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p The ship, flying the red flag of the Soviet Republic, steamed slowly up the Pearl River. The tiring voyage from Vladivostok to Canton was about to end. On the shore, Nguyen saw low mounds sparsely grown with trees and single-storied little houses of a dirty grey colour crowding closely together. Junks sailed by. Their peculiar sails made them look like huge butterflies or bats sitting on the surface oi the dark brown water. Thousands of junks were ranged along both banks of the river, serving as homes for entire families.

p A while later, the voyagers glimpsed the central embankment, which was like an alien body among the innumerable narrow little streets of the Chinese part of the port. In sharp contrast were the multi-stoned modern houses, many of them covered with large advertisements. Prominent among these were Sinccre’s and Sun department stores. In the middle of the river lay the sandy island of Shameen, the settlement of foreign consulates, joined with the mainland by a bridge whose approaches were fenced off with barbed wire. British soldiers wearing cork helmets and khaki shorts guarded the bridge.

p The moment he came ashore, Nguyen felt the breath of his native land, for from Canton it was a stone’s throw to Vietnam. Many things were just as he knew them at home. Orchids everywhere, banana palms growing along the sidewalks, and the dri/./le hanging like water dust in the air just as in Vietman in winter. In summer, on the other hand, showers which were more like waterfalls were a common occurrence, turning streets into streams. Then, with the evening’s breeze, came the cicadas, clustering in a large tree and producing a deafeningly shrill concert.

p Nguyen looked at the Pearl River, and in his mind’s eye saw the rivers of his youth the Blue River and the River of Fragrance. Their water was just as brown, and fishermen’s junks sailed upon it just as noiselessly. The tireless Canton rickshaws wearing broad-brimmed straw hats looked almost the same as their brothers in Hue and Saigon. The last time Nguyen had seen a rickshaw was at the Colonial Exhibition in 77 Marseilles. The people, too, were reminiscent of those at home. He himself was little different externally, and their sing-song Kwangtung dialect also sounded much like the tongue of his country.

p Again, as in Soviet Russia, Nguyen marvelled at the cleansing force of revolution. How brightly and joyfully sparkled the eyes of the Cantonese, unlike those of his downtrodden countrymen. Oppressed and abused by imperialists, the East arose before his eyes in the act of throwing off the chains of colonial slavery.

p On the day he arrived, Nguyen saw a mass action. Spontaneous meetings in support of Sun Yatsen’s revolutionary programme erupted here and there in Canton. The streets were patrolled by groups of workers. They were in semi-military garb, wearing armbands, and carrying rifles. The twelve-rayed Kuomintang stars were attached to their caps. Young Pioneers in khaki suits, white caps and red ties, marched along the streets. Posters and leaflets were stuck on the walls of houses and poles. Red flags were flown out of windows, and streamers were stretched across the streets.

p Situated at the extreme southern tip of China, Canton had always been fairly independent. This left a peculiar imprint on its citi/.ens. They were always free-thinking, always striving for independence, and always receptive to new ideas. "All new things come from Canton,” people said in China, and the activity of Sun Yatsen’s government bore them out.

p When Nguyen arrived in Canton, the Chinese national-democratic revolution was at its peak. Sun Yatscn, idol of all Chinese progressives, was still backed by the national bourgeoisie. Everyone saw the Kuomintang as a truly revolutionary party fighting for the country’s national liberation, against imperialist incursions and the countless warlords who were tearing China to pieces. The Kuomintang’s revolutionary potential swung high when Sun defined his new political course at the end of 1923: alliance with the Communists, alliance with Soviet Russia, support of the worker-peasant movement.

p It would have been a mistake to ignore this. Acting on the interests of the Chinese working class, for democracy and socialism, the Comintern Executive recommended the Chinese Communists to work hand in hand with the Kuomintang. At the 1st Congress of the Kuomintang, which Borodin, who had just come to China, helped to prepare, the Communist Party of China was admitted to the Kuomintang as an individual member, while maintaining its organisational and political independence. Every fifth member of the Kuomintang’s Central Executive Yuan elected at the Congress was a Communist, including such prominent CP of China personalities as Li Tachao and Chu Chiupo.

