Celebrate the life of Comrade Ho Chi Minh
On the occasion of the 120th
anniversary of the birth of Comrade Ho Chi Minh we publish a summary of the
heroic struggle he led against Japanese, French and US imperialism.
The culmination of Ho Chi Minh’s life work is
wonderfully encapsulated in the words of General Vo Nguyen: “Time will pass by, but the Vietnamese
people’s victory in the war of resistance against the US will forever enter
history as one of the most brilliant exploits, a shining symbol of the triumph
of revolutionary heroism and the human mind. It has gone into the world’s
history as a great feat-of-arms of the 20th century, an event of international
importance and of profound epochal character … Vietnam became the focal point
of the fierce struggle between revolutionaries and reactionaries in the world,
a place where there was a [battle] between progress and reaction,
between justice and injustice in the struggle of humanity for peace, national
independence, democracy and social progress.” (‘The anti-US war for national salvation – a great victory of ability and intelligence’, 2005)
Early life of Ho Chi Minh
Nguyen Tat Thanh (later known as Ho Chi Minh) was
born in Nghe An Province on 19 May 1890. He spent his very early years in a
patriotic family – his father resigned his post in protest against French
domination, and his older sister and brother both took part in the anti-French
resistance movements and were imprisoned by the colonialists.
He left Vietnam in 1911 as a cook on a steamship,
working in the US and the UK until he settled in France for a while in the
early 1920s where he was known as Nguyen Ai Quoc (Nguyen the Patriot).
Instinctively he supported the October Revolution, although had not yet read
Lenin’s books.
He then began to study Marxism-Leninism and
participated in heated discussions regarding participation in the Second or
Third International. He asked the question: “which International sides with
the peoples of colonial countries?” In response “a comrade gave me
Lenin’s ‘Thesis on the national and colonial question’ published by
‘L’Humanite’ to read. There were political terms difficult to understand in
this thesis. But by dint of reading it again and again, finally I could grasp
the main part of it. What emotion, enthusiasm, clear-sightedness and confidence
it instilled into me! I was overjoyed to tears. Though sitting alone in my
room, I shouted out aloud as if addressing large crowds: ‘Dear martyrs
compatriots! This is what we need, this is the path to our liberation!’ After
then, I had entire confidence in Lenin, in the Third International. ” (Ho
Chi Minh, ‘The path which led me to Leninism’, Selected Works Vol. 4)
In 1921 he participated in the founding of the
French Communist Party and in 1924 attended the Fifth Congress of the Communist
International in Moscow, when he was appointed as a standing member of the
Oriental Department, before going to China, where he organised a revolutionary
movement among Vietnamese exiles.
Formation of the
Communist Party
The Indochinese Communist Party was brought into
being mainly by the efforts of Nguyen Ai Quoc. It was in his capacity as a
representative of the Communist International that he was able to convene a
meeting of representatives of different communist groups from Indochina on 3
February 1930 in Kowloon, near Hong Kong, to settle the question of uniting the
Indochinese communist forces into a single Indochinese Communist Party. The
conference at Kowloon put forward the political line of carrying out a
bourgeois democratic revolution, including an agrarian revolution, in order to
overthrow the French imperialists and the feudal rulers, of gaining complete
independence and of leading forward to socialism and communism. To ensure
success for this political line it was necessary to build up a party of the
working class, form a worker-peasant alliance, establish a worker-peasant army,
organise a national united front and achieve solidarity between the Indochinese
revolution and the world revolutionary movement.
Right after the setting up of the Party a mass
revolutionary movement flared up throughout the whole of Vietnam, the apex of
which was the setting up of the Nghe An and Ha Tinh Soviets; workers and
peasants in these provinces rose up to overthrow the colonial rule and the
local administration of the mandarins and despots, setting up worker-peasant
power in some rural areas. Again in 1936 a new revolutionary wave swept over Vietnam, which, because of the setting up of the French Popular Front government in France itself, was helped by the legalisation of several of the party’s newspapers. The
party was able to adopt a new orientation, shifting from underground to
semi-clandestine and semi-legal activities.
The struggle kept on mounting after the Second
World War broke out, especially after the surrender of the French Army in France itself to the German fascists and after the entry of Japanese troops into Indochina. It was
in August 1940 that the Japanese troops attacked Lang Son and the French
retreated south. The French colonialists shamefully surrendered and opened
the door of Indochina to welcome in the Japanese. But the Vietnamese people
resolutely opposed both the Japanese and French Fascists.
