and guidance of their activities. Fully as important, with regard to the long-range effects on the world, were the methods devised by Lenin for exercising political control and the application of power. Lenin's concepts of organization, his use of the Communist Party as a disciplined body for exerting authority, his combination of force with other means of influence to gain his ends, and his utilization of Marxist rhetoric to unify the movement were embraced by Communists in other lands. With the overthrow of capitalism an avowed goal, and expansion of Russian influence abroad a less visible but also important objective, the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics spearheaded an offensive which, at varying levels of intensity and with diverse means, exploited turmoil in many places. Subsequent American decisions with regard to military assistance and more active involvement in the Vietnam conflict would hinge on judgements as to the relationships of the Vietnamese revolutionaries to the Sovietled movement.

Founded in July 1919, the Third Communist International (Comintern) provided a mechanism for organizing Communist revolutions abroad. One inviting target was the colonial establishment of "capitalist" nations. In announcing the Comintern's objectives, Lenin criticized socialist groups in capitalist nations which "fail to wage a revolutionary struggle within 'their own' colonies for the overthrow of 'their own' bourgeoisie, which do not systematically assist the revolutionary work which has already commenced everywhere in the colonies, which do not send arms and literature to the revolutionary parties in the colonies. . . ."

" 6

The story of the Communist movement in Indochina is closely intertwined with the life of Ho Chi Minh, who for so many years was to lead the Communist Party in Vietnam. A member of an educated family, Ho was born in 1890 and named Nguyen Sinh Cung. Years later the young man assumed the alias Nguyen Ai Quoc ("Nguyen the Patriot"). While in France during the early 1920s he took the name Nguyen O Phap ("Nguyen Who Hates the French") before finally assuming the name Ho Chi Minh ("He Who Aspires to Enlightenment")."

Quoted in Vladimir I. Lenin, Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1943), Vol. X, p. 46.

David G. Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism: 1885-1925 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1971), p. 253; Ho Chi Minh, On Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920-66, ed. Bernard B. Fall (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967), pp. viii-x. At least twenty aliases used by Ho have been identified; see King C. Chen, Vietnam and China, 1938–1954 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 37–38.

Ho grew up in Nghe An Province just north of the 17th parallel. His father was a teacher and civil servant who at one time served as an official in the Ministry of Rites. Ho's mother died when he was ten years old. As a youth Ho attended the Lycée at Hue where he pursued a program of French studies. In the late nineteenth century his great uncle, a nationalist, had been captured by French troops.

Ho was forced to leave school after his father was removed from his government position by the French. Shortly thereafter, Ho signed on board a French merchant ship as a messboy, serving in that capacity for two years. When World War I broke out he was living in London working at menial jobs. Here he made contact with Fabian socialist groups, closely observed the Irish uprising, and mingled with members of the Chinese Overseas Workers' Association. In 1917 Ho moved to Paris where he met intellectuals, trade unionists, and pacifists. Soon afterward, he began writing articles for Le Populaire, La Révolution Proletarienne, and L'Humanité on the subject of independence for Vietnam. Ho made his presence in Paris known as World War I drew to a close. In early 1919, Nguyen Ai Quoc, as he then was known, appeared as a spokesman for Vietnamese nationalism at Versailles where, as one of many undistinguished representatives of smaller nations, he hovered on the fringes of the peace conference. His attempts to present a memorandum to the major powers, requesting basic liberties for Vietnamese, proved unsuccessful.

8

After the signing of the Versailles Treaty, Ho served as one of the representatives at the Eighteenth Congress of the French Socialist Party, which approved the resolution to found the French Communist Party and affiliate it with the Third International. The French Communist Party later arranged to send him as a delegate to Moscow where he was trained in revolutionary methods at the "University of the Toilers of the East." In December 1924, Ho (alias Ly Thuy) arrived in Canton, China, where he served both as an interpreter for Soviet advisors to the Kuomintang, the nationalist political party of China, and as the leader of a small group of expatriate Vietnamese Communists.9

Probably Ho's most notable early work was accomplished when, as a member of the Comintern's committee on colonies, he helped to establish the League of East Asian Oppressed Peoples. By 1925 Ho and his followers,

8

* Jean Lacouture, Ho Chi Minh: A Political Biography (New York: Random House, 1968), pp. 17-18; Fall, Two Viet-Nams, p. 87; Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism, pp. 253–56.

