49

p I la C,ln AItn/i\\ /tr.\l and ^i’<ale.\l service ?tv/.s
that he tied in the revolutionary movement in
Vietnam it’il/i the international wi>rking-rlii.\.i
movement, and led the people of Vietnam
along the path he had travelled him.tflj
from patriotism lo \l<u \ism-I.enniisni.

Le Duan

1

p “Confidential. To the Minister of French Colonies M. Albert Sarraut from the Chief" Inspector of Indochinese troops in France. I have the honour to report that last night I had a talk with Phan Chu Trinh. He is in a sad condition sick and moneyless and wants to go home. I am sure you know his frame of mind. I should only like to add that he is no troublemaker. Phan Chu Trinh is a nationalist. True, he nurses the hope of seeing his country independent one day. But he believes that our protectorate in Annam should continue.

p “Phan Chu Trinh’s ideas, filtered by his ten years’ stay in France, have no resemblance lo those of Nguyen Ai Quoc. In fact, Trinh disapproves of Nguyen’s ideas and methods. I am convinced that the best thing for us would be to grant Phan Chu Trinh’s request. I therefore beg 50 Your Excellency to permit him to return to his country, and to instruct the Bank of Indochina to pay his tare.

p The French guardians of the law in Indochina no longer feared Phan Chu Trinh. His erstwhile patriotism had succumbed to his Francophile views and finally sank to primitive collaborationism. When departing from France on February 3, 1925, he told an audience at the Salic des Societes Savantes of his political views:

p “To survive and develop, the Asiatic lands need a material force. France and France alone can help us. France, too, if it wants to maintain its power in the Far Kast, has a slake in cooperating with Vietnam. If the two sides work together they will achieve everything. If they do not, they will achieve nothing."

p This speech was Phan Chu Trinh’s political swan song. Young people were the first to see that their idol has fallen, and ridiculed his ideas.

p And the fewer followers Phan Chu Trinh had, the greater were the fears of the colonial authorities concerning Nguyen Ai Ojioc.

p Meanwhile, the young Communist was occupied collecting money, medical supplies and clothing for hunger-stricken Russia. He tried to miss none of the party meetings that called on the French government to lift the economic blockade of Soviet Russia and grant it diplomatic recognition. Often, he was seen among the speakers at discussion clubs. And in his little room he worked late into the night, writing on the colonial issue for party newspapers. On Sundays, Nguyen began going to the Bibliolheque Nationale on Rue Richelieu. It was through Vaillant Couturier, who took advantage of his National Assembly credentials, that Nguyen was granted a permanent library pass. He was also a frequent visitor at the Rue Lafayette headquarters of the French Communist Party’s Central Committee, and was soon appointed member of its Colonial Affairs Commission, in which lie look charge of the Indochina section.

p Lvcr since 1880, it was a tradition among the ordinary people of Paris to lay flowers at the foot of the Wall of the Communards at PereLachaisc Cemetery at the end of May. Nguyen, too, observed the tradition, and listened with rapt attention to speeches extolling the Communards and calling on people lo follow their example.

p All his free time Nguyen devoted to party work. Though he was over !H), he had not yet given any girl a piece of red silk as is the Vietnamese custom, so that old man Moon could lie him by a silken thread to his chosen one. Possibly, there was a girl in his native Lotus Village who, according lo feudal custom, the families had agreed would be his wife. But a lot of water had flowed beneath the bridge. For his fellow villagers he was simply a missing person. Lven if his father had at some time under- 51 written a contract with some family, its validity had lapsed. And it was certainly not easy to find a filling companion in a foreign land. His frequent moves from country lo country, the professional revolutionary’s ascetic way of life, and the rules of conspiracy all this pushed his personal affairs far to the background. Nguyen Ai Ojioc simply remained a bachelor all his life.

p At the Central Committee, Nguyen met progressive young people from other French colonies Algerians, Tunisians, Madagascans, and so on. Gradually, they arrived at the idea of forming a joint organisation, and in July 1921 founded what they called the Intercolonial Union. Nguyen was elected to ils governing committee. The purpose of the Union, its rules said, was to unite colonials resident in France for the common struggle for national liberation. Two hundred people joined at once, including all the members of two organisations the Association of Vietnamese Patriots and the Madagascan Human Rights League.

