Ho Chi Minh the biography

Ho Chi Minh (May 19, 1890 – September 2, 1969) was a Vietnamese revolutionary & statesman, who later became Prime Minister (1946–1955) & President (1955–1969) of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

Ho is most famous for leading the Viet Minh independence movement from 1941 onward, establishing the communist-governed Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 & defeating the French Empire in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu.

Ho was fluent in Vietnamese, several dialects of Chinese, English, & French. He was also known to speak Thai, Spanish, German & Russian. Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) is named after him.

Ho Chi Minh was born, in 1890 in Hoàng Trù Village (his mother's hometown). From 1895, he grew up in his paternal hometown of Kim Liên Village, Nam Ðàn District, Vietnam. He had three siblings, his sister , a clerk in the French Army, his brother a geomancer & traditional herbalist, & another brother who died in his infancy. Following Confucian traditions, at the age of 10 his father named him (Nguyen the Accomplished).

Ho's father, Nguyen sinh Huy, was a Confucian scholar, teacher & a civil servant in the imperial palace. He was later dismissed from his office for refusing to serve at the court. From his father, Ho received a strong Confucian upbringing. During his childhood he noticed the bad things that the French colonizers & the monarchist government did to the citizens. He also received a modern secondary education at a French-style lycée, the alma mater of his later disciples, He later left his study & chose to teach at school in Phan Thiet.

On 5th June 1911, Ho Chi Minh left Vietnam on a French steamer, Amiral Latouche-Tréville, working as a kitchen help. Arriving in Marseille, France, he applied for the French Colonial Administrative School but his application was rejected. During his stay, he worked as a cleaner, waiter, & film retoucher. To familiarize himself with Western society & politics, he spent most of his free time in public libraries reading history books & newspapers.

In the USA
In 1912, as the cook's helper on a ship, Ho Chi Minh traveled to the United States. From 1912 to 1913, he lived in New York (Harlem) & Boston. He worked in menial jobs, including as a baker in Boston . Ho later claimed to have worked for a wealthy family in Brooklyn between 1917 & 1918, & during this time he may have have heard Marcus Garvey speak in Harlem. It is believed that while in the United States he made contact with Korean nationalists, an experience that developed his political outlook.

In England
At various points between 1913 & 1919, Ho lived in West Ealing, west London, & later in Crouch End, Hornsey, north London. It is claimed that Ho trained as a pastry chef under the legendary French master, Escoffier, at the Carlton Hotel in the Haymarket, Westminster, but there is no evidence to support this. Nonetheless there is a commemorative Blue Plaque on the building, which is now New Zealand House.

Political education in France
From 1919-1923, while living in France, Ho Chi Minh embraced communism. Ho claimed to have arrived in Paris from London in 1917 but French police had documents of his arrival in only June 1919. Following World War I, under the name of Nguyen the Patriot, he petitioned for equal rights in French Indochina on behalf of the Group of Vietnamese Patriots to the Western powers at the Versailles peace talks, but was ignored. Citing the language & the spirit of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Ho petitioned U.S. President Woodrow Wilson for help to remove the French from Vietnam & replace it with a new, nationalist government. Again his request was ignored.

Ho Chi Minh soon helped to form the French Communist Party & spent much of his time in Moscow afterwards, becoming the Comintern's Asia hand & the principal theorist on colonial warfare. It was at this time that he took the name Ho Chi Minh, a Vietnamese name combining a common surname with a given name meaning 'enlightened will' (Chí meaning 'will', & Minh meaning 'light'). In other words he became "the one (he) who is enlightened".

In China & the Soviet Union
In 1923, Ho moved to Guangzhou, China. From 1925-26 he organized the 'Youth Education Classes' & occasionally gave lectures at the Whampoa Military Academy on the revolutionary movement in Indochina. He stayed in Hong Kong as a representative of the Communist International. In June 1931, he was arrested & incarcerated by British police until his release in 1933. He then made his way back to the Soviet Union, where he spent several years recovering from tuberculosis. In 1938, he returned to China & served as an adviser with Chinese Communist armed forces.

