Books, chapters, and articles by Olga Dror
Koudé, Roger K. (dir.), La guerre russo-ukrainienne : enjeux et perspectives (Paris: Éditions des Archives Contemporaines, 2025
Les origines de la guerre entre la Russie et l’Ukraine semblent remonter à un passé plus ou moins... more Les origines de la guerre entre la Russie et l’Ukraine semblent remonter à un passé plus ou moins lointain ; ce qui s’est, en l’occurrence, traduit par une première confrontation armée en 2014, au sujet de la Crimée. Aurait-on pu éviter la reprise et la prolongation de ce conflit, huit années plus tard ? Quels enseignements peut-on tirer de cette crise internationale qui se présente comme un véritable défi pour la paix et la sécurité mondiales ?
Dans cet ouvrage, il s’agit essentiellement de comprendre et d’analyser les différents facteurs explicatifs, les enjeux ainsi que les conséquences multidimensionnelles du conflit russo-ukrainien qui, visiblement, était prévisible. Décidément, en plus de ses propres caractéristiques, ce conflit ne manque pas d’accentuer les contradictions habituelles du système international au sein même des Nations Unies...
Journal of Cold War Studies, 2024
During the Cold War, decolonization gave rise to many new countries that struggled to define thei... more During the Cold War, decolonization gave rise to many new countries that struggled to define their place in the East-West confrontation. This was an especially urgent task for intellectuals who identified with new states. One such intellectual was Kateb Yacine, whose quest to look ahead was impaired by his revulsion at the postcolonial leaders of his native Algeria. His search for a secular national model found its object in Ho Chi Minh and the Communist-ruled Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Kateb’s embrace of an imaginary Ho Chi Minh and a rose-colored model of the Democratic of Vietnam was particularly driven by his tortured relationship with France, the colonial master of both Algeria and Vietnam. Kateb detested the Islamic pan-Arabism of post-colonial Algeria and escaped to France and the Francophone world, where he discovered the revolutionary secularism of Ho Chi Minh and the anti-colonial stance of the Vietnamese, which he admired. Kateb used poetry, novels, and theater to express his admiration of Ho Chi Minh and Communist tyrants in the Soviet Union and China, revealing how Cold War cultural products could take many forms.
Desperta ferro contemporánea. Historia military y politica de los siglos XX y XXI (Madrid, Spain), n. 65:52-55, 2024
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2022
The article discusses the representation of Hồ Chí Minh in modern Vietnamese cinema from 1990 to ... more The article discusses the representation of Hồ Chí Minh in modern Vietnamese cinema from 1990 to the present. The first feature film on Hồ Chí Minh's life was produced only in 1990, 31 years after his death. Since then, 6 more films have appeared. I explore the reasons why there were no feature films about Hồ Chí Minh before 1990 and why they eventually began to appear. I address the filmmakers’ attempts to reintroduce Hồ Chí Minh, especially to younger generations who know of him only through propaganda depicting him as a celibate paragon of virtue and through viewing his embalmed body in the Mausoleum he had objected to. I argue that these cinematographic projects to promote Hồ Chí Minh to younger Vietnamese have done very little to develop, or even maintain, his personal cult, a cult that the state endeavours to exploit to (re)establish its connection to the people, to overcome a prolonged crisis of legitimacy, and to garner popular support for the continuing leadership of the Vietnamese Communist Party. The market economy and openness to the world have inevitably undermined the Hồ Chí Minh cult and ideological constructs supporting it.
Journal of Cold War Studies, 2018
Only excerpts available here. Full text is at https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/j... more Only excerpts available here. Full text is at https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/jcws_a_00819 (or through library access)
Abstract:
From the late 1950s until 1975, the war between North and South Vietnam had both domestic and international consequences. Unlike the Cold War divide between the United States and the Soviet Union, the war between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV, the Communist North) and the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, the non-Communist South) was an armed conflict between two polities that both identified themselves as Vietnamese. In this twenty-year-long struggle, the fates of the DRV and the RVN were tied to their success in producing new generations who would subscribe to their respective agendas. This was done through many venues, of which education was one of the most important.
This article analyzes the educational systems at the primary and secondary school levels in the DRV and RVN after the division of the country, with a special focus on the years between 1965 and 1975. It considers their respective “divorces” from the colonial educational system and explores their goals, their problems, and the means they used to overcome these problems. Moreover, the DRV attempted to create an educational mini-empire with the DRV centered agenda—establishing a Vietnamese-based system in China, bringing into the DRV Laotian children, and exporting their ideology in the educational system established in the NLF-controlled territories of the RVN. The DRV created a rigidly politicized school system focused on the war and the construction of socialism. The RVN, creating an educational antipode of the North, endeavored to separate schools from the war, largely taking politics out of the curriculum and leaving pupils to figure out for themselves the aims of the conflict and their place in it, stranding many of them in ambiguity. If the DRV system was depriving pupils of the means to challenge the government, the RVN was supplying children with such means. Relying on archival materials and published documents, this article compares the educational systems at the primary and secondary school levels in the DRV and RVN after the division of the country, with a special focus on the period 1965–1975.