In 1941, now known as Ho Chi Minh (Bringer of
Light), Nguyen Ai Quoc returned to Vietnam to take up direct leadership of the
Vietnamese revolutionary movement. The eighth session of the party Central
Committee was called at Pac Bo and was presided over by Ho Chi Minh. Analysing
the situation in Vietnam and taking into account the world situation with the
German, Italian and Japanese fascists being in a strong position, the central
committee concluded that the revolution to be carried out in the immediate
future should be a national liberation revolution, and that each Indochinese
country should settle this question within their own country; and so the
Vietnam Workers Party was formed.
A national liberation revolution needed to unite as
many forces as possible to fight against the French and Japanese fascist
aggressors. So the Vietnam Independence League (or Vietminh in short) was set
up, which was comprised of National Salvation Associations of different strata
of the population. It was decided to set up revolutionary bases, build up and
develop armed forces, speed up revolutionary work in all its aspects, to
prepare for an armed uprising, preceding from local uprisings to a general
uprisings to seize power.
This programme adopted by the Vietminh gave the
hope of a bright future to the Vietnamese people who were suffering at the
hands of the French and Japanese fascists. In spite of severe repression the
publications of the Vietminh and the Party “denounced … the illusion of
seizing power through peaceful negotiations with the Japanese, fought against
the aggression and sabotage of Trotskyites and the ABs [1]
against division and factionalism, to consolidate unity and oneness of mind in
the Party and the Front, and strengthen the Party’s leadership of the
Vietnamese revolution” (‘An
Outline History of the Vietnam Workers Party’, page 35, Foreign Languages
Publishing House, Hanoi 1970). By educating through their publications, the
Vietminh was able to prepare the people for an armed uprising.
Japanese fascists
defeated
At the end of 1944 the anti-fascist war in the east
being waged by the Soviet Army was winning great victories. The fate of the
German fascists was sealed. In the Pacific area the Japanese were in a
hopeless situation, so while defeat was in the offing for the fascists and
while fighting broke out between the French and Japanese, with the enemy
divided, the time for general uprisings was ripe. In areas where conditions
were favourable, guerrilla warfare was intensified and the local administration
was overthrown. In March 1945 the Vietnam Liberation Army was set up, and in
June 1945 a liberated zone was created which comprised six Viet Bac provinces:
Coa Bang, Bac Can, Lang Son, Thai Nguyen, Tuyen Quang and Ha Giang. This
liberated zone became the principal revolutionary base for the whole country,
and it was to grow up into the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
In August 1945 imperialism was so weakened by war
that the Vietminh were able to take full advantage of the situation. The Soviet Union at this time was going from strength to strength. World War Two was ending.
The German and Italian fascists had laid down their arms and on 8 August 1945
the Soviet Union declared war on the Japanese fascists. Within a few days, the
Soviet armed forces had crushed the Japanese crack armies stationed in North-East China. On 15 August 1945 Japan unconditionally surrendered to the Soviet Union and other Allied powers. On 16 August at Tan Troa in Vietnam, the peoples congress put out an order for a general uprising and elected the
Provisional Government with Ho Chi Minh as President. The policy put forward
was to mobilise the people for an uprising to seize power before Allied troops
landed in Indochina; to disarm Japanese troops, wrest power from the Japanese
and overthrow the Japanese puppets, so that the Vietnamese could receive Allied
troops in their capacity as masters of their own country. In Hanoi on 19
August a successful uprising took place, quickly followed by another success in
Hue on the 23rd and yet another on the 25th in Saigon. Within eleven days,
the general uprising had succeeded in all provinces, bringing the August
Revolution to a successful conclusion.
Birth of Democratic Republic of Vietnam
On 2 September 1945 in the capital, Hanoi, Ho Chi
Minh, on behalf of the Provisional Government, read the Declaration of
Independence, announcing to the Vietnamese people and to the world the
birth of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN), the beginning of a new era
in the history of the Vietnamese people, the era when the Vietnamese people
could become the real masters of their country. About the August Revolution,
Ho Chi Minh wrote:
“Not only the Vietnamese labouring classes and
people, but also the labouring class and oppressed people elsewhere can be
proud that this was the first time in the history of colonial and semi-colonial
peoples that a party which was only fifteen years old, has successfully led a
revolution and seized power in the whole country”.
