Why did Nguyen Ai Quoc believe in the need for a world revolution? Why would a nonviolent approach to national independence not suffice? His thoughts on these issues do not often appear in print, but a letter that he wrote from Canton to Nguyen Thuong Huyen, a young disciple of Phan Boi Chau living with the old patriot in Hangzhou, provides some interesting insight into his views. Huyen was the grandnephew of Nguyen Thuong Hien, a patriotic scholar who was once head of the Hanoi Free School. In the spring of 1925, Huyen sent Quoc a copy of an article on revolution that he had recently written for possible publication and asked for his comments. In the essay Huyen found the origins of the revolutionary concept in the Chinese classic The Book of Changes, where it was implied that revolution was the equivalent of dynastic change. He thereupon concluded that the struggle against the colonial regime had failed because of French brutality, and that independence could best be achieved by means of nonviolent tactics similar to the boycott movement adopted by Mahatma Gandhi in British India,
In his reply, Nguyen Ai Quoc expressed his skepticism about the Chinese origins of the concept (Quoc saw the sources of revolution in Western culture) and offered his own definition, which contrasted revolution with reform. Reform, Quoc pointed out, involves changes brought about in the institutions of a particular counrry. Whether or not reform is accompanied by violence, some of the original order always remains. Revolution, on the other hand, entirely supplants one system with another. Dynastic change is thus not equivalent to revolution, since the victors retain the monarchical system. As for Gandhi, Quoc added, the Indian spiritual leader was clearly a reformer rather than a revolutionary, since he demanded that the British reform Indian institutions but did not arouse the Hindus to revolt as a means of recovering their independence, nor did he demand that the British carry out comprehensive changes in the Indian government. Only after the British rejected his demands, Quoc noted, did Gandhi call for a boycott.
As for Huyen’s remark that revolution had failed in Vietnam because of French brutality, Quoc replied with some exasperation:
What do you expect? Do you expect them to give us the liberty to do anything, to use all means to drive them out? Do you expect them to take no action to prevent us from attacking their own interests? Instead of blaming others, I think it is more reasonable to blame ourselves. We must ask ourselves, “For what reasons have the French been able to oppress us? Why are our people so stupid? Why hasn’t our revolution succeeded? What must we do now?” You compare us with success stories in Egypt and India, but they are like autos with wheels and a chauffeur, while we are just a chassis. India and Egypt have political parties with members, Study groups, peasant associations, and so forth. And they all know how to love their country. So Gandhi can create a boycott. Can we do the same? Where are our parties? We still have no party, no propaganda, no organization, and you want us to boycott the French?
Nguyen Ai Quoc concluded with an aphorism from La Fontaine about the rats that dared not attach a bell to the cat to provide prior warning of an attack. How about the sons of the dragon (meaning the Vietnamese people), he asked, “are we like mice? How humiliating.”28
In Hangzhou, Phan Boi Chau had observed the emergence of the Revolutionary Youth League with some interest. Nguyen Ai Quoc had promised to keep the older patriot abreast of his activities, and they agreed that Chau would arrange a trip to Canton sometime during the summer of 1925. In a letter that he had written to Quoc early in the year, Chau had praised the younger man’s great wisdom and considerable experience and declared that he was gratified to know that someone would continue his work now that he was old and out of fashion. Yet Chau also made it clear that he wanted to be involved with the movement; in a separate letter to Ho Tung Mau, one of Nguyen Ai Quoc’s colleagues, he obliquely criticized Quoc in the form of a warning to his younger compatriors not to move too quickly.
