Bulgaria after the Vietnamese

This week's visit by a high-level Vietnamese delegation to Bulgaria has gone largely unnoticed – unjustifiably so!

Bulgaria's President Georgi Parvanov, and his deputy Angel Marin, grinning widely, welcomed the Vice President Nguyen Thi Doan, a nice lady grinning just as widely.

"President Parvanov sent greetings to the President of Vietnam, and underscored that the presidential institution in Bulgaria in the future will remain a stable factor for the development of the Bulgarian-Vietnamese relations," read the announcement of the Presidency press office. What do you think is wrong with this quote?

Now, I know what you are thinking – and I will lie if I say it didn't cross my mind – because this whole Bulgarian-Vietnamese friendship episode was much like a moment from an age believed gone long ago.

They just don't make historical reminiscences like that any more – the former leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, i.e. the former communist party, and his deputy welcoming the VP of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Come on, it's like a time capsule, the comrades are back together, one might as well have thought. (At least it's only benign Vietnam, not North Korea, whew!)

Yet, when one overcomes the temptation of going into superficial historical analogies, and takes things to the next level, one figures the problem is that they haven't really been taken "to the next level." Namely, the fact that the Vietnamese delegation's visit to Bulgaria remained indeed a "presidential affair". The Vice President of Vietnam for some reason did not meet with the Bulgarian center-right Prime Minister, and the three Vietnamese deputy ministers had no meetings with the Bulgarian government – not to the best knowledge of the media.

Such talks would have made sense – since the guests flew in all the way from the Socialist Republic. It is hard for the unbiased observer to tell whose fault this situation really is.

Is it the Presidency that appears to be treating the Bulgarian-Vietnamese relations not as international ties but as a private affair of its own (replace "presidency" with "(a certain political) party" in the above quote and you will get the picture)?

Or is it the overbearing Cabinet that wouldn't go out of its way to meet with "commies" (even though they don't have a problem when it comes to hanging out with the Chinese; plus, if one is to be theoretically precise, both the Chinese and the Vietnamese today are as communist as those affiliated with the former Bulgarian Communist Party) just to make sure that Bulgaria's relations with a powerful emerging Southeast Asian economy, an ASEAN member, accidentally start making a little sense?

My guess is probably both sides "conspired" to make sure that today's Bulgaria-Vietnam relations remain only a mocking matter for political commentators with their whiff of COMECON times.

What's really striking about Bulgaria's ties with Vietnam, however, is what the Vietnamese Vice President emphasized the entire time – the fact that there are tens of thousands of Vietnamese who graduated Bulgarian universities – including Vietnam's VP herself, as well as the country's first Deputy PM.

The "brotherly" ties between the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam were a bit accidental – as in 1978-1990 both countries turned out to be in the same bloc. But in that brief period 30 000 Vietnamese managed to get Bulgarian diplomas.

(There was this story in the Bulgarian media a couple of years ago when President Parvanov visited Vietnam, and he and his wife remembered they had a Vietnamese classmate at Sofia University called Nguyen, and they thought they could probably seek that dude out and catch up; this endearing project failed when the Vietnamese told the Bulgarian delegation that Nguyen is the most popular family name in Vietnam.)

The Bulgarian education back then was heavily indoctrinated – which was actually good for the Vietnamese comrades – but it was also of high quality and internationally competitive.

What the entire Vietnamese connection has to demonstrate to the Bulgarian society and government is how a small (Eastern) European nation can make an international impact and acquire disproportionate influence by educating many from the elite of an emerging economy. This should matter for a nation whose leaders should be able to figure out where things are going globally, and that ties with the so called "emerging markets" (previously called the Third World, the less-developed countries, or the developing countries, labels that are neither politically palatable, nor true any more) are rapidly becoming a big deal.

Of course, after 1990, the Vietnamese students (and workers, for that matter) – save for some who got married and stayed – were gone from Bulgaria – which confidently took up the road to a liberal democracy, wisely making sure it shattered its higher education system on the way.

That's what Bulgaria became after the Vietnamese – a country whose university education can enjoy no foreign students (except for a certain number of Indians studying medicine; also, let's not forget to mention that many universities in the west tend to make a living out of foreign students' tuition fees - which could be the answer to the money woes of Bulgarian higher education).

The Vietnamese did leave because of the breakup of the COMECON ties but it would have made little sense anyway for them to keep coming as Bulgarian education collapsed to the extent that the only foreign students it can get are ethnic Bulgarians from Moldova and Macedonia.

Perverted as communist era education and ties were, they did give Bulgaria some sway in a distant nation such as Vietnam.

The big question is what Bulgaria will be like if – or after – the Vietnamese come back, and what exactly this comeback will look like.

In early 2008, as the Bulgarian economy, overheated by the construction and real estate bubbles, started to lose its breath in terms of manpower, the Socialist-led government disembarked in Vietnam to negotiate the "import" of Vietnamese workers.

Why was Vietnam chosen as a kind of a priority labor source of all other emerging markets – who knows, apparently the old ties still have some traction. Interestingly, this project ended abruptly as the global economic crisis kicked in just as several dozens of Vietnamese workers had arrived to take manufacturing and construction jobs.

Will the Vietnamese come back to Bulgaria primarily as menial laborers or will it once again make sense for many of them to be here pursuing university degrees? The answer to this question will indicate whether Bulgaria will have made anything out of itself – hopefully, an European country with decent higher education and awareness of the importance of ties with "emerging markets" around the world.

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