Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) was a revolutionary against French rule in then-Indochina, who became President of the (Communist) Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) after the partition of Indochina in 1954. He remained the national leader, certainly symbolically and at least part of the time operationally, through the rest of his life.

His world view included both Vietnamese nationalism and Marxism-Leninism. The balance and coexistence of these views remains, to this day, controversial. He has said that he was strongly influenced by Lenin's Draft Theses on National and Colonial Questions For The Second Congress Of The Communist International,, in which Lenin had seen a stage of a transitional national federation between independence from colonialism and final Communism.

Especially in his early years, he was known by a variety of names. Some of these were political aliases, but others simply were Vietnamese custom of the time. For example, a child was given a "milk name" at birth, but a new name on entering adolescence, typically at age 11. The latter name reflected the parents' aspirations for the child. So, his milk name was Nguyen Sinh Cung. , but, at age 11, not yet a political activist, his father renamed him Nguyen Tat Thanh, "he who will succeed". See personal names for his political and literary aliases; he took on the name Ho CHi Minh, for which he had he identity card of a Chinese reporter, in 1942.

While he died before the forcible unification of North Vietnam and South Vietnam in 1975, his symbolic importance was such that the former Southern capital of Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

Early life
His father, principally known as Nguyen Sinh Sac but also as Nguyen Sinh Huy, was highly educated in the French colonial system, but had been dismissed from the civil service. Sac's tutor was Hoang Duong, also known as Hoan Xuan Duong or simply as Master Duong. Sac was attracted to Duong's daughter Hoang Thi Loan, and, in 1883, married the woman who was to become Ho's mother.

He who was to become Ho Chi Minh was born on May 19, 1890, in the village of Kim Lien, in Nam Dan district of Nghe An Province. His milk name was Nguyen Sinh Cung.

Ho attended school in Hue and Phan Thiet. As was customary for promising children, he was put into the care of a tutor, Vuong Thuc Quoi.

Foreign travel
He was reported to have attended baking school, in Saigon, in 1911. In June 1911, he presented himself, using the name "Ba", to the captain of the French liner, Amiral Latouche-Trevilk, and became an assistant cook. Reports are conflicting whether he actually led a life at sea for the next two years or so, or merely traveled as a member of ships' crews. He wrote a letter, on September 11, 1911, to the President of France, asking for admission to the Colonial School.

Again, he traveled, settling in London in 1914. Ho apparently was a competent cook, telling, in his autobiography, of working under Auguste Escoffier at the Carlton Hotel. One wonders about the future of the world, and of cuisine, if he had taken Escoffier's offer to train him in the art of cooking. Unquestionably, he had multiple talents.

He appears to have spent some time in New York in 1913, spending at least 1913 in New York. While the documentation about his time in the U.S. is scant, there is at least one letter that he signed Paul Tat Thanh. Pham Van Dong said he had lived in Harlem, was impressed by "the barbarities and ugliness of American capitalism, the Ku Klux Klan mobs, the lynching of Negroes." In 1924, he published a pamphlet, "La Race Noire" ("The Black Race"), criticizing racism in America and Europe.

It is not completely clear when he returned to France, certainly by 1918, but most likely December 1917.

Early revolutionary activities
In 1919, he took on the name Nguyen Ai Quoc ("Nguyen the Patriot"), which was to be his main revolutionary alias until the Second World War. While in France, he was one of the founding member of the French Communist Party in 1920, and spoke on French Indochina before going to Moscow in 1923. He told Patti he was influenced by Lenin's Thesis on the National and Colonial Questions which he read in 1920. As opposed to the general Vietnamese call for independence and reform, this specifically introduced a Marxist-Leninist context.

He attended the Fifth Congress of the Communist International (i.e., Comintern), in 1924, then moved to Guangzhou (Canton), China, teaching revolutionary theory using Marx and Lenin, but also Gandhi and Sun Yat Sen.

1924-1927 was a period during which several nationalist and revolutionary organizations were formed. As Nguyen Ai Quoc, he formed the Viet Nam Thanh Nien Cach Menh Dong Chi Hoi (Revolutionary Youth League). In 1926, after studying translations of Marxist material, he said "only a communist party can [ultimately] insure the well-being of Annam". and wrote the handbook, Duong Cach Menh (The Revolutionary Path), in 1926.

By 1927, he went back to China to avoid arrest by the French; he arranged for some members of the Revolutionary Youth League to attend China's Whampoa Military Academy.

Also in December 1927, Nguyen Thai Hoc founded the non-communist Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang (VNQDD, Vietnamese Nationalist Party), in Hanoi.