p One of the Union activists and a close friend of Nguyen’s was the lawyer Bloncourt, a native of the Antilles. Some fifty years later, he recollected:

p “Nguyen atlended all meetings regularly. 1 saw he was dedicated to the struggle for the liberation of all colonial and oppressed people not only in Vietnam, but all over the Earth. He had indomitable faith in final victory. For him the only way to national liberation was thai of revolution. His mind was sel on the thought of national liberation, and this shaped all his life accordingly. Once, when he learned of the barbarous French reprisals heaped on people in Dahomey, he was deeply incensed and suffered as greatly as though all this was happening in Vietnam to his own people. He was a humanist and internationalist in the full sense of the word."

p Nguyen, a prolific contributor to the party press, knew the force packed by the printed word. He suggested the Intercolonial Union should put out its own newspaper. Nguyen and his friends called il Le Paria, for the word indicated the actual situation of the oppressed and humiliated colonial peoples. None of the Union activists save Nguyen had any journalistic experience, and he was promptly chosen to run the paper.

p Nguyen called on Henri Barbusse and asked him to give a hand. At that time, Barbusse headed Clarte, the international league of progressive writers formed on his initiative. Its members included such distinguished writers as Anatole France, Bernard Shaw, Upton Sinclair, Rabindranath Tagore, and so on. Barbusse responded instantly. He even found a room for the newspaper in the Clarte building.

p The first issue of Le I’ana appeared on April 1, 1922. The title of the one-sheet tabloid-si/.c paper was given in three languages French, 52 Arabic, and Chinese, thus emphasising its internationl nature. The introductory message to the readership said it was the lirst newspaper to represent the working people of all the French colonies.

p Distribution called Cor ingenuity. At first, Le Paria was mailed to official addresses in Indochina, the African colonies, and the West Indies. But nearly all the mailed copies were sei/.ed by the local police. Whereupon arrangements were made for seamen to carry the newspaper secretly.

p Some copies were sold in Paris among colonials and Vietnamese workers. Though most of the latter could not read, they were told what it was about, and bought the paper all the same, asking their French mates to read it to them. Le Paria was also put on sale at Paris newsstalls controlled by the FCP. Nguyen used to come to workers’ meetings with a large number of copies, which he handed out silently. In the end, he climbed the platform and said the newspaper, which exposed the colonialist oppression, was being handed out free. "But we should be grateful,” he would add, "if you volunteered some money, even if it is only a sou."

p Many Vietnamese sympathised with Nguyen’s activity, but were afraid of reprisals and sent him money secretly. One day a Vietnamese student slid into the le Paria office, looked about anxiously, and put 5 francs on the desk "for the newspaper”. And vanished at once. He was the son of a prosperous collaborationist.

p Nguyen was not only editor but also writer of most of the articles. Besides, he produced cartoons and drawings. Responding to all important events in Indochina and other French colonies, he ridiculed the mercenary colonial regime. Le Paria was for him also a vehicle for promoting the ideas of the Great October Socialist Revolution. While bourgeois writers flung mud at the Communist International, distorting its policy, Le Paria spoke out loud and clear in its favour issue after issue. "The Comintern,” the paper wrote, "fights tirelessly against the plunderous essence of the bourgeoisie in all countries of the world. Study Marx. See the brilliant embodiment of his ideas in Soviet Russia. Communism is the only road to our liberation."

p In the paper, Nguyen expounded his political and ideological creed. In the colonies, he pointed out, revolution was the business of the mass of the people. The Communist Party, he amplified, was the only party that could take the national liberation struggle to full and final victory. This was a new word for the Vietnamese. Fired by Lenin’s ideas, Nguyen had arrived at the conclusion that the Vietnamese revolution could not do without Marxism-Leninism and a political working-class party.

