VIETNAMESE EXPORT OF LABOR TO THE USSR AND EASTERN EUROPE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83B00551R000100050001-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 10, 2008
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: March 25, 1982
• Content Type: REPORT

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NOT RELEASABLE TO FOREIGN NATIONALS
NOT RELEASABLE TO CONTRACTORS OR CONTRACTOR-CONSULTANTS
(U) VIETNAMESE "EXPORT" OF LABOR TO
THE USSR AND EASTERN EUROPE
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Although differing considerably on details,
intelligence reports make it clear that Vietnam is
sending laborers to the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe under the guise of "labor cooperation" or
technical training. The importation of "guest
workers" into the USSR and Eastern Europe is not
new. But the Vietnamese, who have received train-
ing in Soviet bloc countries for many years, had
not been involved strictly as laborers before
1980. Estimates of the numbers involved in the new
Vietnamese program vary, reaching as high as
500,000. Many reports say that a portion of their
wages is being withheld to cover Vietnamese debts.
Participants apparently consist of "reliable"
northerners and unemployed southerners. Indirect
forms of coercion probably have been involved in
recruiting some candidates, but there is no
evidence to confirm rumors reported by refugees
that active dissidents or former reeducation camp
inmates are prime targets for export. It certainly
is possible that some from these two groups have
been forced to go and that coercion may increase if
it proves difficult to meet quotas. These quotas
presumably have been expanded under agreements
signed over the past six months. This expansion
will facilitate wider dissemination of details of
the program within Vietnam and, in due course, they
will be reported outside by refugees or travelers.
SECRET
RDS-1,2 3/25/02 (multiple sources)
(C) Summary
WARNING NOTICE
SENSITIVE INTELLIGENCE SOURCES
AND METHODS INVOLVED
Report 345-AR
March 25, 1982
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"Labor Cooperation" Agreements; Expanded Airline Service
(C) The current Vietnamese program to export labor to the
USSR and Eastern Europe apparently got under way during 1980 and
subsequently has expanded, possibly even before September 1981
when the first public bilateral agreement on "labor cooperation"
was signed with Czechoslovakia. An indication that the program is
qualitatively different from past vocational training abroad is
the fact that these are independent "labor" agreements, whereas
previous training was subsumed under traditional technical,
scientific, and educational exchange accords.
(C) The Czechoslovak agreement followed a proposal made in
the summer to Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach which
was reported in the Prague press. No details of the agreement
were published, however, and subsequent accords were likewise
uninformative. For example, the November 1981 agreement with the
USSR was described only as being on "labor cooperation and inten-
sified training of technical workers." Agreements with Bulgaria
and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) were signed in Hanoi in
November 1981 and January 1982, respectively.
(S/NF/NC) A Soviet-Vietnamese accord "on the movement of
citizens" between the two countries, signed last July, may have
been intended to handle substantially increased movements of
Vietnamese. Subsequently, there was an increase in flights
between the USSR and Hanoi, and the Czechoslovak airline
reportedly began weekly flights between Prague and Hanoi with a
connection to East Berlin. In addition, Bulgarian airlines have
instituted flights between Sofia and Ho Chi Minh City (formerly
Saigon) which have been explicitly linked to the movement of
workers, according to knowledgeable sources.
(S/NF) Numbers Vary
The number of people involved in the export program appears
significantly greater than that of any previously known type of
arrangement between Vietnam and Soviet bloc states. In 1981, an
East German diplomat placed the number of Vietnamese in Eastern
Europe at 55,000; other East European diplomatic sources claim
that the figure for Eastern Europe and the USSR may grow to
500,000 in the next few years. Current refugee estimates range as
high as 500,000.1/ A November 1981 British press report quoted
(C/NF) (claimed
that 500,000 had already been exported in 1980 and that plans
called for a million more in 1981.
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a Vietnamese Embassy spokesman who said that. the number of workers
to be sent to the Soviet bloc under the 1981 agreements might reach
100,000 over the course of the current five-year (1981-85) plan.
This figure sounds plausible and is the same one used by a pro-
Hanoi Vietnamese publication in Paris which, however, treated the
program as simply an expansion of past vocational training
arrangements.
Purpose: Debt Repayment and Training
(S/NF) The export of surplus Vietnamese laborers to the
USSR, GDR, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria is a practical arrangement
in light of the degree of unemployment in Vietnam, the labor
shortages in these%Soviet bloc countries, and Vietnam's consider-
able debt to these countries. Siberia is a logical destination
for the work force going to the USSR, because of its manpower
shortages on industrial development and oil and gas projects.
(U) The importation of "guest workers" into the USSR and
Eastern Europe is nothing new. In 1972, for example, Bulgaria
signed an agreement--though never implemented--with Egypt to
import Egyptian labor. An agreement with Yugoslavia in 1973
brought Yugoslav construction workers to Bulgaria. Bulgaria,
among the least developed of the-European members of the Council
for Mutual Economic Assistance (CEMA), for years has exported
labor to the USSR (thousands of Bulgarians still cut timber in the
Komi ASSR), Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. And, in the mid-
to-late 1970s, the USSR contracted for workers from Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland to help build
the Orenburg natural gas pipeline (a CEMA-wide investment project
on Soviet territory).