p The Congress endorsed Borodin’s appointment as the Executive Yuan’s and South China government’s chief political adviser. It also 78 decided to invite military advisers from the Soviet Union to model Unarmed forces of the Chinese revolution alter the Red Army. A commission headed by Liao Chungkai, leader ol" the Kuomintang’s left wing, was appointed to set up a military and political academy on Whampoa, an island in the estuary of the Pearl River.
 

p Nguyen had not been wrong in surmising that Vietnamese political emigres were gathering in South China. Some had come to Canton from France to be closer to their country, others had fled from the colonial police in Indochina. There were Vietnamese in various government offices of the Canton Republic. Some served in its People’s Revolutionary Army, others were enrolled in the Whampoa Academy.

p Nguyen had known from the Chinese papers back in Moscow that an attempt had been made on the life of Indochina Governor-General Merlin when he was visiting Shameen. A Vietnamese, Pham Hong Thai, had come to a reception held for the French guest under the guise of a journalist, with a bomb in the leather case of his camera.The bomb killed several officers of Merlin’s retinue, but the Governor-General himself escaped with only slight injuries. Fleeing from his pursuers, Pham Hong Thai dived into the river to swim to the nearest bank. But the distance was more than he could cope with, and the turbid waters of the Pearl River closed over him.

p The Shameen authorities accused the Canton government of " Bolshevik anarchy" and of condoning terrorism. Liao Chungkai, who was by then appointed governor of Canton, rebuffed these charges, and took the drowned Vietnamese patriot and his confederates under his protection. Pham Hong Thai’s friends were given permission to bury him in the central Cantonese cemetery beside the graves of Chinese revolutionaries.

p Nguyen sought to befriend these comrades of Pham Hong Thai’s. The Shameen bombing was still fresh in the memory of the city’s political community. Besides, Nguyen was helped by the Russian advisers, who had connections with the Vietnamese patriots.

p Nguyen was introduced to Pham Hong Thai’s confederates in one of the shabby hovels that lined the streets in the Chinese part of the city. Its windows faced so narrow a passage that two rickshaws would not have been able to pass each other. Ho Tung Mau, Le Hong Son, Le Hong Phong they gave their names with that characteristic Nghc-an accent that no Vietnamese would ever mistake. All three were from the same county as Nguyen. The youngest, Le Hong Phong (or Red Gale), a stocky broad-shouldered young man of proud bearing, instantly struck Nguyen’s fancy.

p These young men, though they looked little older than schoolboys, had the calloused hands of workmen and eyes that were lit up with 79 a thirst for struggle. They say in Vietnam that young bamboo is easily bent. But Nguyen’s new friends were an exception to the rule. They were different from the Vietnamese whom Nguyen had known in his younger years at home and when living in France. This was a generation of freedom fighters. And the far-reaching changes in Vietnam during Nguyen’s absence, especially in the postwar period, were reflected in their life stories.

p The French bourgeoisie, weakened by the war, was pumping riches out of its many colonies with redoubled /cal. The French capitalists, who had lost many of the old-time investment areas as a result of the war and especially after Russia dropped out of the capitalist world system, focussed their attention on Indochina. Railways and motor roads were being laid, factories and ports built, trading firms and banks founded in the cities and plantations of rubber and other industrial crops in the countryside. The colonialists’ profits soared. And the ranks of the Vietnamese working class kept swelling. In the early 1920s it was asserting itself more and more firmly in the political arena. No longer did it confine itself to mere protests against wage injustices, and was liable to call militant political strikes.

p To extend the social and political base of their colonial rule, the French carried through a number of liberal reforms, primarily in education, accompanied by far-flung propaganda of their civilising mission in Vietnam, and extolling Franco-Annamite cooperation.

