Nowadays, various measures are being adopted synchronously to educate and enhance cadres and soldiers’ morality and cultural lifestyle as an important foundation for the Military Region 9’s armed forces to build diverse, healthy cultural, spiritual life and better perform the task of national construction and protection in the new situation.

Morality and lifestyle represent a key part of culture and play a role of utmost importance to the development of individuals, families and the society. Hence, inheriting and applying the 11^th National Party Congress’ viewpoints and major directions set by the 11^th Party Central Committee’s Resolution No.9 on “building and developing Vietnamese culture and people to meet the requirements of sustainable national development,” the 12^th National Party Congress continued to identify 7 major tasks and measures, with emphasis placed on developing Vietnamese people comprehensively as a central task and goal of the country’s development strategy. This is an important line for building morality and cultural lifestyle of the Vietnamese people, including cadres and soldiers within the Military. The reason is that morality and lifestyle act as basic elements to form the political qualities, fighting goal, ideal, and combat readiness capacity of a revolutionary soldier in all situations.

Grasping and executing the 12^th National Party Congress’ Resolution on building and developing Vietnamese culture and people, over the years, the Military Region 9’s armed forces have frequently added great weight to building offices and units with diverse, healthy cultural, spiritual life and achieved a lot of significant results. The awareness of building morality and cultural lifestyle among cadres and soldiers within offices, units and localities has been raised. Cadres and soldiers’ attitude, behaviour and responsibility towards military standard order building, discipline management and settlement of relationships have been improved. Cultural beauties in cadres and soldiers’ lifestyle and behaviour have been clearly expressed via campaigns and movements, such as “Gratitude,” “Hunger eradication, poverty reduction,” “Cadres and soldiers of the Military Region 9’s armed forces join hands in building new-style rural area,” “Joining hands for public health,” “Houses of Gratitude,” “Houses of Comradeship,” and “Homes of Trade Union.” They have also helped the people with socio-economic development, natural disaster prevention and control, search and rescue, and especially “water of affection” against salinity intrusion in Southwestern provinces. In response to the complex developments of COVID-19 pandemic, the Military Region 9’s armed forces have heightened a sense of responsibility, prepared sufficient facilities, forces and means, ensured the best conditions for Vietnamese and foreign citizens in quarantine areas, and taken care of thousands of people, thus preventing the epidemic from spreading within the community. Things mentioned above have made contributions to bolstering the tradition, virtues and image of troops of the Military Region 9 as “Uncle Ho’s soldiers” in the new period. Doing so has also provided more chances for cadres and soldiers to improve their morality, political zeal, and determination so that they would live responsibly in the society.

However, compared to the goal and requirements of building cultural, spiritual life in general, the training of cadres and soldiers’ morality and cultural lifestyle within the Military Region has still witnessed weaknesses. Several party committee members, commanders and localities’ awareness of the significance of morality and cultural lifestyle has yet to be really sufficient. The regulations on troops’ cultural, spiritual life have yet to be stringently maintained in some places. The quality of cultural and artistic activities has still been poor. The attitude, responsibility and behaviour of a number of cadres and soldiers towards their jobs, self and families and towards the society have been negative. Some of them have even shown the signs of comparison between loss and gain, selfishness, and fear of hardship and sacrifice, led a passive, negative lifestyle, and even committed social evils. That has imposed new requirements on the work of educating and training the Military Region’s cadres and soldiers’ morality and cultural lifestyle. In addition to broadening cadres and soldiers’ mind and training their military manners, offices and units should well perform the work of building their staff members’ morality and cultural lifestyle to meet the task requirements in the new situation. To that end, it is necessary to implement basic measures as follows.

