To Huu

If the Vietnamese Communist Party had had an official poet laureate, it would have been To Huu. He was always ready to turn his pen to eulogise the party line, whichever way it twisted. Many critics have claimed that this distorted his genuine ability to write good poetry, as did his political ambitions. He rose to become first Deputy Prime Minister of Vietnam, only to be unceremoniously dismissed in 1985 for instigating policies which brought the country's economy to the verge of ruin. Poetry and politics are not always happy bedfellows.

He was born Nguyen Kim Thanh in 1920, but later became known as To Huu. Like many boys born in the first couple of decades of the 20th century in Hue, the former imperial capital of Vietnam, To Huu was well educated. He learned classical Chinese and Vietnamese as well as French. Almost automatically too, he became anti-colonialist, and was imprisoned by the French in 1940, only to escape two years later. Hence, even at a young age, he became one of the leaders of the revolutionary uprising in Hue which led to the abdication of the Emperor in August 1945.

Eighteen months later, To Huu, already renowned for his poetry, went north to join Ho Chi Minh, then living in a mountain stronghold. There To Huu quickly found himself appointed head of the Party's cultural commission with the right to decide what was, or was not, acceptable in the fields of literature, art and music. In other words he became the Vietnamese equivalent of Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin's cultural commissar. The comparison was not inapt. In 1953, To Huu penned a lament on the death of Josef Stalin which rendered him notorious amongst Vietnamese even before the Soviet dictator was denounced by Nikita Khrushchev.

That did not deter To Huu. In 1956 he spearheaded a campaign against intellectuals who were demanding more freedom of expression. When the campaign succeeded, To Huu's political star began to rise, as did his ambitions. He became a member of the Party Central Committee plus its Military Commission, although what qualifications he had for such a position are obscure.

By 1980 he had become a member of the Politburo and first deputy premier, apparently set to succeed once Phan Van Dong agreed to resign. Then came disaster. In 1985, without any economic experience, To Huu announced that the Vietnamese currency was being withdrawn from circulation and replaced by undervalued script. Naturally the economy collapsed. More significantly, in a Communist Party which had hitherto been reluctant to apportion blame for its mistakes, To Huu was dismissed from all his official positions. Yet, he showed no remorse. Instead he continued to lament the demise of true Communism in Vietnam.

Had he remained a poet, perhaps the grief on his death would have been more heartfelt.

Judy Stowe