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Hồ Chí Minh | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of comrade Ho Chi Minh | |
| Born | Nguyễn Sinh Cung May 19, 1890 Kim Liên, Nghệ An Province, French Indochina |
| Died | September 2, 1969 (aged 79) Hanoi, North Vietnam |
| Cause of death | Heart failure |
| Nationality | Vietnamese |
| Political orientation | Marxism-Leninism Ho Chi Minh Thought |
Ho Chi Minh[a] (May 19, 1890 — September 2, 1969) was a Vietnamese revolutionary. He is known in Vietnam by the nickname Uncle Ho.
Ho Chi Minh joined the Communist Party of France in 1920, studied in the Soviet Union in 1923, joined the Communist International in 1924, and carried out revolutionary activities in China from 1924 to 1927. In 1930, he founded the Communist Party of Indochina, and in 1941 he initiated the establishment of the Vietnam Independence League, which led the struggle against the French colonialists and Japanese imperialism.
Ho Chi Minh was elected President and Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in March 1946, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Labor Party (now the Communist Party of Vietnam) from February 1951 to 1969, and led the war against France from 1945 to 1954, and the war against the United States in the 1960s. He died in Hanoi on September 2, 1969, at the age of 79.
Aside from being a politician, Ho was also a writer, a poet and a journalist. He wrote several books, articles and poems in French, Chinese and Vietnamese.
Life
Early life
Kim Liên - family
In 1890, Ho Chi Minh was born as Nguyễn Sinh Cung and raised in Kim Liên village, in the province of Nghệ An as a child of a rural teacher named Nguyễn Sinh Sắc (his father) and of a weaver named Hoàng Thị Loan (his mother). At that time, Vietnam was suffering from French colonialism steming in 1858. Despite many struggles of resistance, the French colonialists consolidated its occupation by 1884. However, many uprisings of rebels seeking to re-establish the feudal system still persisted including those of Phan Đình Phùng (1885 - 96) and of Hoàng Hoa Thám (1884 - 1913).
He was the third child in the family. The eldest sister was borned in 1884, named Nguyễn Thị Thanh and his older brother, borned in 1888 was named Nguyễn Sinh Khiêm. [1]
He and his family lived in the village of Hoàng Trù where his grandparents would teach Confucianism and writing to the children of the village. There, Ho Chi Minh was exposed to the Vietnamese stories, songs and fairytales. [2]
Huế and the death of his mother
In 1895, his father took the family to Huế by foot through the rural countryside. They would lived in an army barrack near the Governor's building as his father was preparing for an entrance examination to become a Mandarin. 3 years later, in 1898, his father would move the family to Dương Nỗ village, 7km from Huế, to teach children and Ho Chi Minh himself to write in Chinese characters. The family would live in the abandoned home of Nguyễn Sĩ Khuyến. [3]
In 1901, as Ho Chi Minh had moved into Huế again with his mother while his father and brother had gone to Thanh Hóa to attend the entrance exam, his mother gave birth to the fourth child - Xin. Unfortunately, Xin would died due to malnutrition and his mother would soon died as well. Devastated, he would moved to Kim Liên with his grandmother for a little while. Not long after, he was informed that his father had passed the entrance exam as a Phó bảng "Junior Doctor".[4] As per Confucian tradition, his father gave him a new name: Nguyễn Tất Thành.