p The educational reforms generated other processes. The new Vietnamese script, quoc-ngue, quickly took root in the country. More newspapers were being put out, more books published. A reading fever broke out. Educated Vietnamese, pupils and students especially, read everything that reached the bookstalls after the rigid police censorship in Vietnamese, Chinese and French. And books on major socio-political problems were read most widely.

p But while Nguyen had climbed the peak of socio-political thought and had become a champion of Leninism, that most advanced revolutionary doctrine, during his years abroad, his countrymen at home still stumbled about in semi-darkness and raptly absorbed such new concepts as freedom, equality, and fraternity, and the ideas of the French enlighteners. Thirstily, they read Liang Ch’ichao, who inspired a sense of national pride, and heatedly compared the pros and cons of various political doctrines Sun Yalsen’s three people’s principles, Mahatrna Gandhi’s sarvodaya doctrine of a universal welfare society and satyagraha of passive resistance, and also the socialist theories of Proudhon, Blanqui, and the Utopians.

p It was not until after the founding of the French Communist Party that the works of Marx and Lenin began filtering through to Vietnam in 80 French translation. They reached only a limited number of readers at first, but the ideas they contained spread like wildfire. The seed fell on fertile soil. Thus, a few do/en years later than in Kurope, such words and notions as “bourgeoisie”, “proletariat”, "the right of nations to selfdetermination”, “imperialism”, “colonialism”, "bourgeois-democratic revolution”, and so on, appeared in Vietnam’s political vocabulary.
 

p Nguyen’s new friends had been members of the Association for the Restoration of Vietnam (Viet Nam Quang Phuc Hoi), professing the ideas of Phan Boi Chau. The membership consisted mainly of Confucian patriots, many of them of an advanced age. They stigmatised the colonialists in elegant literary style at various gatherings, but were no longer capable of action. And the young people among them gradually drifted away, until finally Ho Tung Mau and Lc Hong Son set up the secret Union of Hearts Association (Tarn Tarn Xa). Its youthful members counted mostly on terrorist action. The tragic death of Pham Hong Thai after his attempt on the French governor, confused them. They had come to a crossroads, for they had heard a lot about things in Soviet Russia and knew the Russians working for Sun Yatsen’s government. Nguyen, however, was the first of their compatriots to come directly from that country, and they hung on his every word.

p “No Vietnamese patriot can fail to revere Pham Hong Thai’s exploit,” Nguyen said to them. "Out of all the seeds that fall to earth, a martyr’s blood sprouts the quickest. Pham Hong Thai’s death is the harbinger of spring. His name will live down the ages because he did not hesitate to lay down his life for freedom. But, brothers, are you sure the road you’ve chosen is correct?"

Nguyen said that in Russia, too, people had begun that way. Lenin’s elder brother had taken part in an attempt on the tsar’s life, and was hanged for it. But Russian revolutionaries had found the right way speedily, and established a monolithic party modelled on an effective revolutionary theory. "That,” Nguyen added, "is what we must do as well if we want to liberate our country.” He said this called for knowledge, especially political knowledge, and suggested that political education courses should be started for young revolutionaries right there, in Canton.

2

p In a letter to the Comintern of December 18, Nguyen wrote: “Arrived in Canton in mid-December. I am a Chinese now, not Annamite any more, and my name is Li Chui. Met a few Annamite nationalists. Picked 81 five of them from different provinces. Will teach them methods of organisation."

p Soon, a signboard saying. Committee for Special Political Studies, appeared on the door of house 13 (a three-storey villa of tropical design) on ostentatiously named VVenminlu (Civilisation Street). In a large second-floor classroom, the walls were hung with portraits of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Sun Yatsen, and Pham Hong Thai. Young people who had come to the courses directly from Vietnam, where they had miraculously avoided arrest, went reverently from one portrait to the next.

p For the rest of their lives, they would remember the words spoken at the opening ceremony by a man who called himself Comrade Vuong.

