two issues (Fall and Spring) of Giai Phẩm and five issues of Nhân Văn.
Among intellectuals that joined the group around the two journals were the lawyer Nguyễn Mạnh Tường, Dr Đặng Văn Ngữ, scholar Đào Duy Anh, philosopher Trần Đức Thảo, poets Trần Dần, Hoàng Cầm, Phùng Quán, Quang Dũng, Văn Cao, Nguyễn Hữu Đang, Lê Đạt and painter Bùi Xuân Phái.
Events of the Nhân Văn-Giai phẩm Period
Prelude (late 1954-1955)
Prior to the founding of Nhân Văn and Giai Phẩm journals, there was an insurgent campaign waged within the army to loosen censorship imposed on military writers and artists.
In February 1955, about thirty writers and artists in the army drafted a resolution to the party's central committee "demanding the abolition of the General Political Bureau`s leadership over arts and letters in the army.", which included three demands: "1) hand over the leadership of arts and letters to the artists and writers; 2) establish an arts and letters association within the structure of army organization; 3) abolish the existing military regime insofar as it affects the artists and writers serving in the armed forces." In the same month, they proposed a political petition based on the above three requests, but the petition was rejected.
The leading figure of this dissenting intellectual campaign was Tran Dan, a soldier-poet who became disenchanted with Maoist cultural policy following a two-month study tour to China in late 1954. as we can see that, however, Tran Dan was in China at the height of the Hu Feng crisis.
Hu Feng, a literary critic and longtime member of the Chinese Communist Party, sent a letter to the central committee in July 1954 that criticized his grievances on the party's literary authority figures. Although he had no intention of challenging party authority, Hu Feng's action reflected a wide range of intellectuals and artists` grievances and was taken as evidence of the earliest cleavage between the party and intellectuals after the formation of the PRC. Hu Feng was arrested in July 1955, and the campaign against him broadened into a campaign to reeducate the masses and reinforce the official line. After Hu Feng's personal letters were published, there is no doubt that Tran Dan was exposed to the materials related to Hu Feng's letter, and later his friends acknowledged the connection between Hu Feng and Tran Dan in a cartoon published in Nhan Van, the most influential Vietnamese dissident magazine. As a result, Tran Dan was also arrested in February 1956, six month later than Hu Feng's imprisoned.
The failure of Tran Dan-led insurgent campaign significantly frustrated the intellectuals who naively believed that their contribution to the revolution had won the party's trust, and thus prepared the ground for the intellectuals` more radical challenge to the party the following year.
The golden age of Nhan Van-Giai Pham (Feb.1956-Nov.1956)
The second stage of Nhan Van-Giai Pham was most liberal from the appearance of the first issue of Giai Pham in February 1956, although shortly after Tran Dan was arrested, and until late November 1956. In particular from August to November 1956, the movement experienced its golden age. The coincidence of the publication of the first issue of Giai Pham and Khrushchev's Secret Speech raised the prospect that a period of liberalization was forthcoming. Indeed, the international circumstances had turned favorable to the intellectuals during this stage. Both the Twentieth Congress and the Chinese Double-Hundred policy had immediate impact upon the relationship between Vietnamese intellectuals and the party. and allowed Vietnamese intellectuals the space to vigorously voice their concerns. The Soviet first deputy premier went to Beijing and Hanoi in April 1956 in order to introduce the new Soviet line. In the same month Tran Dan was released from prison, mainly because of the change in international atmosphere.
Domestically, a similarly liberal atmosphere dominated the Tenth Plenum of the VWP in September during which party leaders "correction of errors" of the land reform and called for a revival of "democratic rights" and the "people`s freedom." after that, many issues of Nhan Van and Giai Pham appeared, along with other independent journals came out intermittently, including Tram hoa (Hundred flowers), Noi that (Speak truth), Tap san phe binh (Criticism newsletter), Sang tao (Creativity), and Dai moi (New land).