National Heroes of Vietnam through the Lens of State Myth-making

Abstract

The elevation by the state of certain historical characters to the rank of national heroes is always myth-making, which pursues its own goals. To understand such goals in relation to Vietnam, it seems important to consider its national heroes, especially since their list is actually determined at the state level. An analysis of the “official” national heroes of Vietnam allows us to draw a number of conclusions. The choice of characters is largely «Sino-centric», which generally reflects the role of the northern neighbor in the history of the Vietnamese state and its worldview in the modern period. Most of the heroes are military leaders and heads of state (mainly who went down in history because the resistance to the Chinese), and not cultural figures, science or art. At the same time, their official biographies are always close to the image of an ideal person, regardless of actual actions. Here one can see the Confucian basis of Vietnamese society, in which history is always positive. Noteworthy is the apparent lack of figures from the last two centuries (with the exception of Ho Chi Minh), which seems to reflect the following peculiarity of the political culture of Vietnam: power usually avoids personification. Also interesting is the modest number of characters associated with Buddhism and religion in general, which may be a consequence of the course taken in the last century to build socialism, which presupposes an atheistic view of the world.