p “What must revolutionaries learn first of all?" he had asked them. And his reply was: "They must learn the right revolutionary theory. Then they will be like travellers in the dark of night lighting their way with a torch. There are many doctrines and theories. But the truest, the most reliable, the most revolutionary, is Leninism."

p The curriculum was fairly large. Students studied the international situation, the history of the October Revolution in Russia, the history of the three Internationals and the national liberation movement, and Sun Yatsen’s political programme. They also studied economic sciences, journalism, the principles of organising mass work, and foreign languages. Some of the lectures were by Whampoa Military Academy instructors. The Committee for Special Political Studies was, indeed, considered a kind of branch of the Academy, and functioned under its auspices. The mam instructor was Nguyen, who devoted all his free time to the courses.

p Those who remembered him at the time said Comrade Vuong had looked very young. He was now 35, slim, his finely chiselled face lit up by an unusually bright pair of eyes. He was dressed in a paramilitary jacket, like that of Sun Yatscn. Lively, quick, soft-mannered, but of firm and confident speech, he had the knack of instantly winning the attention of his audience. He was annoyed with people who indulged in fantasy, and was always intent on hitching his thoughts to actual practice. " Revolution,"he often said, "is the cause of the mass of workers and peasants, not some handful of people. Our main job, therefore, is to work patiently and regularly with the mass of the people.” He had the requisite statistics at his fingertips, and used figures skilfully to argue a point. He told his audience that figures were the most convincing evidence. "As Lenin said,” he would add, "the peasant believes figures more than theories.” He also tried to cultivate Lenin’s approach to the study of the revolutionary’s environment. "A revolutionary,” he would say, "must always be abreast of all political events. Read the papers they are the mirror of life and help understand what is going on."

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p Out of the subjects studied at the courses, the students were naturally most interested in the Vietnamese revolution. They wanted to know everything about it: what its character should be, and what social and political forces, what social classes, would take part in it?

p Following World War I, the relationship between the Vietnamese imperial dynasty and the French colonialists changed. Cowed by French power, Emperor Khai Dinh and his mandarins abandoned even the slight opposition put up by their predecessors, and cooperated obsequiously with the colonial authorities. Khai Dinh’s visit to France in 1922, his honeyed speeches and fawning behaviour during that visit, redoubled the hatred of the Vietnamese.

p The colonialists went out of their way to revive the former worship of the emperor. Now, this would work in their interests. A monarchist party with its own newspaper was founded for this purpose, recruiting a membership among French-educated Vietnamese. People who propagated monarchist ideals and Confucian canons, led by Pham Quynh, one of the most zealous collaborationists, gathered round the young, Western-educated Prince Vinh Thuy. But it was impossible to rebuild the prestige of the imperial dynasty. So, when Phan Chu Trinh, who returned to Vietnam, called for a "reform of the ruling dynasty" this badly hurt his prestige. By the 1920s, the programmes of all patriotic parties and groups in Vietnam associated liquidation of colonial oppression with the overthrow of the imperial dynasty.

p The nature of the feudal class on which the imperial dynasty relied, had also changed radically. During the period of colonial rule, and especially at the time of the First World War, the feudal gentry in Vietnam increased in numbers. In the capital, it was the emperor and his venal court that backed the French; in the countryside it was the reactionary landlords. There, and this applied especially to Cochin China, the national struggle against foreign oppressors gradually acquired ever more distinct social overtones, and tended to merge with the struggle of the poorest peasants against the abuses of the landlords, who, in fact, personified the colonial regime. By the early 1920s, it was quite clear that the bulk of the feudal lords in Vietnam had become servile allies of the French colonialists.

