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Vietnam Ho Chi Minh and the Communist Movement
The year 1925 also marked the founding of the Viet Nam Thanh
Nien Cach Menh Dong Chi Hoi (Revolutionary Youth League) in
Guangzhou by Ho Chi Minh. Born Nguyen Sinh Cung in Kim Lien
village, Nghe An Province in May 1890, Ho was the son of Nguyen
Sinh Sac (or Huy), a scholar from a poor peasant family.
Following a common custom, Ho's father renamed him Nhuyen Tat
Thanh at about age ten. Ho was trained in the classical Confucian
tradition and was sent to secondary school in Hue. After working
for a short time as a teacher, he went to Saigon where he took a
course in navigation and in 1911 joined the crew of a French
ship. Working as a kitchen hand, Ho traveled to North America,
Africa, and Europe. While in Paris from 1919-23, he took the name
Nguyen Ai Quoc (Nguyen the Patriot). In 1919 he attempted to meet
with United States President Woodrow Wilson at the Versailles
Peace Conference in order to present a proposal for Vietnam's
independence, but he was turned away and the proposal was never
officially acknowledged. During his stay in Paris, Ho was greatly
influenced by Marxist-Leninist literature, particularly Lenin's
Theses on the National and Colonial Questions (1920), and
in 1920 he became a founding member of the French Communist
Party. He read, wrote, and spoke widely on Indochina's problems
before moving to Moscow in 1923 and attending the Fifth Congress
of the
Communist International (see Glossary), also called the
Comintern, in 1924. In late 1924, Ho arrived in Guangzhou, where
he spent the next two years training more than 200 Vietnamese
cadres in revolutionary techniques. His course of instruction
included study of Marxism-Leninism, Vietnamese and Asian
revolutionary history, Asian leaders such as Gandhi and Sun Yat-
sen, and the problem of organizing the masses. As a training
manual, Ho used his own publication Duong Cach Menh (The
Revolutionary Path), written in 1926 and considered his primer on
revolution. Going by the name Ly Thuy, he formed an inner
communist group, Thanh Nien Cong San Doan (Communist Youth
League), within the larger Thanh Nien (Youth) organization. The
major activity of Thanh Nien was the production of a journal,
Thanh Nien, distributed clandestinely in Vietnam, Siam,
and Laos, which introduced communist theory into the Vietnamese
independence movement. Following Chiang Kai-shek's April 1927
coup and the subsequent suppression of the Communists in southern
China, Ho fled to Moscow.
In December of that year, a teacher from a Vietnamese peasant
family, Nguyen Thai Hoc, founded Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang, (VNQDD,
Vietnamese Nationalist Party), in Hanoi. With a membership
largely of students, low-ranking government employees, soldiers,
and a few landlords and rich peasants, VNQDD was patterned after
the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), from which it
received financial support in the 1930s. Another source of funds
for the VNQDD was the Vietnam Hotel in Hanoi, which it opened in
1928 as both a commercial enterprise and the party headquarters.
The hotel restaurant, however, provided French agents with an
easy means of penetrating the party and monitoring its
activities. At various times, the VNQDD attempted, without
success, to form a united front with Thanh Nien and other
independence organizations. Thanh Nien, being two years older,
however, had had a head start over VNQDD in organizing in
schools, factories, and local government, which it had done with
patience and planning. The VNQDD therefore concentrated instead
on recruitment of Vietnamese soldiers and the overthrow of French
rule through putschist-style activities.
In February 1929, the French official in charge of recruiting
coolie labor was killed by an assassin connected with the VNQDD.
The French immediately arrested several hundred VNQDD leaders and
imprisoned seventy-eight. VNQDD leaders Nguyen Thai Hoc and
Nguyen Khac Nhu escaped, but most members of the Central
Committee were captured. The remaining leadership under Nguyen
Thai Hoc decided to stage a general uprising as soon as possible.
All dissent to the plan was overridden, and the party began
manufacturing and stockpiling weapons. On February 9, 1930, a
revolt instigated by the VNQDD broke out at Yen Bai among the
Vietnamese garrison, but it was quickly suppressed. Simultaneous
attacks on other key targets, including Son Tay and Lam Thu, were
also unsuccessful because of poor preparation and communication.
