Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh (in chữ nho: 胡志明, Hú Zhì Míng; Vietnamese: Hồ Chí Minh. Nghe An, May 19 1890-Hanoi, September 2, 1969), born Nguyễn Sinh Cung, was a Vietnamese revolutionary and anti-colonial politician. He was an independence leader and a founding member of both the French Communist Party and the Vietnam Communist Party, Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from 1945-1955, and President from 1951 until his death.

Before taking power, Ho Chi Minh traveled many countries, it is said that he used 50 to 200 different aliases. In terms of ideology, Ho Chi Minh was a Marxist-Leninist.

He was the leader of the Viet Minh independence movement, led the August Revolution in 1945, and founded the Democratic Republic of Vietnam after the 1946 general election. After the Dien Bien Phu victory in 1954, the War ended from Indochina.

During the Vietnam War, Ho Chi Minh was a key figure in the leadership ranks of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam. In 1975, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam won the war, the two regions of Vietnam were united, giving rise to the birth of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in honor of him and this event.

Ho Chi Minh left politics in 1965 for health reasons and died in 1969. In addition to his political activities, Ho Chi Minh was also a writer, poet, and journalist with many works written in Vietnamese, Chinese, and French.

Biography

Photograph by Ho Chi Minh taken in 1921 during a Communist Congress held in Marseille, France.

Ho Chi Minh (also called Uncle Ho) was born in the village of Hoàng Trù (named after the local temple near Làng Sen), his mother's village, in the Annam region of central Vietnam, on May 19, 1890. Ho Chi Minh's name meant "he who illuminates." His real name was Nguyễn Sinh Cung (in the local language Nguyen Sinh Coong ). Beginning in 1895, he grew up in his father's village Nguyễn Sinh Sắc (Nguyễn Sinh Huy), of Làng Sen, Kim Liên, Nam Đàn, and Nghệ An Province. He had three siblings: his sister Bạch Liên (Nguyễn Thị Thanh), employee of the French army; his brother Nguyễn Sinh Khiêm (Nguyễn Tất Đạt), geomancer and traditional herbalist; and another brother (Nguyễn Sinh Nhuận), who died in infancy. As a boy, Cung (Ho) studied with his father before taking more formal classes with a scholar named Vuong Thuc Do. He quickly mastered writing Chinese, a prerequisite for any serious study of Confucianism, while honing his colloquial Vietnamese writing. Following the Confucian tradition, his father gave him a new name at the age of 10: Nguyễn Tất Thành (Nguyễn “The Realized One”).

His father was a Confucian scholar and teacher and later an imperial magistrate in the small and remote Binh Khe (Qui Nhơn) district. He was demoted for abuse of power after an influential local figure died several days after receiving 102 cane strokes as punishment for an offence. His father was eligible to serve in the imperial bureaucracy, but he refused because it meant serving the French. This exposed Thành (Ho) to rebellion at a young age and seemed to be the norm for the province. However, he received a French education, attending the Collège Quốc học (secondary school) in Huế. His disciples Phạm Văn Đồng and Võ Nguyên Giáp also attended that school, as did Ngô Đình Diệm, the future president of South Vietnam (and political rival).

The anti-slavery (anti-corvée) demonstration by poor peasants in Huế in May 1908 had been the moment when his revolutionary perspective emerged. Because his father had been laid off, he no longer had any hope of getting a government scholarship and headed south, taking a post at the Dục Thanh School in Phan Thiết for about six months, before traveling to Saigon..

Life in France

Apparently because of the motto "liberty, equality and fraternity" he was motivated to go to France; however, prevailing colonial law did not allow native Vietnamese to leave the country. However, the only way to move to Europe at that time was to take a job on a ship, so he traveled first to London and then to Paris.

Working as a galley boy on a French steamer, the Amiral de Latouche-Tréville, he used the alias Văn Ba. The steamer then left on June 5, 1911, arriving in Marseilles, France on July 5, 1911. The ship then left for Le Havre and Dunkirk, returning to Marseilles in mid-September. There, he applied to enter the French Colonial Administrative School, but his application was rejected. Despite this, he decided to start traveling by working on ships and visited many countries from 1911 to 1917.

