A second problem lies in the similarity in the titles of many Vietnamese-language books about Ho Chi Minh as well as about other aspects of the Vietnamese revolution. I have done my best to be precise when citing such sources, but readers interested in tracing them should take care to note the exact information contained in the endnotes. On other occasions, such as in the case of Ho Chi Minh Toan tap, editions I and II, the second editions often contain material not included in the first edition. Because the first edition of Ho Chi Minh Toan tap is probably more available in libraries in the United States, I have cited that version whenever possible.
A third issue concerns the use of the Vietnamese language. The written language, known as quoc ngu (national language), contains diacritical marks to indicate the proper tone to be adopted when pronouncing each individual word. Some recent books on various aspects of Vietnamese society use such marks for Vietnamese words incorporated in the text. I have decided not to do so in this biography, since they would undoubtedly represent an unnecessary distraction to readers not conversant in Vietnamese. Readers familiar with the Vietnamese language will, in any case, be acquainted with most of the Vietnamese words and phrases appearing in the text or the endnotes.
Finally, a word on the question of proper names might be appropriate. The Vietnamese people, like the Chinese, place their proper name first, while given names follow. In recent decades, however, it has become usual to refer to individuals by the last word appearing in their name. Ngo Dinh Diem, the one-time president of South Vietnam, was thus known as President Diem. Ho Chi Minh however, was known as President Ho, or Chairman Ho, perhaps because the name Ho Chi Minh was a pseudonym adopted from the Chinese language. Other individuals appearing in the text, such as Vo Nguyen Giap and Pham Van Dong, are usually referred to by their last name, as in Giap and Dong.
NOTES
The following abbreviations are used for frequently cited sources:
BNTS
Ho Chi Minh bien nien tieu su [A chronological history of Ho Chi Minh]. 10 vols. Hanoi: Thong tin Ly luan. 1992.
CAOM
Centre des Archives d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence, France.
CO
Colonial Office. Documents contained in the Public Record Office, London and Hong Kong.
Glimpses/Childhood
Nhung mau chuyen ve thoi nien thieu cua Bac Ho [Glimpses of the childhood of Uncle Ho]. Hanoi: Su that, 1985.
Glimpses/Life
Tran Dan Tien [Ho Chi Minh]. Glimpses of the Life of Ho Chi Minh. Hanoi: Foreign Languages Press, 1958. An abridged English-language translation of a Vietnamese publication entitled Nhung mau chuyen ve doi hoat dong cua Ho Chu tich.
HZYZ
Hoang Zheng. Hu Zhiming yu Zhongguo [Ho Chi Minh and China] Beijing: Jiefang Zhun, 1987.
JPRS
Joint Publications Research Service (Washington, DC.)
Kobelev
Yevgeny Kobelev. Ho Chi Minh. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1989.
NCLS
Nghien cuu Lich su [Historical Research] (Hanoi).
SLOTFOM
Service de Liaison avec les Originaires de Territoires de la France d’Outre-Mer.
Souvenirs
Souvenirs sur Ho Chi Minh. Hanoi; Foreign Languages Press, 1967. A collection of articles and memoirs by colleagues of Ho Chi Minh.
SPCE
Service de Protection du Corps Expéditionnaire. This archive is located at CAOM, Aix-en-Provence, France.
Toan Tap I
Ho Chi Minh Toan tap [The complete writings of Ho Chi Minh]. 1st ed. 10 vols. Hanoi: Su that, 1980–1989.
Toan Tap II
Ho Chi Minh Toan tap [The complete writings of Ho Chi Minh]. 2nd ed. 12 vols. Hanoi: Chinh tri Quoc gia, 1995–1996.
USNA
U.S. National Archives (College Park, Md.).
UPA
University Publications of America. These microfilms reproduce the central files of the Department of State, now held in USNA.
ZYG
Guo Ming, ed. Zhong-Ywe guanxi yan bian ssu shi nien [Forty years of Sino-Vietnamese relations]. Nanning: Guangxi Renmin, 1992.
Introduction
1. See Vo Nguyen Giap, “Tu tuong Ho Chi Minh qua trinh hinh thanh va noi dung co ban” [The process of formation and inner content of Ho Chi Minh Thought], in Nghien cuu tu tuong Ho Chi Minh [Studying Ho Chi Minh Thought] (Hanoi: Ho Chi Minh Institute, 1993), p. 17. Some critics of the current regime contend that the quotation is not complete and originally contained the additional phrase “and without freedom there is no independence.”