The Yen Bai uprising was disastrous for the VNQDD. Most of the
organization's top leaders were executed, and villages that had
given refuge to the party were shelled and bombed by the French.
After Yen Bai, the VNQDD ceased to be of importance in the
anticolonial struggle. Although more modernist and less bound by
tradition than the scholar-patriots of the Phan Boi Chau era, the
VNQDD had remained a movement of urban intellectuals who were
unable to involve the masses in their struggle and too often
favored reckless exploits over slow and careful planning.
On June 17, 1929, the founding conference of the first
Indochinese Communist Party (ICP--Dang Cong San Dong Duong) was
held in Hanoi under the leadership of a breakaway faction of
Thanh Nien radicals. The party immediately began to publish
several journals and to send out representatives to all parts of
the country for the purpose of setting up branches. A series of
strikes supported by the party broke out at this time, and their
success led to the convening of the first National Congress of
Red Trade Unions the following month in Hanoi. Other communist
parties were founded at this time by both supporting members of
Thanh Nien and radical members of yet another party revolutionary
with Marxist leavings but no direct tie with the Comintern,
called the New Revolutinary Party or Tan Viet Party. At the
beginning of 1930, there were actually three communist parties in
French Indochina competing for members. The establishment of the
ICP prompted remaining Thanh Nien members to transform the
Communist Youth Leaque into a communist party - the Annam
Communist Party (ACP, Annam Cong San Dang), and Tan Viet Party
members followed suit by renaming their organization the
Indochinese Communist League (Dong Duong Cong San Lien Doan). As
a result, the Comintern issued a highly critical indictment of
the factionalism in the Vietnamese revolutionary movement and
urged the Vietnamese to form a united communist party.
Consequently, the Comintern leadership sent a message to Ho Chi
Minh, then living in Siam, asking him to come to Hong Kong to
unify the groups. On February 3, 1930, in Hong Kong, Ho presided
over a conference of representatives of the two factions derived
from Thanh Nien (members of the Indochinese Communist League were
not represented but were to be permitted membership in the newly
formed party as individuals) at which a unified 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. At the founding meeting, it was agreed that a provisional
Central Committee of nine members (three from Bac Bo, two from
Trung Bo, two from Nam Bo, and two from the overseas Chinese
community) should be formed and that recognition should be sought
from the Comintern. Various mass organizations including unions,
a peasants' association, a women's association, a relief society,
and a youth league were to be organized under the new party. Ho
drew up a program of party objectives, which were approved by the
conference. The main points included overthrow of the French;
establishment of Vietnamese independence; establishment of a
workers', peasants', and soldiers' government; organization of a
workers' militia; cancellation of public debts; confiscation of
means of production and their transfer to the proletarian
government; distribution of French-owned lands to the peasants;
suppression of taxes; establishment of an eight-hour work day;
development of crafts and agriculture; institution of freedom of
organization; and establishment of education for all.
The formation of the ICP came at a time of general unrest in
the country, caused in part by a global worsening of economic
conditions. Although the size of the Vietnamese urban proletariat
had increased four times, to about 200,000, since the beginning
of the century, working conditions and salaries had improved
little. The number of strikes rose from seven in 1927 to ninety-
eight in 1930. As the effects of the worldwide depression began
to be felt, French investors withdrew their money from Vietnam.
Salaries dropped 30 to 50 percent, and employment, approximately
33 percent. Between 1928 and 1932, the price of rice on the world
market decreased by more than half. Rice exports totaling nearly
2 million tons in 1928 fell to less than 1 million tons in 1931.
Although both French colons and wealthy Vietnamese landowners
were hit by the crisis, it was the peasant who bore most of the
burden because he was forced to sell at least twice as much rice
to pay the same amount in taxes or other debts. Floods, famine,
and food riots plagued the countryside. By 1930 rubber prices had
plummeted to less than one-fourth their 1928 value. Coal
production was cut, creating more layoffs. Even the colonial
government cut its staff by one-seventh and salaries by one-
quarter.
Data as of December 1987
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