Young student
By now, Ho Chi Minh was attending formal classes with the scholar Vương Thúc Quý, a son of a rebel who fought the French, and then had gotten good with Chinese characters. The scholar was also regionally famous and had intellectuals visiting him, chief among them was the infamous Phan Bội Châu whom Ho Chi Minh would take inspiration from to fight for an independent Vietnam. [5]
In September 1905, Ho Chi Minh was admitted into the French-Native primary school in Vinh city (12.5km from his birth place). Here, he was introduced to the ideals of the French Revolution.[6] Not long after in June of 1906, he went to Huế again with his father. Ho Chi Minh began to attend a cours préparatoire at the French-Viet primary school in Thừa Thiên province. [7]
By the time he was attending the higher cours élémentaire, protest and unrest were rampent in Huế due to high taxes on the Peasants. Ho Chi Minh, now an 18-year-old, joined the protestors. The demonstration however, was brutally repressed and hundreds of weaponless peasants were massacred by the colonialist troops.[8] Ho Chi Minh was subsequently expelled from the primary school and was closely monitered by the French colonialist afterwards. He then attended the higher cours moyen at the prestigious Quốc Học - Huế highschool by the alias of Nguyễn Sinh Côn. [9] He has by now, became very conscious of the oppression dealt by the colonialists on the native Vietnamese and is also inspired by the rebelious acts against the French by king Thành Thái and Duy Tân.[10]
Teacher
In the summer of 1909, Ho Chi Minh moved to Quy Nhơn province (400km from Huế) to study the cours supérieur at the French-Viet primary school in Quy Nhơn province by his new teacher - Phạm Ngọc Thọ. [11] He would moved again to Saigon in 1910 but ran out of cash. This prompted him to teach physical education at the privately owned Dục Thanh School in Phan Thiết (175km from Saigon). [12]
In February 1911, Ho Chi Minh finally embarked on his journey towards Saigon and beyond. He invited a friend to join him but was refused[13] so he applied to work for the steamship Amiral Latouche Tréville which was going to Marseille. [14]
Activism in France
First voyage
Ho Chi Minh, under the name of Văn Ba, had left from Saigon to travel to France. The purpose of his departure was only revealed to him more than ten years later when answering the Soviet poet Osip Mandelstam:
“For us, all white folks were French, said so the French. And from that time, I really wanted to get acquainted with their civilization, to find out what was hidden behind those words of “liberty, equality and brotherhood”. [6]
Another time, when answering Anna Louise Strong in 1965, he said: “The Vietnamese people, including my father, at that time often asked among ourselves who would be the one to save Vietnam from French domination. Some people thought it would be the English, others thought it would be the Americans. I had to go abroad to see it for myself. After examining how they operate, I will return to help my compatriots”. [15]
The Amiral Latouche Tréville would carried Ho Chi Minh to Singapore[16], Colombo[17], through the Suez Canel to Port Sa'id[18] and finally reaching the habor of Marseille on July 6, 1911[19] after a month at sea. Whilst waiting for the ship to unload its cargo Ho Chi Minh witnessed the poverty of the ubran Proletariat. He realized that not all Frenchmen were the same and that the colonialists in Indochina didn't represent the French working class. [20][21]
Second voyage
In mid July, Ho Chi Minh was on sea again, this time travelling towards the port of Le Havre[22], Dunkerque[23], and back to Marseille. In mid September, he would wrote a petition to the French President and the French Minister of Colonies expressing his wishes to study at the école Coloniale located in Paris but was refused. [24]
Third voyage
Ho Chi Minh went back to Saigon on the Amiral Latouche Tréville in early November and sent the little money he had to his father.
Voyages of 1912
Throughout 1912, Ho Chi Minh would truly embarked on a worldwide journey across the globe to places such as the continent of Africa, stopping at ports in several countries such as Spain, Portugal, Algeria, Tunisia, Congo, Dahomey, Senegal, Reunion. The sufferings of Colonialism were deeply felt by Ho Chi Minh and would leave a lasting impression on him.
In America
In late December, Ho Chi Minh arrived in the United States of America under the new name of Paul Tất Thành. He worked multiple jobs in New York City and at in Massachusetts. At Boston, he worked as a baker for the Parker House Hotel and witnessed the terrible conditions of African-American workers. It is also known that he visited Harlem and attended the meetings of the African-American activist Marcus Garvey. However, his stay in America was relatively short as he would leave for England in early 1913.
