Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh is president of Vietnam from 1945 until 1969. President Ho Chi Minh was the great master of the Vietnamese revolution, the beloved leader of the Vietnamese working class and the entire nation, an eminent soldier, a brilliant activist of the international communist and national liberation movements. Ho Chi Minh has helped Vietnamese to archive freedom and independent. Ho Chi Minh, From 1895, he grew up in his father's hometown of Kimlien, Namdan, Nghean Province. He had three siblings: his sister Bach Lien (or Nguyen Thi Thanh), a clerk in the French Army; his brother Nguyen Sinh Khiem (or Nguyen Tat at), a geomancer and traditional herbalist; and another brother (Nguyen Sinh Nhuan) who died in his infancy. As a young child, Ho Chi Minh studied with his father before more formal classes with a scholar named Vuong Thuc Do. Ho Chi Minh quickly mastered Chinese writing, a requisite for any serious study of Confucianism, while honing his colloquial Vietnamese writing. In addition to his studious endeavors, he was fond of adventure, and loved to fly kites and go fishing. Following Confucian tradition, at the age of 10, his father gave him a new name: Nguyen Tat Thanh. Ho Chi Minhs father, Nguyen Sinh Sac, was a Confucian scholar and teacher, and later an imperial magistrate in the small remote district of Binh Khe (Qui Nhon). He was demoted for abuse of power after an influential local figure died several days after receiving 100 strokes of the cane as punishment for an infraction. In deference to his father, Ho Chi Minh received a French education, attended lyce in Hu, the alma mater of his later disciples, Pham Van Dong and Vo Nguyen Giap. He later left his studies and chose to teach at Dc Thanh school in Phan Thiet. On 3 June 1911, Ho Chi Minh left the country and was employed as a cook on a French steamship liner and thereafter worked in London and Paris. He lived on doing different jobs. He also participated in the revolutionary movements of many peoples while making great efforts to struggle for his nations independence and freedom. Ho Chi Minh was the first Vietnamese supporter to the Russian October Revolution and found the Marxism-Leninism the way to liberate the working class and peoples in colonial countries. At various points between 1913 and 1919, Ho Chi Minh lived in West Ealing, and later in Crouch End, Hornsey. He reportedly worked as a chef at the Drayton Court Hotel in West Ealing. It is claimed that Ho Chi Minh trained as a pastry chef under Auguste Escoffier at the Carlton Hotel in the Haymarket, Westminster, but there is no evidence to support this. However, the wall of New Zealand House, home of the New Zealand High Commission, which now stands on the site of the Carlton Hotel, displays a blue plaque, stating that Ho Chi Minh worked there in 1913 as a waiter. From 1919-1923, while living in France, Ho Chi Minh began to approach the idea of communism, through his friend and Socialist Party of France comrade Marcel Cachin. Cung claimed to have arrived in Paris from London in 1917, but the French police only had documents of his arrival in June 1919. Following World War I, under the name Nguyen Ai Quoc ("Nguyen the Patriot"), he petitioned for recognition of the civil rights of the Vietnamese people in French Indochina to the Western powers at the Versailles peace talks, but was ignored. Citing the language and the spirit of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Ho Chi Minh petitioned U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to help remove the French from Vietnam and replace them with a new, nationalist government. Although he was unable to obtain consideration at Versailles, the failure further radicalized Ho Chi Minh, while also making him a national hero of the anti-colonial movement at home in Vietnam.