p In June 1922, a colonial exhibition opened in Marseilles. It was to show that the French were bearers of civilisation in their colonial 53 empire. Indochina, the pearl ofihe French colonies, was widely on display. Artful models of the Cambodian Angkor temples, of ancient Vietnamese pagodas, and old Hanoi streets aroused everybody s interest. Khmer dancers performed on a platform in tin’ centre ofihe exhibition grounds. Vietnamese rickshaws ran up and down the grounds with lovers of Oriental exolicncss ensconced in them.

p But the greatest attraction was the Vietnamese imperial eourl which the French brought to Marseilles for the opening of the exhibition. It arrived aboard the s.s. Portas, which flew a triangular orange flag with the two red strips of the imperial dynasty. Emperor Khai Dinh whom the French installed on the Annamite throne in 1916 in place ofihe rebellious Duy Tan, walked slowly down the snow-white gangplank. The most vicious of all puppet emperors appeared before the welcoming crowd clad in the traditional imperial garb a goldish (urban on his head, and a long silk robe with elaborate dragons embroidered on it draping him from the neck to his feet. Behind him came a ten-year-old boy named Vinh Thuy. Three, years later he would become the last of the emperors in Vietnamese history under the reign title of Bao Dai.

p Emperor Khai Dinh and his heir apparent were accompanied by an enormous retinue consisting of dignitaries and officials in resplendent garb.

p At the foot of the gangplank, the honoured guests were met by Albert Sarraut, French Minister for Colonial Affairs. Responding to Sarraut’s greeting, Khai Dinh said pompously: "France is our teacher. Out of our fond handshake come good feelings as both our countries march forward together."

p Nguyen wrote an angry exposure of the extravaganza put on in Marseilles. He described an episode that occurred in Vietnam shortly before the opening of the exhibition: a Frenchman had burned a Vietnamese railwayman alive because he thought the man had not been prompt enough in carrying out his orders. "In Marseilles,” Nguyen wrote, " people extol the humane spirit of France, while in Vietnam they kill our compatriots. In Marseilles they hail Indochina’s prosperity, while in Vietnam people die of hunger."

p Nguyen decided to try his hand at a satirical interlude on Khai Dinh, entitled The Bamboo Dragon. From time immemorial, Vietnamese craftsmen cut exotic dragons out of warped or twisted pieces of bamboo. Though in Buddhist demonology the dragon symbolised power and glory, the bamboo dragon, however attractive it may have looked, was nothing but a useless toy. Similarly, a traitor, even though crowned, was nothing but a wretched toy in the hands of the colonialists. Nguyen’s The Bamboo Dragon was published in Le Paria, and was then performed at one of the L’Humanile festivals in a Paris suburb.

54

p The colonial press mounted ;i mudslinging campaign against Le Paria. The Tin (lien thuoc dia, a Saigon newspaper, published a pamphlet in which Nguyen Ai Quoc was described as "a man of excessive ambitions”. When the paper reached Paris, members of" the governing committee of the Intercolonial Union called an emergency meeting. The next issue of Le Paria carried an article by a Vietnamese resident in France, Nguyen The Truyen.

p “What are Nguyen Ai Quoc’s excessive ambitions?" he asked. "His greatest ambition is the liberation of his countrymen who are living in slavery and are mercilessly exploited by the greedy colonialists. What more noble ambition could there be?"

p “Nguyen Ai Quoc’s chest was not covered with decorations,” Truyen went on to say, "and no government remittances were sent to him. Yet he was the personification of Vietnam’s hopes and aspirations."

p “Last year in Vietnam,” Truyen wrote, "I heard many inspiring stories about Nguyen passed from mouth to mouth. An old lady whose two sons were jailed by the French, asked me id knew him. And a boy whose lather the French thought suspicious and put away in prison kept asking me, ’Oh, please, tell me what Nguyen Ai Quoc looks like. Is he really like all of us, a man of flesh and bone?’"

p The French secret police kept an eye on all people coining from the colonies. Their interest in Nguyen Ai Quoc after he joined the CP of France and began putting out Le Paria, was especially great. Wherever he went, plainclothesmen were sure to follow. Often, they did not bother to conceal themselves, though when he was at meetings or conferences, they stayed outside for they feared what the workers would do to them. In the end, Nguyen had to learn things all revolutionaries had to know the art of security. Gradually, he learned, and those who shadowed him found their job getting harder.