2. Some estimates of his pseudonyms exceed seventy-five. For two efforts to amass the names used by Ho Chi Minh over his lifetime, see A. A. Sokolov, “Psevdonimyi Ho Shi Mina kak opyt izucheniya politicheskoi biografii” [The pseudonyms of Ho Chi Minh as an experience in the study of political biography], in Traditsionnyi V’ietnam: Sbornik Statei [Traditional Vietnam: A collection of articles], vol. 2 (Moscow: Vietnamese Center, 1993), pp. 187–218; and “His Many Names and Travels,” in Vietnam Courier (May 1981).
3. The most widely known of his autobiographies was published in Vietnamese under the title Nhung mau chuyen ve dot hoat dong cua Ho Chu tich, authored by the fictitious Tran Dan Tien, one of Ho Chi Minh’s many pseudonyms. An abbreviated English-language version, Glimpses of the Life of Ho Chi Minh, appeared several years later. The earliest and most complete version of this autobiography, entitled Hu Zhi Ming Zhuan [A biography of Ho Chi Minh], was published in Chinese by the Ba Ywe publishing house in Shanghai in 1949. Curiously, this Chinese version, unlike later translations into other languages, identified the name Ho Chi Minh as the pseudonym of the onetime Comintern agent Nguyen Ai Quoc—see p. 4. Ho’s other autobiographical work, which has not been translated into Western languages, is T. Lan, Vua di duong, vua ke chuyen [Walking and talking] (Hanoi: Su That, 1976).
4. The most complete collection of his writings is Toan Tap I. Toan Tap II, just published, is also an excellent source.
5. The best known biography of Ho Chi Minh in English is Jean Lacouture’s Ho Chi Minh: A Political Biography (New York: Vintage, 1968). Originally published in France, it was translated by Peter Wiles. Also see Nguyen Khac Huyen, Vision Accomplished? (New York: Collier, 1971), and David Halberstam’s short Ho (New York: Random House, 1971).
6. Bernard B. Fall, “A Talk with Ho Chi Minh,” in Bernard B. Fall, ed., Ho Chi Minh on Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920–1966 (New York: Praeger, 1967), p. 321.
I | In a Lost Land
1. Cited in Truong Buu Lam, Vietnamese Resistance Against the French, 1858–1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), pp. 127–28.
2. Information on Nguyen Sinh Sac is relatively scarce. I have relied here on my interview with staff members of the branch office of the Ho Chi Minh Museum in Kim Lien village and two recent studies published by the Research Institute of Nghe Tinh province in Vietnam, Glimpses/Childhood and Bac Ho thoi nien thieu [The childhood of Uncle Ho] (Hanoi: Su that, 1989). According to Trinh Quang Phu, Tu Lang Sen den ben Nha Rong [From Lang Sen to the Nha Rong pier] (Ho Chi Minh City: Van Hoc, 1998), the family traced its heritage in the area back to a certain Nguyen Ba Pho, who arrived in Kim Lien in the sixteenth century (p. 13).
3. Ho Chi Minh’s date of birth has often inspired controversy. As an adult, he claimed a number of different birthdates, probably to confuse the authorities. For example, in one autobiographical statement written in Moscow, he claimed that he was born in 1903; in another, he gave the date 1894. Official sources in Hanoi now assert that he was born in 1890, and although some researchers are skeptical, evidence relating to his childhood, such as his long trek to the imperial city of Hué with his family in 1895 and other childhood activities, makes the date seem plausible. See BNTS, vol. 1, p. 17.
There has also been skepticism over the actual day of his birth. Some maintain that it was selected to coincide with the formation of the Vietminh Front in 1941, or to provide a pretext for a national celebratio
n on the arrival of a French delegation in Hanoi in the spring of 1946. See Huynh Kim Khanh, Vietnamese Communism, 1925–1945 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 58, and interview with Vu Thu Hien, Politique Internationale (fall 1997). Given the fact that, at the time of his birth, rural Vietnamese normally employed the lunar calendar, it is not unlikely that Ho Chi Minh was never certain of the exact date of his birth.
