Ho Chi Minh Read online

  INDOCHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY (DANG CONG SAN DONG DUONG, or ICP). Communist party founded by Ho Chi Minh and colleagues in October 1930. The original name adopted in February was the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP). The ICP was formally dissolved in November 1945 and then reemerged in 1951 as the Vietnamese Workers’ Party (VWP).

  INDOCHINESE FEDERATION (LIEN BANG DONG DUONG). Plan developed by the ICP in the mid-1930s to create a federation of revolutionary states of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. After World War II it was replaced by the concept of a “special relationship” among the three states.

  INDOCHINESE UNION (UNION INDOCHINOISE). Administrative structure established at the end of the nineteenth century to supervise French rule in Indochina. It included the colony of Cochin China and the protectorates of Annam, Tonkin, Cambodia, and Laos.

  INTERNATIONAL CONTROL COMMISSION (ICC). Watchdog organization set up by the Geneva Conference to police the cease-fire reached in July 1954. Composed of representatives from Canada, India, and Poland.

  KHMER COMMUNIST PARTY (KCP). Communist organization founded in the mid-1960s by radicals led by Pol Pot in Cambodia. It replaced the Cambodian People’s Revolutionary Party (CPRP) that had been founded in 1951.

  KHMER ROUGE. Popular name for the revolutionary armed forces in Cambodia. Sometimes identified with the Khmer Communist Party.

  LAOTIAN PEOPLE’S REVOLUTIONARY PARTY (LPRP). Revolutionary organization established under Vietnamese tutelage in the early 1950s. It was popularly known as the Pathet Lao.

  LIEN VIET FRONT (MAT TRAN LIEN VIET). Front organization set up by the ICP in 1946 to broaden the party’s appeal, it eventually merged with the Vietminh Front in 1951 and was replaced in 1955 by the Fatherland Front.

  NATIONAL ACADEMY (QUOC HOC). Prestigious secondary school established in 1896 in Hué to provide future court officials with training in French language and civilization. Ho Chi Minh attended the school from 1907 to 1908.

  NATIONAL DEFENSE GUARD (VE QUOC QUAN). Brief name for the Vietnamese Liberation Army (VLA) shortly after the August Revolution of 1945. The name was selected to avoid problems with Chinese occupation forces.

  NATIONAL FRONT FOR THE LIBERATION OF SOUTH VIETNAM (MAT TRAN DAN TOC GIAI PHONG MIEN NAM, or NLF). Broad alliance of resistance groups founded under DRV tutelage in South Vietnam in 1960. It was dissolved after reunification of the country in 1976.

  NATIONAL LIBERATION COMMITTEE (UY BAN GIAI PHONG DAN TOC). Committee of Vietminh representatives established at the Tan Trao conference to prepare for the August uprising. Ho Chi Minh served as chairman.

  NATIONAL SALVATION ASSOCIATIONS (CUU QUOC HOI). Mass organizations set up by the ICP to mobilize support against the French during and after World War II. After 1954, they were simply called mass associations.

  NEW VIETNAMESE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY. Also known as the Tan Viet Revolutionary Party, the organization was founded in the late 1920s by anti-French nationalists. It eventually merged with the ICP.

  PATHET LAO. Popular name for the revolutionary armed forces in Laos. During the Vietnam War, the Pathet Lao cooperated with insurgent forces in Vietnam against the United States.

  PEOPLE’S ARMY OF VIETNAM (PAVN). Regular army created in the DRV after the Geneva Conference of 1954. It succeeded the Vietnamese Liberation Army (VLA) that operated in Indochina during the Franco-Vietminh War.

  PEOPLE’S LIBERATION ARMED FORCES (NHAN DAN GIAI PHONG QUAN, or PLAF, or VIET CONG). Established in 1961, formal name for the armed forces of the revolutionary movement during the Vietnam War. (See also VIET CONG.)

  REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM (VIET NAM CONG HOA, or RVN). Formal name for the non-Communist government founded in South Vietnam after the Geneva Conference. It replaced Free Vietnam in 1956. The RVN collapsed in 1975 and was assimilated into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) in July 1976.

