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The original was posted on /r/askhistorians by /u/phollowingcats on 2023-10-18 03:13:51+00:00.

I’m Vietnamese Canadian. My parents immigrated from vietnam after the war, and when they tell stories they always speak about the brutality communist government during that time. My mom says her family was put on a list (the way she described it, it sounds like the Vietnamese version of “kulaks”) and that their house was going to be seized by the government , and that her brother, who had spent years working for the communists, saw them on the list by chance and was able to get their name crossed off (by raising a huge commotion apparently). The process which she was describing sounds like collectivization, but my main question is, how brutal was this process? She talks of people being evicted and forced to move to the country to farm the land while rich government officials and their children seized and lived in their homes, people would go out for an errand during the day to come home to armed soldiers in their living rooms telling them they had an hour to gather their belongings and leave. my dad talks of having his home seized and warrants for his and his dads arrest while he was in hiding. All this sounds very much like the Soviet Union, how come not as much emphasis is put on vietnams collectivization process , seeing as it was quite similar?

Am I missing something? Are my parents just biased? My parents (and many others) fled the Vietnamese government but nobody really says specifically why, they just say “cuz communists” as if that were self explanatory