The
significance of Vietnamese Communists during the Comintern period.
Page 1
he Vietnamese
revolution was the first communist revolution to succeed
after the Bolshevik
revolution of 1917.1 Ostensibly the initial triumph in
Vietnam in August
1945 only two years after the official demise of the
Comintern, could be
described as the one great achievement of
international
communism albeit a posthumous one for the Comintern. The
Comintern was
instrumental in the creation of communism in Vietnam
through its agent,
one of the most well known revolutionaries of the
twentieth century,
Ho Chi Minh.2 However, recent debate suggests that
Vietnamese
Communists won their victory despite the Comintern whose
attempts at control
may have been more of a handicap than a benign
influence.
Vietnamese Communists driven by real politik painstakingly
succeeded by fusing
revolutionary patriotism with Leninism.
ne of the most
significant successes of the Comintern was its appeal
to colonial
liberation movements and at its heart were the principles
laid out by Lenin
in his ‘Theses on the National and Colonial Questions,’
presented to the
Second Comintern Congress in the summer of 1920. For
many Euro-centric
communists, capitalism in Leninist terms, imperialism,
meant that strikes
and economic disruption organised in the colonies would
impact on the
domestic political situation. After all, for Marxists the
continuation of
feudalism and a minuscule proletariat in the colonial
situation meant
that conditions were not yet advanced for the
commencement of the
class struggle. Pressure for an alternative perspective
came from Asian
delegates to the Second Congress like M.N.Roy,
T
O
The
significance of Vietnamese Communists during the Comintern period.
Page 2
according to Hélène
Carrère d’Encausse and Stuart R.Schram, who forced
the issue onto the
agenda.3 In a substantial clash of opinions with Lenin,
Roy argued that the
success of the revolution depended upon the revolution
in Asia as a first
step to the overthrow of capitalism.4 How far the encounter
influenced Lenin is
uncertain but the conclusion, the Lenin theses, proved
decisive for it not
only mediated the quarrel but also ‘opened wide the door
to the implantation
of Marxism in Asia’.5
The colonial thesis
of Lenin was crucial to the anti colonial struggle
for it profoundly
influenced the young Ho Chi Minh then resident in Paris,
‘this is the path
to our liberation’ was his reaction.6 According to William
J.Duiker, Ho Chi
Minh was transformed from espousing a left nationalist
position to become
an active Marxist and founder member of the French
Communist Party
(PCF).7 He soon found himself in Moscow, at the
invitation of
Dmitri Manuilsky to help prepare for the Fifth Comintern
Congress held in
1924 where he also made a significant contribution to the
anti-colonial
struggle debate.8 The route to Marxism through the anti
colonial struggle
reveals a degree of independent thought and while in
Moscow Ho Chi Minh
became influenced by Roy and was one of the few to
share his thesis.9
he Second Congress
of the International opened the door for the
Leninist hypothesis
that both workers and peasants together could also
achieve a
revolution.10 Conceivably, the admission by Lenin that there
T
The
significance of Vietnamese Communists during the Comintern period.
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could be ‘peasant
soviets’ signalled the first steps leading to Maoism.11
Although there is
no evidence that Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse-tung ever
met during the
Comintern period, both recognised the necessity of a revised
form of Marxism
that incorporated a revolutionary role for the peasants.12 It
has even been
suggested that Ho was far in advance of Mao in suggesting
the peasants should
carry out the revolution.13 Further evidence from one
of the few
theoretical works of Ho Chi Minh, The Road to Revolution, reveals
that he places the
peasantry within the vanguard of the revolution, the
proletariat led by
the Communist Party.14 Ho
Chi Minh was a party
tactician and strategist not a theoretician and Mao Tse-tung is
credited with
developing the revolutionary peasant theories into Maoism.15
When Ho Chi
Minh was in Moscow
for his first tour of duty from 1923, there is evidence
of his interest in
the peasantry, he became actively involved in the
establishment of a
Peasant International, the Krestintern, with the Polish
Communist leader
Thomas Dombal.16 The purpose of the Krestintern was
in itself
significant, to realise ‘a workers’ and peasants’ government.’17 On
his return to Asia
in late 1924, Ho Chi Minh, at his own request, was
denied any post
with the Comintern based in Canton and served as the
representative of
the Peasant International.18
The widespread
rural unrest and uprising that began in 1929 was
significant in that
the fledgling Vietnamese Communist party played a
major role.19 The
rural revolt that lasted until 1932 resulted in the creation
of many peasant
‘Nghe Tinh Soviets.’ Although the Comintern was
The
significance of Vietnamese Communists during the Comintern period.
