9. Letter to Phac Chan (Lam Duc Thu), June 6, 1931, and letter to Lam Duc Thu, in Envoi no. 640, November 30, 1931, in SPCE, Carton 367, CAOM. French sources claim that Quoc attempted to secure assistance from Chinese Communist elements operating in Hong Kong to make arrangements to leave the country (see Néron letter to Mr. Perdue, September 15, 1931, in SPCE, Carton 368, CAOM), but they were apparently unable to come to his aid.
10. For further information on Nguyen Ai Quoc’s family, see Glimpses/Childhood, pp. 101–11. According to this source, the imperial authorities had inrended to burn down the village of Kim Lien after the Nghe-Tinh uprising, but Nguyen Thi Thanh’s vigorous protests led them to abandon the idea. There have been conflicting reports about the activities of Tang Tuyet Minh, Quoc’s first wife, during this period. Le Quang Dat (Lesquendieu), Quoc’s colleague in Shanghai, stated under interrogation by the French that Quoc had informed him that she had not come to see her husband in Hong Kong during the winter of 1929–30. Lam Duc Thu, however, told Noel that she had indeed visited Hong Kong to see Quoc and further declared that, after his arrest, she asked Loseby about him. See Noel report, Envoi no. 660. May 23, 1932, in SPCE, Carton 369, CAOM; the dossier labeled “Mission Laurent,” in ibid; dossier labeled “Arrestation,” in SPCE, Carton 365, CAOM; and Hanoi report, October 28, 1931, in SPCE, Carton 367, CAOM. For a report that Quoc sent fifty Chinese dollars to his brother, Khiem, in January 1926, see Police de l’Indochine Annam (Sogny) à DirAfPol [Directeur des Affaires Politiques] et de SurGe [Sûreté Général), note confidentielle no. 45, Hué, September 1, 1926, in the dossier labeled “Nguyen Ai Quoc 1926–1927,” in SPCE, Carton 368, CAOM. For his farher’s death, see Annexe à la transmission no. 777/SG du 2 juin 1930, in dossier labeled “Correspondances 1927 à 1930,” in ibid. Nguyen Thi Thanh obtained permission from the authorities to visit her father during his last illness and took his remains back to Kim Lien: Glimpses/Childhood, p. 105.
11. Burton to Bushe, October 6, 1931; lettet by Cowell, December 30, 1931; C. Howard Smith (Foreign Office) to Shuckburgh (Colonial Office), October 15, 1931; all in CO. The governor in Hong Kong was evidently reluctant to hold Nguyen Ai Quoc indefinitely, in the conviction that if the Privy Council should rule against the government it would place him in an awkward position. See letter by Cowell, December 31, 1931, CO, PRO.
12. Letter by Jacques Truelle, December 22, 1931, in CO, PRO.
13. Memoir by D. N. Pritt, in the Ho Chi Minh Museum in Hanoi. For the claim that Stafford Cripps had followed his political tendencies, see Duncanson, “Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong,” p. 98. Cripps latet became a prominent Labour Party politician and British ambassador to the USSR. The charge that Quoc agreed to become a British agent appears in Hoang Van Chi From Colonialism to Communism (New York: Praeger, 1964), p. 50. The author may have picked up the rumor from the French, who apparently believed it. See “Fiche pour l’inspection évolution générale des forces communistes en Indochine, début 1950,” in dossier: CAEO/2b, VI. Viet minh, I, Renseignements généraux, Service Historique de l’Armée de l’Air (Paris).
14. Secretary of State (124) to Governor Hong Kong, October 8, 1932, Hong Kong to Cunliffe-Lister, October 27, 1932, and Governor Hong Kong to Sir P. Cunliffe-Lister, date January 31, 1933, CO.
15. The decision to release Nguyen Ai Quoc for political reasons angered some British police officials in Hong Kong and Singapore, who argued that it would make it more difficult to maintain public security throughout the region. See Note sur Nguyen Ai Quoc, signé Tessier, February 12, 1933, in dossier labeled “Hong Kong,” and Handwritten note, signed Ballereau, on a copy of Consul de France à Singapour “Ballereau,” GouGen Indochine, no. 16, March 14, 1933, in dossier labeled “Singapore,” in SPCE, Carton 369, CAOM. Mrs. Loseby described her own role in these events in an article printed in the New York Times, September 14, 1969. Also see Duncanson, “Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong,” p. 99.