In England
Ho Chi Minh's ship stop at the island of Tenerife in the Canaries, to Le Havre and then to South Hampton. After arriving in England, in order to make a living, he worked as a snow shoveler for a school. The work was too hard and tiring, so he had to quit. He found another job as a furnace stoker. From 5am, he had to crawl down to the basement to light the fire, pouring coal and changing coal in the furnace all day, living in the dark, stuffy and scary. But right from the first days in England, Nguyen Tat Thanh immediately started learning English. Every day, early morning and afternoon, that is, before and after working hours to earn a living, he diligently studied by himself. Every week, on his day off, he studied English with an Italian professor.
In 1911, Ho Chi Minh left Vietnam to seek for ways to achieve national liberation of his country. He traveled to France, visited various French colonies in Africa, went to the United States and many Latin American countries. He also went to England, Germany and Russia, then finally returned to France.
Ho Chi Minh learned Esperanto between 1914 and 1917 in his visit to Britain.[25]
In 1919, Ho Chi Minh joined the Socialist Party of France and studied social theory, the French and North-American revolutions, the Commune of Paris, and the October Revolution in Russia. In June 1919, he presented a 8-point platform in the Paris Peace Conference, demanding freedom from colonial interference in Vietnam.
In 1920, it was the first time Ho Chi Minh had access to Lenin's article Theses on the national and colonial questions, published in the periodical L'Humanité, the newspaper organ of French Socialist Party. In December of that same year, Ho Chi Mihn participated of the 18th Congress of the FSP, in which the French Communist Party was founded.
Vietnamese independence movement
In 1924, Ho Chi Minh traveled to China, in the city of Guangzhou. Along with other revolutionaries from parts of Asia, including China, Korea, India, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, he founded the Association of Oppressed Peoples of Asia.[26] In the same year, he traveled to Moscow to speak in support of national liberation at the 5th Congress of the Comintern.[27]
In 1925, Ho Chi Minh helped develop the Association of Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth, what became the embryo of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
In 1931, the Hong Kong police arrested Ho Chi Minh at the request of France.
In 1935, the first National Congress of CPV was established.[26]
In September 1945, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam's independence from France by simply saying, "We are free".[28]
Anti-French Resistance War
Resistance War against the United States
See also
References
- ↑ Gia phả họ Nguyễn Sinh ở làng Kim Liên. Tài liệu lưu tại Khu di tích Kim Liên - Nghệ An, additional text.
- ↑ Ban Nghiên cứu Lịch sử Đảng Tỉnh uỷ Nghệ - Tĩnh: Những mẩu chuyện về thời niên thiếu của Bác Hồ, Nxb. Sự thật, Hà Nội, 1985, tr.15-16
- ↑ liệu của Chi nhánh Bảo tàng Hồ Chí Minh Thừa Thiên - Huế
- ↑ Quốc triều khoa bảng lục, Long cương tàng bản, xuất bản năm Thành Thái thứ 18 – Bính Ngọ (1906)
- ↑ Phan Bội Châu niên biểu, Nxb. Văn - Sử - Địa, Hà Nội, 1955, tr.30
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 “At the young age of around 14 or 15 was when I first heard of the phrase: liberté, egalité, fraternité.”
Meeting a communist - Nguyễn Ái Quốc (1923-12-23). Ogoniok no.39. - ↑ "Tư liệu của Chi nhánh Bảo tàng Hồ Chí Minh Thừa Thiên - Huế".
- ↑ “On May 14, 1908, the protesters marched to Tam Giang Bridge - the gateway to Song Cau provincial capital, but were again met by French troops. Hundreds more people were killed and dozens were arrested. At this point, the anti-tax protest in Phu Yen completely collapsed.”
"DOCUMENTS COMMEMORATING THE 110TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MOVEMENT AGAINST AND HEAVY TAXES IN THE CENTRAL PROVINCES (1908 – 2018)" (2018-02-26). - ↑ “Hue, August 7, 1908.