Nguồn: Olga Dror, “Learning From the Hue Massacre”, The New York Times, 20/02/2018.
Trung Quốc dùng trường học để gây ảnh hưởng lên Bắc Việt ra sao? , 2018
Nguồn: Olga Dror, "How China used schools to win over Hanoi", The New York Times, 26/01/2018. Biê... more Nguồn: Olga Dror, "How China used schools to win over Hanoi", The New York Times, 26/01/2018. Biên dịch: Phan Nguyên
After Vietnam's August Revolution in 1945, Hồ Chí Minh was venerated as the center of a newly cre... more After Vietnam's August Revolution in 1945, Hồ Chí Minh was venerated as the center of a newly created political religion that eventually became part of the Vietnamese religious landscape. This article traces the origins of Hồ Chí Minh's veneration and his own role in cementing his image not only as the leader of the nation but as the Uncle, the head of the Vietnamese national family. Through an examination of Hồ Chí Minh's first (auto)biography, it explores some of the means employed to achieve these results. Hồ Chí Minh's cult transformed the nation and altered Vietnamese cultural traditions. It served to acquaint people with the new order and to create and perpetuate people's loyalty to the newly formed state entities. This article looks at how Hồ Chí Minh went from being the master of his own cult to losing control over it and becoming its employee.
This article focuses on love, hatred, and heroism as facets of youth socialization in the Democra... more This article focuses on love, hatred, and heroism as facets of youth socialization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) during the war years 1965–1975. It is based on publications by adults to propagate the ideology and policies of the state to children and youth. It also considers publications by children and youth to demonstrate how closely they echoed the narratives created by adults. The goal of these publications was to raise obedient nephews and nieces of Uncle Ho who would later become steadfast supporters of the party’s goals in conducting the war as well as in constructing Socialism.
The Introduction to the book describing the tragic events of the Tết Offensive in Hue in 1968, wh... more The Introduction to the book describing the tragic events of the Tết Offensive in Hue in 1968, when the city was under the control of communist forces and thousands of people were massacred, is divided into three parts: biography of Nhã Ca in the context of the intellectual milieu in South Vietnam; how the Tết Offensive unfolded in Hue; view of the Huế massacre and Nhã Ca's account by the American, Soviet/Russian, and Vietnamese sides, the latter includes both communist and anti-communist perceptions of the Huế massacre and Nhã Ca's work.
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Books, chapters, and articles by Olga Dror
Dans cet ouvrage, il s’agit essentiellement de comprendre et d’analyser les différents facteurs explicatifs, les enjeux ainsi que les conséquences multidimensionnelles du conflit russo-ukrainien qui, visiblement, était prévisible. Décidément, en plus de ses propres caractéristiques, ce conflit ne manque pas d’accentuer les contradictions habituelles du système international au sein même des Nations Unies...
Abstract:
From the late 1950s until 1975, the war between North and South Vietnam had both domestic and international consequences. Unlike the Cold War divide between the United States and the Soviet Union, the war between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV, the Communist North) and the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, the non-Communist South) was an armed conflict between two polities that both identified themselves as Vietnamese. In this twenty-year-long struggle, the fates of the DRV and the RVN were tied to their success in producing new generations who would subscribe to their respective agendas. This was done through many venues, of which education was one of the most important.
This article analyzes the educational systems at the primary and secondary school levels in the DRV and RVN after the division of the country, with a special focus on the years between 1965 and 1975. It considers their respective “divorces” from the colonial educational system and explores their goals, their problems, and the means they used to overcome these problems. Moreover, the DRV attempted to create an educational mini-empire with the DRV centered agenda—establishing a Vietnamese-based system in China, bringing into the DRV Laotian children, and exporting their ideology in the educational system established in the NLF-controlled territories of the RVN. The DRV created a rigidly politicized school system focused on the war and the construction of socialism. The RVN, creating an educational antipode of the North, endeavored to separate schools from the war, largely taking politics out of the curriculum and leaving pupils to figure out for themselves the aims of the conflict and their place in it, stranding many of them in ambiguity. If the DRV system was depriving pupils of the means to challenge the government, the RVN was supplying children with such means. Relying on archival materials and published documents, this article compares the educational systems at the primary and secondary school levels in the DRV and RVN after the division of the country, with a special focus on the period 1965–1975.