(S/NF) Although the Vietnamese privately stress the benefits
of such "labor cooperation" in training underskilled workers, an
important motivation for the program clearly is repayment of the
substantial debts Hanoi has incurred for imports and developmental
assistance. The vehicle for repayment is the partial withholding
of laborers' wages. According to one report, the ratio is 40 per-
cent for the worker to 60 percent for debt repayment. Only two
reports have mentioned the wage level: one saying that the level
would be the same as in Vietnam, and the other that in the USSR it
would be less. In either case, it is possible that the exported
workers could have a standard of living comparable to or better
than that in Vietnam with its low wages and rampant inflation.
(C/NF) Participation Mixed; Coercion Difficult To Document
Available information on participation in the program comes
almost exclusively from refugee sources, which are often con-
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flicting and sometimes clearly exaggerated. (These reports are
summarized in the Appendix.) According to this information,
workers for the program are drawn mainly from two categories:
northern Vietnamese considered "reliable," and unemployed
southerners. For northern Vietnamese, the program is evidently an
expansion of previous training arrangements. For participants
from the south, however, the program is more aptly described as
the exporting of labor. These individuals are drawn from the
large pool of skilled and unskilled unemployed workers for use in
a purely labor capacity which, nevertheless, may have some train-
ing benefits. For example, Hanoi probably hopes that those
employed on Siberian oil and gas projects will gain skills for
use on Vietnam's own projects, if and when the latter get
under way.
Although the possibility exists that the program includes
political dissidents and individuals drawn from reeducation camps,
there is no firm evidence of this. Nor is there information to
substantiate refugee rumors that the program is designed as a
punitive measure targeted against such groups. Because it is
highly doubtful that the Soviet Union or any other bloc country
would be willing to accept large numbers of "unreliable" workers
within their borders, it seems improbable that dissidents or
reeducatees would form a significant proportion of the "guest
workers."
The widespread rumors of reeducatee involvement in an
"export" program to Siberia began to be reported by refugees only
in the latter part of 1981--after the BBC (and possibly others)
broadcast to Vietnam news accounts of Vietnamese laborers being
exported to the USSR and Eastern Europe. Thus, in the absence of
firsthand accounts, the veracity of refugee reporting on this
subject must be viewed with caution, because such stories may be
self-serving.
Nonetheless, some degree of coercion likely is involved in
"recruitment" in the south of participants for the program. The
extent is difficult to determine, however, because of the scarcity
of good intelligence., The most reliable information available is
the report of a Ho Chi Minh City public security officer who said
that individuals unwilling to participate in the program were
faced with the threat of being forced to move from Ho Chi Minh City
and change their trades. The degree of future coercion probably
will be directly related to the strictness of quotas for the
program and the ease with which they can be filled. Vietnamese
cadre in both parts of the country are faced with competing
demands for labor--for the draft as well as for the "New Economic
Zones" being revived. Neither program is popular and may have
even less appeal to segments of the populace than labor abroad.
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Vietnamese Sensitivity
(U) The Vietnamese clearly are sensitive to the suggestion
that they are providing indentured or "slave" laborers to Eastern
Europe and the USSR. Thus, with the exception of two obscure
accounts in a Hanoi newspaper, the matter apparently has not been
mentioned in the media. The first account, published in July
1980, reported a farewell party given by the Minister of Labor for
the "first wave" of Vietnamese workers leaving for East Germany.
It mentioned that they had attended lectures on various subjects,
including the "policy on sending workers and cadres abroad to
upgrade their skills." The other, published in December 1981,
complained that workers selected for "cooperative labor" were
being overcharged for inferior photographs for passports and
identity cards. These were required by the "International
Cooperation Department" which, judging from the first article, is
an office in the Ministry of Labor charged with handling the
worker export program.
(S/NF) The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry apparently has
provided guidance for diplomats on how to respond privately to
such reports. Several representatives have said that the program
is simply an expansion or extension of existing plans for training
workers who would return to Vietnam when the training was
completed. This reaction contrasts sharply with a report that
Foreign Minister Thach told the Director of the World Food Program
in January that 250,000 Vietnamese workers were already in the
USSR and Eastern Europe and 60 percent of their wages was being
withheld by the Soviets. Thach, however, is given to hyperbole on
occasion. In this instance, his motives in breaking with past
denials apparently were to suggest dissatisfaction with Moscow and
encourage the notion that Western aid would help break Moscow's
monopoly and increase Vietnamese independence.
(LOU) Outlook
The signing of labor agreements with Soviet bloc countries
suggests that Hanoi is prepared to increase the number of workers
to be sent abroad. If the program does in fact expand and run
smoothly, details on the arrangements should become more widely
known within Vietnam, and more information may become available
from refugees and other sources. Moreover, Hanoi itself would be
under increasing pressure to deal openly with the subject.
Prepared by Dorothy Avery, x22277
Marc Berkowitz
Approved by Wever Gim, x21338
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