From 1919 to 1923, Thành (Ho) began to show an interest in politics while living in France, influenced by his friend and comrade from the French Socialist Party Marcel Cachin. Thành claimed to have arrived in Paris from London in 1917, but the French police only had documents recording his arrival in June 1919. In Paris he joined the Groupe des Patriotes Annamites (The group of Vietnamese patriots) which included Phan Chu Trinh, Phan Văn Trường, Nguyễn Thế Truyền and Nguyễn An Ninh. Upon coming into contact with Indochinese nationalists, little by little he added to his political thought the ideology of Marxism: he joined the Socialist Party and, later, the Communist Party. In fact, he participated in the founding congress of the latter party in December from 1920.

Subsequently, the French Communist Party founded an organization for members of colonial origin residing in France and, in April 1922, the publication Le Paria was created, edited by Ho himself.

Before Thành's arrival in Paris, he published newspaper articles advocating for Vietnamese independence under the pseudonym Nguyễn Ái Quốc ("Nguyễn the Patriot"). Likewise, the group of Vietnamese patriots requested the recognition of the civil rights of the Vietnamese people in French Indochina to the Western powers in the Versailles peace talks. Citing the principle of self-determination outlined earlier in the peace accords, they called on the Allied Powers to end French colonial rule of Vietnam and ensure the formation of an independent government.

Since Thành was the public face behind the publication of the document (although it was written by Phan Văn Trường), he soon became known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc and used the name for the first time in September during an interview with a correspondent for a Chinese newspaper.

Stay in the Soviet Union

From Paris he moved to Moscow in 1923, where he participated in several congresses of the Communist International. Later he moved to China as a translator and assistant to Mikhail Grusenberg Borodin, adviser to the Kuomintang in its relations with the Communist Party of China.

Return to Asia

On behalf of the Comintern, he joined the Huangpu Military School to teach Asian communist organizations the art of revolutionary warfare. The director was Colonel Chiang Kai-shek and the head of the political department was Zhou Enlai, who would later be rivals in the Chinese Civil War.

On the night of April 3, 1927, when Chiang Kai-shek confronted the communists with a massive massacre, Ho Chi Minh managed to flee and went underground, organizing revolution in Siam (present-day Thailand) and China, going from jail to jail, from torture to torture, promoting strikes, riots and armed uprisings.

That is why, that same year, Ho Chi Minh founded the Thanh Nien, the Communist Party of Vietnam, in Hong Kong.

At the end of the 1930s, Vietnam underwent a major turnaround in its situation, with the replacement of French rule by that of Japan, which occupied the country with 50,000 men.

Return to Vietnam

Freed from prison by the Allies in 1940, he returned to his country twenty-eight years after leaving it. He fought in the guerrilla during the five years of the Japanese occupation.

To liberate the country from the new invasion, he founded the Việt Nam Ðộc Lập Ðồng Minh Hội, better known as the Viet Minh, or Front for the Liberation of Vietnam. He also creates a guerrilla army led by Võ Nguyên Giáp, one of the most prestigious revolutionary generals in the world, who died in 2013.

For many years he lived in a small house, despite offers from the government to move to a better home.

The struggle for independence

War against France

The French wanted to regain their colonial domains and reoccupied the country, while Vietnamese guerrillas pushed back the Japanese in the north.

The Viet Minh organized the general insurrection, achieved national independence (on September 2, 1945, declared in Hanoi) and founded the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, a communist state. But when the French colonialists returned in 1946, they unleashed a new and bloody war that lasted for nine years. On November 24, 1946, the French bombarded Haiphong, killing more than 6,000 people. The people reacted on December 19 with an insurrection in Hanoi.

President of Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh Bust in Caracas, capital of Venezuela.

The colonialists began to retreat: Dong Khi falls, Cao Bang is evacuated, then Lao Kay, and later Dinh Lap. France gave in and had to ask for the support of the United States; however, American support was to no avail. After the battle of Điện Biên Phủ (on May 7, 1954), the French are defeated and Ho Chi Minh is proclaimed president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

Between 1953 and 1956, the North Vietnamese government introduced various land reforms, including "rent reductions" and "agrarian reforms," which were accompanied by political repression. Between 10,000 and 15,000 people were executed during the land reform campaign.

