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In 1930, he founded the Communist Party of Vietnam and in 1941, he returned to Vietnam and founded the Việt Minh independence movement, an umbrella group. Then, Hồ led the August Revolution against the Japanese in August 1945, which resulted in the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
- Overview
- Early life
- Founding of the Indochinese Communist Party
Ho Chi Minh led a long and ultimately successful campaign to make Vietnam independent. He was president of North Vietnam from 1945 to 1969, and he was one of the most influential communist leaders of the 20th century. His seminal role is reflected in the fact that Vietnam’s largest city is named for him.
How did Ho Chi Minh grow up?
Ho Chi Minh grew up in a small village in what was then French Indochina. As a teen, he attended a good school in Hue. As a young man, he traveled the world as a seaman, took various jobs in London, and moved to France, where he advocated for Vietnamese nationalism and became a communist.
Ho Chi Minh (born May 19, 1890, Hoang Tru, Vietnam, French Indochina—died September 2, 1969, Hanoi, North Vietnam) founder of the Indochina Communist Party (1930) and its successor, the Viet-Minh (1941), and president from 1945 to 1969 of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). As the leader of the Vietnamese nationalist movement for nearly three decades, Ho was one of the prime movers of the post-World War II anti-colonial movement in Asia and one of the most influential communist leaders of the 20th century.
The son of a poor country scholar, Nguyen Sinh Huy, Ho Chi Minh was brought up in the village of Kim Lien. He had a wretched childhood, but between the ages of 14 and 18 he was able to study at a grammar school in Hue. He is next known to have been a schoolmaster in Phan Thiet and then was apprenticed at a technical institute in Saigon.
In 1911, under the name of Ba, he found work as a cook on a French steamer. He was a seaman for more than three years, visiting various African ports and the American cities of Boston and New York. After living in London from 1915 to 1917, he moved to France, where he worked, in turn, as a gardener, sweeper, waiter, photo retoucher, and oven stoker.
During the six years that he spent in France (1917–23), he became an active socialist under the name Nguyen Ai Quoc (“Nguyen the Patriot”). He organized a group of Vietnamese living there and in 1919 addressed an eight-point petition to the representatives of the great powers at the Versailles Peace Conference that concluded World War I. In the petition, Ho demanded that the French colonial power grant its subjects in Indochina equal rights with the rulers. This act brought no response from the peacemakers, but it made him a hero to many politically conscious Vietnamese. The following year, inspired by the success of the communist revolution in Russia and Vladimir Lenin’s anti-imperialist doctrine, Ho joined the French Communists when they withdrew from the Socialist Party in December 1920.
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After his years of militant activity in France, where he became acquainted with most of the French working-class leaders, Ho went to Moscow at the end of 1923. In January 1924, following the death of Lenin, he published a moving farewell to the founder of the Soviet Union in Pravda. Six months later, from June 17 to July 8, he took an active part in the Fifth Congress of the Communist International, during which he criticized the French Communist Party for not opposing colonialism more vigorously. His statement to the congress is noteworthy because it contains the first formulation of his belief in the importance of the revolutionary role of oppressed peasants (as opposed to industrial workers).
Meeting in Hong Kong in May 1929, members of the Thanh Nien decided to form the Indochinese Communist Party (PCI). Others—in the Vietnamese cities of Hanoi, Hue, and Saigon—began the actual work of organization, but some of Ho’s lieutenants were reluctant to act in the absence of their leader, who had the confidence of Moscow. Ho was brought back from Siam, therefore, and on February 3, 1930, he presided over the founding of the party. At first it was called the Vietnamese Communist Party, but, after October 1930, Ho, acting on Soviet advice, adopted the name Indochinese Communist Party. In this phase of his career, Ho acted more as an arbiter of conflicts among the various factions, allowing the organization of revolutionary action, rather than as an initiator. His prudence, his awareness of what it was possible to accomplish, his care not to alienate Moscow, and the influence that he already had achieved among the Vietnamese Communists can be seen in these actions.
The creation of the PCI coincided with a violent insurrectionary movement in Vietnam. Repression by the French was brutal; Ho himself was condemned in absentia to death as a revolutionary. He sought refuge in Hong Kong, where the French police obtained permission from the British for his extradition, but friends helped him escape, and he reached Moscow via Shanghai.
Jul 6, 2010 · Ho Chi Minh first emerged as an outspoken voice for Vietnamese independence while living as a young man in France during World War I. Inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution, he joined...
Apr 2, 2014 · Ho Chi-Minh was the founder and first leader of Vietnam’s nationalist movement. Starting at an early age at the dawn of the 20th century, Ho became a strident voice for an...
Jun 26, 2024 · Ho Chi Minh City, largest city in Vietnam. It was the capital of the French protectorate of Cochinchina (1862–1954) and of South Vietnam (1954–75). The city lies along the Saigon River (Song Sai Gon) to the north of the Mekong River delta, about 50 miles (80 km) from the South China Sea.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC; Vietnamese: Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh), commonly referred to by its former name Saigon (Vietnamese: Sài Gòn), is the most populous city in Vietnam, with a population of around 10 million in 2023.
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Nov 5, 2019 · The country was Vietnam, and the man was Ho Chi Minh, who led communist-controlled North Vietnam and wanted to take over South Vietnam to create an independent, unified communist country. Although Ho’s name was largely unknown to Americans, he had been arguing for—and then fighting for—independence since the end of World War I.
