“ This book, undated, (1958?) was presumably published in Saigon, in English, in The Republic of (South) Viet-Nam (Việt Nam Cộng hòa), and widely distributed by anti-communist elements in the American-backed administration of President Ngô Đình Diệm as an affront to the political problems of the government of the northern Democratic Republic of Vietnam (Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa), in an effort intended to discredit the management of the north, and to point out the inefficiency of the land reform programme, as well as to illustrate the whole-scale poverty being made by the leadership of the Hồ Chí Minh government. The affair is named for the suppression of two independent newspapers in North Vietnam in 1956. During the brief period of a loosening of political restrictions which were reflective of the policies similar to the Chinese Hundred Flowers Campaign ( 百花運動 or, in Vietnamese, Trăm hoa đua nở) upon which it was based, there followed an abrupt hardening of attitudes. Two periodicals were closed down and their political associates imprisoned or exiled.
"Nhân Văn" (Human art) was a popular periodical in Hanoi. (The official address of the Nhân Văn paper was 27 Hang Khay, Hà Nội.) Its editor was Phan Khôi, and its secretary was Tran Duy.
These two men published a series of articles in their exceptional newspaper which were humourous, sardonic, ironic, and mostly symbolic. However, they were truly old guard communists who basically supported Hồ Chí Minh, and although they were adamantly against the American puppet government in Saigon, they ruthlessly criticised the ineptitude of the bureaucracy in the north; many nowadays do not realize that the Chinese (and Vietnamese) Hundred Flowers Campaign was a direct outgrowth and response to the Soviet-crushed Hungarian uprisiing of 1956, and the instalation of a new Soviet-backed leadership there, after a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the People's Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. That uprising was surprisingly enough formulated by the policies of de-Stalinisation, of which China was opposed, causing the Sino-Soviet Rift. (After Khrushchev's "secret speech" of February 1956, which denounced Stalin and his protégés, Rákosi was deposed as General Secretary of the Party and replaced by Ernő Gerő on 18 July 1956. The Hungarian State Security apparatus, known as the ÁVH, was banished, as the former Beria-controlled NKVD in the USSR was now replaced by the Soviet KGB, and János Kádár, who presided over Hungary from 1956 until his forced retirement in 1988.)
"Nhân Văn" used metaphoric allusions to western commercialization and materialism, employed science fiction short-stories to illustrate the outrageous indignities which common Hanoi people were forced to suffer, and used poetry and reflections from the rich literary tradition of Vietnamese classic authors, to establish the mediocrity of their post-1956 lot in life. Just as the Yugoslavian author Milovan Đilas later had done in Tito's non-alligned socialist and anti-Soviet satellite, Phan Khôi and Tran Duy had engaged, as dissidents, in what was commonly termed "counter-revolutionary activities" and both quietly disappeared and were soon forgotten. This English-language accounting of the affair is a most wonderful resource for the scholar of Vietnamese history, and the history of socialist movements, eagerly trying to break from the Chinese and Soviet models. ”
