Literature and arts are among the fields that adversaries, reactionaries and opportunists often make use of to sabotage our revolution. As a result, identifying and fighting against wrongful and adversary opinion conveyed through this sensitive field is a crucial and impending task at present.
Literature and arts, which are a crucial part of culture, can have direct impacts on opinion, awareness, ideology, sentiments or artistic taste of a majority of people in different classes. While culture is the spiritual foundation of societies and the internal power of nations, literature and arts are essential needs of people, which reflect their passion of the true, the good and the beautiful and enormous driving force making direct contributions to the development of advanced Vietnamese culture imbued with national identity. With deep acknowledgement of the matter, our Party and Government, during our revolution, have been paying continuous attention to the development of literature, arts, guiding it to absorb human kind’s cultural quintessence while preserve the nature, character and tradition of Vietnam’s national culture. As a result, our literature and arts have enjoyed many achievements, thereby contributing to the promotion of people’s spiritual life during our course of national liberation, construction and defense.
As an important part of our Party’s ideology – theory front, literature and arts are the domain where the adversaries focus their hard hostile efforts following their “Peaceful Evolution” strategy. They consider it as a “spearhead” to thrust deeply into our ideology to ruin our people’s belief and create an “ideological chaos” and a vacuum for the bourgeois ideology to infiltrate and replace the one of socialism. According to some statistics, through dozens of foreign radio and television stations, publishing houses, nearly 400 newspapers and magazines and over 420 websites, foreign organizations have been bringing into our country a number of documents, books, newspapers, literature and artistic works which misrepresent the facts and historical events as well as propagandize and encourage adversary and reactionary ideologies. Literature and arts represent a sensitive and delicate domain, leading to sophisticated activities of the adversaries. It is not easy to identify them, as they are disguised by the covers of “literature”, “arts” and “true events”, which are attractive to most of ordinary people. Normally, they have one (or more) of these following signs.
Adversary notions usually focus on falsifying our Party’s opinions and guidelines through spreading literature and painting works, entertainment shows or movies which go against our regime, yet disguised by the cover of “democracy” or/and “human rights” to deny the results of our revolution, Marxism and Leninism, Ho Chi Minh’s ideology and our socialist regime. Noticeably, there are revisionists who call for reconsideration of our America resistance war, which, in their opinion, can provide “more exact truths” with richer documents from the both sides. Among those materials, there are literature works falsifying or issuing ambiguous assessments of the nature of our resistance war, thereby creating doubts among people and ruining their confidence in our Party and regime. The adversaries are intensifying the spreading of their falsified notions of our Party’s guidelines on the development of literature and arts, which they describe as “rigid and coercive”, “All literature and artistic works are put under strict censorship” and “Ideological dogmatic has strangled literature and arts”, etc. At the same time, they encourage the orientation “art for art’s sake” and put literature and arts in contradiction to politics. In their literature and artistic works, they exaggerate the mistakes of our Party, Government and some individuals in several events such as: the land reform in the North (1953 - 1956); bourgeois reform in the South after 1975. They have also carried out deep investigations into personal life of some leaders of our Party and Government, etc. Through such measures, the adversaries have spread their falsified notions, undermining cadres, Party members and ordinary people’s ideology and confidence in our Party and regime.
In addition, there have been market-characterized literature and artistic works which highlight the bad and negative sides of social life or focus on the problems of our society and market regime. In the field of music, there is a trend in which the consumerism or pessimism, sadness or separation of couples is emphasized. Moreover, several musical shows just focus on entertainment and ignore their missions in improving people’s political awareness and artistic tastes. In painting, some works do not care much about emerging issues in social life and their political importance, but pay much attention to commercial values. In short, falsified and adversary notions have been entertained in various sophisticated forms and have regular, continuous impacts on the understanding, ideology and sentiment of people of different groups.
To effectively fight against such falsified and adversary notions and to protect and preserve our national cultural identity as well as the noble values of our revolutionary literature and arts, we need to comprehensively implement many measures, focusing on the main ones as follows.
First, intensify the leadership of our Party and the management of the Government over literature and arts as well as writers and artists. Paragraph 2, Article 60 of the 2013 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam read: “The State and society develop literature and arts to fulfill the diversified and healthy spiritual needs of people; develop mass media to satisfy their desire for information, thus serving the course of national building and defense.” Our Party has also emphasized: “To develop literature and arts and to cultivate and make all necessary conditions for studying and creativity of our writers and artists; moreover, to innovate the operation method of literature and arts associations.” That statement is an important legal base and guideline for the development of our literature and arts in the future. Imminently, we need to well conduct the summarization of Resolution No. 23-NQ/TW of the Politburo (Tenure X) dated June 16th 2008 on “Continuing to build and develop literature and arts in new circumstances”, firmly upholding political orientations in activities of literature and arts towards an advanced Vietnamese culture imbued with national identity and fighting against commercialization and de-politicization in literature and artistic activities. Moreover, we should intensify the re-examination and addition of the existing regulations and principles of laws and policy on writers and artists as well as literature and arts. Additionally, literature and arts associations should be completed in their organizations and perform their roles well. We also need to well manage cultural works entering our country from outside.
