Changes in the country’s economy and society have been producing multidimensional effects on every soldier and leading to a lot of issues on grasping and managing their social relationships. As a main specialised unit of the Military Region 5, tasked with training and combat readiness, natural disaster prevention and mitigation, and other contingency missions, the Tank-Armoured Brigade 574 has always grasped and managed its staff members’ social relationships via practical, effective measures. This is one of the Brigade’s central, breakthrough tasks and helps create a solid, huge positive change in its military standard order building and ideological and discipline management.

Over the years, the Brigade’s Party Committee and Command have focused their leadership and direction on raising the awareness and responsibility of forces and organisations, particularly party committees and commanders at all levels for managing cadres and soldiers’ social relationships. Issues on grasping and managing staff members’ social relationships have been included in resolutions by the Brigade’s Party Committee and party cells as well as in annual inspection plans intended for cadres and party members. The Brigade’s Party Committee and Command have promoted the role of organisations and forces, while opportunely rectifying the signs of bureaucracy and poor leadership in the management of soldiers’ social relationships. The Brigade has actively improved its cadres and party members’ awareness, responsibility and capacity to manage soldiers’ social relationships, dealt with subjectivity and oversimplification, and avoided absolutising military administrative measures. At the same time, it has conducted inspections of its affiliates’ party committees and commands, while maintaining the order for directing and inspecting the management of staff members’ social relationships so as to opportunely detect and settle arising issues and ideological deviations. Besides, the Brigade has encouraged the role of its Inspection Commission in directing, inspecting, and helping affiliated units under their functions and tasks to quickly, completely settle arising issues on soldiers’ social relationships at each level, thereby preventing complex developments from happening.

Commander of the Brigade talking with soldiers

In the process, the Brigade has placed emphasis on flexibly, creatively, effectively adopting measures to grasp and manage staff members’ social relationships in accordance with each group of offices and units. A grasp of soldiers’ social relationships has been combined with the management of party members, cadres, and soldiers within offices and units, via self-criticism and criticism within party organisations, mass organisations, and soldiers’ councils. Besides, offices and units have included the management of soldiers’ social relationships in campaigns, the Determination to Win Emulation Movement, and the studying and following of Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, ethics, and lifestyle. Doing so has enabled every cadre and soldier to self-adjust their behaviours and social relationships under moral standards and military regulations. In mid-year and year-end review conferences, the Brigade has concretised the criteria for assessing staff members’ social relationships associated with each office and unit’s situation and task performance. To more understand each soldier’s family background and social relationships, in addition to cadres, party members and soldiers’ profiles, the Brigade has developed specific regulations for its offices and units to report their staff members’ families, friends, and social relationships in the stationed areas. The ideological work has been combined with the organisational work, while organisations’ meetings have been aligned with soldiers’ self-criticism and criticism. Due attention has been paid to closely managing staff members’ smart devices and social network accounts and strictly maintaining regulations on non-commissioned officers and soldiers’ use of cell phones.

To opportunely, effectively collect information, in addition to promoting the role of party committee members, security soldiers, and mass mobilisation soldiers, the Brigade has asked all-level commanders to publicise their phone numbers so that their cadres and soldiers could make reports. Furthermore, importance has been attached to maintaining close cooperation between families, localities, and units in managing soldiers’ social relationships, establishing connections with soldiers’ families by phone and social networks, fostering coordination with local party committees, authorities, politico-social organisations and people, and building safe units, localities, and stationed zones and cultural residential areas as the basis for managing staff members’ social relationships.

Additionally, great value has been attached to decentralising the management of soldiers’ social relationships. At company level, emphasis has been placed on orientating healthy social relationships, raising soldiers’ awareness of their demand for relationships and communication, developing regulations on staff members’ relationships with their families, relatives, and locals as a favourable condition for improving relationships within units. At the same time, consideration has been given to frequently analysing, assessing, and closely managing each cadre and soldier’s relationships in order to orientate their ideology and opportunely prevent unhealthy relationships from negatively impacting on their task performance. Battalions and offices have been responsible for managing their staff members comprehensively, with a focus on grasping social relationships of cadres, professional service men and women, and soldiers in difficulty. As 60% of its staff members are officers and professional service men and women, the Brigade has directed its offices and units to manage each cadre’ relationships with families, friends, and locals via party committees and commands’ management systems, self-reports, self-reviews, and meetings. Commanders of offices and units have enhanced measures for grasping the ideological situation of soldiers in difficult circumstance, assigned cadres with great prestige to frequently meet those soldiers, listen to their opinions and aspirations, master their relationships, encourage and help them to stay away from unhealthy social relationships. Meanwhile, the Brigade’s Party Committee and Command have been responsible for managing their key cadres at all levels. To grasp those cadres’ social relationships, the Brigade has promoted the role of all-level party committees and regularly renewed the contents and methods of managing its cadres and party members. Grounded on work plans, tasks and particularities of offices and units, the Brigade has employed proper methods of managing key cadres, financial and logistics cadres, and cadres tasked with independent missions outside their barracks.

To create the synergy in the multidimensional management of its staff members’ social relationships, the Brigade has focused on encouraging the role of mass organisations and soldiers’ councils at all levels. It has directed its political office to give instructions to all-level youth unions and women’s unions on renewing the method of managing their members and closely combining the management of their members’ social relationships with the performance of task and the observance of directives and discipline. Soldiers’ councils at all levels have promoted democracy, actively given opinions to commanders about settling relationships between superiors and inferiors, between cadres and soldiers, and between soldiers themselves, built up comradeship, and created a sense of unity within units. Doing so has helped establish healthy social relationships and create new strength for successfully fulfilling all assigned tasks.

The Brigade has actively, flexibly applied methods of direct, indirect, regular and irregular report and summary, while providing basic, necessary, and important information to analyse, evaluate, and manage soldiers’ relationships correctly. The Brigade has directed its offices and units to deliver comprehensive reports on all relationships of their staff members with families, relatives, locals, and local authorities in the stationed and residential areas. Offices and units have been required to strictly maintain the order for report at daily meetings, while each section within offices and units has been assigned to grasp and verify the accuracy of reports and information provided.

Besides, the Brigade has employed various measures to encourage each soldier’ self-awareness and self-improvement. Significance has been attached to conducting the work of education and propagation to raise soldiers’ knowledge of law, discipline and regulations set by the Military, the Military Region 5, and their units. It has organised training courses on annual political topics to orientate its staff members’ ideology, prevent social evils from penetrating into its units, and improve its cadres and soldiers’ political zeal and skills in establishing and handling social relationships during their working and living process within their units and stationed and residential areas. Moreover, it has stringently maintained regulations on training, work, and study, while building cultural environment and exercising democracy within its offices and units.

Thanks to its synchronous, drastic, effective measures for grasping and managing soldiers’ social relationships, the Brigade has achieved a positive change in its military standard order building and ideological and discipline management. Since 2016, the rate of violations of discipline amongst its staff members has been reduced by 0.17%, while the rate of violations amongst its party members has decreased by 0.23%. Those achievements will provide a solid foundation for the Tank-Armoured Brigade 574 to successfully fulfil its missions in the upcoming time.

Sr. Col. NGUYEN THANH DUNG, Commissar of the Brigade