p The landlady, too, noticed this side in Nguyen’s life. "Monsieur Ho,” she said years later, "led a secluded life. I could never be sure if he was still at home. That was how, one day, he disappeared forever."

p The 2nd Congress of the French Communist Party gathered in Marseilles, and once more Nguyen was elected delegate as member of the Central Committee’s Colonial Affairs Commission. On arriving from Paris, he and a few other delegates approached the building where the congress was to take place. Out of nowhere two plainclothesmen jumped on him. But Nguyen was quicker. He slipped out of their hands, and ran inside the building, where the policemen did not dare follow.

p The congress opened, and Nguyen was elected to its presiding party. He spoke on the colonial question, and proposed a resolution, " Communism and the Colonies”, drafted by the Party’s Colonial Affairs Commission in keeping with the Comintern line.

55

p When the sitting was over, those among the delegates who were members of the Marseilles municipality and the National Assembly surrounded Nguyen and led him across the city past police patrols to a saleplace. On the following day, L’ami du peuple came out with a strong protest against the behaviour of the Marseilles police. "The French working class,” it wrote, "will not sit by and watch such disgraceful behaviour. It will protest most vehemently if the police goes against the law and arrests Nguyen Ai Quoc..The entire Communist Party agrees with Nguyen Ai Quoc’s words of pain and anger in support of native workers victimised by imperialist colonialists. If they want us to keep quiet they will have to imprison not only the Annamite delegate but all delegates to the Congress, all members of the Communist Party."

p When Nguyen returned to Paris, his employer informed him vexedly that the police had been to his studio and had turned everything upside down. The police had told him he would have trouble for hiring a “troublemaker”. The employer said Nguyen’s carte d’idmtite had been invalidated, and that to keep his job he would have to have it renewed. Meanwhile, he reduced Nguyen’s salary.

p It never rains but it pours. After a few hours in a queue at police headquarters, Nguyen caught pneumonia. And while he was in hospital, his employer hired someone else in his place.

p To make ends meet, Nguyen advertised his services as a retoucher of photographs in La vie ouvnere. Also, he called on the coal merchants in his vicinity and offered to make signboards for them. He also had orders from curio shops to draw Chinese-style pictures on paper fans and vases. Usually such pictures were accompanied with a few characters wishing happiness, luck, prosperity, and the like. Now and then, Nguyen would write other characters in their stead, meaning "down with imperialism”. That was how ostensibly medieval artifacts landed on the shelves of curio shops and finally adorned the rooms of unsuspecting purchasers.

p The ideological thrust of Le Paria, no matter how modest its influence, troubled the French authorities. The Colonial Affairs Ministry classified the paper as seditious literature and banned its dissemination in the colonies. Issues of the paper found aboard French ships leaving for the colonies were to be destroyed on the spot.

p In early 1923, Albert Sarraul informed Maurice Long, Governor-General of Indochina, that the government intended to arrest Nguyen Ai Quoc and ship him to Vietnam under the surveillance oi the local police because his activity in France was becoming politically dangerous. Governor-General Long cabled back categorical objections. It would be the lesser of two evils to keep Nguyen Ai Quoc out of Vietnam, where he was increasingly popular.

56

p One night, the concierge met Nguyen with an ingratiating smile. "Oh, Monsieur Nguyen, you’ve come up in this world,” she said, handing him an official-looking envelope: Monsieur Albert Sarraut himself was inviting him for a chat.

p .Nguyen had no choice but to comply. At the gate ol the old ministry building, a National Guardsman examined his papers. A few seconds later, .Nguyen was marching across the cobblestones ol the inner yard. A stifFofficial in a black suit gestured to him silently, and brought him to a large study profusely adorned with Eastern curios and artifacts. A baldish middle-aged man came from behind his desk to meet him, a monocle over his right eye.

