Tố Hữu

Tố Hữu (4 October 1920 – 9 December 2002) was Vietnam's most famous revolutionary poet.
He published five collections of poems, the first of which was the 1946 collection entitled Poem, which included many of his most popular and influential works that were written between 1937 and 1946.

Tố Hữu was born as Nguyễn Kim Thành in Phù Lai Village in central Vietnam, later taking on the pseudonym Tố Hữu, whose Sino-Vietnamese etymology is unknown. Around the age of 18, he was incarcerated by the French colonial authorities for his involvement with the communist movement. He escaped from Dac Lay prison in 1942 and rejoined the communist underground.

Tố Hữu moved quickly and successfully through what became the Communist Party of Vietnam. During the pre-unification period (before 1975) Tố Hữu was most influential in setting cultural policy in North Vietnam, especially in deciding the bounds of what was permissible for intellectuals and artists to publish and perform during this tightly controlled period. His control of intellectual and artistic production was matched only by Trường Chinh and Hồ Chí Minh himself. Intellectual discontent with this control was expressed by the poet Lê Đạt who, during the Nhân Văn affair, declared that Tố Hữu considered writers and artists petty bourgeois elements, and regarded literature as a mere tool of politics. As an example, he mentioned the case of Nam Cao whom Tố Hữu compelled to write a work on the rural taxation system, a topic with which the writer was by no means familiar.

He continued to hold many important party and government posts, including member of the Politburo, Secretary of the Central Committee, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers (as the government cabinet was then called), and the same post that was later renamed Deputy Prime Minister.

As the leader of the cultural section, he was named as the chief instigator of the persecution of intellectuals during the Nhân Văn affair. However, according to the musician Văn Cao, one of the prominent victims, the main author of this policy was Trường Chinh, the general secretary of the communist party at that time. According to Văn Cao, Tố Hữu, as a poet, was not sufficiently hard-hearted to pursue such a policy on his own. (See the article at the Vietnamese Wikipedia).

During his career, Tố Hữu was awarded the Gold Star Order, the 60-year membership badge, and the Hồ Chí Minh Award, the highest award for literary and artistic accomplishments conferred by the Vietnamese state.

Tố Hữu enjoyed a steep rise in the party and government culminating in an equally steep and precipitous decline. He was blamed for the disastrous 1985 attempt at monetary reform and the ruinous inflation that resulted from its unsuccessful implementation. Inflation had risen 700% by 1986. Tố Hữu had to step down from his position as deputy prime minister and played no further political role in Vietnam. Despite his political fall from grace, Tố Hữu remains the Communist Party's poet-laureate. He died in 2002.