Vietnam Communists Urge Party Reform

Intellectuals and Communist ideologues in Vietnam are urging their party to respond to political upheavals in Eastern Europe by relaxing its 45-year grip on power.

In interviews Sunday, they said the Communist Party must respond to a crisis in Soviet-led socialism by giving ground, even to the extent of allowing some degree of multi-party democracy.

Communist leaders in Hanoi have been surprised and confused by the breathtaking political change among Vietnam’s East European allies, and they’re afraid it could upset the country’s own socialist system.

“The constitution says the ideal future is communism,” senior journalist Nguyen Van Dang said. “Parties which form and oppose this are illegal. . . . But if the people want to change this, they can.”

Impoverished Vietnam has been isolated diplomatically and economically from the West since its 1978 invasion of Cambodia and has relied almost exclusively on Soviet and East European support to survive.

With the lightning collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, Vietnam’s aging leaders are faced with the option of either tightening their hold on power in the midst of growing internal dissent or introducing Soviet-style democratic reforms, officials said.

Hanoi has recently allowed limited freedom of expression in the media and legislature, but officials said a party plenum due next year will embrace significant changes and may revise a decision made in August that ruled out political pluralism.

“I expect the next Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party will bring big changes, not least in personnel,” Duong Xuan Nam, deputy editor of the youth newspaper Tien Phong, said.

Officials have said that party leader Nguyen Van Linh, plagued by illness since taking over in 1986, will resign in the next few months.