> What's the structural difference between Vietnam's one-party
> military/political elite and the Russian nomeklatura who have robbed the
> former SU blind?
Their position in the world-system: the former is a non-industrial periphery of East Asia and the latter a semi-industrial periphery of the Eurostate. Basically, Russia is run by oil oligarchs who practice gangster capitalism and Vietnam is run by agrarian oligarchs who practice rice-export socialism (Vietnam still has a huge peasant class, is 75% rural, etc.). The VCP's peasant base has, so far, managed to keep the megalomaniac tendencies of their technocrats in check.
-- Dennis