Ho Chi Minh

Há»" Chí Minh (May 19, 1890 – September 2, 1969) was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman, who later became Prime Minister (1946-1955) and President (1955-1969) of North Vietnam.

He was originally named Nguyá»…n Sinh Cung, is also known as Nguyá»…n Tất Thành, Nguyá»…n Ã�i Quốc (a name which means "Nguyá»…n the patriot"), Lý Thụy, Há»" Quang (among others) and is popularly called Bác Há»" (Uncle Há»") in Vietnam, Há»" Chí Minh means "he who enlightens". He is most famous for being the founder of the Viet Minh independence movement in 1941 and establishing communist control in part of Vietnam in the 1960s.

Ho was fluent in English, Chinese, French, German and Russian besides his native Vietnamese.The Prison Diary of Há»" Chí Minh (Introduction by Harrison E. Salisbury) Há»" Chí Minh City was named after him in his honor.

Biography

Early life

Nguyễn Sinh Cung was born in Hoàng Trù Village (maternal homeland) and lived there in the earliest period of his life (1890-1895) and grew up in Kim Liên Village (paternal homeland), Nam �àn District, Nghệ An Province, Vietnam. Following Confucian traditions, he received the name Nguyễn Tất Thành at age 10. He had two siblings, his brother Nguyễn Sinh Khiêm (or Nguyễn Tất �ạt), a geomancer and traditional herbalist and his sister Bạch Liên (or Nguyễn Thị Thanh) who worked as a clerk in the French Army.

His father, Nguyá»…n Sinh Sắc, was a Confucian scholar, and he himself received a strong Confucian upbringing. He also received a modern secondary education at a French-style lycée in Huế, the alma mater of his later disciples, Phạm Văn Ã�á»"ng and Võ Nguyên Giáp. Há»" Chí Minh applied for a course at the French "Colonial Administrative School" immediately after he arrived in Marseille. However, his application was rejected.

Ho in America

It is believed that he even travelled to the United States, Boston first, then New York City, where he worked as a dishwasher in Chinatown. In the United States, he was astonished by the civil liberties enjoyed by immigrants, the type of liberties he was denied in his home country under the colonial rule.

Ho in France

In 1911, Há»" Chí Minh went to the South to Gia Dinh (Saigon) and joined a ship en route to Marseille, France as a cabin-boy. Há»" Chí Minh's first time abroad was not easy, he worked hard as a cleaner, waiter, cook's helper, and film developer. Regardless, he was very excited with what he learned from a totally different world each day. He often went to the public library, read newspapers and paid close attention to the current affairs and political issues. He also appreciated the French mundane life, and enjoyed Maurice Chevalier songs, which he knew by heart.

Ho in England

He lived in England in 1913-1917 where he trained as a pastry chef under the legendary French master, Escoffier, at the Carlton Hotel in the Haymarket, Westminster. There is a commemorative Blue Plaque on the building, which is now the New Zealand House. The city's fancy restaurants were beyond his means, but he indulged in one luxury â€" American cigarettes, preferably Camel or Lucky Strike brands.

Political education

Há»" Chí Minh embraced communism while living abroad in France from 1917-1923. Following World War I, as Nguyá»…n Ã�i Quốc (Nguyen the Patriot), on behalf of the "Group of Vietnamese Patriots" he petitioned the great powers at the Versailles peace talks for equal rights in French Indochina but was ignored. He asked sitting U.S. President Woodrow Wilson for help to overthrow the French in Vietnam for a nationalist movement and new government, but was ignored. He soon helped to form the French Communist Party and spent much time in Moscow. He later moved to Guangzhou, China, where he founded the Communist Party of Indochina.

Há»" Chí Minh lying in state in his mausoleum that is viewed by millions of supporters and tourists per year.

Ho in Hong Kong and Soviet Union

He was forced to leave China when local authorities cracked down on Communist activities, but he returned in 1930 to found the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP). He stayed in Hong Kong as representative of the Communist International. In June 1931 Há»" was arrested there by British police and remained in prison until his release in 1933. He then made his way back to the Soviet Union, where he reportedly spent several years recovering from tuberculosis. In 1938 he returned to China and served as an adviser with Chinese Communist armed forces.

Independence movement

He returned to Vietnam in 1941 to lead the Việt Minh independence movement, conducting successful military actions against the Japanese occupation forces and later against the French bid to reoccupy the country (1946-1954). He adopted the name Há»" Chí Minh, a Sino-Vietnamese name with a common surname (Há»" ) and a given name meaning 'enlightened will' (Chí meaning 'will', and Minh meaning 'light') in August 1942 while sojourning in China. He was jailed for many months by Chiang Kai-shek's local authorities. After his release in 1943 he returned to Vietnam. After the August Revolution (1945) organized by Việt Minh, he became Chairman of Provisional Government (Premier of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam), when he forced Emperor Bảo Ä�ại to abdicate, but this government was not recognized internationally. Há»" petitioned American President Harry Truman to accept Vietnamese independence, but was rebuffed.

