A Historical Biography of Hồ Chí Minh

Introduction

Determining the historical significance of someone is always a matter wide open to fallacies. Retroactively distinguishing whether and to which extent an individual changed the course of history necessarily depends on something that cannot be perceived; Specifically, history without that individual. However, in my research into Hồ Chí Minh’s life I feel confident to say that he was not merely a representation of a movement that could have been easily replaced but a flint, an impetus, that sparked a fire. I distinguish between three categories of his contributions that I will describe in a loose chronological order. Every category lays out relevant historical context and indicates historical constellations which would be significantly different without him.

Hồ Chí Minh’s anti-colonial reinterpretation of Marxism-Leninism according to local Confucian context.

In the year 1911 young Hồ left Vietnam to see the world. He spent his time as a common labourer in both France and the US and came to understand their cultures and languages. Soon after his arrival in France he showed interest in and joined communist causes in Paris. Then already he demonstrated his allegiance to the anti-colonial struggle as a cause and Leninism merely as a means to liberate his people. Writing: “At first, patriotism, not yet Communism, led me to have confidence in Lenin, […] [but I later realized] only Socialism and Communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery’ (Fall, p. 24).

In fact, he believed the colonized people of Vietnam had the will to free themselves but could not for they knew nothing of communism. He was frustrated by the mutual ignorance of the French and Vietnamese proletariats, which only saw each other through a colonial lense as either lesser beings or colonial oppressors (Fall, p. 26-27). Determined to free his people from the colonial chains, Hồ sought to revise Marxism-Leninism and place it in a local Vietnamese context. An extraordinary feat for Vietnamese society at the time had no experiences like those of the industrial revolution that gave rise to Marxist thought. Rather, society was more than 90% agrarian. Luckily, despite not being a scholar, Hồ Chi experienced Confucian thought from a young age and was therefore able to fuse its demands for peace and compromise with a communist revolution for national liberation in a pragmatic and accessible manner, most apparent in his work Duong Cach Mang (Pike, p. 28-29; Huei, 2009, p.2). Through Marxist-Leninist ideology he could help the Vietnamese people create a common identity as belonging to the same class. Only against this backbone could a unity be established, that made collaboration between peoples and consequently the acquiescence of independence feasible.

Hồ Chí Minh’s organization of the Viet Minh.

During his time traveling the world Hồ made himself a network of many notable communists ranging from Trotsky to Chou En-lai. But to his dismay he found himself in the Soviet Union during Stalin’s purge of the Comintern from 1936-1938 but was luckily left alive even though he should have been a target, for he was always more nationalist than communist. Only after, when the USSRs position on indigenous nationalism shifted was, he able to go back to Viet Nam, just in time for the Japanese invasion. In 1941 he founded the Viet Minh whose purpose was first and foremost national independence from the Japanese. Then, when the latter surrendered in World War II, the Viet Minh stepped into the power vacuum. They were, however, only one of multiple nationalist parties claiming the position of government for themselves, but Hồ swiftly took the initiative and persuaded other nationalist parties to form a provisional government with his Viet Minh, which resulted in a working national assembly.

This was the first time Hồ’s organizational skills appeared on the national scene (Huei, 2009, p. 3-4). Something almost all his biographers agree upon is his unparalleled skill of shaping, fusing, and slaying organizations. In fact, he rebuilt his party twice and formed 17 other major organizations in his lifetime, half of which were front organizations. Many ascribe it to his leadership that his party had the greatest internal unity of any communist party globally and was the only that had not experienced a full-scale purge. Personal antipathies and rampant selfishness that elsewhere led to the demise of nationalist groups were unheard of under Hồ’s command (Pike, p. 32-33). This may have been because he recounted his experiences of the aforementioned purge under Stalin. Even though there is consensus about his organizational skills one should keep in mind that apart from the military mastermind general Võ Nguyên Giáp, he did not manage to recruit any other outstanding people and he, in fact, conducted a pre-emptive albeit small purge of the party in 1946, during a truce with the French. Yet then, there remains his finesse in diplomatic relations, which he for instance maintained with both the USSR and China by receiving material and support from both even throughout the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s (Huei, 2009, p. 4-5). At last, the importance of his peaceful abdication of power was a first amongst communist leaders.

Hồ Chí Minh’s use of symbols.

General Võ Nguyên Giáp described that it was only because of the “People’s War” under Hồ Chi’s command that the Vietnamese struggle for independence could be successful. It was this foundational notion of the war as a national rather than ideological struggle that allowed the Viet Minh to win the most significant battle in colonial history; The Battle of Điện Biên Phủ, a supposedly impregnable fortress of the French. Who believed, that by confronting the Viet Minh there, they could end the first Indochina war in a single decisive battle. But precisely, since the struggle was framed as national rather than ideological the Viet Minh could with good conscience incur triple the losses of the French and win (Davidson, 1991, pp. 223). It was the first time since the American revolution that a colonized people had beat their colonial power, thereby shaking the foundations of colonialism. It was in this battle that the Hồ’s years of efforts had for the first time bore fruit. Not only territorial but also ideological ground was won. After the Victory Hồ, in one speech, proclaimed the Vietnamese independence and cited the American declaration of independence and the French declaration of the rights of men. He illustrated how they have perversely failed their own ideals by disrespecting the humanity of the Vietnamese (Minh).

In fact, from this point on he would often stress the hypocrisy of the west, for this was a part of his military strategy during the conflict with the US. In interviews he would mention how unfathomable it was to him how a colonial people who had gained independence fought to supress the independence of other colonial people (Whitman). Yet, he was not speaking out of frustration, rather from a correct belief that the war could not be won by killing all American troops, but rather by making fighting for the Americans untenable through the demoralization of their troops with guerrilla tactics and changing the American public’s opinion of the war. (“Interview Vo Nguyen Giap”). In essence, Hồ understood the power of symbolism and metaphorically directed a mirror towards the west. Finally, he knew that he himself had become a symbol for the class struggle and in his testament wrote that he “goes now to join Marx, Lenin, and the other revolutionary elders.” (“The last testament”).