Following your letter No. 526 dated August 4 of this year, I am pleased to inform you that I can accept into the National School a student named Nguyen Sinh Con, a native of Nghe An, a student of the French-Vietnamese School in Thua Thien Province.
Signed
Chouquet.”
Chouquet (1908). Chouquet's letter to the Resident-Superior of Annam. Centre des archives d'Outre-mer. - ↑ Hồi ký của La Hoài, đăng trong Tập san Hội ái hữu Quốc học, số 2. Tài liệu lưu tại Bảo tàng Hồ Chí Minh.
- ↑ Hồi ức của bà Phạm Ngọc Diệp, chị ruột ông Phạm Ngọc Thạch. Tài liệu lưu tại Bảo tàng Hồ Chí Minh
- ↑ Hồi ức của các ông: Nguyễn Quý Phầu, Nguyễn Đăng Lầu, Từ Trường Phùng, học sinh Trường Dục Thanh năm học 1910 - 1911. Tài liệu lưu tại Bảo tàng Hồ Chí Minh.
- ↑ ““One day I (Lê) invited Thành to eat ice cream. He was very puzzled. It was the first time that he had tasted ice cream.
After a few a moments, he suddenly asked me:
"Le, do you love our country?"
I was surprised and replied: "Of course I do!"
"Can you keep a secret?"
"Yeah sure?".
“I want to go out there and see France and other nations. After examining their accomplishments, I will return to help our people. But if I go alone, it would be extremely risky, like how you get sick... Do you want to go with me?”.
I asked him where he would get all the money. Thành would hold out his two hands:
“Here, here it is... we will labor. We will do anything to live and to go”.
Drawn in by his enthusiasm, I agreed. But after some thinking, I was not brave enough to go with him and to keep my promise.
A few days later, I did not see my friend ever again. At that time, I guessed that he had gone abroad and asked myself how had he done it? I honestly have no idea. Many years passed, I finally found out that my enthusiastic, passionate young friend was Nguyen Ai Quoc and had become our President Ho.””
Trần Dân Tiên (1975). The stories of President Ho's life and work: 'Section 1' (Vietnamese: Những mẩu chuyện về đời hoạt động của Hồ Chủ tịch) (p. 5). Hanoi: Sự Thật Publishers. - ↑ “Mr. Mai from Haiphong, a former employee on the French ship who recounted:
"Around the end of 1911 or 1912 - I don't remember exactly - I was working in the officers' mess on the ship which was docked in Saigon to pick up cargo and passengers.
One afternoon, a young man boarded the ship. After a moment of hesitation, he
asked for a job. We replied that there was no more positions and that even if there was, we had no right to hire him.
We laughed because the young man looked like a student and not a
worker like us. We would whispered to each other: "What kind of work can a guy like that do?"
I don't know why I felt sorry for him so I said:
"Follow me, I will take you to the ship's owner. Perhaps he will have work for you."
The ship's owner asked,
"What can you do?"
"I can do anything!" – The young man replied.
"Alright then, I will make you a kitchen assistant. Tomorrow morning, come here to get your position."
The young man said his name was Văn Ba. Because I had helped him with that small task, he was very close to me, and because he was very likable, I was also very close to him. Whatever I could do, I tried to help him, because he didn't know anything yet. Besides, he was a brave and patient man. As a kitchen assistant on the ship, every day he had to work from four in the morning, cleaning the big kitchen on the ship, and at night lighting the stoves. Then he carried coal and went down to the hold to get vegetables, meat, fish, water ice, and other goods. The work very hard because due to the heat from the kitchen and freezing in the hold.
Especially when he had to carry a heavy bag and climb the stairs while the ship was rocking on the waves.
After that, he had to clean up for the French kitchen staff. After that, he picked vegetables, washed the pots and pans, and reheated the stove. The work lasted all day.