Page 4
predicting a
revolutionary situation Huynh Kim Khanh believes that the
revolt was a local
initiative inspired by mass unrest.20 There is no evidence
that Ho Chi Minh
was instrumental in the Nghe Tinh Soviet movement, its
origins remain a
‘mystery’.21 Speculation exists that young revolutionaries
trained in Moscow
and obedient to the new ultra leftist line of the
Comintern were
responsible for the rising. If this were the case, it would
perhaps be expected
that the rising would have been initiated amongst
workers and not
peasants. Although the consensus suggests that the revolt
was spontaneous,
Duiker argues that Ho Chi Minh had serious misgivings,
however, he does
not deny that Ho did not disassociate himself from the
revolt on
theoretical grounds.22 After the Guomindang suppression of
communists in
China, Ho Chi Minh had criticised the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) for the
Canton uprising, suggesting that its defeat was the
consequence of it
not sufficiently involving the peasantry.23 The
establishment of
peasant soviets as part of a revolutionary push would
therefore appear to
be fully compatible with the position taken by Ho and
the Vietnamese
Communist Party (ICP) at the time.
The rising failed
and had devastating repercussions for the
Communist Party in
Vietnam resulting in near annihilation. In the post
Nghe Tinh analysis,
Ho Chi Minh and cadres within Indochina were
severely criticised
by the pro Moscow, ICP Overseas Executive Committee
for ‘placing too
much attention on mobilising peasants.’24 Its failure coincidentally
came when the
Comintern was trying to vigorously enforce the
The
significance of Vietnamese Communists during the Comintern period.
Page 5
new ultra leftist
line during the ‘third period’. It not only displaced the
attention of party
work in the countryside but also impacted on the only
Vietnamese leader
with any authority, Ho Chi Minh, who was rewarded
with an extended
stay in Moscow until 1938. The issue would also appear
to have been
heavily entwined with the machinations surrounding the
formation of the
ICP as will be discussed.
t is ‘impossible to
separate the early fortunes of Vietnamese Communism
and nationalism…
from the career of Ho Chi Minh.’25 From the
beginning, Ho Chi
Minh was committed to two goals, national liberation
from colonial
oppression and a socialist revolution. The tension between
liberation and
socialism surfaced within the Comintern from an early stage
as has been
referred to in the Lenin/Roy debate. Should communists be
seeking nationalist
gains or organising workers in the struggle to overthrow
capitalism? The
question was again a significant factor in relations between
the Comintern and
the Chinese Communist Party following the Shanghai
uprising and the
break with the Guomingdang.26 The issue was also very
pertinent to the
creation of the Vietnamese Communist Party (ICP) in
1930 and
inseparable from the figure of Ho Chi Minh.27
Ho Chi Minh was
‘more than a pawn of historical forces… he
impressed his
personality on the course of Vietnamese history.’28 The
foundation of the
ICP owes much to his initial work in at first fusing the
anti-imperialist
movement with its Vietnamese patriotic tradition with an
I
The
significance of Vietnamese Communists during the Comintern period.
