Nguyen Ai Quoc’s words of warning were well taken; conditions in Guilin were becoming more perilous, as government authorities were again beginning to harass Communists. Deciding that it would be better to establish a base of operations nearer the border, Quoc dispatched Hoang Van Hoan and Vo Nguyen Giap to Liuzhou to assess the situation and prepare a base area there. On arrival, they contacted Truong Boi Cong, who attempted to recruit them for his own purposes. But Giap was wary. Shortly after, Nguyen Ai Quoc traveled secrerly to Liuzhou and changed his name, advising his colleagues there to return to Guilin to make it their temporary base of operations.
In the meantime, Quoc was giving some serious thought to the creation of a new united front appropriate to the new situation. Such a Front must be susceptible to strong ICP influence and direction, but the Party’s role would have to be carefully disguised in order to alleviate the concerns of non-Communist elements in Indochina and abroad as to the front’s political leanings. Quoc proposed the formation of a broad organization that would unite all patriotic forces in a common struggle to evict the French colonial power. Suggesting three possible names for the new organization, Vietnamese Liberation Front (Viet Nam Giai phong Dong minh), Vietnamese Anti-Imperialist League (Viet Nam Phan De Dong minh), or League for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet Nam Doc lap Dong minh), he indicated his preference for the last one. Several years earlier, an organization by that name had been created by Ho Hoc Lam, serving briefly as a vehicle for cooperation between nationalist and Communist Vietnamese living in the Nanjing area; the hope was it might now serve a similar purpose during this reincarnation.20
After some discussion, it was agreed to accept Nguyen Ai Quoc’s suggestion for the name of the new group, to be known as the Vietminh Front for short. To attract moderate elements, Ho Hoc Lam, now living in Guilin, was asked to chair the organization, while Pham Van Dong (identified only by his pseudonym, Lam Ba Kiet) was named vice chairman. Armed with their new cover, the group approached General Li Jishen once again to seek his assistance in mobilizing Vietnamese residents in south China for eventual military operations inside Indochina. Although some members of his staff were suspicious of the political goals of the organizers, Li Jishen was receptive, and the new front was granted formal recognition. He did warn his visitors, however, not to allow the Communists to achieve a dominant role in the organization.21
While Nguyen Ai Quoc and his colleagues were in Guilin attempting to obtain the support of Chinese Nationalist military leaders for future operations inside Indochina, their rival Truong Boi Cong had been active in his own recruiting efforts along the border. After receiving information that forty Vietnamese resistance fighters had crossed the frontier into Guangxi province to escape the French, Cong left Liuzhou for Jingxi, a small border town about thirty miles by mountain trails north of Cao Bang, with plans to recruit them.
By now the Central Committee, which had placed its headquarters in Saigon, was in almost total disarray. All of its members were in fact in jail, except for Phan Dang Luu, and links with the regional committees in central Vietnam and the north had been broken.
Lacking any contact with other regions or the external leadership in south China, ICP operatives in Cochin China were left to their own devices. Tran Van Giau, one of the leading Party members in the area, had been released from jail in May 1940, but was rearrested five days later. There had earlier been some discussion of launching a general uprising in Cochin China to take advantage of rising popular unrest in the region. Agricultural conditions were not as bad as in the other parts of the country, but taxes were higher, and as much as 30 percent of the population was sympathetic to the Communists. That spring, the situation grew increasingly tense when the colonial government began to conscript Vietnamese to serve in military units in Europe, or in Cambodia, where war with Siam was imminent over Bangkok’s demand for the return of territories lost to the French in 1907. Party operatives played on discontent among the troops, popularizing slogans such as “don’t die for the colons [French residents of Indochina] in Cambodia,” and provoking popular demonstrations at recruiting centers in provincial towns in the Mekong delta. For many Vietnamese peasants in Cochin China, conscription brought not only the threat of death or injury on the battlefield, but also increased hardship for their families.
