Nhân Văn–Giai Phẩm affair

The Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm affair (Vietnamese: Phong Trào Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm) was a cultural-political movement in North Vietnam in the late 1950s. Two periodicals were established during that time, Nhân Văn (Vietnamese: [ɲən van], Humanities) and Giai Phẩm (Vietnamese: [zaːj fə᷉m], Masterpieces), many issues of which were published demanding freedom of speech, creativity and human rights. Following a loosening of political restrictions with some similarities to the Chinese Hundred Flowers Campaign, there was a hardening of attitudes. After those two major journals were closed down, their political associates were imprisoned or reeducated. Moreover, the agenda of Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm was linked to "reactionary" political projects by North Vietnamese government.

The 1954 Geneva Accords marked the end of anti-French struggle and provided the Viet Minh with prestige and authority. After the close of the Geneva Conference, the VWP faced two fundamental tasks: to reconstruct the north and to unify the south. To rebuild the north, the VWP leadership continued to look to China for assistance and China immediately began to offer aid to help the DRV. But the reconstruction efforts in the DRV following the First Indochina War underwent many trials and tribulations. The 1954 Geneva Accords on Nhan Van-Giai Pham facilitated enormous emigration from the north to the south from July 1954 to May 1955. The mass migration added to the social disorder generated by the other contemporary political reforms in North Vietnam.

The key global preludes of Nhan Van-Giai Pham affair may be located in the ups and downs of reform and repression that dominated political life in the eastern bloc and China throughout the turbulent years of the 1950s. Most significant was the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, the rise of currents of de-Stalinization promoted by political elites, and the growth of agitation throughout the Eastern bloc on the part of workers, intellectuals, and students. This course was the so-called Liberalization, which accelerated in the wake of Nikita Khrushchev`s Secret Speech denouncing the crimes of Stalin in Feb 1956. The uprisings in Eastern bloc later that year brought this era of high de-Stalinization which inspired and stimulated not only the Soviet bloc, but many intellectuals within Chinese and North Vietnamese state-party.

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