In 1920, he took part in establishing the French Communist Party in the Tour Congress. and spent much of his time in Moscow afterward, becoming the Comintern's Asia hand and the principal theorist on colonial warfare. During the Indochina War, the PCF would be involved with anti-war propaganda, sabotage and support for the revolutionary effort. In 1921, he founded the Union of French Colonial Nations; published the newspaper Le Paria in France (1922). In 1923, Ho Chi Minh left Paris for Moscow, where he was employed by the Comintern, studied at the Communist University of the Toilers of the Eas. He became a member of the International Peasantry Committee. In 1924, he attended the Fifth Congress of Communist International and was appointed a standing member of the Oriental Department. In late 1924, he was sent to Canton, China, where he organized a revolutionary movement among Vietnamese exiles. He was forced to leave China when local authorities cracked down on Communist activities In 1925, he participated in establishing the Union of Asian Oppressed Nations, and published the two famous books, The Indictment of French Colonialism (1925) and The Revolutionary Path (1927). In 1925, he founded the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth Association in Guangzhou (China) and organized Communist League as the core of the association, training communist cadres to lead the association and popularize Marxism-Leninism in Vietnam. On 3 February 1930, he presided the Party Founding Conference in Jiulong (Hong Kong). The Conference approved the Brief Political Platform, Brief Policy and the Party Statutes drafted by Ho Chi Minh. He gave an appeal on the occasion of the Communist Party of Vietnam (later renamed the Indochina Communist Party, the Vietnam Workers Party and nowadays the Communist Party of Vietnam). From 1930 to 1940, Ho Chi Minh engaged in activities to liberate the Vietnamese nationand other oppressed peoples under difficult conditions and hardships. In 1941, he returned Vietnam, convening the 8th Conference of the Central Committee of the Indochina Communist Party, deciding the way for national salvation, establishing the Vietnamese Independent Alliance Association (Viet Minh), building armed forces and revolutionary bases, leading the people to launch the uprisings and prepare the general insurrection to seize power throughout the country. After the August 1945 Revolution, on 2 September 1945, at Ba Dinh Square, Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence to establish the Democratic Republic of Vietnam; organized the free nationwide general selection to elect the National Assembly and approved the first democratic Constitution of Vietnam. The First National Assembly appointed Ho Chi Minh as the President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam . Together with the Party Central Committee, President Ho Chi Minh appealed and lead the whole Party, the entire people and army to defeat all schemes of the imperialists, protecting and strengthening the revolutionary government.

Under the leadership of the Central Party Committee, headed by President Ho Chi Minh, our resistance war won a resounding victory at Dien Bien Phu (1954). The 1954 Geneva Accords, concluded between France and the Viet Minh, provided Vietminh forces would regroup in the North and the anti-communist & pro-democracy forces regroup in the South. Ho Chi Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam relocated to Hanoi and became the government of North Vietnam, a communist-led single party state. After the Northern part of Vietnam was liberated (1955), the Party Central Committee and President Ho Chi Minh put forward the two strategic tasks for the Vietnamese revolution: carrying out the socialist revolution and building socialism in the North; and struggling to liberate the South and reunify the country, fulfilling the peoples national democratic revolution in the whole country. The Geneva accords also provided for a national election to reunify the country in 1956, but this was rejected by Ngo Dinh Diem's government and the United States. The U.S government committed itself to contain the spread of communism in Asia beginning in 1950, when they funded 80% of the French effort. After Geneva, the U.S became the replacement for France as Republic of Vietnam's chief sponsor and financial backer, but there was never a written treaty between the United States and South Vietnam. With the Party Central Committee, President Ho Chi Minh guided the great resistance war of the Vietnamese people to fight against the American aggressors as well as led the cause of socialist renewal and construction in North Vietnam. On September 3, 1969, he died in Hanoi. In his honor, after the Communist conquest of the South in 1975, Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Ho Chi Minh was not only the founder of Vietnamese communism, he was the very soul of the revolution and of Vietnam's struggle for independence. Ho Chi Minh, who devoted his whole life to the national liberation, set a bright example of patriotism and noble sacrifices. His life becomes a legend. Ho Chi Minh is a charismatic leader. He has an inordinate level of power and an emotional impact on his audience. He inspires the Vietnamese with the use of his political charisma. He uses this charismatic charm internationally and domestically. He projects the image of a simple, humble, and passionate old man who puts a great touch of wisdom in what he does. This is what helps grow around him a charismatic cult. Ho Chi Minh was a fervent democrat who shares the belief that the will of the people must always be served and allowed to prevail. To mention a quotation from Ho: If people in an independent country do not enjoy happiness and freedom then independence has no meaning.