Anti-French resistance
With the birth of the DRVN, there were tremendous
problems to overcome immediately. In the north Chiang Kai-shek troops had
arrived on a so-called mission to disarm Japanese troops in Indo-China. On the
same so-called mission British troops, under the orders of the Attlee Labour
Government, had landed in the south; they were there in fact to help the French
regain a foothold in Vietnam. A race against time was needed to organise
general elections to demonstrate that the revolutionary power was a real power
of the people. On 6 January 1946 general elections were successfully held throughout
the country.
Since the Chiang Kai-shek troops were being
confronted with the powerfully growing revolutionary struggle of the Chinese
people under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, the Central
Committee pointed out that the Vietnamese people must concentrate their
fighting against the French colonialist aggressors as they were the main
enemy. ‘Support the Resistance’ committees were set up everywhere; supporting
and encouraging the south Vietnamese fight against the French became a broad
and seething political campaign.
As measures were being taken to improve people’s
living conditions such as a 25% reduction in land rent, confiscation of the
holdings of the French colonialists, equitable redistribution of communal lands
to all citizens, promulgation of the eight-hour day, etc. along with education,
etc. so that by the end of 1946 over two million people had learned how to read
and write, the Vietnamese people were unreservedly prepared to fight to throw
out all the imperialist aggressors and colonialist who had been sapping the
life-blood of the Vietnamese people.
Ho Chi Minh was thus able to make this appeal and
be confident that the Vietnamese people would carry it out: “We would rather
sacrifice everything than lose our country. We are determined not to be
enslaved. … Those who have rifles will use their rifles; those who have
swords will use their words; those who have no swords will use spades, shoes
and sticks. Everyone must endeavour to oppose the colonialists and save the
country. .. Whatever hardships we may have to endure in the war of resistance,
with our determination to face all sacrifices, victory will surely be ours!”
In spite of the lack of arms and equipment, the
Vietnamese people were able to hold back the aggressive attacks of the French.
At the end of 1947 the French mounted, with ten thousand troops, a large scale
offensive against Viet Bac, hoping to destroy the base area of the whole
country. However after two months of heroic fighting the people and the armed
forces smashed the French plan for a lightning war, and managed to capture
large quantities of weapons and military equipment. To the victories of the
Vietnamese were added those of the world revolutionary movement. In October
1949 the Chinese revolution triumphed. In January 1950 the Democratic Republic
of Vietnam was recognised by the Soviet Union, China and other peoples’
democracies. In order to break the imperialist encirclement of the liberated
areas in the north, so that the Vietnamese might have a direct land link with
the socialist allies, an offensive by the armed forces to expand the Viet Bac
base area was launched and succeeded. The break in the imperialist
encirclement of Vietnam marked a great leap in the growth of the strength of the
people and armed forces.
This success, added to many other victories over
the French, who by this time were relying heavily on the United States for arms and every other kind of support, prepared the people and armed forces of Vietnam for a general counter-offensive. At the Vietnam Workers’ Party Second National
Congress in February 1951, President Ho Chi Minh was able to say: “We are
still making active preparations for the general counter-offensive. … When
the preparations are truly completed, the general counter-offensive will be
mounted. The more complete the preparations, the quicker the general
counter-offensive and the more favourable the conditions attending to it”
(Selected Works p. 351).
The political programme of the Vietnam Workers’
Party, which was adopted by the 1951 Congress, pointed out that: “The basic
task of the Vietnamese revolution now is to drive out the imperialist
aggressors, to gain genuine independence and unity for the nation, to remove
the feudal and semi-feudal leftovers, to give land to the tillers, to develop
the people’s democratic regime, to lay foundations for socialism”.
Even while the resistance was going on, in 1953 the
Central Committee decided to mobilise the masses for strictly carrying out the
reduction of land rents and for achieving a land reform, thus putting into
effect the slogan: “Land to the tillers”. The “Land to the tillers”
campaign showed the large numbers of peasants in Vietnam that it was in their
interest to fight with the Vietnamese working class to overthrow the
imperialists, so the resistance forces became stronger and they continued to
record big victories.
Dien Bien Phu Victory
During the winter of 1953, General Navarre,
commander-in-chief of the French expeditionary corps, tried to regain the initiative
by concentrating 112 battalions in Bac Bo. On 20 November 1953 the French
dropped 5,000 troops by parachute on Dien Bien Phu, which was to serve as a big
trap in which to lure the Vietnamese and so secure a foothold in the
north-west. Dien Bien Phu was turned into a powerful entrenched camp held by
16,000 crack French troops equipped with weapons supplied by the US.
