The VCP leadership realises that the masses' seepticism of the media constitutes a greater crisis than economic failures.
becoming more and more difficult, is contradictory and unjustifiable. How could we expect the laboring mass to accept such speeches. "8

This is alarming enough for the direction of the VCP. A few months later, in a speech at one of those close Party reunions, Le Duc Tho was echoing the saure concern:
"The press, the radio network and the media are propagandizing without feedback, stressing only the strong points and the good scores, daring not mention the negative aspects, avoiding frank and open criticism, refusing to provide fidl answers to the questions of the masses ... On the contrary, il happened that the press was repeating about Plan fulfillments in the face of the misery of the
people. "9
As in other countries, this combination of social distress and flourishing panegyrics of party achievements has been a perpetual source of black humorists and underground poets. But for the resigned population, to quote a pertinent remark from Francoise Thom: "the contrast between the triumphant tonality of the media and the grim reality ended up by totally discrediting the official press".10

Anyone who has ever lived in Vietnam can easily tes tify to the common experience of "cognitive dissonance". If one cannot manage to become one of the'boat people", to escape the fate of the Pavlovian dog subjected to the paradox of the circle and the eclipse, one has to reject the whole environment of headlines and posters or pay mere lip service to the daily rituals of mass brainwashing. A quite accurate picture of the actual social malaise is offered by Nguyen Khac Vien, once an acclaimed historian of the revolutionary transformation in Vietnam:
"A dreadful silence is spreading over the society. Few people use their braira to discover a new ides. For some, time and energy are used up to making ends meet; others become depressed and pessimistic, too exhausted to take offense ".11

Vien's impressions mostly stemmed from his experience in Hanoi and North Vietnam, yet corresponded basically with those of Duong Quang Dong, a veteran Party member living in the South. An eighty years old retired official, Dong could be more honest in his words than the younger apparatchik:
"... There is a severe loss of failli among the people as regards the Party and the State, they are complaining about the sordid poverty and the rising prices, as well as about their precarious and insecure fille ... Although they fear the regime and the police, the people are frankand straightforward with retired men like us; in Ho Chi Minh City, they are not enthusiastic about the neighborhood solidarity tell meetings, they feel bored when listening to political speeches. "12

This means the demise of the pre-established harmony between the VCP and the Vietnamese people, and a lethal blow to the monolithic orthodoxy. Faithful followers of the bolsheviks of October 1917, Vietnam's communist leaders have confiscated the power from the people. In the name of the proletariat, it has imposed the Party's dictatorship on the entire society. This usurpation is legitimized by the bolshevik doctrine, according to which, the Party is the only authentic social consciousness that can rightly define the interests of society on behalf of historical necessity. For its legitimacy, needless to say, the Party answers to no-one.13

Yet perhaps deep down in its unconscious,the VCP feels uneasy about its self-investiture and is constantly concerned about the political climate of mass allegiance. In the eyes of seasoned communist leaders, the population's discrediting of Party propaganda, with society breaking loose from Party control, constitutes a current confidence crisis far more perilous than economic failures or natural disasters.
Indochina Report 4	Oct-Dec 1990