Even before Phan Boi Chau could complete his plans to come to Canton, he was complaining that Nguyen Ai Quoc was ignoring him. In mid-May Chau left Hangzhou on a train to Shanghai, but the French authorities in China had been apprised of his plans through an informer within his own entourage. On arrival at the Shanghai railway station, which was in the International Concession of the city, Chau was arrested by French security agents disguised as taxi drivers and returned to Hanoi for trial on the charge of treason.29
The episode has provoked one of the most long-lasting and contentious debates in the tangled history of Vietnamese nationalism. From the beginning, many members of the Revolutionary Youth League suspected that the man who had betrayed Phan Boi Chau to the French was his personal secretary, Nguyen Thuong Huyen. Chau himself made a similar claim in his memoirs. But some non-Communist nationalist sources have argued that the culprit was Nguyen Ai Quoc’s close associate Lam Duc Thu, or even that Nguyen Ai Quoc himself had connived with Thu in deliberately betraying Chau in order to obtain the reward money and create a martyr for the nationalist cause. This charge has been repeated by a number of Western writers, although no concrete evidence is available to confirm it. Communist sources have consistently denied the allegation, repeating that the plot to betray Phan Boi Chau had been initiated by Nguyen Thuong Huyen, a man who eventually left the revolutionary movement to work with the French.30
The argument has raged largely along ideological lines. Evidence in French archives is not conclusive, but tends to exonerate Nguyen Ai Quoc of any responsibility for the affair. There is some plausibility to the charge that Lam Duc Thu was the informer, since he was already playing that role as a member of the league and reportedly assumed responsibility for the act in later years. But that assumption is probably without merit; a Sûreté report written at the time confirms that there was a French informer—presumably, but not certainly, Nguyen Thuong Huyen—living in Ho Hac Lam’s household in Hangzhou. He would have had better information on Chau’s movements and could have provided such information to the French. Thu was well-known as a braggart and may have taken credit for the arrest to inflate his own importance. In all likelihood, it was Huyen who betrayed Chau.31
In any event, it seems unlikely that Nguyen Ai Quoc would have seen an advantage to having Phan Boi Chau seized by the French. This is not to deny that he was capable of betraying the old patriot if he believed it would serve the interests of the revolutionary cause. Phan Boi Chau’s value was obviously limited by his age, his lack of political sophistication, and his reluctance to countenance a violent approach. By 1925 he was clearly more valuable as a symbol of Vietnamese nationalism than as an actual participant in the resistance movement, and the anger aroused in Vietnam by his arrest and conviction could provide welcome publicity to the revolutionary cause. On the other hand, the league did not make much of the arrest of Phan Boi Chau in its propaganda, and continued to focus more attention on the heroic martyrdom of Pham Hong Thai, whose fate served as a prime motivational tool in the indoctrination of recruits in Canton.
Could financial needs have motivated Nguyen Ai Quoc to turn Chau in to the French authorities, as some allege? This charge should not berejected out of hand, since Quoc was receiving only a limited subsidy from the CCP and sometimes was compelled to use his own private funds to carry out his activities. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that Quoc would have risked the possibility that the French might divulge the plot themselves to discredit the league and its mysterious leader. All in all, he must have felt that Chau would be more useful at liberty, where he could have served as a figurehead, an easily manipulated front man for a Communist-dominated united front, than in prison in Vietnam. It is notable that in statements made in exile to the end of his life, Chau continued to hold Nguyen Ai Quoc in high esteem and never suggested publicly that he might have held the younger man responsible for his seizure in Shanghai.32
Phan Boi Chau’s trial opened before the Hanoi Criminal Commission on November 23, 1925. The defendant was assisted by two lawyers, but despite the presence of large crowds who demonstrated in favor of Chau—when the prosecuti
on demanded the death sentence, one old man even offered to die in his place—he received a life sentence of hard labor. Chau was fifty-eight years old. The following day, there were demonstrations throughout the country, and students in Hanoi printed tracts to distribute on the streets. A few days later, a new governor-general arrived in Hanoi. A member of the Socialist Party and a critic of French colonial policy, Alexandre Varenne had no desire to open his term of office with a cause célèbre, and after sending a cable to France for permission, in December he commuted Chau’s sentence to house arrest in Hué.
