Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Van Huy - Photo: VIET CUONG
Mr. Nguyen Van Huy said that when hearing the name of the Museum of the Communist Party of Vietnam , many people will think that it will be very political and dry.
But it can become very vivid, attractive, very real, every Vietnamese person - from young people, women, ethnic minorities to overseas Vietnamese - can see their story in it.
The Central Propaganda and Mass Mobilization Commission is launching a campaign to mobilize people to donate documents and artifacts to build the Communist Party of Vietnam Museum (expected to open in 2030, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Vietnam).
Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Van Huy - who was very successful in building and operating the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology to become a top museum in attracting domestic and foreign tourists - holds the role of Vice Chairman of the Advisory Council for Content Development of the Museum of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
He had an in-depth conversation with Tuoi Tre about the story of building the Communist Party of Vietnam Museum.
Telling the story of the Party and the whole country
* Sir, the documents and artifacts to be displayed at the Museum of the Communist Party of Vietnam will certainly not be limited to artifacts and documents about the founding of the Party or artifacts related to the Party's senior leaders, but will be very diverse and rich?
- That's right. The campaign will not only focus on documents of/about President Ho, other leaders, predecessors of the Party, leaders in localities...
The campaign to donate artifacts from the people also includes artifacts that tell the stories of the people, the workers, farmers, soldiers, intellectuals, and businesses and entrepreneurs...
For nearly 100 years, especially since the country's founding in 1945, the Party has led comprehensively in all fields, so the stories of the people in all fields and in all periods have reflected the Party's leadership.
For example, in Ho Chi Minh City, there are countless documents and artifacts of soldiers, special forces, urban commandos, and secret and public figures. Their stories are very important to the Communist Party Museum.
Because their actions and sacrifices all demonstrate one side or another of the Party's leadership, concretizing the Party's leadership on all fronts.
* Does this mean that the artifacts of enterprises during the Doi Moi period, the artifacts associated with the 10-contract policy in agriculture ... are also valuable artifacts that the Museum of the Communist Party of Vietnam needs?
- A decision to establish a private enterprise in the 2000s (the period when the private economy was budding) will tell us how complicated and difficult it was to establish that private enterprise.
The first products of private enterprises, of party members doing private business, or artifacts telling the story of the establishment of economic groups and artifacts telling the story of businesses and businessmen today are all good stories showing the economic leadership of the Party through the ages.
Vietnam currently has about 5 world-class billionaires. The artifacts telling the stories of these people can also be displayed at the Museum of the Communist Party of Vietnam. Because only the Party's innovative thinking and new perception of socialism can bring such results.
That is the leadership achievement of the Party, when the Party gradually opened up the private economy to develop; until now, the private economy is considered an important driving force for the country's development.
* Listening to you, we can see that the Communist Party Museum seems like something very dry but in fact it can be very interesting and very rich. It is the historical story of a nation under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam over the past 100 years, not just the story of a single party?
- Exactly. Over the past 100 years, the Communist Party of Vietnam has contributed to shaping the country's appearance, a modern Vietnam, and modern Vietnamese people.
The Communist Party of Vietnam Museum will tell the story of how the Party has shaped the country over the past 100 years. Every story of the country is linked to the Party.
The story of land reform completing the democratic revolution is very important, but how it left behind many valuable lessons and how it corrected mistakes and shortcomings also needs to be told in the Communist Party Museum.
Of course, how to tell it needs to be carefully calculated. Luckily, we have had a lot of successful experience in displaying "sensitive" stories.
The exhibition " Hanoi Life During the Subsidy Period " of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology opened in June 2006 is also a sensitive story of the period of centralized economic planning, but has been very successful.
The exhibition shows a period when people lived in such hardship, 10-12 people lived in a 10m2 room; communal houses had shared kitchens, shared bathrooms, and even had to queue to use the toilet in the morning...
Yet after viewing, everyone was very moved and happily shared their memories. For more than a year, people flocked to see the exhibition in record numbers.
Experience is to tell the real story, viewers understand that after such crises, the Party realized its mistakes and decided to innovate, the Party courageously looked straight at the truth, stepped over the bureaucratic subsidized economic management to accept the socialist-oriented market economy.
This example shows that if we change our thinking about building museums, the Communist Party of Vietnam Museum will be extremely interesting and attractive.
That museum will satisfy the need to understand history, the leadership of the Party through the people. From youth to veterans, from ethnic minorities to overseas Vietnamese…, everyone who comes will see themselves in that historical process.
The exhibition 'From Norodom Palace to Independence Palace 1868 - 1966' at the Reunification Hall recently attracted many viewers because of its 'multi-voice' storytelling - Photo: HONG PHUONG
Tell stories from many sides
* From the experience of exhibiting Hanoi Life during the Subsidy Period, it can be seen that the documents and artifacts that the people can donate to the Museum of the Communist Party of Vietnam are extremely numerous and interesting?
- There will certainly be a lot of documents and artifacts, very valuable. These artifacts will attract visitors because they are stories of everyday life, of each agent or witness. It will cause real emotions.
Experience from museums around the world shows that people are curious and enjoy seeing things that are concrete and related to everyday people. They want to know what those people think, why, and how they behave before each event.
When we were exhibiting Hanoi Life in the Subsidy Period, people lent us a very valuable subsidy-era bicycle. Behind it was a story of poverty, a Peugeot goldfish bike that people valued so much that they didn't dare let their children ride it and hung it on the ceiling. When it was put on display, after 20 years, the bike was still brand new.
Then people brought a lot of stamps and rice books to the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology for display.
* And will the stories of literary and artistic innovation also be present at the Museum of the Communist Party of Vietnam?