In July, the Cochin Chinese regional committee, under its general secretary, Ta Uyen, approved tentative plans to prepare for the insurrection that had been called for by the Sixth Plenum (i.e., the sixth formal session of the Central Committee since the First National Congress of the Party in March 1935) in November 1939. First, however, the insurrection leaders sent Phan Dang Luu to the north to consult with the Tonkin regional committee. During the next three months, thousands of Vietnamese soldiers rioted in Saigon and other cities in the region to protest plans to send them to the Siamese border. In haste, Ta Uyen gave the order to launch the uprising in late November, despite the fact that Phan Dang Luu had not yet returned from his mission to Tonkin.
Luu, in fact, had reached Hanoi, and had contacted members of the Tonkin regional committee just as they were assessing the overall situation at their headquarters outside the city in light of the failed Bac Son uprising along the Chinese border. Northern Party leaders, like Truong Chinh, Hoang Quoc Viet, and Hoang Van Thu, were opposed to Ta Uyen’s plan, arguing that conditions throughout the country were not ripe for a successful insurrection. They did approve a recommendation to increase preparations to launch future local uprisings in areas where conditions were favorable, and sent Hoang Van Thu to assist the resistance groups who had fought at Bac Son to teorganize themselves into guerrilla units in the mountains near the border. Finally, to fill the vacuum left by the French arrests of Party leaders in Cochin China, the regional committee unilaterally transformed itself into a provisional central committee, with Truong Chinh serving tempotarily as general secretary.22
Prior to adjourning the meeting, the committee instructed Phan Dang Luu to return to Cochin China and request a postponement of the uprising. When Luu arrived in Saigon on November 23, he was arrested by French police at the train station. In any event, he was too late, for the uprising had broken out the day before in rural areas southwest of Saigon, and several districts from My Tho to the Plain of Reeds were briefly seized by insurgent forces. Sympathy riots broke out in Saigon, but the authorities had been forewarned and were able to crush the urban insurrection with relative ease. Meanwhile, the rural unrest, lacking organization and cohesion, was suppressed after four days of bloody French counterattacks, during which more than one hundred insurgents were killed and several thousand participants were placed under arrest and led off to imprisonment. In Saigon, hundreds of Communist activists were rounded up, including Nguyen Ai Quoc’s ex-wife Nguyen Thi Minh Khai. Several incriminating documents were found in her house. In March 1941, Minh Khai, Nguyen Van Cu, and Ha Huy Tap were sentenced to death by a military court in Saigon; all were executed by firing squad shortly afterward. Ta Uyen had apparently been killed by the French during the uprising. Before her death, Nguyen Thi Minh Khai briefly met with her husband, Le Hong Phong, who had been in jail since June 1939. He died of torture or deprivation in the tiger cages at Poulo Condore prison in September 1942.23
In Guilin, Nguyen Ai Quoc had been kept informed about Truong Boi Cong’s recruiting activities in Jingxi through letters from a Communist sympathizer within Cong’s entourage. Quoc eventually ordered Vo Nguyen Giap and Vu Anh to go to the border area to evaluate the situation and decide how it could be turned to the Party’s benefit. On arrival, they persuaded General Cong to invite Ho Hoc Lam, as chair of the new League for the Independence of Vietnam, to come to Jingxi to assist in the recruitment process. Quoc had just been informed about the suppression of the uprising in Cochin China and must have surmised that its impact on the Party apparatus in the South could be considerable. When Cong’s invitation to Lam arrived at his headquarters in Guilin, Quoc remarked to his colleagues: “The world and the n
ational situation are favorable to us, but the hour of insurrection has not yet arrived. However, because there has already been an explosion, it is necessary without delay to organize the retreat of patriots into hiding to preserve the movement.”24
In fact, conditions on the international scene were rapidly evolving, with consequences that could not yet be foreseen. Nazi Germany had consolidated its occupation of France and the Low Countries and was now embarked on an effort to bring Great Britain to heel by means of air power. Although the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 was still in operation, German advances into the Balkans had strained relations between the two countries. In China, Japan was continuing its military advances into central China to defeat Chiang Kai-shek’s government, while at the same time introducing military forces into Indochina with the reluctant acquiesence of French colonial authorities.