In 1945, Há»"'s subordinates executed a number of nationalists that were not part of the Viet Minh, including the leader of the Constitutional Party, the head of the Party for Independence, and Ngo Dinh Diem's brother, Ngo Dinh Khoi. Joseph Buttinnger, Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled, vol. 1. (New York: Praeger, 1967) . Purges and killings of Trotskyists, the rival anti-Stalinist communists, have also been documented See: The Black Book of Communism Há»" allegedly commented on the death of Vietnamese Trotskyist Ta Thu Thau by saying "Thau was a great patriot and we mourn him" but "all those who do not follow the line which I have laid down will be broken." Quoted in Loren Goldner, "The Anti-Colonial Movement in Vietnam" New Politics (Summer 1997), p. 141During 1946, when Ho was out of the country, his main general, Giap, imprisoned 25,000 non-communist nationalists and forced 6,000 others to flee Cecil B. Currey, Victory At Any Cost (Washington: Brassey's, 1997), p. 126. Hundreds of political opponents were also killed in July. Spencer Tucker, Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: a political, social, and military history (vol. 2), 1998 All parties apart from the Viet Minh were banned and local governments purged John Colvin, Giap: the Volcano under the Snow (New York: Soho Press, 1996), p.51 which ensured that there was little opposition to Há»"'s regime later on.

Birth of Communist State of North Vietnam

It was on September 2, 1945 that he read the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Việt Nam. Before this speech, both the new Vietnamese anthem (Tiên Quân Ca) written by Văn Cao and the American anthem (the Star-Spangled Banner) were played. Before the speech, he had tried unsuccessfully to acquire a copy of the American Declaration of Independence from the OSS. Unable to get one, he quoted it from memory as, "All people are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these are the right to live, the right to be happy, and the right to be free".

During this period, the History Channel reports that a team of American paramedics rescued him from a certain death (due to illness and hunger. Famine struck Vietnam and caused the death of about two million Vietnamese, while wheat was exported to France out of charge.)

He signed an agreement with France which recognized Vietnam as an autonomous state in the Indochinese Federation and the French Union on March 6, 1946. But soon after, the agreement broke down. The purpose of the agreement on the Vietnamese side was to get the Chinese army to withdraw from northern Vietnam. Soon after the Chinese left, fighting broke out with the French. Há»" Chí Minh was almost captured by a group of French soldiers led by Jean-Etienne Valluy at Việt Bắc, but he was able to escape.

In January 1950 the Soviet Union recognized Ho's government and in February Ho went to Moscow to meet with Stalin and Mao. Ho was told by Stalin that China would be responsible for backing his Viet Minh. Luo Guibo, pp. 233-6 French. Mao's emissary to Moscow stated in August that China planned to train 60-70,000 Viet Minh in the near future. Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "Chronology," p. 45. China's crucial support to Ho enabled him to carry on the fight against the French.

In 1954, the important Battle of �iện Biên Phủ was fought between the French and Viet Minh, which convinced France of giving up it's empire in Indochina.

Becoming president

Há»" Chí Minh became president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) in 1955.

From 1953 to 1956, the government of Há»" Chí Minh conducted the Land Reform Campaign, possibly inspired by the Land Reform of Mao Zedong. During this campaign, many deemed "counter-revolutionaries" were killed. Estimates vary between 800 imprisoned or killed Fire In the Lake and 200,000http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.TAB6.1A.GIF executed. Edwin Moise, a leftist historian on land reform, commented "There were valid reasons for the exaggeration of classism.... But this extreme view of the class nature of rural affairs sometimes went beyond the real interests of the revolution and it often went beyond the bounds of objective truth" and also implied that punishment for non-existant crimes was proportionately larger than in Mao's Chinese Land Reform. Edwin E. Moise, Land Reform in China and North Vietnam: Consolidating the Revolution at the Village Level (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983) pp. 5, 221, 274. President Há»" Chí Minh would later publicly denounce the more extreme violence that took place.