The Vietnamese armed forces were determined to
deprive the French of this stronghold. By launching offensives in many widely
distant regions, the Vietnamese forced Navarre to disperse his forces over a
wider area while the guerrilla warfare developed in the enemy’s rear area. The
French command had lost all strategic initiative. Dien Bien Phu was recaptured
by the Vietnamese on 7 May 1954 after 56 days of fighting. The brilliant
victory of Dien Bien Phu forced the French government to sign the Geneva
Agreements on 20 July 1954 in spite of US attempts at prolonging and extending
the conflict.
Military historian Martin Windrow characterised the
Dien Bien Phu victory as “the first time that a non-European colonial
independence movement had evolved through all the stages from guerrilla bands
to a conventionally organized and equipped army able to defeat a modern Western
occupier in pitched battle.” (quoted by Michael Kenney, ‘British Historian
Takes a Brilliant Look at French Fall in Vietnam’. Boston Globe,
4 January 4, 2005).
French troops withdraw
The Geneva Conference, whose participant countries
were Cambodia, Democratic Republic of Vietnam, France, Laos, People’s Republic of China, State of Vietnam, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United State of America, all recognised the independence, unity and territorial integrity of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The Vietnamese people were to carry out free general elections in 1956
in order to reunify their country. The French troops were to be withdrawn from
Indochina.
Because all the other participant countries were
agreed on the Geneva Agreements, the US imperialists had to make a declaration
pledging respect to the Geneva Conference on Indochina. This, of course, as we
all know, was in words only because even in 1953 President Eisenhower, speaking
at the Governors’ Conference had this to say about Indochina: “Now let us
assume that we lost Indochina. If Indochina goes, several things happen right
away. The peninsula, the last bit of land hanging down there would scarcely be
defensible. The tin and tungsten that we so greatly value from that area would
cease coming. … So when the United States vote four hundred million dollars
to help the war we are not voting a give-away programme. We are voting for the
cheapest way that we can to prevent the occurrence of something that would be
of a most terrible significance to the USA, our security, our power and ability
to get certain things we need from the riches of Indochinese territory and from
southeast Asia” (‘Remarks at the Governors’ Conference’, Seattle, 4
August).
From this statement of President Eisenhower it is
quite clear that by 1954 the US were already involved in the war, and that the
declaration of supporting the Geneva Agreement meant nothing compared to the
tin and tungsten they were getting from Indochina.
After 1954 the US imperialists couldn’t bear to see
such “riches of Indochinese territory” fall from their grasp so they
attempted to use the Ngo Dinh Diem stooge administration in south Vietnam to
turn it into a new type colony and a military base, in order to attack the
socialist north, and to create havoc in the 1956 general elections, because
they knew if the Geneva Agreements were actually implemented then Ho Chi Minh
would become president, and “the tin and tungsten that we so greatly valued
from that area would cease coming”.
However in spite of the US imperialists’ trickery
neither the south Vietnamese nor their compatriots were going to give up the
fight.
North liberated
completely
From 1954, in the north the enemy had to accept
defeat and had to stop (for the time being) bombardments of the whole of the
territory of the DRVN. This quotation shows what the Geneva Agreements meant
to the people of north Vietnam: “On 1 January 1955 our people held a big
mass rally at Ba Dinh Square to welcome President Ho Chi Minh, the Party
Central Committee and the Government back to the capital after nearly nine
years of arduous and heroic resistance. This important historical event made a
deep impression on and had great political significance for the people of the
whole country. On 16 May 1955 we liberated the whole area of Hai Phong. The
last expeditionary soldier of the French colonialists had left north Vietnam. Half of our country was liberated. That marked our people’s brilliant
victory.
“The north, completely liberated, had the
necessary conditions to pass into the stage of socialist revolution….
“Under the leadership of the Party, our people
strove to turn to account the advantages and overcome the difficulties so as to
fulfil two very great tasks, namely the completion of land reform and the
rehabilitation of the national economy with a view to preparing for the
transition of the north to the stage of socialist revolution” (ibid).
The southern part of
Vietnam
After the northern part of Vietnam was liberated,
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 people’s national democratic
revolution in the whole country.
The people in the south were very much encouraged
by the support, both material and political, which north Vietnam and other
socialist countries were giving. From 1955 to 1959 political struggles for
consultations and for general elections (according to the Geneva Agreements),
in order to reunify the country, were carried on by the south Vietnamese
people, revolutionary bases were set up and held, in spite of cruel
intimidation and a campaign of ‘denunciation and extermination’ by the Ngo Dinh
Diem puppet clique.