16. Why Nguyen Ai Quoc left the ship, the S.S. Anhui, at Xiamen is not clear, but it may have been to avoid the possibility of capture in its final destination of Shanghai. In fact, the French consul in Hong Kong had established good relations with the British police and in late January informed French authorities in Shanghai of Quoc’s departure from Hong Kong. That is probably why the French police in Shanghai were convinced that he might be hiding in the city. See Consulat de France Hong Kong à Gougal, no. 8, January 22, 1933, in dossier labeled “Projet d ’échange …,” and DirSurGe (Marty) à Consulat de France Shanghai, no. 979, January 10, 1933, in dossier labeled “Correspondance 1932,” in SPCE, Carton 369, CAOM. According to Vietnamese sources, Quoc did not leave Amoy until July. See BNTS, II, p. 42. Also see T. Lan, p. 43. In his own memoirs, Quoc’s colleague Nguyen Luong Bang said that he was in Xiamen for six months.
17. For the quote, see T. Lan, Vua di duong, p. 51. According to this source, Quoc handed the note to a servant at the doot. For other versions, see Charles Fourniou and Leo Figuerès, Ho Chi Minh: Notre Camarade, (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1970), pp. 115–116, and Nguyen Luong Bang article in Nash Prezident Ho Shi Minh, [Our President Ho Chi Minh] (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), p. 102. Kobelev, p. 110, claims that he lived the life of a rich Chinese on vacation while in Shanghai.
18. T. Lan, Vua di duong, pp. 55–56.
19. Nguyen Khanh Toan, “En URSS avec ‘Oncle Ho,’” in Souvenirs, p. 145; information on the funeral ceremony is on p. 143. Also see Kobelev, p. 114.
20. Kobelev, p. 115. According to Anatoly A. Sokolov, Quoc enrolled at Lenin University in October 1934. For information on his circumstances in Moscow, see Sokolov’s Komintern i V’ietnam (Moscow; Iv Ran, 1998), pp. 85–86. The timing of Nguyen Ai Quoc’s arrival in Moscow is difficult to pinpoint. Nguyen Khanh Toan reported that he saw him there in early 1933, which is almost certainly mistaken. A brief autobiography written by Nguyen Ai Quoc himself at the time stated that he arrived in Moscow in July 1934 and then spent several months in the Crimea, enrolling in the Lenin School at the end of the year. Other dates in his account, however, are so inaccurate that it is difficult to know how much credence to give to it. See his “Avtobiografiya,” of April 17, 1938, in the Comintern files, Carton 495, Folder 201, File 132.
21. Jean Lacouture, Ho Chi Minh: A Political Biography, trans. Peter Wiles (New York: Vintage, 1968), trans. Peter Wiles (New York: Vintage, 1968), p. 69.
22. I am grateful to Mr. Do Quang Hung of the Institute of History in Hanoi for providing me with speculation about Quoc’s trial. Sophie Quinn-Judge has also heard reports in Moscow about the trial and speculates about the reasons—see her “Ho Chi Minh: New Perspectives from the Comintern Files,” The Vietnam Forum, no. 14 (1994), p. 73. Sokolov has little to say about the matter, except that while Quoc was in Moscow during the mid-1950s he met with Dmitri Manuilsky and Vera Vasilieva.
23. Quoted in ibid., citing Moscow, Carton 495, Folder 154, File 586. Also see Sokolov, Komintern, p. 87. Recently, however, a bizarre story has circulated in Moscow that it was Vasilieva who charged Ho Chi Minh with treason when he jilted her after engaging in a mutual affair during the 1920s. According to this account, which is allegedly contained in closely guarded Kremlin archives, Ho was exonerated through the efforts of the Comintern official Georgi Dimitrov.
24. Le Hong Phong’s arrival in China was reported in Note Périodique, second quarter 1935, dossier 35, in SLOTFOM, Series III, Carton 54, CAOM. Also see Nguyen Van Khoan and Trieu Hien, “Le Hong Phong tim bat lien lac voi Dang” [Le Hong Phong seeks to establish ties with the Party], in Xua Nay, September 1997, pp. 9–11, and Pham Xanh, “Su no luc cua Quoc te Cong san trong viec khoi phuc phong trao cach mang Viet Nam” [The efforts of the Comintern to revive the Vietnamese Revolutionary Movement], in Tap chi Lich su Dang (Hanoi), no. 25, 1989, p. 31. On the Overseas Executive Committee, see Notes Périodiques of November and December 1932, SLOTFOM, Series III, Carton 52, CAOM.
25. An article in Giau’s Tap chi Cong san [The Communist Review] noted that revolutionary wo
rk among the workers was more difficult than among peasants in Cochin China at that time, partly because it was difficult to penetrate the factories. See Note Périodique, first quarter 1934, annex 9, SLOTFOM, Series III, Carton 52, CAOM.
26. On Le Hong Son, see Note Périodique, first quarter 1933, SLOTFOM, Series III, Carton 52, CAOM. Also see “Interrogation of Hong Son,” October 24, 1932, in SPCE, Carton 367, CAOM. For French reports on ICP activities during this period, see Note Périodique, second quarter 1933, in SLOTFOM, Series III, Carton 52, CAOM. The quote on police frustration is from Note Périodique, report of third quarter 1933, in ibid.