Before reducing the sentence, Varenne sought to induce the old rebel to cooperate with the colonial regime. Initially Chau refused, but he later mellowed and, although he continued to maintain contacts with leading members of the nationalist movement, he frequently issued statements that could be construed as favorable to the French, In one address that he presented to students at the National Academy in Hué, Chau praised the high quality of French education in Indochina. Such remarks aroused anger in nationalist circles and provoked Nguyen Ai Quoc in Canton to remark that they were “utter nonsense.” According to information provided to the French by an informer, some nationalists even debated whether to take violent action against him. Chau finally died in 1940.33
While the Phan Boi Chau trial was under way, the old reformist Phan Chu Trinh returned to Indochina after more than a decade abroad. His arrival in Saigon was the occasion for mass rejoicing, and his speeches over the next few months, which continued to make the case for a policy of nonviolent reform, aroused considerable emotion. When he finally died of cancer early in 1926 at the age of fifty-three, his funeral became the occasion of a mass national outpouring of grief; thousands lined the streets to watch his bier as it was carried from Saigon to a grave site near Tan Son Nhut Airport in the northern suburbs of the city. Nguyen Ai Quoc apparently did not approve of such mass actions, arguing that they distracted public attention from more important issues. According to one Sûreté report, when he heard about the demonstrations surrounding the funeral of Phan Chu Trinh, Quoc remarked that they had probably been exaggerated by the French press to embarrass Governor-General Varenne, who was seeking to put a more human face on French colonial policies in Indochina.34
Through Nguyen Ai Quoc’s efforts, his close colleagues in the In-dochinese Communist Group were gradually exposed to Marxist-Leninist ideas. At the same time, a steady stream of patriotic young Vietnamese was recruited and brought to Canton, where they received training and indoctrination at the training institute, which had the impressive title of Special Political Institute for the Vietnamese Revolution. Its first location was in a building on Ren Xing Street. When that became too small, the school was moved to a larger three-story building owned by Communist sympathizers on Wen Ming Street, just across from Guangdong University (now the Lu Xun Museum) and close to CCP headquarters. In Chinese style, the ground floor served as a commercial establishment. Classes were held on the second floor in a large classroom with chairs, a rable, and portraits of Communist luminaries on the walls. Behind the classroom was a small office and a bed for Nguyen Ai Quoc. The third floor was a dormitory for the students. A hidden trapdoor provided a secret exit to the street in case of a police raid. The kitchen was located in the garden behind the building.35
Most of the Vietnamese teachers at the school, such as Ho Tung Mau and Nguyen Ai Quoc himself, were themselves members of the Revolutionary Youth League, but occasionally visitors from the Soviet mission, such as Vasily Blücher (Galen), P. A. Pavlov, M. V. Kuibyshev, and V. M. Primakov, or from the local CCP mission, such as future leaders Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, and Li Fuqun, as well as the rural organizer Peng Pai, were invited to give guest lectures. One third of the school costs was borne by the CCP, while the remainder was provided for from other local organizations or through contributions by Vietnamese cadets studying at the Whampoa Academy, who donated a part of their monthly scholarship. The curriculum at the institute was closely patterned after similar training institutes in the USSR, with classes in such subjects as the rise of capitalism, the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, the organization of the Revolutionary Youth League, and the current world situation. To provide familiarity with local conditions, courses were taught on the ideology of Sun Yat-sen (which Nguyen Ai Quoc described to students as a relatively primitive form of socialism) and the Chinese language. One of Nguyen Ai Quoc’s own courses was on the Leninist concept of the united front.