In 1960 the struggle against the US-Diem clique
grew even stronger. The people of south Vietnam felt that they could no longer
live under such a fascist brutal regime, and a tidal wave of uprising and
demonstrations swept through the country. In this way three quarters of the
territory was liberated under the direction of the broad organisation, the
National Front for Liberation (NLF) (derogatively referred to as the
‘Vietcong’). The revolutionary armed forces developed very quickly after the
founding of the NLF. By February 1961 the Peoples’ Liberation Armed Forces
(PLAF) were formed.
The PLAF recorded many victories, particularly by
attacking enemy supply lines, etc. and had by 1968 won great victories, both in
the dry and rainy seasons, thus giving the imperialists no time to rest. While
the US aggressors were groping in the dark for new plans, the PLAF launched the
Tet general offensive in February 1968 with lightening attacks on 64 towns,
including the ‘Presidential Palace’ and the US Embassy, along with 24 airbases,
etc.
The US command panicked at the prospect of another Dien Bien Phu. Losses of the US troops were severe and the puppet administration was
collapsing, with civil servants abandoning their posts. The Tet offensive
forced the US to begin negotiating in 1968, although it was an extremely drawn
out process which did not culminate in the signing of the Paris Peace Accords
until 1973.
Reactionary role of
Trotskyites
Let it be said in passing, that the Trotskyites in Britain, as elsewhere, did their usual dirty work to sabotage the movement for solidarity with Vietnam. They denounced the NLF as “bourgeois” because it was conducting a national
liberation struggle (and as always the Trotskyites avoid the struggle
appropriate to the conditions of the time for some future fight they never, in
fact, get round to). They denounced Ho Chi Minh as a “Stalinist bureaucrat”.
He was certainly not a bureaucrat but was certainly a thorough going
Marxist-Leninist and as such a supporter of Stalin and that, of course, was
anathema to the Trotskyites. Instead of backing the clear and precise slogans:
“Victory to the NLF” and “Long Live Ho Chi Minh”, this gentry
advanced the vague slogan “Victory to the Vietnamese revolution”
(without any indication about how it might be achieved).
In particular, they opposed the adoption of these
two slogans on the occasion of the historic October 1968 demonstration in London against the war in Vietnam. In the event, such were the victories being won by the
NLF and the strength of the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, and under the pressure
of mass sentiment, that on the actual demonstration the Trotskyites were forced
to chant the above two slogans even as they tried to lead the solidarity movement
astray. Thanks to their sabotage, the Vietnamese solidarity movement in Britain went into serious decline after 1968.
Crimes of US imperialism
In its impotent rage the US intensified the bombing
of the occupied and liberated areas for several more years. They dropped bombs
and mines to kill the civilian population, splinter bombs to maim and kill,
napalm bombs to kill and burn, toxic bombs to kill and destroy the crops and
vegetation and all of these devices were dropped in vast quantities. According
to data published by the US Defence Department: from early 1969 to July 1971 on
Nixon’s orders, 5,975,522 tons of bombs and shells had poured onto Indochina,
mostly on south Vietnam. That is more than twice the ordnance tonnage used in
World War Two, and over a hundred times bigger than the size of bombs on Hiroshima (15,000 tons) and Nagasaki (20,000 tons). The Vietnam figure, being a US estimate, can be taken as an under-estimate!
As Nixon’s policy of ‘Vietnamisation of the war’
got underway in 1969, there was no doubt that the US imperialists were being
defeated. One of the main strategic policies of the ‘Vietnamisation of the
war’ policy was ‘pacification’ which was aimed at winning people over,
expanding the areas under US – puppet control, wiping out the revolutionary
forces, strengthening the political basis of the puppet administration and
expanding the possibilities for it to draft people, especially in the
countryside into the puppet army.
This ‘pacification’ programme meant that in the
period 1969-71, 2,275,00 hectares of cropfields were sprayed with toxic
chemicals, over 3,000 hamlets (25% of the total) had been razed to the ground,
and according to Associated Press (AP) (21 September 1971) W Colby who was
responsible for the ‘pacification’ programme in south Vietnam, admitted the
5,800,000 civilians – one third of south Vietnam’s population – were either
killed, wounded or forcibly removed from their dwellings. In spite of the
killing and the bombings, Senator George McGovern was reported in AP, on 23
September 1971 as saying “Despite 50,000 GIs dead and ten years of
defoliation and bombing, no road is safe at night and less than five per cent
of the villages are secure”.
