Vietnam of 20 years After " Mau Than" War

Vietnam of 20 Years After “Mau Than” War

All of us know what happens to a country after war. It is not only a mess for the whole country, but also a challenge for authorities to rebuild a new country. Effects of war brought many miserable incidents to the Vietnamese people in the 1960s. Specifically, Vietnam became politically messy after war  ended on April 30, 1975. The main causes of “Mau Than” war were conflicts between the North and South. The Vietnamese Communists from the North wanted to unify Vietnam, and they believed that Marxism would be the best solution to have a better country. Because of these causes, the “Mau Than” war happened. As a result, the effects of Marxist philosophy turned Vietnam into the most miserable situation. The bad effects especially affected daily life-style of people in South Vietnam in politics, human rights and education.

Marxism was terrible for people in South Vietnam after the “Mau Than” war ended. Before the communists took over the South, men working for The American army used to earn enough to support their family. This group was called Republican Vietnam soldiers. After Vietnamese communists occupied the South and united Vietnam,The Republic Vietnam soldiers were called soldiers “Nguy.” Soldiers “Nguy” and their family suffered many bad things from communists. For example, first, their earnings were not high enough to support their family members. Next, they were told lies by the Vietnamese Communists that if soldiers “Nguy” surrendered to communist party, they would be released. After they did what the communists said, they didn’t get released but arrested and/or tortured to death. In addition to low earnings and those lies, their houses and business were occupied by the communists. More than those, they had to eat only daikon radish and rice flour that are for pigs. If their family had young children, they could not go to school. If the parents wanted their children to go to school, the parents had to give bribes to the communist authorities so that the kids could go to school. Because of these reasons, some families that had savings fled to the other countries such as London, North America, and Australia. Applying Marxism for transforming a new Vietnam by communists was really miserable for daily life of people in the South.

 In addition to the miserable crisis after communists’ victory, Marxist philosophy was also applied for human rights. Because of the terrible communist scheme, there were no human rights in Vietnam at that time. People couldn’t complain anything about the government. Students had no rights to complain about teachers if teachers were wrong. It was always wrong for people who can afford to buy a color TV because they will be called "Republican Vietnam” and sent to jail. If people bought black-white TV, they would be safe. My mom told me her story in this period of time. My family saved up to buy a color TV, but we couldn’t leave it in the living room. We had to hide it on the second floor. Whenever we watched TV, a person was assigned to stay downstairs to watch around and alert upstairs people if the police came to over to check. My mom also told me that they couldn’t laugh so loud when watching TV, or else they would get caught  watching “color TV.” Under the Marxist philosophy, people couldn’t buy what they wanted, buy what they loved or say what they thought.

Furthermore, Marxism was also applied to education. Textbooks were from Ex-Soviet Union. Teaching method was terrible. For example, my dad told me that in order for him to go to one of the best secondary schools in Saigon, my grandparents had to give a bribe to the principal so that he could go to that school and became a pupil in one of the best classes. At that time, if my grandparents could not give bribes to the school administrators, my dad could fail the class and  he might be obliged to learn Russian. Fortunately, my grandparents worked hard to have enough money for my dad to be in a class that he had a chance to learn English, instead of learning Russian. In addition to giving bribes to go to a good school, my dad had to join the Youth Party so that teachers would not fail him. He was obliged to study their “proud” history that was not true. For example, to win over the 1968-1975 wars, the Vietnamese Communists had  aid from Chinese and Russians. Nevertheless, when my grandparents hired a woman from countryside to do chores and to take care of their children, they had to lie to the local communists that this woman was our relative. If we told the truth, we would have troubles for sure. We would be in jail or taken to the local police office  several times for questioning.

In conclusion, along with all the difficulty at that time, Marxism took a part in Vietnamese  history to make the situation become worse. These causes including politics, human rights and education didn’t help the lives of the Vietnamese to improve at all. Therefore, the “Mau Than” war happened to get rid of this bad solution.