Second, strengthen the improvement of political steadfastness and ideology of writers and artists. In terms of education and training for the writers and artists, attention should be paid to the innovation of programs, contents and methods, expertise and political awareness, ideology and moral. Education courses should focus on the enhancement of their awareness of Marxism – Leninism, Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, our Party’s guidelines and directions, our Government’s policies and laws; of the honorable history and traditions of our Party, nations and revolutionary literature and arts. The theory study and lesson learning should be further accelerated to address challenges in the fields of literature and arts as well as the development of writers and artists. Currently, many free writers and artists have appeared in the market economy environment leading to the urgent need for different literature- and art-related authorities and organizations at all levels, in coordination with each other, to well manage and educate this group so that they deserve the title “revolutionary fighter in the fields of literature and arts”, following the teachings of President Ho Chi Minh: “Culture and arts are a battlefield as well. Those who are working there are fighters in the field”. On the other hand, each of the writers and artists should regularly self-educate and learn the guidelines and policies of our Party and continuously improve their political awareness and caution to be able to self-defend and distinguish between right and wrong, dare to fight against the wrong and defend the right, and not be used by adversaries. Every time they create a new work, they need to answer these questions: Who is it for? What is the purpose of it? And how to make it?
Third, using the creativity of writers, artists and ordinary people to produce more works of high ideological and artistic values, which are humanity, nationalism, progression, and which can truly and vividly reflects our social life, national history and national innovation. Writers and artists need to be provided with more favorable conditions to deeply penetrate into people’s life to demonstrate their creativity and promote our literature and arts. We need to establish mechanisms to encourage and honor contributory writers and artists and valuable works of art. The Government ensures writers and artists’ freedom of and favorable conditions for creation, and they are expected to effectively perform their responsibilities in making works of high ideological and artistic values as mentioned above. At the same time, they have responsibilities in proactively fighting against inducing and inciting plots and measures, which are designed to undermine our Party’s policies on culture, literature and arts. Writers and artists should also encourage ordinary people to express their artistic talent for further education and training.
Fourth, improve awareness and artistic tastes of ordinary people, especially youngsters and teenagers. The targets of adversary activities range from cadres in our political system to ordinary people, particularly youngsters, students and pupils. Meanwhile, our local systems for culture development, especially in rural and mountainous areas are at low quality; cultural life in many locals are poor; the gap of spiritual life between mountainous and remote areas with cities is slowly narrowed; “reading culture” has not been emphasized duly, etc. Therefore, we need to invest more in facilities and equipment to improve local systems. Mass media should be utilized to promote valuable literature and artistic works. At the same time, we need to accelerate the implementation of the movement “The entire people consolidate to build cultural life” to nurture humane values in communities; diversify activities in literature and arts at local level and help people to have chance for enjoying literature and artistic works of high values. On the other hand, we need to give efforts to further improve fighting spirit, citizen awareness and resisting abilities for people against falsified notions of adversaries.
Additionally, relevant agencies need to keep reviewing and improving coordinating mechanisms in literature and arts, while be proactive in studying the plots and measures for propaganda spreading of adversaries as well as the thoughts and sentiments of different groups in our society to give make opportune advice to Party’s and Government’s leaders. Moreover, education and training need to be further fostered to enhance the quality and ability of the cadres working in the field of ideology, culture and communication at local level, thereby contributing to the development of Vietnamese literature and arts of people’s and nation’s identity.
Fifth, proactively and actively integrate into international literature and arts to learn the quintessence of humankind’s literature and arts. Today, in the general integration of our country into international community, our literature and arts have more opportunities to enlarge their international cooperation. The exchanges in literature and arts should be a two-way express, which means Vietnamese literature and arts can be introduced to the world, and at the same time, the essence of human kinds’ literature and arts can be brought into Vietnam. However, the learning should be selective. On one hand, adversary and falsified notions disguised under the cover of literature and arts infiltrate into Vietnam to do harms to our Party and regime as well as divide our national solidarity bloc. On the other hand, we need to investigate and publicize all connections between internal and external groups for the composition, publishing and promotion of anti-revolution works, which can have negative impacts on the cultural and spiritual life of people in different groups, especially the young.
The fight against falsified and adversary notions in literature and arts is a part of the fight against “peaceful evolution”, “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” within our system. To make it effective, we need to comprehensively conduct the above-mentioned measures, while closely combining the leadership and management of relevant agencies and cadres with the creativity of writers, artists and ordinary people to create the overall strength for the defeat of every adversary plots and measures in this field.
Sr. Col., MA Nguyen Manh Dung
Sr. Col., Dr. Phan Sy Thanh