Alain Ruscio and Pavel Vladimirovich Pozner are two foreign researchers who received the Phan Chau Trinh Culture Awards 2011 in Hanoi on March 24.Learning about Vietnam for 40 years Dr. Alain Ruscio.The Phan Chau Trinh Culture Foundation presented the Vietnamese studies award to a Frenchman, Dr. Alain Ruscio, for his outstanding contribution to advertising Vietnamese cultural and history values in France and Europe.Dr. Ruscio, a historian, a doctor of literature and an independent researcher has spent his life in researching Indochina and the France war in Indochina, including an important part of Vietnam’s history.Dr. Ruscio has been the director of the French Center for Information and Documentation on Contemporary Vietnam for over 20 years, which has the participation of many retired professors, overseas Vietnamese and Vietnamese studies experts.Dr. Ruscio went to Vietnam for the first time in 1978, as a correspondent of the L’Humanite Newspaper. That was the extremely difficult time of Vietnam because the war just passed for several years.“Vietnam was very poor at that time but I saw a country of pride and a country that did not stop struggling to rebuild,” he said.The French correspondent stayed in Vietnam until the summer 1980. He said that he was very lucky to travel along Vietnam, from Lao Cai in the north to Ca Mau in the south. His experience in the first two years in Vietnam was noted in the book “Vivre au Vietnam” (Live in Vietnam”. The book is his thinking about Vietnam five years after the Vietnam War.Dr. Ruscio has taken at least 30 flights from Paris to Hanoi because he has returned to Vietnam each two years.“I’ve worked very very hard. I was not a researcher of Vietnam at the beginning, but in the past 40 years, I’ve focused my mind in researching Vietnam’s history, especially wars of resistance. I witnessed many significant moments in Vietnam’s history during my two years working as a correspondent in your country. I see a close relation between correspondents and historians,” he added.Speaking at the Phan Chau Trinh award ceremony, Dr. Ruscio related his meetings with Vietnamese PM Pham Van Dong and General Vo Nguyen Giap, who is his great idol.“April 30, 1979, became the most memorable day in my life. When I knew that I was about to see Mr. Giap. I told myself that I was about to have a meeting with ‘history in capital letters.’”“But when I stepped up onto small footsteps and saw a gentle, righteous and smiling man, I suddenly felt no fear. He gave me a hug. And he talked with me by his perfect French.”He remembered his meetings with General Giap in a book entitled “Vo Nguyen Giap – A Life” which was published in 2011.Dr. Ruscio also researches the modern history of former colonial countries of France. He won the Book against Colonialism awards in 2008 and 2011.He has written 15 books about Vietnam.Six books on Vietnam’s history Researcher Pavel Pozner talks with Vietnamese writer Nguyen Ngoc  He is among several experts on Vietnamese studies at the Eastern Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1973. He is also the chairman of the project to compile six books on Vietnamese history, which will be published in Russian in 2013 and in English in 2016.Russian researcher Pavel Pozner said that the six books will cover Vietnam’s history from the Hung Vuong era to 2010.The first volume will tell about Vietnam’s history from the Hung Vuong era to the end of the Ly dynasty. The second volume will continue from the end of the Ly dynasty to 1600 (Le-Mac dynasties). The third book will tell Vietnam’s history from 1600 to 1897. The modern history will be in the fourth and fifth volumes, from 1897 to 1945 and from 1945 to 2010. The sixth book will include annotations, detailed articles, maps, etc.“We will finalize the preparation phase by this year end and the book will be published next year,” he said.“We have traveled from the north to the south to collect documents and take photos for the books and we have always received warm support from everyone.”“These books will be expensive because they will be printed on high-quality papers, with many illustration pictures. After delivering the books in Russia, we hope to publish them in Russia,” he added.Pozner was born in 1945 in New York. His family returned to Germany in 1948 and then to Russia in 1952. His father is a famous film producer in France, USA and Russia.Cinema used to be Pozner’s passion when he was a child but he became a student of the University of Oriental Languages. A trip to Vietnam in 1979 turned Pozner into a researcher of Vietnamese studies.He successfully defended his MA thesis on ancient history of Vietnam in 1976 and the doctoral thesis on Vietnamese history from the beginning to the 10th century in France in 1987.He is the translator of a Chinese-Russian book on Vietnamese history.Vietnamnet