In foreign policy, Vietnam maintained diplomatic relations with socialist countries such as China, North Korea, Marshal Tito's Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union itself. He made and received various state visits including Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Josip Broz Tito, Indira Gandhi, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai.

Despite the fact that the north and south had to unify and hold national elections, in South Vietnam the pro-Western Ngô Đình Diệm coup d'état took place with the support of the CIA, who rejected the election plan and made war preparations. Dwight Eisenhower himself (then President of the United States) believed that 80% of the Vietnamese would have voted for the popular Hồ, so the United States decided to support the south, trying to contain the strong communist influence in Southeast Asia.

Ho Chi Minh with President Tito in Belgrade.

The Geneva Accords were followed by a 300-day period in which almost a million Vietnamese, mostly Catholics, emigrated to the south, and another group of Vietnamese Buddhists and communists settled in the north. Hồ promoted and ordered support for the guerrillas that had already been operating since the previous year in South Vietnam, forming the National Liberation Front (FNL), and the Viet Cong, the name that the liberation guerrillas received from him.

Propaganda in protest to Charles de Gaulle and Ho Chi Minh.

The War Against South Vietnam

The war against the French was followed by a war between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, who were supported by the United States. The United States sent a large military force to fight the North Vietnamese army and the VC in 1965 and withdrew in 1973. The war ended in 1975, more than 5 years after Ho Chi Minh's death, when the forces of North Vietnamese invaded the South and defeated its army. More than 1.3 million people died.

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi.

Death of Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh died on the morning of September 2, 1969, at his home in Hanoi of cardiac arrest at the age of 79 from tuberculosis. He wished to be cremated, and he had stated that this method of burial "is more hygienic, and saves space for agriculture." Despite his wishes, Ho Chi Minh was embalmed by order of the government. His body is displayed in a mausoleum similar to those of other communist leaders such as Lenin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, in the city of Hanoi, in the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum.

The Hồ Chí Minh Mausoleum (Vietnamese: Lăng Hồ Chí Minh) is located in Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi, the country's capital.

Hồ died before the war against the Americans was over and he could see a unified communist Vietnam.

On September 5, 1969, former Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río wrote in his Notes: "Ho Chi Minh and Gandhi, two fighters, examples of civic virtues in universal history, who served their country with stoic rectitude, without omitting personal efforts, without vanity and with the sole purpose of freeing their peoples from foreign oppression".

Personal life

Ho Chi Minh carrying her goddaughter, baby Elizabeth Aubrac, with Elizabeth's mother, Lucie in 1946.

In addition to being a politician, Ho Chi Minh was also a writer, journalist, poet and polyglot. His father was a scholar and teacher who received a high rank in the Nguyễn dynasty in an imperial examination. Hồ was taught to be proficient in classical Chinese at a young age. Before the August Revolution, he often wrote poetry in Chữ Hán (the Vietnamese name for the Chinese writing system). One of them is Prison Diary Poems, written when he was imprisoned by the ROC police. This poetry chronicle is Vietnam's National Treasure Number 10 and has been translated into many languages. It is used in Vietnamese secondary schools.

After Vietnam gained independence from France, the new government exclusively promoted Chữ Quốc Ngữ (Vietnamese writing system in Latin characters) to eliminate illiteracy. Hồ began to create more poems in the modern Vietnamese language in order to spread them to a wider range of readers. From the time he assumed the presidency until the appearance of serious health problems, a short poem of his was published periodically in the newspaper Nhân Dân during Tết (lunar new year) to encourage his people to work, study or fight the Americans in the new year.

Ho Chi Minh watching a football match in his favorite way, with his closest comrade, Prime Minister Phmadm Văn Đitchng sitting on the left of Ho (photo on the right).

Because he was in exile for nearly 30 years, Hồ was able to speak fluently as well as professionally read and write French, English, Russian, Cantonese, and Mandarin, as well as his native language, Vietnamese. he was reported to speak Esperanto. In the 1920s, he was bureau chief/editor of many newspapers which he established to criticize the government of French Indochina and for communist propaganda purposes. Examples are Le Paria (The Outcast) first published in Paris in 1922 or Thanh Nien (Youth) first published on June 21, 1925 (the 21st June was designated by the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam as Vietnam Revolutionary Journalism Day).