According to the recollections of many students, Nguyen Ai Quoc, who taught under the pseudonym of Vuong (in Chinese, Wang), was the most popular teacher in the school. They remembered him as slender, with bright eyes and a warm voice, friendly and good-humored, although he rarely laughed. Vuong was exceptionally approachable and patient with his students. He would explain difficult words and give long explanations of unfamiliar concepts. He seemed unusually well read, and a walking almanac when it came to statistics. One of his students remembered: “With dates and figures at his fingertips, he could tell us that the French colonialists had stolen so many tons of rice to send to the metropolis, that the Banque de l’Indochine netted fabulous profits, that Governor-General Varenne had shipped to France crates and crates of precious antiques from archaeological excavations.”36
As in Paris, Nguyen Ai Quoc was not only instructor, but also moral adviser, surrogate parent, and resident cheerleader. He taught his charges how to talk and behave in a morally upright manner (so as to do credit to the revolutionary cause), how to speak in public, how to address gatherings of workers, peasants, children, and women, how to emphasize the national cause as well as the need for a social revolution, how to behave without condescension to the poor and illiterate. He anxiously checked on their living and eating conditions to make sure that they were healthy and well cared for; when they were gloomy and despondent, he cheered them up. One ex-student recalled his incurable optimism. When students appeared discouraged at the petty corruption of Vietnamese mandarins and the general ignorance and lethargy of the village population, he replied, “It’s just these obstacles and social depravity that makes the revolution necessary. A revolutionary must above all be optimistic and believe in the final victory.”37
After the conclusion of their training program, which usually lasted three to four months, the students accompanied Nguyen Ai Quoc on a ceremonial visit to the graves of seventy-two Chinese revolutionary martyrs at the Hoang Hoa knoll, outside of Canton, and in front of the tomb of the martyred patriot Pham Hong Thai, they recited their ritual vows to serve the revolutionary cause. Then most of them returned to Vietnam. A few of the more talented students, such as former Tam Tam Xa member Le Hong Phong, were sent to Moscow for further schooling. Still others found employment in the Chinese police or armed forces or were assigned to the famous Whampoa Academy, run by the Kuomintang with Comintern assistance. Nguyen Luong Bang, a member from a family of laborers, was instructed to find employment on a steamship line to set up a communications link between Hong Kong and the Vietnamese port city of Haiphong. By the spring of 1927, more than seventy students had passed through the school.38
Back in Vietnam, graduates from the institute sought to spread the league’s revolutionary doctrine among their friends and acquaintances and to find new recruits to dispatch to Canton. As most of the alumni came from scholar-gentry backgrounds, it was inevitable that the majority of their first recruits were the same. French intelligence sources estimated that 90 percent of the students were what they described as petty bourgeois intellectuals, with the remainder workers or peasants. They came from all parts of the country, but there was a strong contingent from Nguyen Ai Quoc’s native province of Nghe An and other parts of central Vietnam. By 1928 the Revolutionary Youth League had an estimated 300 members inside Indochina, with 150 in Cochin China (notably in Saigon and the large delta towns of My Tho and Can Tho), 80 in Annam (especially in Nghe An, Ha Tinh, and Quang Ngai), and 70 in Tonkin (Bac Ninh, Thai Binh, Nam Dinh, Hanoi, and Haiphong). A year later, the
number had increased to over 1700.39
With the formation of the league, Nguyen Ai Quoc had taken the first step toward the realization of the socialist revolution in Vietnam. It was clearly a small and cautious step, but it was necessary to start somewhere. As he had written a few years earlier: “To say that that area [i.e., Indochina], with more than twenty million exploited people, is now ready for a revolution is wrong; but to say that it does not want a revolution and is satisfied with the regime … is even more wrong.”40
Nguyen Ai Quoc was experienced enough to realize that propaganda would play a central role in building up his embryonic movement. The journal Thanh Nien helped to popularize his message. Printed in Canton, it was issued weekly and sent by sea to Vietnam. A total of 208 issues were published between June 21, 1925, and May 1930. It was written in his now familiar simple style and was enlivened by Chinese slogans and cartoons that satirized the French colonial regime and the rickety monarchy in Hué. As with Le Paria, Nguyen Ai Quoc wrote many of the editorials himself, although they were unsigned. The league also published two other journals, the biweekly Linh Kach Menh (Revolutionary Soldier) and the monthly periodical Viet Nam Tien Phong (Vietnamese Vanguard).41
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