However, such were the victories of the south
Vietnamese people under the leadership of the NLF, they were able to attack
both the US aggressors and the puppet forces without let up and hold out in the
liberated areas, looking after the wounded, teaching the children, keeping the
roads and supply routes open, fighting the aggressive US army and puppets and
producing goods to be able to live and fight!
Many of these tasks were done underground in a
network of tunnels. Facing the continuous bombing raids and to be out of sight
of the enemy this was an excellent and now world-famous tactic. For example
near Saigon: “Hospital C2 is one hospital like all others, but the
difference is that it lies in a place pockmarked with enemy positions on
the approaches to Saigon.. .. Here the enemy has resorted to the most barbarous
methods. Yet the hospital has kept operating. Its personnel have had to fight
against the enemy to defend their ground. Everything is under ground –
dwelling houses, operating rooms, pharmacy, rooms for the wounded soldiers.
Besides their professional duties, doctors, assistant doctors, nurses have
learned how to handle weapons of various types and how to fight the enemy”.
However, the US was unable to defeat the dauntless
Vietnamese liberation fighters and, with the ‘Vietnamisation’ policy, began
reducing troop numbers in 1969. At the same time as the accompanying
‘pacification’ programme in the south, the US imperialists made vicious attacks
on north Vietnam, aimed at killing the civilian population, with the bombing of
dykes, the mining of Haip Phong harbour, bombing of hospitals, schools,
factories, etc. .. all of which was fairly unsuccessful because the casualties
were surprisingly very light – the DRVN took great care and used great speed
to evacuate the civilians. With no battles or encounters going the right way
for the US imperialist they were forced to sign the Paris Accords on 27 January
1973. The signing of the Paris Accords was indeed a victory for the Vietnamese
people.
Even after signing the Paris Accords, the US still tried to prop up the puppet regime in the south, retain its influence, and prevent the
unification of Vietnam. But in April 1975 the puppet government finally
surrendered. There followed the famous scenes of US diplomats, troops and
puppets scrambling to be evacuated by helicopter from the roof of the US
Embassy compound in Saigon. The Vietnamese people had fought heroically to win
their national rights.
Long live Ho Chi Minh
In order not to break the thread of the narrative
of the Vietnamese national liberation struggle – which was the life’s work of
Comrade Ho Chi Minh – the fact that he died on 3 September 1969 before its
completion was not included above. For although his death was an extremely sad
occasion, taking place before the final defeat of US imperialism and the
reunification of Vietnam on 30 April 1975, the revolutionary struggle of the
Vietnamese people, carried out for so long under his leadership and completed
after his death, was the culmination and fulfilment of the mission to dear to
Ho Chi Minh and so ably espoused by him over several decades. He was the true
leader of the Communist Party of Vietnam and the Vietnamese people’s victory.
As the Communist Party of Vietnam reported of his
funeral: “In the world, people of various nationalities and political
beliefs came and paid their last respects to Ho Chi Minh at our embassies and
diplomatic representations abroad, wrote condolences and signed the book of
mourning. In many countries the population held meetings, memorial ceremonies
or marched in processions carrying his portrait. In the United States and several West European countries, the people turned memorial ceremonies in honour
of Ho Chi Minh into demonstrations against the aggressive war of the American
imperialists in Vietnam.
“Those were expressions of the fine, deep and
sincere feelings of the world’s peoples for Ho Chi Minh, their noble-hearted
friendship with our people, and of the precious political support of the whole
of progressive mankind for our nation’s just struggle against US imperialist aggression.
“Those deep feelings were due to the fact that
Ho Chi Minh’s great revolutionary work was closely linked to the achievements
of our Party, of our people, of the Vietnamese nation now fighting heroically
and winning glorious victories, thus setting a brilliant example of struggle
for national liberation, independence and freedom, and socialism. Ho Chi Minh
was also venerated for his great contribution to the world revolution and to
the communist and international workers’ movement, for his noble virtues, his
high-minded and generous feelings toward our brothers and friends around the
world.” (‘Biography, Ho Chi Minh will live forever in the hearts of the
people of Vietnam and the world’ www.cpv.org.vn)
For the progressive movement in this country, the
successful struggle of the Vietnamese people against the Japanese, French and
US imperialists will be for ever a glorious moment in our history. The waging
of the national liberation and socialist struggle in Vietnam led by Comrade Ho
Chi Minh according to the principles of Marxism-Leninism is a lesson that all
workers and oppressed people must keep dear to their heart!
NOTE
[1] Anti-Bolsheviks (ABs) – sabotage agents employed by
the French fascists who feigned to be communists in order to undermine the
Party.