One day in 1998 when I was passing a bronze statue of Lenin in Hanoi a foreigner asked me "How long do you think this statue will stay there". I understood the question perfectly and said "twenty years and then we will see". However, a Western ambassador said that it would exist no more than three years. I did not agree with him.

Three years had passed and nothing happened. That ambassador of a big industrialized country thought is would be so simple to end the communist regime in Vietnam once every Vietnamese around him were so fed up with the regime. I was pragmatic in weighing all forces in Vietnam when I said "twenty years". According to a known theory (V.I. Lenin?) a revolution could happen only when "the Low don't want to continue like that and the High can not rule in the same way any more". That condition is not ripe in today's Vietnam. Hoping for an end of Vietnam communism in a near future makes ourselves no wiser than Utopian communists.

Feb. 2001