Independence movement
In 1941, Ho returned to Vietnam to lead the Vi?t Minh independence movement. He oversaw many successful military actions against the Vichy French & Japanese occupation of Vietnam during World War II, supported closely but clandestinely by the United States Office of Strategic Services, & also later against the French bid to reoccupy the country (1946-1954). He was also jailed for many months back in China by Chiang Kai-shek's local authorities. After his release in 1943, he again returned to Vietnam. He was treated for malaria & dysentery by American OSS doctors.

After the August Revolution (1945) organized by the Vi?t Minh, he became Chairman of the Provisional Government (Premier of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam). Though he was able to convince Emperor B?o Ð?i to abdicate, his government was not recognized by any country. He petitioned American President Harry Truman for support for Vietnamese independence, but was rebuffed due to French pressure on the U. S., & his known communist activities.

In 1945, in a power struggle, the Viet Minh killed members of rival groups, such as the leader of the Constitutional Party, the head of the Party for Independence, & Ngo Dinh Diem's brother, Ngo Dinh Khoi . Purges & killings of Trotskyists, the rival anti-Stalinist communists, have also been documented . In 1946, when Ho traveled outside of the country, his subordinates imprisoned 25,000 non-communist nationalists & forced 6,000 others to flee . Hundreds of political opponents were also killed in July that same year. All rival political parties were banned & local governments purged as a measure to minimized opposition later on.

Birth of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
On September 2, 1945, after Emperor Bao Dai's abdication, Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence of Vietnam under the name of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. In the midst of a spiral violence between rival Vietnamese factions & French forces, the British commander, General Sir Douglas Gracey declared martial law. On September 24, the Viet Minh leaders responded with a call for a general strike .

On September 1945, a force of 200,000 Chinese Nationalists arrived in Hanoi. Ho Chi Minh made arrangement with their general, Lu Han, to dissolve the Communist Party & to hold an election which would yield a coalition government. When Chiang Kai-Shek later traded Chinese influence in Vietnam for French concessions in Shanghai, Ho Chi Minh had no choice but to sign an agreement with France in which Vietnam would be recognized as an autonomous state in the Indochinese Federation & the French Union on March 6, 1946. The agreement soon broke down. The purpose of the agreement was to drive out the Chinese army from north Vietnam. Soon after the Chinese left, fighting broke out with the French. Ho Chi Minh was almost captured by a group of French soldiers led by Jean-Etienne Valluy, but was able to escape.

In February 1950 Ho met with Stalin & Mao in Moscow after the Soviet Union recognized his government. They all agreed that China would be responsible for backing the Viet Minh. Mao's emissary to Moscow stated in August that China planned to train 60-70,000 Viet Minh in the near future. China's support enabled Ho to escalate the fight against France.

According to a story told by Journalist Bernard Fall, after fighting the French for several years, Ho decided to negotiate a truce. The French negotiators arrived at the meeting site, a mud hut with a thatched roof. Inside they found a long table with chairs & were surprised to discover in one corner of the room a silver ice bucket containing ice & a bottle of good Champagne which should have indicated that Ho was ready to negotiate. One demand by the French was the return to French custody of a number of Japanese military officers who had been helping the Vietnamese armed forces, in order for them to stand trial for war crimes committed during World War II. Ho replied that the Japanese officers were allies & friends which he could not betray. Then he walked out, to seven more years of war. (From Last Reflections on a War, Fall's last book, published posthumously.)

In 1954, after the important defeat of France at a Battle, France was forced to give up its empire in Indochina.

Becoming president
In 1955, Ho Chi Minh became president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), a Communist-led single party state.