- The story of artists will be one of the best stories of the Communist Party of Vietnam Museum.
Artists play an extremely important role on the propaganda front as well as the ideological and cultural front. Their stories and contributions on many levels from poetry, stories to music, painting, and film in the August Revolution, in the resistance wars against France and the US...
How they became soldiers on the cultural and ideological front will be fascinating topics in the museum. Resistance literature and art will become legends. Their notebooks, works, and diaries will be valuable artifacts of the museum.
The story of the Party's innovation in thinking about culture and arts will be very interesting. The film Hanoi in Whose Eyes by Tran Van Thuy was once considered to have "sensitive" issues, but after General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh saw it, not only was the film released, but the author was also encouraged to continue making films. Surely that author still has many souvenirs and memories...
The story of the Party's innovative thinking in the leadership of literature and art through the cases of Bao Ninh, Nguyen Huy Thiep... Or the story of journalists who risked their lives to fight against corruption, their manuscripts, and the pioneering newspapers fighting against corruption can also become attractive artifacts of the Museum of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
* What about big stories like the Party's decision on Renovation, or the wars to unify the country, will the Communist Party of Vietnam Museum tell them in a very different way?
- The story of the Party's decision to renovate the country can also find many documents, artifacts, and interesting stories from the people. From artifacts, you can find stories and vice versa, from a specific story, you will certainly discover interesting and unique artifacts from the people.
Innovation is a process that has been gradually explored, from the time of Mr. Kim Ngoc and Mrs. Ba Thi, from the illegal contracts in Do Son, Hai Phong to the breakthrough in price compensation in wages in Long An... Collecting artifacts started from that process, from those people.
We know that before the 6th Party Congress, as soon as Mr. Truong Chinh became General Secretary, the Politburo meeting decided to rewrite all previously prepared documents and create new documents with new viewpoints. The whole group discussed and drafted.
How precious it would be to have a notebook written by someone who was an insider recording the discussions and concerns that changed each concept and perception at that time. Those artifacts show the courage and creativity that led to the innovation of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
If the museum clearly presents those changes in thinking with physical evidence, then we can see the courage of the Party and the mettle of the Party in daring to admit mistakes in order to change.
The Museum of the Communist Party of Vietnam must also explain why the Doi Moi process took place. How the Party leaders struggled to decide on a new path, a new policy, and create a new shape for the country.
Then the nation's resistance war against the US, the countless creativity of the Party, the army and the people in leading and fighting during the war. It is told as a dialogue, so the diaries, memoirs, notes and wartime memorabilia are very important to the Museum of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
Documents and artifacts from both our side and the other side, such as the stories in McNamara's memoirs (US Secretary of Defense during the bombing of the North) or the awakening story of the father and son of Navy Admiral Elmo Zumwalt - who launched the campaign of spraying toxic herbicides in the Mekong Delta - will contribute to the dialogue about the war and the post-war period.
* Recently, many historical exhibitions or book publications show that there is a great openness when it comes to accepting diversity of voices, don't you think?
- That's right. The exhibition From Norodom Palace to Independence Palace 1868 - 1966 in an ancient villa in the grounds of Independence Palace (HCMC) is an example of diverse voices.
In this exhibition, one can see the voices of insiders from our side, the voices of generals of the Saigon government, the voices of the CIA...
The entire two-story exhibition is dedicated to answering one question: Why did the First Republic from 1955 to 1963 collapse? Why was the Ngo Dinh Diem government overthrown and he assassinated?
When we did this exhibition, we were very nervous about how people would react. Luckily, it was very well received by the public and professionals.
From this experience, it is possible to mobilize the collection of documents from abroad, from people who participated in anti-war protests across the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, from American soldiers who were against the war or later suffered from war syndrome, to support movements of overseas Vietnamese.
Or the story from international historians, how Americans evaluate the war. The Museum of the Communist Party of Vietnam will have to tell stories from many sides, tell the story of history with a variety of voices creating interesting dialogues when interpreting history.
The Communist Party of Vietnam Museum will tell the story of reconciliation: why American and Vietnamese veterans came together in friendship after the peace, and associated with that story are images, documents, and artifacts such as Dang Thuy Tram's diary and the repatriation from the US of countless martyrs' mementos that American veterans brought back to Vietnamese families.
Or the story of the first post-war visit to the US by Vietnamese leaders or citizens, the story of Vietnam's negotiations to join the international trade system... Their passports, their business travel decisions, their notebooks, and their memorabilia are also objects of collection for the Museum of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
These are the artifacts that tell the story of the Party's integration policy, closing the past and moving towards the future.
Ms. Nguyen Kim Nu Hieu next to the medical cotton and bandage box that Dr. Ton That Tung used from the KC to the Dien Bien Phu campaign. The artifact is currently owned by Mr. Nguyen Van Huy. Mr. Huy plans to donate this artifact to the Communist Party Museum - Photo: NVCC
We understand that behind the artifacts from the people is the story of the Party's leadership; the story of how the Party's guidelines, policies, and resolutions were transformed into real life, who implemented them, and why they dared to sacrifice to implement them. That is the Party's will and the people's heart.
If we tell the story of Party leadership only through the Central Committee's resolutions, it will be dry.
But the resolution told through the everyday stories of ordinary people putting the resolution into practice is extremely compelling.
For example, stories about collective housing, workers' housing, social housing, temporary housing elimination, poverty reduction, and encouragement to get rich... can all become good stories when talking about the social and economic policies of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
Source: https://tuoitre.vn/pgs-ts-nguyen-van-huy-ai-cung-tim-thay-minh-trong-bao-tang-dang-cong-san-viet-nam-2025082711345849.htm
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