4. For one personal account of the incident, see Son Tung, “An Episode of Uncle Ho’s Childhood in Hué,” Vietnam Courier (April 1976), pp. 25–29. Also see Trinh Quang Phu, Tu Lang Sen, pp. 39–40. According to Phu, neighbors admonished young Cung not to weep in public after his mother’s death on the grounds that public displays of grief were not permitted in the vicinity of the imperial city.
This narrative of Ho Chi Minh’s childhood is based on several sources, including Glimpses/Childhood; Bac Ho thoi nien thieu (Hanoi: Su that, n.d.); Duc Vuong, Qua trinh hinh thanh tu tuong yeu nuoc cua Ho Chi Minh [The process of formation of Ho Chi Minh’s patriotic thought] (Hanoi: Chinh tri Quoc gia, 1993); Nguyen Dac Xuan, Bac Ho thoi thanh nien o Hué [Uncle Ho’s youth in Hué] (Ho Chi Minh City: Tre, 1999); and Di tich Kim Lien que huong Bac Ho [Traces of the Ho Chi Minh’s home village of Kim Lien] (Nghe Tinh: n.p., 1985); as well as interviews with personnel at the Ho Chi Minh Museum branch in Kim Lien village.
5. According to local tradition, at one point he joked to a visitor, in wordplay on the names of his two sons, that their names were “khong com” or “no rice”—see Glimpses/Childhood, p. 29. Also see Di tich Kim Lien, pp. 36–40. Sac’s pessimism about the current political situation had apparently affected his answers in the metropolitan examination, and it was only at the intervention of an influential friend at court that he was awarded his degree—see Nguyen Dac Xuan, Bac Ho thoi, pp. 46–47.
6. Quoted in Nash Prezident Ho Shi Minh [Our president Ho Chi Minh] (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), p. 26. For a similar comment, see Trinh Quang Phu, Tu Lang Sen, pp. 21, 36.
7. Nguyen Dac Xuan, Bac Ho thoi, pp. 34–35.
8. Once, while under the influence of a cup of Nguyen Sinh Sac’s rice wine, Phan Boi Chau remarked that he had never liked to study the old classical texts and recited a poem he recalled from his youth that ridiculed the classical writings as worthless. When they met twenty years later in south China, Nguyen Tat Thanh was still able to recite the verse to his older compatriot. See Glimpses/Childhood, p. 35, citing Phan Boi Chau, Phan Boi Chau nien bieu [A chronological autobiography of Phan Boi Chau] (Hanoi: Van su dia, 1955), p. 55. Also see Trinh Quang Phu, Tu Lang Sen, pp. 22–23, and Nguyen Dae Xuan, Bac Ho thoi, pp. 51–52.
9. Information on Phan Boi Chau’s revolutionary career can be found in his two autobiographies, Phan Boi Chau nien bieu and Nguc trung thu [A letter from prison] (Saigon: n.p., n.d.). For analysis, see David G. Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism, 1885–1925 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1971); William J. Duiker, The Rise of Nationalism in Vietnam, 1900–1941 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1976); and Vinh Sinh, ed., Phan Boi Chau and the Dong Du Movement (New Haven: Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1988).
10. For the first version, see Truong Chinh, President Ho Chi Minh: Beloved Leader of the Vietnamese People (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1966), pp. 10–11. For the second, see Nguyen Dac Xuan, Bac Ho thoi, p. 51. According to Xuan, the meeting with Phan Boi Chau took place on a ferryboat. The Russian scholar Yevgeny Kobelev says Thanh used the need to seek his father’s permission as an excuse to refuse the offer—see Kobelev, p. 18. According to Hong Ha, Thoi thanh nien cua Bac Ho [The Childhood of Uncle Ho] (Hanoi: Thanh nien?, 1994), Chau sent a friend to Kim Lien and did not meet with Thanh himself; see p. 11. Also see Avec l’Oncle Ho (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1972), pp. 15–16, the first chapter of which is a lengthy passage from the early sections of Glimpses/Childhood.
11. Bac Ho thoi nien thieu, p. 53; BNTS, vol. I, p. 35; Glimpses/Childhood, p. 51.
12. Nguyen Dac Xuan, “Thoi nien cua Bac o Hué” [Uncle’s childhood in Hué], in NCLS, no. 186 (May-June 1979). Also see Trinh Quang Phu, Tu Lang Sen, p. 45. The apartment was on Mai Thuc Loan Street, not far from their last residence in Hué.
