The Politics of Memory in Socialist Vietnam

Since Vietnam's reform period began in the 1980s, the country's leadership has loosened its control over the public sphere and citizens' private lives, driving significant societal transformation. This shift has been further amplified by Vietnam's open-door policy. This project examines the extent to which these changes have diversified narratives about Vietnamese history. It explores whether Vietnamese history journals, textbooks, websites, museums, and historical sites have become arenas for national and transnational historiographic debates and whether the Party’s official historiography has begun to reshape its portrayal of Vietnam’s past.

The  book offers an analysis of the inner workings of the Vietnamese "memory  machine." In four case studies it shows which tools the Vietnamese  one-party state uses to disseminate a "correct" outlook on history,  manage the representation of the past and suppress dissenting historical  views. While emphasizing the role of the Vietnamese Communist Party in  memory-making the study also highlights that in the last two decades  non-state "agents of remembrance" have increasingly managed to shape the  commemoration of the past. The book is based on ten years of research  including a close reading of Party documents, history textbooks,  official histories and memories of cadres, and visits to numerous sites  of memories in Vietnam such as museums, monuments, and war cemeteries.'