  REVOLUTIONARY YOUTH LEAGUE OF VIETNAM (VIET NAM THANH NIEN CACH MENH DONG CHI). Early Vietnamese revolutionary organization founded by Ho Chi Minh in South China in 1925. Combining nationalist and Marxist themes, it was replaced by a formal Communist Party in 1930.

  SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM (CONG HOA XA HOI VIET NAM, or SRV). Formal name for the united Vietnamese state created in 1976 after the end of the Vietnam War.

  SOUTHEAST ASIA TREATY ORGANIZATION (SEATO). Multinational alliance established under U.S. auspices in 1954 to defend the area against Communist expansion. It is now moribund.

  VANGUARD YOUTH MOVEMENT (THANH NIEN TIEN PHONG). Mass youth movement established under Japanese auspices in Cochin China during World War II. It was directed by Pham Ngoc Thach, a clandestine member of the ICP, and was used in support of the August uprising in Saigon in 1945.

  VIET CONG (VIET COMMUNISTS). Pejorative name used to describe insurgent forces in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The formal name was the People’s Liberation Armed Forces, or PLAF.

  VIETMINH FRONT (VIET NAM DOC LAP DONG MINH, or LEAGUE FOR THE INDEPENDENCE OF VIETNAM). Front organization created under ICP leadership in May of 1941. During World War II and in succeeding years it struggled to obtain independence from French rule.

  VIETNAMESE COMMUNIST PARTY (DANG CONG SAN DONG DUONG, or VCP). Original name for the party founded by Ho Chi Minh in February 1930. Replaced by the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) in October 1930, it was revived in December 1976.

  VIETNAMESE DEMOCRATIC PARTY (DANG DAN CHU VIET NAM). Small non-Communist political party established under ICP auspices, as part of the Vietminh Front in 1944. Technically it existed to represent the interests of patriotic intellectuals.

  VIETNAMESE LIBERATION ARMY (VIET NAM GIAI PHONG QUAN, or VLA). Formal name for the resistance forces organized by the ICP during the war against the French after World War II. First founded in December 1944, it was replaced by the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) after the Geneva Conference of 1954.

  VIETNAMESE LIBERATION LEAGUE (VIET NAM GIAI PHONG DONG MINH). Front organization established by Ho Chi Minh in south China in 1941. It was designed to unite anti-French elements under ICP leadership, but was later dominated by anti-Communist elements in the area. Eventually it was replaced by the Dong Minh Hoi.

  VIETNAMESE NATIONAL ARMY (VNA). Formal name for the armed forces organized by the Associated State of Vietnam under Chief of State Bao Dai. It was replaced after the Geneva Conference by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).

  VIETNAMESE NATIONALIST PARTY (VIET NAM QUOC DAN DANG, or VNQDD). Non-Communist nationalist party established in Tonkin in 1927. For the next several decades it was one of the Communist Party’s major political rivals in Indochina. Now disbanded.

  VIETNAMESE RESTORATION PARTY (VIET NAM QUANG PHUC HOI). Anticolonialist party established by Phan Boi Chau in 1912. It replaced his monarchist Modernization Society when Chau decided to form a republic instead. After several unsuccessful uprisings, it eventually declined in influence and disappeared.

  VIETNAMESE WORKERS’ PARTY (DANG LAO DONG VIET NAM, or VWP). Formal name for the Communist Party in Vietnam after its revival in 1951. It was replaced by the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) in 1976.

  INTRODUCTION

  On the morning of April 30, 1975, Soviet-manufactured North Vietnamese tanks rumbled through the northern suburbs of Saigon and headed toward the presidential palace in the heart of the city. Seated on the tanks, soldiers dressed in combat fatigues and the characteristic pith helmet with the single gold star waved the flag of the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG).

  Just after noon, a row of tanks rolled slowly along Thong Nhut Avenue past the American Embassy, from the roof of which the last U.S. marines had lifted off by helicopter only two hours before. The lead tank hesitated briefly before the wrought-iron gate in front of the presidential palace and then crashed directly through the gate and stopped on the lawn before the ceremonial staircase that gave entrance into the palace. The young tank commander entered the building and met briefly with President Duong Van “Big” Minh. He then ascended to the roof of the palace where he replac
ed the flag of the Republic of Vietnam on the flagpole with the red and blue banner of the PRG.