13. At that time, the imperial civil service was divided into nine ranks, with two grades within each rank. Nguyen Sinh Sac was given an appointment at rank seven, grade two. BNTS, vol. 1, p. 35, fn 11. According to Nguyen Dac Xuan, in Bac Ho thoi, pp. 54–55, it was Cao Xuan Due who persuaded Sac to aceept a post at the Board of Rites as the only way his friend could remain in Hué and provide an education for his children. At Sac’s age, Due said, if one did not accept a post at court, the only recourse was to become a rebel. Sac agreed to accept an assignment, but only in a menial position, so he would not be serving a corrupt system.
14. The original French version is printed in the Bulletin de l’Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient (March-June 1907), pp. 166–75. For a discussion, see The Nguyen, Phan Chu Trinh (Saigon: n.p., 1956).
15. Bac Ho thoi nien thieu, p. 60. In letter to a nephew in his home village, Sac wrote an enigmatic poem: “The life of a man is like a dream,/life is like a cloud;/skill can be dangerous./Be aware! Be aware!”—Glimpses/Childhood, p. 58.
16. Glimpses/Childhood, p. 61; Nguyen Dac Xuan, Bac Ho thoi, pp. 57–58.
17. Hong Ha, Thoi thanh nien, p. 11. Tormentors called young Thanh a “fish and wood man,” akin to a hillbilly—see Nguyen Dac Xuan, Bac Ho thoi, p. 64. According to Xuan (pp. 66–67), when he was scolded by the school superintendent, Thanh replied that he was only voicing complaints that had already been raised by Phan Chu Trinh and other reformers. The superintendent replied that they too had been punished, and asked why Thanh was unhappy with a system that had provided him with a grant to study at the school. In the end, he warned Thanh’s instructors that if they could not control his behavior, the police would be called in and they themselves would be dismissed. There is some documentary confirmation of this incident: a French police report dated February 23, 1920, reported that Thanh and his brother showed an attitude of “clear resistance” to authority, prompring school officials to discipline them severely. A copy of the document is located at the Ho Chi Minh Museum in Ho Chi Minh City.
18. Hong Ho, Thoi thanh nien, p. 68.
19. “Thoi nien cua Bac o Hué,” p. 80; Glimpses/Childhood, p. 70; Bac Ho thoi nien thieu, 74. Some Vietnamese historians have sought to link Nguyen Tat Thanh directly with the protest movement—see Nguyen Dac Xuan, Bac Ho thoi, p. 65. According to Nguyen Dac Xuan, (pp. 72–73), Thanh was quite liberal in his translation of the representative’s remarks, and his comments to Levecque may have inflamed the situation. When Levecque argued that agricultural taxes could not be reduced, since they must be used to pay for flood control efforts undertaken earlier in the year, Thanh replied that those efforts had only exacerbated the situation, since the levies that had been constructed had only retained the flood waters in the rice fields, thus damaging the harvest even further. Why, he asked further, did the French build a bridge over the Perfume River that brought little benefit to the peasants. Levecque retorted angrily that violence was not the way to resolve the situation. Xuan’s version of the conversation seems highly speculative, but plausible. After the events of May 9, Hoang Thong was arrested, and police found a few patriotic statements among his writings, but he claimed that he was drunk at the time and couldn’t remember writing the material in question, so he was given too strokes of the cane and released. His students were outraged at his treatment by the authorities. “Thoi nien cua Bac,” p. 81; Nguyen Dac Xuan, Bac Ho thoi, p. 68.
20. A French intelligence report written in December 1920 recounted that Sac had recently told a friend that his son had once visited him at Binh Khe, but that he had sent him away after giving him a beating. According to Sac, he no longer wished to have any contact with his children. See Note, December 27, 1920, in SPCE, Carton 364, CAOM. For another reference to the be
ating, see Nguyen Khac Huyen, Vision Accomplished? (New York: Collier, 1971), p. 9. Sac’s comment that he no longer had any desire to see his son seems unlikely, in light of other evidence to be cited later. Perhaps the remark was made in a fit of pique. Still, there is additional support for the contention that he was sometimes abusive to his children. French police sources reported in 1920 that Sac’s daughter had declared under interrogation that she had left Hué for her home village in 1906 because she could no longer tolerare the brutality of her father, who beat her frequently—see Daniel Hémery, Ho Chi Minh: De l’Indochine au Vietnam (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), pp. 132–33.
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