The 1954 Geneva Accords (which had not been signed by the United States or the State of Vietnam) had agreed to carry out a national election in 1956 to reunite Vietnam under one government. The government of South Vietnam, now under the leadership of Ngo Dinh Diem & supported by the United States, refused to hold the stipulated elections, noting that Ho had introduced a police state & refused to allow international observers, precluding a free election. Moreover, most contemporary observers estimated that were an election held in the 1954-55 period, around 80% of the Vietnamese population would have voted for Ho Chi Minh. Even "President Eisenhower is widely quoted to the effect that in 1954 as many as 80% of the Vietnamese people would have voted for Ho Chi Minh, as the popular hero of their liberation, in an election against Bao Dai... [though] it is almost certain that by 1956 the proportion which might have voted for Ho--in a free election against Diem--would have been much smaller than 80%." The point, however, was moot, since Diem had no intention of holding an election he did not believe he would win. Therefore the U. S. instead focused on nation building in South Vietnam as a bulwark against communism.

From 1953 to 1956, under the pressure to replicate Chinese land policies, the government of Ho Chi Minh conducted Land Reform. Initially, tens of thousands of landowners were denounced, their land confiscated & re-distributed to poor peasants. Of the identified 44,444 landlords, 3939 were tried & 1175 were executed. A further number of 18,738 "concealed landlords" were "revealed" (these "revelations" led to further 3,312 trials & 162 executions) . Other sources place the death toll significantly higher, between 3,000 & 500,000. Edwin Moïse, 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 & it often went beyond the bounds of objective truth". President Ho Chi Minh would later weep as he publicly apologized for the miscarriage of the campaign.

Another controversial incident occurred on November 2, 1956 when a revolt by villagers in Ho's home province of Nghe An was put down by the military. According to one estimate, 6,000 people were deported or executed.

It was long been claimed that 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. However, more recent research has indicated that the number of civilian refugees involved was much smaller than originally claimed - with some 450,000 moving from North to South, & 52,000 moving in the opposite direction. This was partly due to claims by church officials that the Virgin Mary had moved South out of distaste for life under communism. 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.

In 1959 Ho's government began to provide active support for the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which escalated the fighting that had begun in 1957. In late 1964 North Vietnamese combat troops were sent southwest into neutral Laos.

During the mid to late 1960s, Ho permitted 320,000 Chinese troops into northern North Vietnam to help build railways, roads, & airports, thereby freeing a similar number of North Vietnamese forces to go south.

Demise

Ho Chi Minh died on the morning of September 2, 1969, at his home in Hanoi at age 79 from heart failure. Many tearfully mourned his death. Santiago Álvarez's 1969 documentary film 'Seventy-Nine Spring Times Of Ho Chi Minh' (much of which was based on found footage) documents some of this, with powerful scenes depicting crying school children & weeping mourners. His death day was initially reported to be September 3 as not to coincide with the National Day. Recently the government changed his official death day to September 2

The former capital of South Vietnam, Saigon, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City on 1 May 1975.

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 & since, including Mao Zedong, Kim Il-Sung, & for a time, Josef Stalin, but the "honor" violated Ho's last wishes. He wished to be cremated & his ashes buried in urns on hilltops of Vietnam (North, Central & South). He wrote, "Not only is cremation good from the point of view of hygiene but also it saves farmland."

In Vietnam today, he is elevated by the Communist government to an almost god-like status even though the government has abandoned most of his economic policies. He is still referred to as "Uncle Ho" in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh appears on the Vietnamese currency, & his image is featured prominently in many of Vietnam's public buildings. UNESCO officially recognized him as a "great man of culture" on his 100th birthday.

Quotes
"Nothing is more precious than independence & liberty."
"I follow only 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 & we will win." (referring to France & America in their wars in Vietnam)
"It is better to sacrifice everything than to live in slavery!"
"The Vietnamese people deeply love independence, freedom & peace. But in the face of United States aggression they have risen up, united as one man."
"We have to win independence at any cost, even if the Truong Son mountains burn."
"In (Lenin's Theses on the National & Colonial Questions) there were political terms that were difficult to understand. But by reading them again & again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment & 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 & the cypress to show their strength & their stability."
"My only desire is that all of our Party & people, closely united in struggle, construct a peaceful, unified, independent, democratic & prosperous, & make a valiant contribution to the world Revolution." (Hanoi, May 10, 1969.)
“Better to eat the French dung for 100 years than the Chinese dung for 1,000.”

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