The kitchen had to take care of seven or eight hundred people, both staff and passengers. There were many copper pans so big and heavy that Ba had to drag them across the floor. And the pots were so high that he had to climb on chairs to clean them. He had to always hear:
"Ba, bring the water!"
"Ba, clean the pans!"
"Ba, add coal here, add coal there!"
All day long, Ba was drenched in water and sweat, and completely covered in coal dust. People saw that Ba had to use all his might to finish the tasks. Moreover, because he was not used to the job, he had to finish peeling the radishes and potatoes. He did not know how to do it so I taught him. I remember one time when he was peeling asparagus. It was the first time Ba had seen asparagus. He started peeling it bare, and just then I arrived. I hurriedly threw all the peeled asparagus into the basin and I showed him how to do it correctly. Thanks to that, nothing awfuled happened.
Every day, at nine o'clock in the evening, the work was finished. Ba would be exhausted. But while we rested or played cards, Ba read and wrote until midnight. In terms of hierarchy, Ba was below us, we were the ones with positions, and Ba was just the kitchen assistant. But because Ba was knowledgeable – he helped my illiterate friends write letters home to their families and he never used foul language, he was loved by all of us.”
Trần Dân Tiên (1975). The stories of President Ho's life and work (Vietnamese: Những mẩu chuyện về đời hoạt động của Hồ Chủ tịch) (pp. 6 - 7). [PDF] Hanoi: Sự Thật Publishers. - ↑ no.4062 (1965-05-18). Báo Nhân dân (People's daily).
- ↑ The travel log of the Amiral de Latouche-Tréville dated June 8th, 1911
- ↑ The travel log of the Amiral de Latouche-Tréville dated June 14th, 1911
- ↑ The travel log of the Amiral de Latouche-Tréville dated June 30th, 1911
- ↑ The travel log of the Amiral de Latouche-Tréville dated July 6th, 1911
- ↑ “There were two passengers – young soldiers who had been discharged from the army and were returning to France. I did not understand why these two men had become close friends with Ba. They helped him pick vegetables and in the evening they lent him small books, taught him how to read and write in French. And Ba taught them Vietnamese and occasionally gave them a cup of coffee. He was surprised:
"Hey Mai, there are also good French folks!"”
Trần Dân Tiên (1975). Stories of president Ho's life and work: 'Section 1' (Vietnamese: Những mẩu chuyện về đời hoạt động của Hồ Chủ tịch) (p. 8). Hanoi: Sự Thật Publishers. - ↑ “Seeing prostitutes coming to make money on board, Ba said to me:
"Why don't the French "civilize" their own people first before going to "civilize" us, right Mai?"”
Trần Dân Tiên (1975). Stories of president Ho's life and work: 'Section 1' (Vietnamese: Những mẩu chuyện về đời hoạt động của Hồ Chủ tịch) (p. 8). Hanoi: Sự Thật Publishers. - ↑ The travel log of the Amiral de Latouche-Tréville dated July 15th, 1911
- ↑ The travel log of the Amiral de Latouche-Tréville dated August 26th, 1911
- ↑ “[...] It would an honour, by your great kindness, to be admitted to the Colonial School as a boarder as I am currently an employee of the Charles Reunion Company. [...]”
Nguyễn Tất Thành (1911). Ho Chi Minh's admission into the Colonial School. - ↑ "Ho Chi Minh kaj Esperanto" (2006-12-27T14:53:21Z+08:00). China Radio International.
- ↑ 26.0 26.1 Ho Chi Minh, Pedro de Oliveira (2020). Ho Chi Minh: vida e obra do líder da libertação nacional do Vietnã. Anita Garibaldi. [LG]
- ↑ "Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, ¡presente! − a WW statement" (2023-05-19). Workers World.
- ↑ Vijay Prashad (2017). Red Star over the Third World: 'Preface' (p. 12). [PDF] New Delhi: LeftWord Books.
Notes
- ↑ Vietnamese: Hồ Chí Minh, “the one who shines”