Top leaders purged in Vietnam Stalinist crisis

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• The replacement of three prominent ministers last week is only the tip of a vast iceberg of political and economic problems for the Vietnamese Stalinist bureaucracy.

The most prominent of the removed ministers is General Vo Nguyen Giap, who leaves the Ministry of Defence after 30 years in the job.

The two other septuogenarian Stalinists to be pensioned off are Le Thanh Nghi, who has been in charge of economic plańning, and Foreign Minister Nguyen Duy Trinh.

No reason No official reason has yet been given for these three sackings. But there can be little doubt that they are connected with the disastrous state of the Vietnamese economy, now suffering the problems resulting from last year's invasion and the continued military occupatión of Kampuchea.

They must also be linked with the massive purge which has been taking place Vietnamese CP.

This purge has been largely directed zgainst "pro-Maoist" elements.

The CP. it is officially announced. *has launched a campaign of education of its members to help them distinguish between false Marxism a come the venomous influence of Maoism".

The result has been a fall in membership of the Party from about 12 million (at the time of the Fourth Congress in late 1976) to only just over one million, according to a report in the party newspaper Nhan Dan last December.

Given that the intervening three vears was one of rapid the course of the purges at least half a million and perhaps as many as one million members have been expelled from or have left the Party.

There is no reason to suppose that the three sacked ministers are "pro-Maoist". But several leading veteran Party leaders have been purged.

Most dramatically. Hoang Van Hoan was deposed last summer as Vice-premier-only to defect to Peking and give public press conferences denouncing the Hanoi regime!

It is mconceivable that all the purged party members represent one organised pro Peking faction.

They almost certainly repres ent diverse currents opposed to the bureaucratic Hanoi regime, accentuated by the economic failures and resistance to the invasion of Kampuchea.

The two things are closely economed hardships in viet nam partly result from the heavy demands of maintaining a massive army of occupation of 200,000 in Kampuchea (relative to the population of the occupied country it is one of the largest occupying armies in history).

Numerous reports from Vietnam in recent months attest to an extreme shortage of food and other consumer goods which the bureaucracy has been promising to supply ever since the victory against American imperialism in 1975.

In fact the economic conditions of the masses have got worse since then.

This is not only due to expansion into Kampuchea, but also because of the impact of the elimination of private retail trade in 1978; a price structure masses in Ho Chi Minh City and goods famine which offers peasants no material incentive io market their produce; and finally because of widespread corruption in which the bureau cracy receives numerous material privileges.

In relation to the last point, the official Tatio of the salaries of a top bureaucrat to "the lowest paid is only 3 to 1.

But it has been estimated that, with all the bureaucrats' perks taken into account, the real difference is more in the region of six or even ten ta one.

Embarrassed by failures and corruption, the top bureaucracy has been forced to open in the pages of Nhan Dan to wave of critical letters.

As is the custom with top Stalinist bureaucrats in these only too common circumstances an effort has been, made to devolve the blame onto lower levels of the admiristration (Castro did the same in Cuba only last month.

Special shops for bureaucrats are to be abolished, the controlled prices made "more realistic" (i.e. raised) and much more reliance placed on the free market, especially in food.

At the same time, however, a new hierarchy of official salaries is to be introduced, considerably widening • the present nominal differentials.

These measures may reduce the gap between the official and black market price of food (at present the black market price is four times the official price).

They may also bring a bit more food onto the market.

But they cannot get around the more fundamental problems reflected in the fact that the country's production of rice last year amounted to 15: million tons when the much publicisea plan, outlined in 1976 required 21 million tons.

Aside from the natural disasters (drought and floods) which affected this failure, a vast influence came from chronic producton problems in the cooperatives in the north, and irom policy vacillations and the failure of the government to win the confidence of the small and middle peasants of the South It is also reported that many:

of those induced to leave Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon)

after the war and go to new agricultural settlements beginning to return in disillusion to the cities.

A favourite complaint of the Hanoi bureaucracy at present is directed against what it calls "manifestations of negativism"

within the masses.

Events show clearly, however, how once again a Stalinist bureaucracy is attempting to blame workers and peasants for its own criminal acts of sabotage against socialism.

The way to socialism in Vietnam can only be opened up by a struggle to depose the Stalinist bureaucracy and install a Soviet government under the leadership of a revolutionary Trotskyist party which incorporates the vanguard of the Vietnamese working class.

Only then can the heroic sacrifices made by Vietnamese workers and peasants in the struggle against imperialism come finally to fruition.

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