ee ee

Ho Chi Minh who was 79 this May
19, was one of the truly heroic figures
of the international Communist move-
ment. His life spans nearly the entire
modern history of the movement, in
which he rendered tremendous service
to his class, his people, and all the
freedom-loving peoples of the world.

Ho Chi Minh was born in 1890 in
Kim Lien hamlet, in Nghe An province
of what is now the DRV. At that time,
Vietnam and the rest of so-called Indo-
china was under French imperialist
tule. Ho’s father was a Vietnamese
Classical scholar whose anti-French
and anti-feudalist activities brought
down repress‘on on the family, which
was forced to live in conditions of
poverty.

In 1905, Ho Chi Minh travelled to
Hue, the ancient citadel of Vietnamese
classical culture on the banks of the
Perfume River. But Ho found that in
Hue education was simply a means of
turning out people alienated from their
own culture and in the service of the
French. For a time, he taught in a
private school and then went to Saigon.

In Saigon, Ho took a job on a-

French ship, working in the galley.
This gave him a taste of the life of
other peoples and other workers in
countries such as France, Germany
Britain, the U.S. and the African colo-
nies of France. He learned that oppres-
sion was an international phenomenon
affecting all countries, not just Viet-
nam.

From what he saw in the U.S., Ho
Chi Minh later penned two bitter
articles on racist oppression, one on
lynching in the U.S. south, the other
on conditions in Harlem and other
ghetto areas.

The outbreak of World War I found
Ho Chi Minh in France, where he de-
veloped close contacts with other Viet-
namese who, like himself, were trying
to find the right way to liberate the
people of Vietnam.

The great October Revolution in
Russia had a profound effect on Ho
Chi Minh. He studied Marxism-Lenin-
ism and decided that this gave the key
to the liberation of Vietnam. He joined
the French Socialist Party, which held
a conference in Tours in 1920 to decide
whether or not to join the Communist
International.

Ho Chi Minh voted to join. He be-
came the first Vietnamese Communist
-in the ranks of the newly-formed Com-
munist Party of France. He founded
the League of Colonial Peoples, pub-
lished a study of French imperialism,

Internationalist

“field that it became an example to

and edited the newspaper, Le Paria

(The Pariah), addressed to the colonial ~

peoples. In 1924, he went to Moscow
to attend the Fifth Congress of the
Comintern. Later in that same year, he
came to China and established the
Vietnam Revolutionary Youth League
and the League of Oppressed Asian
Peoples. :

The Communist Party of Indochina
was founded at Ho’s initiative in Hong
Kong in 1930; but in 1931, the British
arrested him and he was forced to flee
to Shanghai, and then to Moscow. In
Moscow he studied and taught at the
Lenin school until 1936, when he re-
turned to China.

The outbreak of World War II and
the subsequent collapse of France in
1940 created new possibilities for Viet-
namese revolutionaries. In May, 1941,
in a remote village near the southern
Chinese border, Ho helped the Eighth
Plenum of the Central Committee of
the Party set up the League for the
Independence of Vietnam, which came
to be called the Viet Minh.

In an effort to win Kuomintang sup- —

port. for the Viet Minh, Ho went to
China in 1942, but was regarded with
great suspicion by the Chinese Natio-
nalists and thrown into prison. Ho
returned to Vietnam in 1944 to organ-
ize the anti-Japanese and anti-imperial-
ist resistance.

Widespread guerrilla warfare devel-
oped, and in August, 1945, a general
insurrection broke out, led by the Viet
Minh, in which the Vietnamese forces
captured Hanoi. On September 2, 1945,
President Ho Chi Minh of the new
Provisional government of Vietnam
read out his nation’s “Declaration of
Independence” from Ba Dinh Square
in Hanoi.

In 1946 Ho went to France to ar-
range for the peaceful consolidation of
the DRV’s position. But in the midst of
negotiations, the French imperialists
launched an attack, bombarding Hai-
phong and Hanoi, and from December,
1946, until July, 1954, Ho Chi Minh led
a nation at war with the biggest em-
pires of the time.