p It followed that Lenin’s postulate that the national liberation revolution was sure to be anti-feudal, thus conditioning a powerful revolutionary surge among the peasantry, was entirely valid for Vietnam. Nguyen and his comrades were aware of this. The "land to the tiller" slogan imposed by objective necessity, became the main slogan of their political platform. But who, what social forces, would carry the slogan into effect and mobilise millions of villagers against colonialism and feudalism? Nguyen pointed out that the working class alone was grown to 83 this task, because the workers were, in effect, the most consistent fighters against colonialism and the truest bearers of the national interest. The bourgeoisie was out, because its interests were increasingly interwoven with those of the landlords. In Cochin China, it was the landlords who were turning capitalist, while in Tonkin the bourgeoisie, which was buying up land, was turning into landlords.

p Nguyen and his new friends were convinced that the Vietnamese working class had to have its own party, its own political vanguard, and as quickly as possible. But unlike his friends, Nguyen knew of Lenin’s warning that artificial and premature founding of communist parties, especially in the backward East, could have deplorable consequences. The objective need for a working-class party already existed, but the subjective conditions in Indochina were not yet ripe for it. An organisation was needed to act as an intermediate link.

p Nguyen learned that in June 1924 Phan Boi Chau, impressed by Sun Yatsen’s ideas, had founded a Vietnam Nationalist Party, consisting of Vietnamese emigres who had settled in China. The Party’s programme censured French colonialism and demanded national self- determination, equality, a constitutional republic, liberation of all political prisoners, the right for Vietnamese students to go abroad, and freedom for the activity of different parties. In a report to the Comintern, Nguyen spoke highly of the Nationalist Party’s patriotic spirit, but noted the faults of its leaders, who, as he put it, "were at sea in politics and had no skill at all in organising the masses".

p He met Phan Boi Chau several times in Canton and Shanghai. Speaking on behalf of the Comintern, he demonstrated the need for revising the Nationalist Party’s programme and tactics so as to make it more revolutionary. And his arguments did, albeit slowly, yield the desired results. It was decided to call a Nationalist Party conference in the summer of 1925 in order to determine its further activity. But the decision was not fated to be carried out. On May 18, 1925, Phan Boi Chau was spotted and seized by agents of the French police in Shanghai, and shipped to Vietnam, where he was thrown into a Hanoi prison.

p At the end of June 1925, gathering on the top floor of the Wenminlu villa after the lectures, Nguyen and his young friends formed a new patriotic organisation called the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association. Here was how Nguyen defined its objectives:

p “The main thing for us today is to propagate the fundamentals of Lenin’s doctrine, and the decisions and instructions of the Comintern. We must never forget that nothing can substitute for Leninism. The Association with its revolutionary platform must become a bridge for the establishment of a communist party when conditions permit."

p He suggested forming a communist group inside the Association. It 84 would operate clandestinely at first. The local authorities, and especially the French police, would of course show an interest in the nature of the Association. That is why, he said, it would be advisable to use a less radical name for it in public. He suggested calling it Youth Party of Vietnam.

p It was agreed to put out a paper, Thanh men (Youth), and, as in Paris, Nguyen was made its chief editor. The paper was stencilled in a few hundred copies, and distributed in South China among Vietnamese emigres, and among French seamen in Canton and Shanghai, who shipped it secretly to Vietnam, France, and Siam. The paper’s calls for national and social liberation, and its exposures of the crimes committed by colonialists and collaborationists, won it much popularity among progressives in Vietnam. So much so that the colonial authorities became aware of it. ”The paper founded by Nguyen Ai OJLIOC,” said a report to the French Governor-General, "is read not only in Vietnam, but also abroad read and often transcribed."

p The 61st issue of the paper created a commotion at secret police headquarters in Indochina. Across the front page ran this banner headline: "Only the Communist Party Can Bring Freedom to Vietnam.” This meant to say that the Vietnamese national liberation movement was about to embark on a new stage, and that the objective need of the hour was to set up a genuinely revolutionary vanguard, a Communist Party, the only force that could take the liberation movement from the godforsaken paths of defeat to the highway of victory.