Page 6
international
communist movement into the patriotic revolutionary
organisation Thanh
Nien in 1925.29 With its headquarters in Canton,
Thanh Nien fell
victim to the events in China, following the violent collapse
of the united front
between the CCP and the Guomindang and Ho Chi
Minh returned to
Europe.30 In the ensuing chaos the organisation already
suffering from
factionalism over its commitment to social revolution or
colonial
independence split.31 One section, based on Tokin, heavily
influenced by the
class against class line of the 1928 Sixth Congress of the
Communist
International declared themselves a Communist Party while
the other two
followed a more nationalist position but also adopted similar
title and the
‘dispute degenerated from crisis into absurdity.’32
The squabble became
farce as the Comintern became involved when
invited to
adjudicate between all three factions who had applied to join the
Comintern. The
question became embroiled in the bureaucratic monolith
of the Comintern
with the CCP claiming jurisdiction against that of the Far
Eastern Bureau and
the Singapore based South Seas Communist Party
which claimed to
represent fledgling organisations not yet granted full party
status.33 The
question also arises of the strong possibility that the Chinese
were attempting to
take on the leadership of the whole Asian Communist
movement.34 During
this period Ho Chi Minh had returned to Southeast
Asia and with
painstaking negotiation, as an emissary of the Comintern,
brought together
the three disparate groups to form the Vietnamese
Communist Party at
a meeting in Hong Kong in February 1930.35
The
significance of Vietnamese Communists during the Comintern period.
Page 7
How much authority
Ho Chi Minh had from the Comintern to
resolve the issue
is controversial. The new party including its programme
was very much
fashioned by Ho Chi Minh, ‘there is little question that his
sympathies lay with
the nationalist faction.’36 There were also further
entanglements, as
the nationalist faction appeared to carry the support of
the CCP against the
pro Moscow Tonkin group.37 Once reports reached
Moscow, the
Comintern held back recognition of the new party on a
number of grounds
until April 1931.38 Humiliation for Ho Chi Minh and
his supporters
followed as the Comintern criticised its policy for ‘violating
the class
principles of communism’ denounced its slogan ‘an independent
Vietnam’ as
‘chauvinist’ and ordered that its name be changed to the
Indochinese
Communist Party.39 The ICP was now established clearly in a
model laid down by
the Comintern following the Sixth Congress and the
position adopted by
Ho Chi Minh and to a certain extent Lenin was clearly
repudiated.40
ommunism was the
most successful of the anti-colonial groups at
work against the
occupation of the French in Indo China. Melanie
Beresford has
suggested that the other nationalist groups failed because they
took an
‘essentially traditional and hierarchical view of society’ and were
unable to ‘place
the mass of Vietnamese peasants and workers at the centre
of their political
strategy’.41 Further evidence of communist success has
come from Duiker
who rejects any suggestion that the French Colonial
regime was so harsh
and successful at containing non-communist
C
The
significance of Vietnamese Communists during the Comintern period.
Page 8
nationalism that it
created a power vacuum that the ICP was able to
exploit.42
Vietnamese
Communism had a pragmatic and independent streak as
has been noted in
respect of work with the peasantry but also exceptionally,
it widely extended
the interpretation of the Popular Front line from 1935.
The ICP was the
only Communist Party to work in collaboration with
Trotskyites, the
group associated with the Saigon based newspaper La
Lutte.43
Such was the anxiety at Comintern headquarters and the minor
electoral success
that occurred, that the relationship could not be quelled
until 1937
following the direct intervention of a senior figure from the PCF
and a somewhat
reluctant one from Ho Chi Minh then resident again in
Moscow.44
t has been argued
that the significance of Vietnamese Communism was
not to be realised
until after the demise of the Comintern. In the 1920s
and 1930s Southeast
Asia was ‘a mere appendage’ of China, the spotlight of
international
communist attention and Indochina was a mere side show.45
Marxist roots had
firmer foundations in other countries, the Communist
Party of Indonesia
the oldest in Asia was founded in May 1920, before the
Chinese and ten
years before that of Vietnam.46 However, under the
influence of Ho Chi
Minh and a form of revolutionary patriotism combined
with pre-Maoist
thought the Vietnamese Communists established
themselves as a
viable anti-colonial movement.
I
The
significance of Vietnamese Communists during the Comintern period.
