History has reached a crucial turning point in Vietnam.
Introduction
E choing Gorbachev's reform campaign in the Soviet Union, an unprecedented turn of events has taken place in Vietnam. Unlike the blind imitations of Mao or Stalin applied to "agrarian reform" and "heavy industry" during the 1950s, the policy of openness advocated by Nguyen Van Linh and his allies is not simply a servile duplication of Glasnost and Perestroika, but pressures threatening the country History has reached a crucial turning point in Vietnam. In addition to a systemic crisis confronting the regime, the VCP has to face the no less dreadful specter of a consensus crisis pervading not only the population, the youth, and the army, but also attacking the faith of many rank and file party members. After Le Duan's death, the issue of power transfer has further affected the political climate already aggravated by the dismal results of the Third Five-Year Plan (1981-85). Meanwhile, bureaucratic immobility and corruption on a nationwide scale are undermining, not only the prestige, but also the efficiency of the VCP in its attempts to curb its decline.

After more than a decade of undisputed rule, traditional explanations are no longer valid. An entirely new way of thinking and explanation is needed to cope with the unbearable pressure for change. In this context, openness and renewed thinking appear to be the most radical measures to be adopted by the VCP since the time of its unhappy flirtation with freedom of the media and expression during the Nhan Van Giai Pham affair in 1956. Under a regime infamous for human rights violations and suppression of truth, suddenly with the backing of party bosses, the population, public opinion, writers, and the press began to reveal the hidden nature of a totalitarian system. Issues long kept behind closed doors that could split the VCP's unity, at first confined to economic administrative malins, have now invaded the ideological bastion, guardian of the system's very soul.

What is the meaning of Glasnost a la Vietnamienne? Are we witnessing the classic drama of tactical alliance between political factions and mass opinion in the power succession battle? Are the people and the intelligentsia mere pawns on the contending parties' chess-board, or are they taking advantage of the troubled interregum to make their voices heard? Is the media's liberation a device to check bureaucratic graft, or just another trick to dispel domestic resentment and deceive foreign observers? Was social communication introduced to provide the system with a self-regulating mechanism for the renovation process, or does it constitute an authentic indicator of mass participation in the remodeling of the power structure?

This paper will examine the impact of the new policy of information and culture upon the carrent historical mutation in Vietnam. It will attempt to assess the political significance of such a move in a regime where sharp constraints on public discussion of the country's problems are always rigidly maintained. In shedding a complementary light on their method of controlling and conducting the reform, in clarifying the relationships between Nguyen Van Linh and his cirde and the social components of their following, the paper will also contribute to the explanation and understanding of the emergence of a new pole of authority within the VCP.
PART I: A Crisis of Confidence
The Vietnamese mass media were not always guilty of inefficiency and redundanIndochina Report 2	Oct-Dec 1990