First of all, all-level party committees and commands should render their cadres and soldiers fully aware of the goals, tasks and measures for building and developing Vietnamese culture and people set by the 12^th National Party Congress. Building and developing Vietnamese culture and people comprehensively on the basis of national tradition and ethics represent a consistent viewpoint of our Party. As for the Military Region 9’s armed forces, this is amongst one of the most fundamental methods to create a healthy cultural environment and build up the virtues of “Uncle Ho’s soldiers,” while acting as a determinant to ensuring that the Military Region 9’s armed forces will always be reliable and loyal to the Party, the State and the people. Therefore, all-level party committees and commands should be acutely aware of the importance of the Resolution by the 12^th National Party Congress on building and developing Vietnamese culture and people, introduce it to their staff members, and formulate their action programme for the Resolution in accordance with the particularities and tasks of each type of offices and units. In this regard, it is essential to identify “a standard value system of Vietnamese people in the period of industrialisation, modernisation and international integration” suitable for the particular lifestyle of Southwestern soldiers.

Besides, due attention should be paid to enhancing the work of political, ideological, moral and cultural education for cadres and soldiers as a basic measure. In response to the increasingly higher requirements set by the military-defence task and the impacts made by the market economy, it is vital to effectively perform the task of political, ideological, moral and cultural education for cadres and soldiers, which is a measure of utmost importance and plays a decisive role in the combat strength of a unit. Hence, party committees, party organisations and commanders at all levels should clearly identify the contents of moral and cultural education for their cadres and soldiers. In the process, cadres and party members, particularly the key ones at all levels must heighten their role and responsibility for improving the virtues of revolutionary soldiers and set typical examples in self-improvement, morality, lifestyle, working method and even behaviour towards others and each soldier so that morality and cultural lifestyle will play an important part of all tasks, activities and pieces of work and become self-awareness, self-esteem and self-reliance of all cadres and soldiers. Doing so will enable them to know how to protect and honour the truth and the good, criticise and remove the wrong and backwardness, and spread noble, humanitarian values within offices, units and localities.

It is also necessary to raise the quality of cultural environment in accordance with offices, units and localities’ practical conditions. This is a measure of importance and provides a solid foundation for training and improving cadres and soldiers’ ethics and lifestyle. For that reason, all-level party committees and commands should focus on building standard, exemplary and disciplined units, implementing the Regulation on Democracy at grass-roots level, resolutely fighting against superstition, preventing cadres and soldiers from committing social evils, building civilised lifestyle and cultural behaviour, closely managing relationships both inside and outside units. At the same time, consideration should be given to enhancing the quality of cultural institutions as the basis for educating and improving cadres and soldiers’ morality, lifestyle, knowledge, conscience, social and civic responsibilities, and compliance with the State’s law and the Military’s discipline.

Last but not least, it is essential to heighten the spirit of self-study and self-improvement in morality and lifestyle and resolutely fight against negative thinking and bad behaviours amongst cadres and soldiers. The training of cadres and soldiers’ ethics and lifestyle is a long-term process impacted by the dialectical relationship between organisations in charge of this work and troops’ reception and transformation of moral and lifestyle knowledge into their sentiment and behaviour. In this process, cadres and soldiers are placed under the impacts made by the training of morality and lifestyle, while being the subject of perception. Thus, all impacts by the process of perception become effective only when each soldier is self-aware to improve their ethics and lifestyle. In other words, this is a process during which cadres and soldiers transform their knowledge of ethics and lifestyle into their needs and internal incentives for self-improvement in morality and lifestyle. Therefore, party committees and commands at all levels should give priority to preventing and combating negative thinking and signs of morality and lifestyle within their units, fighting against and neutralising hostile forces’ evil cultural products and distortions. They should proactively closely cooperate with local party committees and authorities in eliminating depraved customs, individualism, indifference, irresponsibility, and partiality. Only by doing so could the training of cadres and soldiers’ morality and cultural lifestyle become practically effective and satisfy the requirements of making the Military Region 9’s armed forces politically strong and capable of fulfilling all assigned missions.

Sr. Col. NGUYEN VAN CHUONG, PhD

Commissar of the Military Region 9’s Military School