Development of Vietnamese communism
Ho began his Communist activities in France, including writing for a Vietnamese audience there, and in copies secretly sent to Indochina, in 1921. Over time, he would move back to Asia and build infrastructure, eventually forming the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP).

In approximately 1923, he joined an association of Vietnamese exiles, the Tam Tam Xa.

Moscow
The young Nguyen Ai Quoc was invited to Moscow in 1924, and worked with the Comintern and other international organizations. He was quite visible at the Fifth Comintern Congress in the summer of 1924, which began to establish his role as an Asian revolutionary; he had been named a member of the Far Eastern Secretariat of the Comintern Executive Committee.

Return to Asia
In November 1924, he moved to Guangzhou, China. (Canton in English). Not initially having any official role, he quickly made contacts, including with Mikhail Borodin, the Comintern representative to Sun Yat-sen's government. He went to work at the Soviet news agency in Guangzhou, also working on the formation of a Vietnamese revolutionary party, and education of Vietnamese elites in Marxism-Leninism.

He linked up with Tam Tam Xa members; in June 1925, he transformed this organization into the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association, a precursor of the ICP. The VRYA name, commonly Thanh Nien (youth) in Vietnamese, was not yet used; he referred to it as the Vietnamese Guomindang in early 1925. The League, however, had nationalist aspects separate from Marxism.

A controversial area, during this period, was Ho's relationship to Phan Boi Chau, a prominent Vietnamese dissident exiled to China. He had formed a variety of revolutionary organizations, beginning with the Duy Tan Hoi (Reformation Society) in 1904, replaced in 1912 by the Viet Nam Quang Phuc Hoi (Vietnam Restoration Society). Its members included Le Hong Son,, truong van Lenh, Le Hong Phon, and Le Quang Dat, who were to become followers of Nguyen Ai Quoc.

The Tam Tam Xa was a spinoff of his organization by more activist members disappointed with Phan Boi Chau's leadership. Eventually, the Vietnam Restoration Society became part of the noncommunist but nationalist VNQDD

In May 1925, Phan Boi Chau was arrested by the French and charged with treason. There are various arguments on who betrayed him. His own memoirs name his personal assistant, Nguyen Thuong Huyen, who eventually went to work for the French. Other non-Communist nationalists, however, claim it was Ho's associate Lam Duc Thu, or possibly Nguyen Ai Quoc himself. Duiker regards the evidence as inconclusive, but it was most likely Nguyen Thuong Huyen, possibly Lam Duc Thu, and probably not Nguyen Ai Quoc. Phan Boi Chau made statements of high esteem for Ho, up to his dealth in 1940. Quinn-Judge says reports from Lam Duc Thu state that he had been informing on Phai Boc Chau. Questions remain on whether Nguyen Ai Quoc saw Phan Boi Chau as an obstructionist, or the man who would hand the mantle to him.

Under the pseudonym Ly Thuy, Nguyen Ai Quoc formed the League (or Society) of Oppressed People on June 30, 1925, an overt Vietnamese group in China. Possibly by a youth group within it, the journal Thanh Nien began publication and clandestine distribution throughout Southeast Asia, to teach Marxist theory. Before he left Moscow for Indochina, he had been asked to represent the Peasant International in China, which initially cooperated with the Kuomintang under Sun Yat-Sen; the education effort was part of this representation.

Beginnings of Communist organization
Probably in 1926, from the larger Thanh Nieh organiztion, he created an inner communist group. This has been known by two names, Thanh Nien Cong San Doan (Communist Youth League), or Viet Nam Than Nien Cach Man Hoi (Association of Revolutionary Vietnamese Youth); the former is probably the more authoritative name. Just as the League as a step toward Vietnamese identity, the 1926 group was a step in developing Vietnamese Communist identity.

After Sun Yat-Sen's death in March 1925, Chiang Kai-Shek took power, and initially cooperated with the Communists. Chiang Kai-Shek purged them, however, in April 1927, and Nguyen Ai Quoc fled to Hong Kong in May. Pursued by British authorities, he went to Soviet Far East headquarters in Vladivostok, and then moved to Moscow. The initial plan was for him to move to Siam as a base for organizing Indochinese Communism, but, instead, spent time in various European cities. Eventually, he arrived in Bangkok in July 1928. Assuming the identity Father Chin, he moved to northern Siam late in the year; the French lost track of him. A French tribunal, however, sentenced him, in absentia, to death, on October 29, for plotting revolution in Annam.

In May 1929, the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League met in Hong Kong, with representatives from the three regions of Indochina. Le Hong Son listened to a proposal from Tran Van Cung, from Tonkin, to form a Communist part, but felt that this was premature. Congress chairman Lam Duc Thu, however, opposed it.

