Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
Ho Chi Minh in 1943. As a Paris writer, anti-colonialist nationalism was the major theme for his back room newspaper — Viet Nam Hon (The Soul of Vietnam). Ho also produced a widely-read attack on French colonial policy called French Colonization on Trial, which purportedly became the "bible of nationalists" in Vietnam.3 Caught up in the patriotic fervor of the armistice, Ho produced an eight-point program to present at Versailles:
- "Attracted by the promise of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, spokesmen of the various peoples who wanted independence followed the leaders of the victorious Allies to Paris in 1919. Along with the Indians, the Koreans, the Irish, and the Arabs, Ho Chi Minh came with a list of Vietnamese grievances and a plea for Vietnamese autonomy. He arrived at Versailles in rented evening clothes to deliver his appeal. But the statesman assembled in Paris had no time for the problems of the subject peoples of the French Empire, and nothing came of it."4
This was Ho's last major fling at non-communist nationalism before 1920, since increasingly he began to move in the circles of Leon Blum, Marcel Cochin, Marius Moutet, and other left-wing political figures, and became a member of the French Socialist Party. In May, 1920, Ho was a delegate at the Socialist Congress in Tours, and joined in the founding of the French Communist Party. Ho much later in life recalled those days in describing "The Path Which Led Me To Leninism."[1]
- "After World War I, I made my living in Paris, now as a retoucher at a photographer's, now as painter of 'Chinese antiquities' (made in France!). I would distribute leaflets denouncing the crimes committed by the French colonialists in Viet-Nam.
- "At that time, I supported the October Revolution only instinctively, not yet grasping all its historic importance. I loved and admired Lenin because he was a great patriot who liberated his compatriots; until then, I had read none of his books.
- "The reason for my joining the French Socialist Party was that these 'ladies and gentlemen' — as I called my comrades at that moment — had shown their sympathy toward me, toward the struggle of the oppressed peoples. But I understood neither what was a party, a trade-union, nor what was Socialism or Communism.
- "Heated discussions were then taking place in the branches of the Socialist Party, about the question of whether the Socialist Party should remain in the Second International, should a Second-and-a-half International be founded, or should the Socialist Party join Lenin's Third International? I attended the meetings regularly, twice or thrice a week, and attentively listened to the discussions. First, I could not understand thoroughly.
- ↑ Article written in April, 1960, for the Soviet review Problems of the East, for the 90th anniversary of Lenin's birth. From Fall, Ho on Revolution, 5–7.