  The long Vietnam War had thus finally come to an end. After nearly a decade of bitter and often bloody fighting that left 50,000 of their comrades dead, the last American combat troops had finally departed after the signing of the Paris Agreement in January 1973. The agreement quickly broke down, and over the next several months the armed forces of the Saigon regime clashed repeatedly with soldiers of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army (formally known as the People’s Army of Vietnam, or PAVN), over 100,000 of whom had been tacitly permitted to remain in the South as the result of the agreement. In December 1974, emboldened by success on the battlefield and by growing evidence that the United States would not reenter the conflict, Party leaders (the Vietnamese Communist Party at that time was known as the Vietnamese Workers’ Party, or VWP) approved a plan drawn up by the PAVN general staff for a two-year campaign to bring down the Saigon regime by the spring of 1976. But the first probes along the Cambodian border and in the Central Highlands in early 1975 elicited such a weak response from Saigon that at the end of March Hanoi instructed its commanders in the South to seek final victory before the close of the dry season at the end of April. Saigon’s defenses in the northern part of the country collapsed with lightning suddenness, and by mid-April North Vietnamese troops were marching rapidly southward toward Saigon. South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu resigned on April 21. His replacement, the elderly Saigon politician Tran Van Huong, lasted only seven days and was in turn replaced by “Big” Minh in the forlorn hope that the popular southern general might be able to induce the North Vietnamese to accept a compromise peace settlement. Minh’s peace feelers were contemptuously ignored in Hanoi.

  The Communist triumph in Saigon was a tribute to the determination and genius of VWP leader Le Duan and his veteran colleagues in Hanoi. Equally crucial to success were the North Vietnamese troops and Viet Cong guerrillas—the simple bo doi (the Vietnamese equivalent of the GI), who for a generation had fought and died for the revolutionary cause in the jungles and swamps of South Vietnam. But above all it was a legacy of the vision, the will, and the leadership of one man: Ho Chi Minh, founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party, leader of the revolutionary movement, and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) until his death in 1969, six years before the end of the war. In tribute to his contribution, after the fall of Saigon his colleagues would rename it Thanh pho Ho Chi Minh, or the City of Ho Chi Minh.

  Agent of the Comintern in Moscow, member of the international Communist movement, architect of victory in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh is unquestionably one of the most influential political figures of the twentieth century. Yet at the same time he remains one of the most mysterious of men, a shadowy figure whose motives and record have long aroused controversy. For three decades, debate has raged over the deceptively simple question of his underlying motives for a lifetime of revolutionary activity. Was he primarily a nationalist or a Communist? Was his public image of simplicity and selflessness genuine, or a mere artifice? To his supporters, Ho was a symbol of revolutionary humanitarianism, an avuncular figure devoted to the welfare of his compatriots and to the liberation of all the oppressed peoples of the world. To many who met him, Vietnamese and foreigners alike, he was a “sweet guy” who, despite his prominence as a major world leader, was actually a selfless patriot with a common touch and a lifelong commitment to the cause of bettering the lives of his fellow Vietnamese. Critics, however, pointed to the revolutionary excesses committed in his name and accused him of being a chameleon personality, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

  The question of Ho Chi Minh’s character and inner motivations lies at the heart of the debate in the United States over the morality of the conflict in Vietnam. To many critics of U.S. policies there, he was a simple patriot leading the struggle for Vietnamese independence and a vigorous opponent of global imperialism throughout the Third World. Supporters of the U.S. war effort raised doubts about his patriotic motives by alluding to his long record as an agent of Joseph Stalin and five decades of service to the world revolution. The nationalist image that he so assiduously cultivated, they allege, was simply a ruse to win support at home and abroad for the revolutionary cause.