Several different Communist factions formed parties, beginning with a group, called the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP--Dang Cong San Dong Duong), started by Cung's group of Thanh Nien members, on June 17, 1929. Based in Hanoi, this Tonkinese group was affiliated with the Comintern. Meanwhile, in August, an Annam Communist party (An Nam Cong San Dang) formed inside the league, with leadershipby Le Hong Son, Ho Tung Mau, and Le Quang Dat. Mau wrote to Cung and suggested forming a unified party, but the latter said he was "too busy". Mau then wrote to the Comintern to seek a means of unity.

An Annamese group called New Revolutinary Party or Tan Viet Party, of Thanh Nien and radical members of yet but no direct tie with the Comintern, renamed itself the Indochinese Communist League (Dong Duong Cong San Lien Doan).

At the beginning of 1930, there were actually three communist parties in French Indochina competing for members. In an October 27 message, Comintern, disapproving, asked Ho, then in Siam, to bring the three groups together in a Hong Kong meeting. It supported the Hanoi fction of Tran Van Cung.

Unification
At the founding meeting on February 3, 1930,  Ho presided over the formation Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) was founded, the Viet Nam Cong San Dang. At the Comintern's request, the name was changed later that year at the first Party Plenum to the Indochinese Communist Party, thus reclaiming the name of the first party of that named founded in 1929. A Comintern representative, hwever, told Ho Tung Mau and others that none of the Vietnamese organizations would be recognized until the Comintern decided they were unified. Until then, the Chinese Communist Party would direct the Vietnamese groups. Finally, the Indochinese Communist Party was recognized on February 18, 1930.

Nguyen Ai Quoc, still under death sentence, stayed in Hong Kong in 1931, with an increasingly restive Tran Phu, the first General Secretary, in Saigon. Phu was irritated both by the poor communications, and Quoc's nationalism. Tran Phu himself, however, was caught in a French sweep, and died in 1931, possibly of torture.

Nationalist vs. internationalist split
Changing the organization name from "Vietnamese" to "Indochinese" also reflected a Comintern desire to move the context from nationalism to class struggle. In Vietnamese communism, there was an increasing split between those focused on advancing worldwide communism, and a more nationalist, although still Marxist, emphasis. Ho was in the latter camp.

In the international Communist movement, however, there was another split, between the Stalinists that controlled the Comintern, and the Trotskyites. A Vietnamese Trotskyite group, in 1933, created a publication, La Lutte (Struggle). While the Comintern forbade official cooperation, an informal slate of ICP members and Trotskyites won four seats on the Saigon municipal council in 1935.

Meanwhile, Ho headed back to Moscow in 1934. Three other members represented the Seventh Congress of the Comintern in 1935, but he only had observer status. Le Hong Phong gained new prominence at Ho's expense, even though Le Hong Phong was a "leftist" supporter of class struggle, while the Soviets had adopted anti-fascism as a higher priority.

Ho, who had been working in Moscow as a translator, as well as studying ideology and Russian, requested to go back to Asia, and returned to China in 1938. In July 1939, he advised the Comintern that his party should be moderate in its demands; to seek independence is "to play into the Japanese fascists’ hands." He spoke of broad-front tactics to include Indochinese nationalists as well as French "progressives". His position was clearly Stalinist: "With regard to the Trotskyites there can be no compromise, no concession. We must do everything possible to unmask them as agents of fascism and annihilate them politically."

By 1939, Ho (Quoc) and colleagues were receiving miitary training in China, in an unusual cooperation between the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party. Le Phong Hong, who was the Comintern representative, was arrested in September 1939, following the German invasion of Poland.

Second World War
When Japan occupied French Indochina in 1940 and collaborated with French officials loyal to France's Vichy regime. Ho, contacted the Allies and assisted actions against the Japanese in South China and Indochina. Especially in Indochina, however, the Allies were cautious about causing tensions with the French, after the fall of the pro-Axis Vichy French government.

On February 8, 1941, he established his headquarters in the Coc Bo Grotto, in a mountain near Pac Bo hamlet of Cao Bang Province. He made a statue of Karl Marx out of one of the stalagmites, and named the spring running in front of the grotto entrance after Vladimir Lenin and the highest mountain peak also after Marx. The Ministry of Tourism plans to develop as a historical site.

In the spring of 1941, the Communists reorganized into what became the Viet Minh The Chinese arrested him soon afterwards. During the Japanese occupation, even during French administration, the Viet Minh exiled to China had an opportunity to quietly rebuild their infrastructure. They had been strongest in Tonkin, the northern region, so moving south from China was straightforward. They had a concept of establishing "base areas" (chien khu) or "safe areas" (an toan khu), often mountainous jungle. Of these areas, the "homeland" of the VM was near Bac Kan Province. (see map)

In 1943, the Chinese released him from jail and allowed him to head the Dong Min Hoi coalition, initially dominated by the VNQDD party. formed in October 1942 but had but had accomplished little. The Allied goal was to get better intelligence from Indochina, where only the Viet Minh actually had personnel.