With preparations for future operations now virtually complete, Nguyen Ai Quoc left Guilin with Pham Van Dong, Phung Chi Kien, Hoang Van Hoan, and Dang Van Cap by automobile. From Nanning they went leisurely by boat westward along a branch of the Pearl River to Tiandong. To keep his identity secret, Nguyen Ai Quoc traveled as a Chinese journalist using a new name, Ho Chi Minh (He Who Enlightens). He spoke only in French, although on one occasion, he slipped. When a colleague dropped a cigarette ash on his clothing, Quoc inadvertently warned him in Vietnamese that his trousers were burning.25
Nguyen Ai Quoc remained briefly in Tiandong, while Pham Van Dong went on to Jingxi, near the frontier, to prepare conditions for the group’s arrival. The final journey was made on foot over mountain trails sometime in December. On arrival in Jingxi, Quoc found accommodations in nearby Xinxu village, and then instructed Vu Anh to cross the bordet into Indochina to find a suitable location for the forthcoming meeting of the Central Committee. The spot, he directed, should be in an area where the local population was sympathetic to the revolution, and it should possess an escape route back into China if that should prove necessary.
The primary purpose of moving the Party’s external headquarters from Guilin to Jingxi was to take advantage of the presence of the resistance fighters who were there receiving training and weapons for use against the Japanese and the French. After arriving, Nguyen Ai Quoc instructed Vo Nguyen Giap, Phung Chi Kien, and Pham Van Dong to establish a Party training program in Jingxi to provide political indoctrination and revolutionary training for young cadres. The first set of courses, taught over a two-week period in January 1941, consisted of courses in three major areas: the situation in the world and in Indochina; how to utilize mass organizations; and methods of propaganda, organization, training, and revolutionary struggle. Training materials were drawn up under Nguyen Ai Quoc’s direction, and printed in lithograph in a pamphlet called The Road to Liberation (Con duong giai phong). The courses were taught in a shady grove on a hillside just outside of town. Nguyen Ai Quoc played an active role as a lecturer, tirelessly repeating to each class the importance of proper behavior to the local population, including an effort to learn the minority language and follow local customs, as well as the importance of dressing in local clothing to maintain secrecy. After completion of the program, the graduates took patt in a ceremony in a jungle clearing, each stepping forward to kiss the future emblem of nationhood—a red flag with a gold star. Then they returned to Indochina.
Nguyen Ai Quoc also tried to cement the Party’s fragile relationship with Truong Boi Cong. Quoc had sent already Hoang Van Hoan, Vo Nguyen Giap, and Pham Van Dong to talk with Cong about founding a new organization, to be called the Vietnamese National Liberation Committee to facilitate cooperation between Cong’s followers, many of whom were members of the VNQDD, and members of his own Party. The new organization was formally founded in December 1940 and Quoc, operating under the name of Hoang Quojun, served as chairman of its executive committee.26
But Nguyen Ai Quoc spent the bulk of his time preparing for the upcoming meeting of the Central Committee, later to be labeled in Party histories as the famous Eighth Plenum. In early January 1941, Hoang Van Thu, Truong Chinh, and Hoang Quoc Viet, all members of the provisional Central Committee that had been established in Tonkin two months earlier, arrived in Jingxi to report to him on conditions in the interior. Vu Anh had also returned from his brief reconnaissance trip across the border to Indochina, having located an appropriate spot to hold the conference; it would take place in a spacious cave not far from the small village of Pac Bo, in an area marked by massive limestone cliffs jutting out of the dense green jungle growth. Most of the local people were of Nung ethnic stock. On January 26, Nguyen Ai Quoc split his followers into two groups: one to accompany him back to Vietnam to settle at Pac Bo, the other to remain temporarily in Jingxi. Just before his group’s departure, they all joined local villagers in celebrating the traditional New Year’s holiday. In accordance with local custom, Quoc offered as a gift to every family a piece of red paper on which was written the Chinese characters for Happy New Year. On the twenty-eighth, accompanied by Vu Anh, Phung Chi Kien, the minority cadre Le Quang Ba, and a number of other comrades all attired in the dress of the local Nung people, Nguyen Ai Quoc left Jingxi and headed for the border.