  For Americans, the debate over Ho Chi Minh arouses passions over a war that is now past. For Vietnamese, it conjures up questions of more fundamental importance, since it defines one of the central issues in the Vietnamese revolution—the relationship between human freedom and economic equality in the emerging postwar Vietnam. Since the end of the Vietnam War, Ho Chi Minh’s colleagues, some of whom are still in power in Hanoi today, have tirelessly drawn on his memory to sanctify the Communist model of national development. Ho’s goal throughout his long career, they allege, was to bring an end to the global system of capitalist exploitation and create a new revolutionary world characterized by the Utopian vision of Karl Marx. A few dissenting voices, however, have argued that the central message of his career was the determination to soften the iron law of Marxist class struggle by melding it with Confucian ethics and the French revolutionary trinity of liberty, equality, and fraternity. In justification, they point to one of Ho’s slogans, which is seen everywhere on billboards in Vietnam today: “Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom.”1

  The debate over Ho Chi Minh, then, is at the heart of some of the central issues that have marked the twentieth century, an era of nationalism, revolution, egalitarianism, and the pursuit of human freedom. The complexities of his character mirror the complexity of the age. He remains a powerful force in postwar Vietnam, revered by millions and undoubtedly detested by countless others. For good or ill, Ho Chi Minh managed to reflect in his person two of the central forces in modern society—the desire for national independence and the quest for social and economic justice. Although all of the evidence is not yet in, it is past time to expose this dominating figure of the twentieth century to historical analysis.

  The problems encountered by any biographer who embarks on this quest are intimidating. Although Ho’s name is instantly recognizable to millions of people throughout the world, there has long been a frustrating lack of verifiable sources of information about his life. Having passed much of his adulthood as a revolutionary in opposition to the French colonial regime in Indochina, Ho spent many years in exile and others living a clandestine existence inside his own country. During much of that period he lived and traveled incognito under a variety of pseudonyms. It has been estimated that during his lifetime Ho adopted more than fifty assumed names.2 Many of his writings were penned under such names, while countless others have been lost or were destroyed in the course of a generation of conflict.

  Ho Chi Minh contributed to the confusion by assuming a tantalizing mystery about his life. For years he denied that the unknown public figure who emerged immediately after World War II as President Ho Chi Minh was in actuality the same person as Nguyen Ai Quoc, the founder of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) and a prominent Comintern agent of the prewar period. Even after his true identity was revealed, Ho remained extraordinarily secretive about key events in his past life, and his few ventures into the field of autobiography, one of which was published in several languages by the DRV in the late 1950s, were written under assumed names. Only in recent years have researchers in Hanoi been able to confirm that these works were indeed written by Ho Chi Minh himself.3

  The problem of compiling a biography of Ho Chi Minh has been compounded by the inaccessibility of existing sources. Because Ho traveled and lived in several countries in the course of his life, information on his activities is scattered on several continents. Ho himself spoke several foreign languages and his voluminous writings (including pamphlets, articles, reports, and letters) were written in a variety of languages, including English, French, Chinese, and Russian, as well as in his native Vietnamese.

  Until recently, much of this information was not available to scholars. Even today, ar
chival materials held in Hanoi are generally closed to both Vietnamese and foreign researchers. Information relating to his activities in China and the USSR was also off-limits and was rarely divulged by either the Chinese or the Soviet governments. Virtually the only interval of his life that had been subjected to careful exploration was a brief period that he spent in France after World War I. The opening of French colonial archives during the early 1970s placed those years for the first time under public scrutiny. More recently, voluminous collections of his writings have been published in Vietnam, but such compilations are by no means complete, while official editing of some passages raises doubts about their accuracy. The archives of the Comintern in Moscow have been partially opened to scholars, but detailed records of his relations with Soviet leaders remain closed to outside observers.4

  Yet another question about Ho Chi Minh concerns the character of his leadership. Although Ho was the founder of the ICP and a leading figure in the international Communist movement, he was not as dominant a personality as many other modern revolutionary leaders, such as Lenin, Stalin, or Mao Zedong; he appeared to lead by persuasion and consensus rather than by imposing his will through force of personality. Nor did he write frequently about his ideas or inner motivations. In contrast to other prominent revolutionary figures, Ho Chi Minh expressed little interest in ideology or intellectual debate and focused his thoughts and activities on the practical issue of freeing his country and other colonial societies from Western imperialism. For that reason, Ho has often been dismissed by scholars—and sometimes by his own contemporaries—as a mere practitioner, rather than as a revolutionary theoretician. The distinction never seemed to bother him. To an interviewer who once asked why he had never written an ideological treatise, he playfully replied that ideology was something he would leave to Mao Zedong. During his later years, serious works on doctrine or strategy published in Vietnam were usually produced by his colleagues Vo Nguyen Giap, Truong Chinh, or Le Duan.