27. Note Périodique, second quarter, 1933, in SLOTFOM, Series III, annex 9, Carton 52, CAOM. For a discussion, see William J. Duiker, The Comintern and Vietnamese Communism (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1975), p. 28. For operations in Tonkin, see Note Périodique, second quarter, 1934, in SLOTFOM, Series III, annex 9, Carton 52, CAOM. According to this source, a provisional regional committee was established in Hanoi sometime in early 1934. That same day, however, the organizers and much of their network were arrested by the French. This source also mentions that a provisional regional committee was set up in Vinh. The reference to those released from prison is from SLOTFOM, Series III, Note Périodique, third quarter 1934, annex 9, Carton 52, CAOM.
28. All these are quotations from Bolshevik Nore Périodique, no. 34, fourth quarter, 1934, annex 9, in SLOTFOM, Series III, Carton 52, CAOM. For information on the drawing up of the program of action, see Nguyen Van Khoan and Trieu Hien, “Le Hong Phong.” A Vietnamese-language version of the program is contained in Van kien Dang (1930–1945) [Party Documents (1930–1945)], vol. 1 (Hanoi: Ban nghien cuu Lich su Dang Troung uong, 1977), pp. 292–324; for a discussion, see Pierre Rousset, Communisme et nationalisme vietnamien (Paris: Editions Galilée, 1978), pp. 125–126. Historians in Vietnam today agree that the program was too leftist to meet the needs of the times. See for example, Tran Huy Lieu, Lich su tam muoi nam chong Phap [A history of eighty years of struggle against the French] (Hanoi: Van su dia, 1958). I.N. Ognetov says that the ECCI meeting in March 1932 had called upon the ICP to fight petty bourgeois ideas in its ranks, while also criticizing “left deviationism” and “adventurism,” such as addiction to the idea of a premature general uprising. According to Ognetov, it was as a result of rising petty bourgeois influence in the Party that the program of action was issued—see his “Komintern i revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie vo V’ietnam” [The Comintern and the Revolutionary Movement in Vietnam], in Komintern i Vostok [The Comintern and the East] (Moscow: n.p., 1969), pp. 435–37.
29. See Daniel Hémery, Révolutionnaires vietnamiens et pouvoir colonial en Indochine (Paris, 1975), pp. 53–54. The quote comes from Bolshevik, no. 5, December 1934, in Note Périodique, first quarter 1935, annex in SLOTFOM, Series III, Carton 54, CAOM. Ha Huy Tap wrote under the pseudonym Hong The Cong [Redness Will Bring About Communism]. Many years later, I interviewed Tap’s brother Ha Huy Giap in Hanoi. He conceded chat in wanting to combine the anti-imperialist and antifeudal task Nguyen Ai Quoc had been correct, rather than focusing exclusively on antifeudalism, as his brother Tap had wanted.
30. The resolution is contained in Note Périodique, second quarter, 1935, annex I, p. 6, in SLOTFOM, Series III, Carton 54, CAOM. The inclusion of Nguyen An Ninh in the list of national reformists is especially surprising, since he had already begun to cooperate with ICP leaders in Saigon. According to one French security services report, also in attendance at this conference were Nguyen Van Dut, Tran Van Chan, and Nguyen Van Than—see Note Périodique, second quarter, 1935, in SLOTFOM, Series III, Carton 54, CAOM.
31. See Orgwald note in SLOTFOM, Series III, Carton 54, CAOM. There have long been disagreements over the identity of the author. Charles B. McLane, in his Soviet Strategies in Southeast Asia (Princeton, N.J.; Princeton University Press, 1966), assumed chat it was written by Nguyen Ai Quoc, which is almost certainly an error, since Quoc did not arrive in Moscow until early in 1934 (pp. 163–64). The Sûreté was convinced that the aurhor was the Ukrainian Comintern official Dmitri Manuilsky, who had for years played an advisory role to the ICP. Sophie Quinn-Judge, based on material available to her in the Moscow archives, is of the same opinion. The Vietnamese historian Do Quang Hung, who has done extensive research in the archives in Moscow, believes that there was an actual Orgwald, who was a member of George Dimitrov’s faction in Moscow (interview with Do Quang Hung, December 15, 1990). For a recent discussion of the issue, see Anatoly 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 Vietnam; Sbornik statei [Traditional V’ietnam: A collection of articles] (Moscow: Vietnamese Center, 1993), pp. 216–17, fn 39. Sokolov suggests that the name might have been used by more than one person. I am inclined to accept the French view that Orgwald was Manuilsky.