The trip was only about forty miles, but it was physically difficult, as the trail wound over mountain streams and through rocky outcroppings and tangled jungle growth. In early February, they crossed the border into Vietnam at a spot marked by a small stone pillar. From there, a rocky path wound down through the jungle to the village of Pac Bo. With the aid of a local sympathizer, the group established their accommodations in a cave known to the locals as Coc Bo (the Source) and situated behind a rock in the side of one of the local cliffs. About 140 feet below the mouth of the cave was a stream that Nguyen Ai Quoc named for his hero Lenin. Overlooking the site was a massive outgrowth that he dubbed Karl Marx Peak. From the cave, a secret path wound straight to the Chinese border, less than half a mile away.
In later years, Nguyen Ai Quoc and his colleagues would remember their days at Pac Bo as among the most memorable in their lives. Yet conditions were harsh. They slept on a mat of branches, leaving them with bruised backs in the morning. The cave itself was cold and damp, so the occupants kept a small fire going all night. As was his habit, Nguyen Ai Quoc rose early, bathed in the stream, did his morning exercises, and then went to work on a rock at the edge of Lenin Stream. As always, he spent much of his time editing, this time working on the Party’s local newspaper, Viet Nam Doc Lap (Independent Vietnam), which was produced on a stone lithograph. Meals consisted of rice mixed with minced meat or with fish from the stream. In the evening, the group would gather at the edge of the cave, where Nguyen Ai Quoc lectured to his colleagues on world history and modern revolutions. “Hour after hour, seated around the fire” as Vo Nguyen Giap later recalled, “we listened to him, like children listening to a legend.” Vigilance, however, was constantly necessary. Colonial border patrols from the nearby town of Soc Giang were frequent, and the local police came periodically to Pac Bo to search for criminals or illegal distillers of alcohol. On one occasion, the group was forced to avoid a local patrol by hiding under rocks. That night, it rained heavily, overflowing the local streams, and when they returned to Pac Bo, they discovered that snakes and rodents had entered their cave to seek refuge from the torrent. Nguyen Ai Quoc tolerated the discomfort with his unfailing good humor, but took the opportunity to warn his colleagues always to maintain secrecy and pay attention to the “three nothings” (when a Party member was accosted by a stranger, he was to say one of three things: I have seen nothing, I have heard nothing, or I know nothing). “Between the enemy and ourselves,” Quoc warned, “it is a struggle to the death. We must be able to tolerate all hardships, surmount the worst difficulties, and struggle to the end.”27
During the next three months, Nguyen Ai Quoc and his colleagues attempted to broaden their base of support in the border area by distributing copies of Viet Nam Doc Lap. To make it more understandable to the local population, it was written
in simple prose. It was sold at a nominal price rather than given away to give the impression that it was something of value. Mass organizations, to be known, Chinese-style, as National Salvation Associations (Cuu quoc hoi), were created under Party leadership for peasants, youth, women, and soldiers, and a security network was established throughout the surrounding region to protect against spies.
The Eighth Plenum of the Indochinese Communist Party convened at Pac Bo on May 10, 1941, with Nguyen Ai Quoc serving as the representative of the Comintern. It was the first meeting of the Central Committee that he had chaired since the unity conference in Hong Kong in February 1930. In attendance were Vu Anh, Hoang Van Thu, Truong Chinh, Phung Chi Kien, and Hoang Quoc Viet, as well as a number of other delegates from other parts of Indochina and abroad. Other members like Vo Nguyen Giap, Hoang Van Hoan, and Pham Van Dong were still assigned to maintain the Party’s external headquarters in Jingxi, where the new Vietnamese National Liberation Committee established with the cooperation of Truong Boi Cong was also just beginning to launch its own operations. But Quoc and his colleagues now planned to create a rival organization, the National Liberation League, to win over non-Communist elements in the area to the Vietminh.28
The primary task of the Eighth Plenum was formally to establish the new Vietminh Front, which had initially been envisaged by Party leaders late the previous year. The program of the front symbolized the new stage in the Vietnamese revolution. According to the resolution drafted at the meeting, the immediate task for the Vietnamese people was to struggle for national liberation from the French colonial regime and the Japanese occupation forces. The conflict now sweeping the world was between two competing branches of global imperialism, and although many nations were attempting to stay neutral in the battle, it was inevitable that the entire world would be dragged into the struggle. In the end, just as World War I had led to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, so the new global conflict would eventually lead to the emergence of several more socialist countries. The primary task of the front was thus to prepare to seize power at the appropriate moment.
Ho Chi Minh Page 35