Another controversial incident occured on November 2, 1956 when villagers in Ho's home province of Nghe-An revolted and were subsequently put down by the military. According to one estimate, 6,000 people were deported or executed. Bernard Fall, The Two Vietnams (New York: Praeger, 1963) pp. 155-7

During the early years of Ho's government, 900,000 to 1 million Vietnamese, mostly Catholic, left for South Vietnam while 130,000, mostly Viet Minh personnel, went from South to North. Pentagon Papers: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent11.htmUnited Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, State of the World's Refugees (Chapter 4, Flight from Indochina), online at [1]. Although this migration was allowed under the Geneva Agreement for 300 days, Canadian observers claimed that some were forced by North Vietnamese authorities to remain against their will. Thakur, p. 204

In 1959 Ho's government began to back the Hanoi-controlled National Liberation Front in South Vietnam (via the Truong Son Trail), which escalated the fighting which had begun in 1957. Lind, 1999 In late 1964 North Vietnamese combat troops were sent southwest into neutral Laos. Davidson, Vietnam at War: the history, 1946-1975, 1988

During the mid to late 1960s, Ho permitted China to send 170,000 troops to North Vietnam, whom helped buld railways, roads, and airports in addition to freeing North Vietnamese forces to go south. Chen Jian, "China's Involvement in the Vietnam Conflict, 1964-69," China Quarterly, No. 142 (June 1995), pp. 366-9.

On becoming cult hero

Há»" Chí Minh is the center of what his detractors see as a large personality cult in North Vietnam, though his supporters argue that this was charismatic authority. Former capital of South Vietnam, Saigon (Sài Gòn), was renamed Há»" Chí Minh City on 1 May, 1975.

For the West, he remains much of a dual character: To his supporters Há»" Chí Minh is viewed positively as a committed Nationalist who fought for a united Vietnamese state. To his detractors and some critics in the West he was an opportunistic communist who seized power, created an authoritarian government, plunged Vietnam into a war that wrecked the country and established economic policies that left Vietnam poor and backward. They claimed that he mandated the invasion of South Vietnam that resulted in the deaths of over a million of its citizens. Many more, as many as two million, fled South Vietnam after the unification of Vietnam. Many criticize the Việt Cá»™ng, who were subordinate to him, for terrorism in the south, even though his direct knowledge of these exactions is still not clearly known by his biographers.

Death and legacy

Há»" Chí Minh mausoleum, Hanoi

Há»" Chí Minh died on the late evening of September 2, 1969, at his home in Hanoi at age 79 from multiple health problems, including diabetes. His embalmed body was put on display in a granite mausoleum modeled after Lenin's Tomb in Moscow. This was consistent with other Communist leaders who have been similarly displayed before and since, including Mao Zedong, Kim Il-Sung, and for a time, Josef Stalin, but the "honor" violated Há»"'s last wishes. He wished to be cremated and his ashes buried in urns on three Vietnamese hilltops, each in one of the three main regions of Vietnam (North, Central and South). He wrote, "Not only is cremation good from the point of view of hygiene, but it also saves farmland."

In Vietnam today, he is elevated by the Communist government to an almost cult-like status even though the government has abandoned most of his economic policies. He is still referred to as "Uncle Há»"" in Vietnam. Há»" Chí Minh appears on the Vietnamese currency, and his image is featured prominently in many of Vietnam's public spaces. UNESCO had planned to officially recognize him as a world hero on his 100th birthday, but the Vietnamese exile community blocked this from happening.

Quotes

*"Nothing is more precious than independence and liberty."
*"I only follow one party: the Vietnamese party."
*"You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win." (referring to France and America in their wars in Vietnam)
* "It is better to sacrifice everything than to live in slavery!"
*"The Vietnamese people deeply love independence, freedom and peace. But in the face of United States aggression they have risen up, united as one man."
* "In (Lenin's Theses on the National and Colonial Questions) there were political terms that were difficult to understand. But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy. Sitting by myself in my room, I would shout as if I were addressing large crowds: "Dear martyr compatriots! This is what we need, this is our path to liberation!" Since then (the 1920s) I had entire confidence in Lenin, in the Third International!"
* "When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out."
* "It was patriotism, not communism, that inspired me."
* "Remember, the storm is a good opportunity for the pine and the cypress to show their strength and their stability."

Notes

Further reading

*Richard Nixon, Reprint edition (November 1, 1987).No More Vietnams. Arbor House Pub Co.
*Bernard B. Fall, ed., 1967. Ho Chi Minh on Revolution and War, Selected Writings 1920-1966. New American Library.
*Francis Fitzgerald. 1972. Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and Americans in Vietnam. Little, Brown and Company.
*William J. Duiker. 2000. Ho Chi Minh: A Life. Theia.
*William J. Duiker. The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam.
*N. Khac Huyen. 1971. Vision Accomplished? The Enigma of Ho Chi Minh. The Macmillan Company.
*Há»" chí Minh toàn tập . NXB chính trị quốc gia
*Hoang Van Chi. From colonialism to communism. New York : Praeger, [1964]

External links

*New York Times Obituary, May 19, 1969
*TIME 100: Há»" Chí Minh
*Há»" Chí Minh's biography
*Há»" Chí Minh Biography from Spartacus Educational
*Há»" Chí Minh Archive at Marxists.org.
*Há»" Chí Minh pictures as slides
*Satellite photo of the mausoleum on Google Maps