Page 9
The ‘political
success of communism in Vietnam has been largely
due to its ability
to identify with Vietnamese patriotism’ but it would not
have succeeded
without the outside assistance provided by the Comintern
in terms of a
refuge in China and Moscow for when the going got tough.47
The legacy of the
Comintern and its agent Ho Chi Minh continues to this
day, Vietnam is in
one of the few communist states still remaining, having
achieved its own
unique road to power. The Vietnamese party, certainly its
leader was
exceptional, influenced by Lenin rather than Marx, Ho Chi
Minh wrote ‘at
first, it was patriotism, not yet communism which led me to
have confidence in
Lenin, in the Third International.’48
The
significance of Vietnamese Communists during the Comintern period.
Page 10
NOTES
1 Melanie
Beresford, Vietnam: Politics, Economics and Society, (London, 1988), p.1
2 Ho Chi Minh
was born Nguyen Sinh Cung according to William J. Duiker, Ho Chi Minh,
(New York, 2000),
p.17. and used between thirty two and seventy six aliases during his life,
see
Huynh Kim Khanh,
Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1982), pp.57-58.
The
most commonly used in the 1920s and 1930s are Nguyen Ai Quoc, however, I shall
use the
name
he is commonly known as Ho Chi Minh.
3 Hélène Carrère
d’Encausse and Stuart R.Schram, Marxism and Asia, (London, 1969),
pp.26-27.
4 Ibid.p.27.
5 Ibid.p.4.
6 Khanh, Vietnamese
Communism, p.56. and Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, p.64.
7 Duiker, Ho Chi
Minh, pp.71-73.
8 Ibid. pp. 85-86
and 98-101.
9 Ibid. p.95.
10 Ibid. p.90.
11 Carrère
d’Encausse Marxism and Asia, p.30.
12 W.E.Willmott,
‘Thoughts on Ho Chi Minh,’ Pacific Affairs, Vol.44, 4, (Winter, 1971-
72), p.585.
13 Beresford,
Vietnam: Politics, p.91.
14 William J.
Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, 2nd Edition, (Boulder,
Colorado, 1996),
p.20.
15 Beresford,
Vietnam: Politics, pp.91-92. see also Willmott, ‘Thoughts on Ho Chi
Minh,’
pp.586-587.
16 Duiker, The
Communist Road to Power, pp.16 and 20.
17 Duiker, Ho Chi
Minh, pp.90-92.
18 Duiker, Ho Chi
Minh, pp.113-114.
19 R.B. Smith, ‘The
Foundation of the Indochinese Communist Party, 1929–1930’,
Modern Asian Studies,
32, (1998), p.783. see also Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, p.177. First as the
ICP
the northern wing of the disintegrating Thanh Nien and then from 1930 as the
unified VCP.
20 Khanh,
Vietnamese Communism, p.164.
21 Ibid. p.171.
22 Duiker, Ho Chi
Minh, p.181 and 183.
23 Khanh,
Vietnamese Communism, p.169. see also Note 14, Duiker, Ho Chi Minh,
p.181.
24 Duiker, Ho Chi
Minh, pp.216-218.
25 Kevin Ruane, War
and revolution in Vietnam, 1930-75, (London, 1998), p.1.
26 Smith,
‘Indochinese Communist Party’, p.771.
27 Smith,
‘Indochinese Communist Party’, p.771.
The
significance of Vietnamese Communists during the Comintern period.
Page 11
28 Khanh,
Vietnamese Communism, p.8.
29 Khanh,
Vietnamese Communism, pp.20-21, 26-28, 63-64. see also Duiker, Ho Chi
Minh, pp.129-133.
30 Khanh,
Vietnamese Communism, pp.67, 76 and 88.
31 Duiker, Ho Chi
Minh, pp.144-145.
32 Duiker, Ho Chi
Minh, pp.158-159. See also Smith, ‘Indochinese Communist Party’,
pp.781-789. and Ruane,
War and revolution, p.4. see also Khanh, Vietnamese
Communism, pp.86
and 123.
33 Duiker, Ho Chi
Minh, pp.161-162. and Smith, ‘Indochinese Communist Party’, p.793.
34 Smith,
‘Indochinese Communist Party’, p.801.
35 Duiker, Ho Chi
Minh, pp.163-164.