32. The original was published in Communist International on August 5, 1934, and was later reprinted by the Trotskyite journal Partisans, no. 48 (June–August 1969). It appears in a French version in Note Périodique, third quarter, 1934, annex, in dossier 32, in SLOTFOM, Series III, Carton 52, CAOM. The quotes are taken from Pierre Rousset, Le Parti Communiste Vietnamien (Paris: François Maspero, 1975), pp. 69–70. The identity of the author of the letter is a matter of debate. Rousset speculated that it might have been written by a Soviet official in the Comintern. Sophie Quinn-Judge suggests that it might have been Kang Sheng or Wang Ming, both of whom were then serving as representatives of the CCP Central Committee in Moscow and were highly sectarian in their views of the Asian revolution.
33. Note Périodique, second quarter, 1935, (March), pp. 21, 58, in dossier 35, in SLOTFOM, Series III, Carton 54, CAOM. The ICP congress was scheduled to take place in Ha Huy Tap’s three-room apartment in Macao, and the delegate from the Comintern was to receive the only bed (ibid., p. 62). Also see Nguyen Van Khoan and Trieu Hien, “Le Hong Phong,” p. 10.
34. For French coverage of Tran Van Giau’s travels, see Note Périodique, second quarter 1935 (March), in dossier 35, in SLOTFOM, Series III, Carton 54, CAOM. Ha Huy Tap’s suspicions were reported in a letter to the Comintern. Vera Vasilieva in a letter dated March 17, 1931, advised Tap that in case of suspicions of disloyalty, he should immediately remove the suspect from any position of responsibility wichin the Party, change the location of its headquarters, and then seek to verify his suspicions. Tap’s later admission that Giau was apparently not a provocateur was contained in a report to Moscow dated April 4, 1935, filed in Carton 495, Folder 154, File 586, in the Comintern archives. In that letter, Tap said that “two hours before his [Giau’s] departure for the Party congress, eight automobiles of the Sûreté came to fetch him at his residence.” It is difficult to reconcile this with other information that Giau left Macao in mid-March, several days before the congress, and was not arrested in Saigon until May. Perhaps he was apprehended in Macao en route to the supposed March 18 congress.
35. Ha Huy Tap’s complaints are contained in his letters to Moscow dated April 4 and April 20, 1935, Carton 495, Folder 154, File 586, in the Comintern archives. Also see SLOTFOM, Series III, Carton 52, CAOM, and the dossier on the Seventh Comintern Congress, in SLOTFOM, Series III, Carton 113, CAOM. Nguyen Huu Can claimed to his colleagues that he had gone to the consulate to lead the French astray about plans for the congress. Tap did not accept his explanation, but French reports indicate that the Sûreté did not trust him either—see Note Périodique, second quarter 1935, pp. 62–65, in dossier 35, in SLOTFOM, Series III, Carton 52, CAOM. According to ICP sources, the cook Nguyen Van Tram had raped a female Party colleague shortly before taking flight. She later died from her wounds.
36. Documents from the congress indicate that the Overseas Executive Committee was considered to be superior in rank to the Central Committee, and was to consist of from five to seven members, with a three-member Standing Committee. See Note P
ériodique, fourth quarter 1935, in dossier 37, in SLOTFOM, Series II, Carton 54, CAOM. On the reasons for the postponement of the Macao congress, see the letter from Ha Huy Tap of the Overseas Executive Committee to the Comintern dated March 31, 1935, in the Comintern archives and at the Ho Chi Minh Museum in Hanoi.
37. Letter of April 20, 1935, to Moscow, in Comintern archives, Carton 495, Folder 154, File 586. What comes across most forcefully in Tap’s reports to Moscow is his almost pathological fear of “provocateurs.” The extent of Tap’s suspicion of Nguyen Ai Quoc is indicated by his asking in his letter of March 31 that, in translating the documents of the congress for the use of Comintern officials in Moscow, Quoc be held entirely responsible for political errors resulting from “false translation.”
38. Quoc’s letter, dated January 16, 1935, is contained in the Ho Chi Minh Museum in Hanoi and was written in French. A Vietnamese-language translation is available in Toan Tap I, vol. 3, pp. 55–59.
39. Le Hong Phong’s speech, as well as those of the other Vietnamese delegates, is reproduced in a Vietnamese-language translation in Van kien Dang (1930–1945), vol. a, pp. 7–41. A number of writers, as well as the Sûreté itself, have mistakenly assumed that the speaker was Nguyen Ai Quoc. It is now clear that “Chayan”—a corruption of Hai An—was in fact Le Hong Phong. See Rousset, Le Parti Communiste, p. 70, and Note Périodique, fourth quarter 1935, in dossier 37, in SLOTFOM, Series II, Carton 52, CAOM.
40. There is a questionnaire confirming Quoc’s participation in the Seventh Congress in the Ho Chi Minh Museum in Hanoi. It is reproduced in BNTS, vol. 2, pp. 51–52. The banquet is mentioned in ibid., p. 50.
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