* Fall, Two Viet-Nams, pp. 88–93; Chen, Vietnam and China, pp. 14–23.

still in Canton, had formed the Association of Revolutionary Annamite Youth, some of whose members returned to Vietnam to recruit other followers and set up clandestine political cells. One of the steps taken at this time was the elimination of the greatly respected nationalist leader Phan Boi Chau, now considered by Ho to be a formidable rival. Allegedly, Ho arranged to deliver Chau to the French Security Service for a reward of 100,000 piasters.'

10

Ho Chi Minh and his comrades took a major organizational step on 3 February 1930 when they merged the Communist groups of the north, center, and south of Vietnam into the Communist Party of Indochina. The party then qualified as a national section of the Comintern. Hardly had the party been formed when it launched an offensive. On 1 May, the Communists began to organize mass riots and foment unrest in parts of Annam and Cochin China, efforts that continued into 1933. Predictably, Communist terrorism bred counteraction by the French. The French success in quashing the rebellion was a serious setback to the Indochinese Communist Party and one that almost proved fatal. Ho himself has described the years 1931-1933 as a period of disintegration."1

Following these abortive Communist revolts, Ho ordered the party to go underground. He soon was apprehended by the British police in Hong Kong. The French authorities previously had asked for his extradition to Indochina where a death sentence awaited him. Since they viewed Ho as a political refugee, the British refused, Ho then was transferred to a Hong Kong prison hospital because of a worsening of the tuberculosis from which he long had suffered. The last entry made in Ho's file by the French security police read: "died in Hong Kong prison, 1933." 12

Actually, the "dead" Ho had been slipped out of the prison hospital in 1932 by a British lawyer named Frank Loseby and placed on board a boat bound for Amoy, where he hid for six months. In 1933 Ho resumed his political activities in Shanghai. Some time later, to escape Chiang Kaishek's hunt for Communists, Ho boarded a Soviet ship which sailed to

10 Ibid., p. 18; Ellen J. Hammer, Vietnam: Yesterday and Today (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), p. 129; Hall, History of South-East Asia, p. 719; Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism, p. 260.

"Ho, On Revolution, pp. 127, 208; Ralph Smith, Viet-Nam and the West (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971), pp. 105-07; Giap, Banner of People's War, p. 8; Joseph Buttinger, From Colonialism to the Vietminh, Vol. I of Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967), pp. 217-20.

Vladivostok. From there Ho traveled by train to Moscow. In Moscow, under the name of Livov, he studied at the Lenin Institute, where he also taught Vietnamese history to students in the Asiatic department.

13

A change in strategy of the world Communist movement gave the Communists in Indochina the chance to accumulate powers on a wider basis. In 1934 the Soviet Union pressed for "collective security" against the threat of aggression by Germany and Japan. The Seventh World Congress of the Comintern was convened in August 1935. Concerned with fascism —particularly its advent to power in Germany-and the danger of an attack on the U.S.S.R., the congress declared that the main and immediate task was to establish a "united fighting front." While long-range goals continued to be the overthrow of capitalism and the victory of the proletarian revolution, the united front tactics were to be applied in a new manner in the struggle against fascism. It was deemed the duty of Communist parties to seek to "reach agreements with the organizations of the working people of various political trends for joint action on a factory, local, district, national, and international scale." The parties were to participate in election campaigns on a common platform and a common ticket with the anti-fascist front, while reserving for themselves freedom to use the methods of political agitation and criticism. The congress considered it "necessary to draw the widest masses into the national liberation movement" in the colonial and semi-colonial countries.1

14

In an effort to create a friendly accord with France, the Comintern directed the French Communist Party to cease its subversive activities against the French armed forces. A popular front government temporarily came into power in France, and a Franco-Russian alliance was signed in 1936. Ho Chi Minh adapted his party's line to the new Comintern policy, stating:

For the time being, the Party cannot put forth too high a demand (national independence, parliament, etc.). To do so is to enter the Japanese fascists' scheme. It should only claim for democratic rights, freedom of organization, freedom of assembly, freedom of press and freedom of speech, general amnesty for all political detainees, and struggle for legalization of the Party.

He sought to form a broad "Democratic National Front," including "progressive French" as well as Indochinese "bourgeoisie" and "toiling

13

14

Lacouture, Ho Chi Minh, pp. 64–65; Chen, Vietnam and China, pp. 28-30.

Quoted in VII Congress of the Communist International (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1939), pp. 570-86.