36 Ruane, War and
revolution, p.4. see also Khanh, Vietnamese Communism, pp.126-127.
37 Smith,
‘Indochinese Communist Party’, p.797.
38 Ibid. p.799.
39 Khanh,
Vietnamese Communism, pp.126-130. See also Smith, ‘Indochinese Communist
Party’, p.799.
40 Duiker, Ho Chi
Minh, p.189.
41 Beresford,
Vietnam: Politics, p.12.
42 Duiker, The
Communist Road to Power, pp.353-354.
43 Huynh Kim Khanh,
Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1982),
pp.198-199, Duiker,
Ho Chi Minh, p.215, Duiker, The Communist Road to Power, p.56.
For
the Trotskyite history of the La Lutte movement see Daniel
Hemery, Revolutionnaires
Vietnamiens et
pouvoir colonial en Indochine, (Paris, 1975), translated by Ted Crawford,
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/Vol3/No2/Hemery.html
[Accessed 25
November 2001].
44 Duiker, The
Communist Road to Power, p.56. and Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, pp.2226-227.
45 Justus M. van
der Kroef, Communism in South-east Asia, (London, 1981), pp.6-7. see
also
Michael Weiner, ‘Comintern in East Asia, 1919-39’ in Kevin
McDermott and Jeremy
Agnew, The
Comintern: A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin,
(Basingstoke,
1996), p.159.
46 van der Kroef,
Communism in South-east Asia, p.4.
47 Khanh,
Vietnamese Communism, pp.26 and 100.
48 Ho Chi Minh,
‘The path which led me to Leninism’ quoted in Khanh, Vietnamese
Communism, p.35.
The
significance of Vietnamese Communists during the Comintern period.
Page 12
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
Melanie Beresford,
Vietnam: Politics, Economics and Society, (London, 1988).
William J. Duiker,
The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, 2nd Edition, (Boulder,
Colorado, 1996).
William J. Duiker,
Ho Chi Minh, (New York, 2000).
Hélène Carrère
d’Encausse and Stuart R.Schram, Marxism and Asia, (London, 1969).
Stanley Karnow,
Vietnam: A History, (Harmondsworth, 1984).
Huynh Kim Khanh,
Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1982).
Justus M. van der
Kroef, Communism in South-east Asia, (London, 1981).
Jean Lacouture, Ho
Chi Minh, (London, 1968).
Kevin Ruane, War
and revolution in Vietnam, 1930-75, (London, 1998), Ch.1.
ARTICLES
IN BOOKS
Michael Weiner,
‘Comintern in East Asia, 1919-39’ in Kevin McDermott and Jeremy
Agnew, The
Comintern: A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin,
(Basingstoke,
1996).
ARTICLES
IN JOURNALS
R.B. Smith, ‘The
Foundation of the Indochinese Communist Party, 1929–1930’, Modern
Asian Studies, 32,
(1998), pp.769-805.
W.E.Willmott,
‘Thoughts on Ho Chi Minh,’ Pacific Affairs, Vol.44, 4, (Winter, 1971-72),
pp.585-590.
INTERNET
Daniel Hemery,
Revolutionnaires Vietnamiens et pouvoir colonial en Indochine, (Paris,
1975), translated
by Ted Crawford,
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/Vol3/No2/Hemery.html
[Accessed 25
November 2001].
ADDITIONAL
BIBLIOGRAPHY - AMERICAN TEXTS CONSIDERED
FUNDAMENTAL
TO THE DEBATE BUT UNAVAILABLE TO THE AUTHOR
William Duiker, The
Rise of Nationalism in Vietnam, 1900-1941, (Ithaca: New York,
1976).
William Duiker, The
Comintern and Vietnamese communism, (Athens, Ohio., 1975).
David G. Marr,
Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945, (Berkeley: California, 1981).
Sophie Quinn-Judge,
‘Ho Chi Minh: New Perspectives from the Comintern Files,’
Vietnam Forum, No.
14 (1994), pp. 61-81.
Sophie Quinn-Judge, Ho Chi Minh: The
Missing Years, (Berkeley: California, 2002
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