The shattering defeat the Viet Minh
inflicted on the French at Dien Bien
Phu in 1954 brought the imperialists
to the Geneva Conference table, where
an agreement was worked out which
would have permitted the peaceful re-
unification of Vietnam.

The DRV, under the leadership of
Ho, was compelled to start building
socialism only in the northern part of
the divided country. By 1964, the suc-
cess of the DRV was so great in every

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 12, 1969—PAGE 6 Bf

Communist, Patriot

and

the oppressed peoples in Asia.

This earned Ho and the DRV thd
wrath of U.S. imperialism: in 1964-68,
the U.S. war machine tried its best to
smash the Vietnamese people to their
knees. The U.S. failed. Ho Chi Minh
and the Vietnamese people defeated
them.

Perhaps the greatest tribute that can
be paid to Ho Chi Minh is to note
the simple fact that toward the end of
his' life, his work and his accomplish-
ments were so bound up with the com-
mon achievements of his people, and
the aspirations of all the struggling
peoples of the world, that his loss
would be felt by hundreds of millions
of people as a very deep and persona:
loss, far beyond the borders of the
nation he did so much to create.

FROM HIS WRITINGS

The Revolutionary

The path which fed
me to Leninism

After World War I, I made my living
in Paris, now as a retoucher at a photo-
grapher’s, now as painter of “Chinese
antiquities” (made in France!). I would
distribute leaflets denouncing the
crimes committed by the French colo-
nialists in Vietnam.

As that time I supported the Octo-
ber Revolution only instinctively, not
yet grasping all its historic importance.
I loved and admired Lenin because he
was a great patriot who liberated his
compatriots, until then, I had read
none of his books.

The reason for my joining the French
Socialist Party was that these “ladies
and gentlemen”—as I called my com-
rades at that moment — had shown
their sympathy toward me, toward the
struggle of the oppressed peoples. But
I understood neither what was a party,
a trade union, nor what was Socialism
or Communism.

Heated discussions were then taking
place in the branches of the Socialist
Party, about the question of whether
the Socialist Party should remain in the
Second International, should a Second-
and-a-half international be founded, or
should the Socialist Party join Lenin’s
Third International? I attended the
meetings regularly, twice or thrice a
week, and attentively listened to the

er
discussions. First, I could not ut +

stand throughly. Why were the d i
sion so heated? Either with the Si,
Second-and-a-half, or Third Inter 41
nal, the revolution could be Was.)
What was the use of arguing the,
for the First International, what
become of it? aft
What I wanted most to know: }
this precisely was not debated

meetings — was: Which Internati g |

sides with the peoples of colonial ©

tries? m0
(

I raised the question — the net!
important in my opinion — in 4 ie |,
ing. Some comrades answered: af |
Third, not the Second. And a COM yy |,
gave me Lenin’s “Thesis on thé 4 |.
tional and. Colonial Questions, P
lished by l’Humanite, to read. fi tT

There were political terms SMM yy |
to understand in this thesis. BY’ ig |
dint of reading it again and
finally, I could grasp the maim 7 oy
of it. What emotion, enthusias™, ge
sightedness, and confidencé it ins ats |
into me! I was overjoyed tO a
Though sitting alone in my 100,
shouted aloud as if addressing rio
crowds: “Dear martyrs, compa iy
This is what we need, this is the? — .
to our liberation!” agent |

After then, I had entire confit:
in Lenin, in the Third Internation®

Formerly, during the meetings ®
Party branch, I only listened ' sgl |;
discussion; I had a vague bell€. oy
all were logical, and could not diff wit
tiate as to who were right an" als?
were wrong. But from then OM; | col
plunged into the debates and dis in }
with fervor. Though I was still °° py |!
French words to express 4 A
thoughts, I smashed the allegation a :
tacking Lenin and the Third IP” yy
tional with no less vigor. MY eft! |
argument was: “If you do not con with |
colonialism, if you do not sid@ , ye
the colonial people, what kin@ ~
volution are you waging?” et |

Not only did I take part in thé me Vy)
ings of my own Party branch, "(0
also went to other Party bran@™ oy
lay down “my position.” Now a
tell again that Comrades Maree
chin, Vaillant Couturier, Monmour
and many others helped me to |
my knowledge. Finally at the”

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