Ho's associates in China asked for U.S. recognition in August 1944. The analysis department of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) became aware of his activities in the Tuyen Quang-Bac Kan-Lang Son-Thai Nguyen provinces, informing the field missions in 1945. LTC Paul Helliwell, the OSS Secret Intelligence (i.e., clandestine human-source intelligence) chief in Kunming, China, gave Ho a small number of weapons in March 1945.

He directed that the Armed Propaganda Brigade be formed in December 1944: "Armed Propaganda Brigade for the Liberation of Viet Nam shows that greater importance is attached to its political than to its military action. It is a propaganda unit...the most resolute and energetic cadres and men will be picked from the ranks of the guerilla units in the provinces of Bac Can, Lang Son and Cao Bang". According to Hammer. by 1945, it had organized 10,000 soldiers led by Vo Nguyen Giap, who recruited both from ethnic Vietnamese and Montagnards.

Attempt at independence
Vietnamese Communist Party documents say he called for insurrection in August, although Duiker describes the August actions as focused more on some rural test cases, preparation for revolution, but still some willingness to negotiate with the French. There was also considerable difference in the political situation in Cochin China and Annam. Patti met with Ho, Giap, Truong Chinh, and possibly a few others on August 27. Jean Sainteny requested American help, approximately on August 28, to meet with Ho. ; Giap met with Sainteny the next day.

On September 2, 1945, Ho declared independence for Vietnam, as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), but was soon under a French crackdown on revolutionary activity. By September 12, the Bank of Indochina had closed the DRV and declared it bankrupt. Ho, Pham Van Dong, and Vo Nguyen Giap decided to launch "Gold Week", asking for contributions.

In March 1946, he signed a treaty with the French, along with the VNQDD leader, Vu Hong Khanh. They agreed not to resist the French on their return. Neertheless, the situation declined, until, in November, the French shelled Haiphong, killing an estimated 6,000 people. The Viet Minh struck back in December; Ho, who was ill, fled.

As the U.S. Office of Strategic Services missions left Hanoi, their commander, MAJ Archimedes Patti, had personal disciussins with Ho and Giap. Patti, talking privately with Ho, asked him how he had decided Communism was the way,and he responded that he did not consider himself a true Communist, but a "national-socialist". He had come to communism through meetings of anticolonialists, in Britain in 1913. at that point, he did not understand the differences among socialism, communism, trade unions, and even pollitical parties. At the time, Communism was by no means unified; there had been the Socialist Party, Bolshevik October Revolution, and Lenin's Third International.

He objected to the U.S. considering him a puppet of Moscow. Rather than making him a hard-line Communist in American terms, he was repaying 15 years of training with party work.

In 1948, however, U.S. State Department analysts estimated that the "Vietnamese Communists are not subservient to Moscow," and it had been the "French colonial press that had been strongly anti-American,...to approximating the official Moscow position."

First Indochina War
On February 7, 1950, France ratified treaties that created the French Union, of the three Vietnamese regions, Laos, and Cambodia. On February 7, The U.K. and U.S. recognized Bao Dai as chief of state of Vietnam.

In early 1950, he gave up on obtaining an agreement with France, and obtained recognition of the DRV from the Soviet Union and China. U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson said the Soviet recognition "should remove any illusions as to the 'nationalist' nature of Ho Chi Minh's aims, and reveals Ho in his true colors as the mortal enemy of native independence in Indochina". He remained the national leader through the Indochinese revolution.

The Two Vietnams
Ho remained active in leadership until his health declined and he became more of a symbol. By 1962, Le Duan took increasing control, emphasizing military means (i.e., armed dau tranh). Le Duan's allies included Le Duc Tho and Gen. Nguyen Chi Thanh. Vo Nguyen Giap represented a different strategic faction.

Pham Van Dong, rather like Zhou Enlai in China, was less of an ideologue, concerned more with running a government. Neither Ho nor the various factions tended to regard him as a threat, as he was not interested becoming the highest national leader.

Late years and death
Ho reasserted himself, at the policy level, in March 1964, but never retook full power. He addressed North Vietnam shortly before the Tet Offensive in January 1968, which was symbolically important to many in the People's Army of Viet Nam.

Ho died in 1969. While he had not wanted a state funeral or elaborate memorials, memorials and artwork are common themes. This is not necessarily surprising in a culture with widespread traditions of ancestor veneration and memory of cultural heroes two millenia later, as with the Trung Sisters.