p This was the first lime Nguyen saw one of the powerful men ol the world, the Colonial Affairs Minister, at such close range. For him and all other freethinking Vietnamese, the man was the incarnation ol the evil colonial policies in Indochina. This was the man who had control over territories totalling 1 million square kilometers with a population of 60 million speaking twenty different languages. From 1917 to 1919, M. Albert Sarraut had been Governor-General of Indochina, where his cruelty in suppressing the people ol Cochin China earned him the title of Saigon butcher. In his book, Le mise en valeur des colonies Jrarifaises\ he stood before his readers as an ardent protector ol the interests ol French capitalism.

p His eye glittering behind the monocle, M. Sarraut examined the frail Vietnamese who seemed to have sunk into the large soft leather armchair. Then, in a schoolteacher’s voice, the minister said:

p “Troublemakers connected with the Russian Bolsheviks have made an appearance in France. They are in contact with Canton, and through Canton with Annam. They are planning to make trouble in Indochina. France is merciful, but it is not going to suffer this forever. We are strong enough to crush the rebels."

p He showed by compressing his fist how easily the rebels would be crushed, and went on to say that he liked people of Nguyen’s mould who had a purpose and will-power.

p “Will-power,” he said, "is splendid. But one must also have understanding. Let bygones be bygones. If you happen to want anything, I’m always at your service. Now that we know each other, you can apply directly to me..."

p Nguyen stood up. Looking straight into Sarraut’s face, barely controlling himself, he said:

p “Thank you, Monsieur Sarraut. The main thing in my life, and what I need most ol all, is freedom lor my compatriots, and independence for my country. May I go now:’"

p On the way home, Nguyen reflected on the interview. In that brief 57 duel of wits disguised by polite turns of phrase, he had managed to put in the last word. To Nguyen, this little triumph seemed a kind of harbinger of his people’s corning victory over colonialism.

p Thirty years later, when the French expeditionary corps surrendered at Dien Bien Phu, Albert Sarraut, now Chairman of the Assembly of the French Union, may have recalled that brief encounter with the man who had then, too, expressed assurance that the ideas of liberation would triumph.

p “Comrade .Nguyen, it has been decided to send you to Soviet Russia to work for the Comintern. At the request of Comrade Manuilskv of the Comintern Executive.”

p Nguyen could not believe his ears. Was his dream to come true at last? Would he see Moscow and Lenin? He remembered how he had met Manuilsky. It was at the 3rd Congress of the FCP in Paris in October 1922. Nguyen was invited to the presiding party as a representative of the French colonies, and there met the first Soviet person in his life. Though the opportunists headed by Frossard did manage, in died, to thwart the work of the Congress, Nguyen had had an opportunity to speak, and had the colonial question put on the agenda as a leading item. Manuilsky had liked his impetuous speech. Listening, he nodded his head in approval and applauded along with the rest when Nguyen ended his intervention with these words: "It is every Communist’s duty to further the liberation of the colonial peoples."

p A few months later, when the Executive of the Comintern had instructed him to make the main report on the national and colonial question at its 5th Congress, Dmitry Manuilsky remembered the energetic young Vietnamese he had met in Paris, and advised the French comrades to send him to Moscow.

p Travelling from France to Russia was a dangerous undertaking in those days. Nguyen had himself taken part in meetings of protest against killings of French Communists en route to or returning from Russia by police hirelings. The French authorities persisted in their hostility towards the Soviet state. The one more or less safe route from Paris to Moscow lay through Germany, the only great power that then maintained normal relations with Soviet Russia.

p Before his departure Nguyen had to go through some intricate procedures to mislead the police in preparation for his disappearance from Paris. He wrote several articles and notes for Le Paria and the French party papers to be published after his departure, creating the impression that he was somewhere in France. To confuse the agents who shadowed him, he adopted an indolent way of life, suggesting that he had given up politics. He worked in the mornings, spent the afternoons in the library or a museum, and went to the movies in the evenings. As the days of this 58 unchanging monotonous routine passed, the agents became less watchful.

p One dark June evening, Nguyen bought a ticket to ihe cinema as usual for (he last show. Long before the (ilm ended, however, he slipped out by an auxiliary exit he had noted before. It was a matter of minutes to run down to the subway and head lor the railway station, where a French comrade was waiting for him with his small suitcase.

