Robin, so present

Dear Robin,

There is an old Latin America tradition, which says a person who departs surrounded by those who love him/her and whom he/she loves, is always present.  That’s why the multitude who accompanied Salvador Allende have called repeatedly during the march, « Allende »,  « present ».  So here you are, dear Robin, so present among us, with your joyful smile, your witty look and your sharp mind. 

Thanks to Frances, I was asked to write about the Socialist Seminar at IDS in 1979 where I met with you for the first time. 40 years have passed and my memory did not allow me to say something meaningful about the content of it.  But what I have learned, the people I met with, have been my companions until today.  Let me tell how and why.

In 1979, I was lecturer in Paris Nanterre University where I taught as many of us, Marxian economics. My knowledge was a theoretical one until 1977, when the Government of Vietnam, as an award to my service at the Paris Conference on Vietnam (1969-1975), gave me a train ticket from Paris to Hanoi. It took me three months for completing the journey since I was also asked to visit all socialist countries on my way and to study them, mainly the USSR and China.  I also stayed for a two-month tour study in Vietnam.

I never told any body or publish any thing on that Tran Siberian trip. But it was an eye opening experience.  To my thesis director, I just explained that during those months, I tried but failed to discover any thing close to the ideal of socialism we were discussing about in Paris. 

Then thanks to Christine White’s introduction, I was allowed to join IDS and your seminar (the “your” came from her). I recall the head of my Department in Nanterre approving my leave: « leave authorised for an extremely important event. » Every thing was new to me, from the daily life (what is a pigeon hole?) to the relation with other fellows.  Without being always present, you were the one who inspired our discussions, who pulled out the best part of our ideas and who obliged us to discuss with facts, arguments or theories in hand.

With you, and with Anthony Barnett and Suzy Paine, I found the way to reconcile my academic knowledge and my practical experiences.  We never told this to you dear Robin, but two years later, I managed to initiate an invitation to Suzy to visit Vietnam, where discreetly she would present to the Government her views on our   economic reforms, before Gorbachev’s Perestroika and Glasnost.  I remember the last day of her stay when she came out of her hotel waving into my direction her notes, smiling: “I did it”! That was the first step of the reforms, which became a national policy from 1990. The Socialist Seminar at IDS in 1979 has its part in the transformation of my country. 

Few years later, I joined the United Nations bureaucracy and I lost track of your research and publication. A peacekeeping operation is not really a place to read and to discuss. But I took with me what I also learn from you in those years: your unlimited optimism and generosity.  These two qualities have served me well since we were sometime in difficult situations. To be optimistic is to see the bright face of the thing (your smile Rob) and to be generous (your approach based on an immense culture) is to accept the others opinion.  I remember you never said no to new proposals, but always: why not? And from there we went on, from there we learned, and from there we grew up. Thanks again and again.

Robin! Present!

Much love

Dong

 Paris, October 2019