On many official state visits to the Soviet Union and China, he often spoke directly to their communist leaders without interpreters, especially about top-secret information. While being interviewed by Western journalists, he used French.^{[citation needed]} His Vietnamese accent carried a heavy accent from his birthplace in the central province of Nghệ An, but could be widely understood throughout the country.

As president, he held formal receptions for heads of state and foreign ambassadors at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi, but did not live there. He ordered the construction of a house on stilts at the rear of the palace, which today is known as the [Presidential Palace Historic Site. His hobbies (according to his secretary Vũ Kỳ) included reading, gardening, feeding fish (many of which are still^[when?] alive), and visits to schools and children's homes^{[citation required]}

Ho Chi Minh remained in Hanoi during his final years, demanding the unconditional withdrawal of all non-Vietnamese troops from South Vietnam. In 1969, with the negotiations still dragging on, his health began to deteriorate due to multiple health problems, including diabetes that prevented him from participating in more active political activities. However, he insisted that his forces in the south continue to fight until all of Vietnam was reunited no matter how long it might take, believing that time was on his side.^{[citation needed]}

Ho Chi Minh's marriage has long been shrouded in secrecy and mystery. Several scholars of Vietnamese history believe that he married Zeng Xueming in October 1926, although he was only able to live with her for less than a year. Historian Peter Neville claimed that Ho (at the time known as Ly Thuy) wanted to involve Zeng in communist movements but demonstrated a lack of skill and interest in doing so. In 1927, Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang's increasing crackdown on the Chinese Communist Party forced Ho to go to Hong Kong, and his relationship with Zeng seemed to have ended at that point. time

In addition to the marriage to Zeng Xueming, there are a number of published studies indicating that Ho had a romantic relationship with Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai. As a spirited young revolutionary woman, Minh Khai was delegated to Hong Kong to serve as an assistant to Ho Chi Minh in April 1930 and quickly caught Ho's attention due to his physical attractiveness. Ho even approached the Far East Office and requested permission to marry Minh Khai despite the fact that the previous marriage to Zeng was still legally valid. However, the marriage could not take place as Minh Khai had been arrested by the British authorities in April 1931.

Legacy

Ho Chi Minh's bust in Kolkataen India.

Ho Chi Minh is considered one of the most influential leaders in the world. Time included him in the list of the 100 most influential people of the XX century (Time 100) in 1998. His thought and revolution inspired many world leaders and people in Asia, Africa and Latin America during the decolonization that occurred after World War II.

As a communist, he was one of the few relatively well-regarded international figures and did not face the same degree of international criticism as other communist factions, and even won praise for his actions.

In 1987, UNESCO officially recommended its member states to "join the commemoration of the centenary of the birth of President Ho Chi Minh by organizing various events in honor of his memory", considering "the important and multifaceted, President Ho Chi Minh's contributions in the fields of culture, education and the arts" who "dedicated his entire life to the national liberation of the Vietnamese people, contributing to the common struggle of the peoples for peace, national independence, democracy and social progress".

One of Ho Chi Minh's works, The Black Race, much of it originally written in French, highlights his views on the oppression of peoples by colonialism and imperialism in 20 articles written. Other books such as 'Revolution', which published selected Ho Chi Minh works and articles in English, also highlighted Ho Chi Minh's interpretation and beliefs in socialism and communism, and in the fight against what he perceived as the evils derived from capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism.

Hi Cho Minh's image appears on banknotes and his portrait is prominently displayed on many government buildings in Vietnam. A decoration bears his name and portrait of him: the Order of Ho Chi Minh. When, six years after his death, Vietnamese fighters defeated South Vietnamese troops, the tanks carried a banner: "You always march with us, Uncle Hồ." In 1975, Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in his honor.

The Chilean singer-songwriter Víctor Jara dedicated his well-known song “The right to live in peace” to the figure of Ho Chi Minh. The Venezuelan singer-songwriter Alí Primera also dedicated a song to the memory of this character with the title "Unforgettable Ho Chi Minh", and the Cuban troubadour Pablo Milanés composed a song dedicated to Ho Chi Minh in 1967 entitled "His name can be put in verses».

Works

• French colonization process.
• Prison Journal (poems)
• Indochina Communist Party Program.
• Actions that “must be done” and that “not be done”.
• Leninism and Liberation of the Oppressed Peoples.