p Paris night life was as exuberant as ever, Glittering advertisements lit up the streets, the cabarets in iVlontmartre and along the main boulevards attracted crowds of customers. Vans laden with oranges, cauliflower, beef, pork, and so on were already heading through the streets for les Halles cenlrales, the famous Parisian market. In the black sky an airplane was advertising Citroen cars. The lights atop the Eifl’el tower shone in all directions.

p Nguyen was leaving the city lor long, if not forever. He had decided by then that from Russia he would at last head for home. The six years he had spent in Paris had not been wasted. He had become a Communist, a practitioner of Leninism, the surest of all revolutionary teachings. He had looked for and found the way to his people’s liberation the thought of which had sent him on his travels abroad. He had gone through a severe school, had learned to work, had picked up knowledge, had absorbed the basics of revolutionary struggle, and had become a professional revolutionary.

p The only person he had told of his going to Moscow was his close friend Bloncourt. And the letter of goodbye which he had written to his friends in the Intercolonial Union and Le Paria (he had saicl he was going to the countryside to rest up), he also left with Bloncourt.

p This letter, which abounded in fervent faith, is worth reproducing, if only in part:

p “Dear friends, we have worked together a long time. Though we arcpeople of different races, different countries, different religions, we are attached to each other as brothers of the same family.

p “All of us suffer from the atrocities of colonialism and are fighting for a common ideal: the liberation of our people and the independence of our fatherland. We are not alone in our struggle, because we have the support of our entire people, of the French democrats, the true Frenchmen who stand by us.

p “Our common work in the Intercolonial Union and Le /’aria has borne good results. It has shown France the real situation in the French colonies. France is now aware of the fad that the colonialist sharks abuse the name and honour of France to plunder us and multiply their profits. Our work has helped to arouse our countrymen, and has helped them to see the real France, the country that first raised the slogan of liberty, 59 equality, and fraternity. But a lot still has to be accomplished. What precisely?

p “This question must not be answered automatically. Everything depends on the conditions in each country. For me the question is clear: I have got to go back home, to rejoin my people, to rouse it, to organise, to rally, and to prime for the struggle for freedom and independence..."

p To escape the agents who were shadowing him, Nguyen put on an elegant suit and took a first-class ticket on the Paris-Berlin express. As he recollected once, he was smoking an expensive Havana cigar, and posing as a wealthy businessman. In Berlin he was met by a German comrade, who then called at the Soviet mission and asked for entry papers for a member of the French Communist Party, a native of Indochina, who was going to work in the Comintern in Moscow. Soon, Nguyen was given entry papers in the name of photographer Trail Vang, and a fewdays later arrived in Petrograd on a Soviet ship, the Karl Liebknecht, which he boarded in Hamburg.

p Most authors writing about Ho Chi Minh say, for some reason, that the first time he came to Soviet Russia was in 1924. But the entry papers issued to him in the name of Tran Vang by the Soviet mission in Germany, repudiate this version. The border guards had stamped his papers on June 30, 1923, as he disembarked in Petrograd.

p Nguyen’s disappearance created a commotion in the French secret police. The archives of the Colonial Affairs Ministry still have copies of dispatches which the Siirele sent Albert Sarraul. A dispatch dated July 30, 1923, for example, said Nguyen Ai Qjioe had told people he was leaving on a ten-day vacation. A month had passed and he was not back.

p Then, a dispatch of October 8: "In reply to your inquiry of August 30, in which you informed us that Nguyen Ai Quoc, an Annamite revolutionary, member of communistic organisations and editor oi Le 1’ana, has disappeared, we have the honour to inform you that we are searching for Nguyen Tat Thanh, also known by the name of Nguyen Ai Quoc, high and low, but so far we have not (bund him."

Not until a year later, in October 1924, did the Colonial Affairs Ministry receive a coded message from the French Embassy, just opened in Moscow after the establishment of Franco-Soviet diplomatic relations, that the communist troublemaker, Nguyen Ai Quoc, was in the Soviet Union.