Paper short abstract:

Based on the fieldwork study of the Vietnamese political activists, the paper provides an analysis of the flows of ideas between Poland and Vietnam, revealing the complex hierarchical system of connections among the former socialist countries never entangled in colonial relations with one another.

Paper long abstract:

The paper provides an analysis of the flows of ideas resulting from the human mobility between Poland and Vietnam. During the Cold War Era, the two countries belonged to a common political organism - Soviet Bloc, which resulted in the multifold connections between the two previously unrelated states, including the educational migration of Vietnamese to Poland. While the two states have never never been directly entangled in colonial relations with one another, they were nevertheless immersed in a complex system of relations of domination and subordination existing within the Soviet Bloc. The conceptual framework of (post)colonialism has recently started to be used to interpret the situation of former socialist countries - particularly in the case of the relations between the Soviet empire and its satellites. However, the seemingly horizontal connections among the satellite states have not been subjected to a deeper analysis.

Basing on the fieldwork study I examine the flow of ideas which emerged between Poland and Vietnam in the result of actions of the Vietnamese migrant political activists, who derive from the legacy of Polish anti-communist dissidents to formulate their objectives and strategies. This case illustrates the asymmetrical nature of flows between the two countries, existing both during the Cold War Era and after the fall of the Soviet bloc. The paper, therefore, aims to illustrate the complexity of the hierarchical and unbalanced system of flows between the countries formerly labeled as "brothers in arms in socialism" and currently adopting the semi-peripheral position in the global order.