p The Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association was not officially affiliated with the Comintern. But it followed Comintern recommendations, and maintained close ties with communist parties in other countries, notably the Soviet Union, France and China. In due course, as Nguyen had foreseen, it became the nucleus of the future communist party.

p The Association had a rigid system of selection and training worked out by Nguyen. Most of the recruits came from the political courses. Those joining the Association had to take an oath of loyalty to the ideals of the revolution on Pham Hong Thai’s grave. On completing their training, many were sent to Indochina for underground work. Years later, when the revolution had won, they recalled how thoroughly each of them was briefed by Comrade Vuong:

p “Find old friends you can trust. Whatever you may be talking about, try to switch the conversation to the brutality of the French in our country. If you feel a response, ask: How much longer are we Vietnamese going to stiller foreign oppression? If you are asked how to get rid of the French, say unity is the key."

p In July 1926, Nguyen wrote to the Comintern:

p “Here is what we’ve managed to do since I came here:

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p “1) An underground group has been organised;

p “2) A peasant league has been organised (for Vietnamese living in Siam);

p “3) A group of Young Pioneers has been formed out of peasants’ and workers’ children. 1 hey live in Canton and we pay for their schooling (at the political courses, Nguyen had separate lessons with eight Vietnamese boys and girls. He gave them new names to mislead the police, and one surname lor the lot Li. They were considered Li Chili’s ’ nephews’ }e.l.)

p “4) A group of revolutionary women ilen) has been organised;

p “!)) A school of political propaganda has been opened, with students arriving in Canton secretly. They go home alter six weeks training. The first group consisted of 10 persons. The next group, which will finish in July, consists of about 30."

p The Young Pioneer Organisation in Moscow also received a letter from Canton, signed Li Clnii. It said there was a small group of Vietnamese children aged 12 to If), who were the first Young Communists of Vietnam. "They are still very young, though they have endured much grief,” the letter said. "They say they would like to come to your country, to be Lenin’s pupils like you. We hope you will not refuse to lake them..."

p The reply from Moscow was affirmative. The children set out for the Soviet Union accompanied by Vuong Time Tin, the son of Nguyen’s unforgettable teacher and an active member of tin- Association. The journey was long and dilhcull. Time I in and the children (of whom, seemingly, tlu-re had been five) took several months to reach Moscow.

p Those who studied at the Canton political courses and were active in the Association and the newspaper 1hanh men, received an excellent revolutionary training. It would be fair to say, indeed, thai they received true Ho Chi Mmh schooling, in which the fundamental principles of Leninism were intricately woven into the specific conditions of Vietnam without coming into conflict with them and finding support in the complicated socio-political situation and the national psychological traits of the Vietnamese of that lime.

The Association and the newspaper were the training ground for a powerful group of professional revolutionaries who devoted their lives to the national and social liberation of their nation. Among them were future leaders ol the Communist Partv of Vietnam and I he Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Ton Due’ Thang, Le Duan, Truong Chinh, Pham Van Dong, and Hoang Ojioc Viet, and prominent Party activists who did not live to see the revolution, Le Hong Phong, Nguyen The Minh 86 Khai, Ho Tung Mau, Lc Hong Son, Ngo Da ’1’u, Ha Huy Tap, Nguyen Van Tao, the first Vietnamese Komsomol Ly Tu ’I’rong, and many oth- = ers.

3

p Consistent internationalist that he was, Nguyen went out of his way to establish tics with revolutionaries of other countries. Backed by Liao Chungkai, with whom he was on a friendly footing, he formed the Union of Oppressed Asian Peoples. Its membership included patriots from Indochina and revolutionaries from Korea, Malaya, Indonesia and India who had found refuge in the Canton Republic, and also prominent Chinese democrats, including Liao Chungkai himself, who was elected Union President.

p But Liao’s days were numbered.

p On August 20, 1925, he was mortally wounded by a hired assassin outside the Kuomintang Central Executive Yuan building. Liao had worked resolutely to improve the life of the workers and peasants, and was a stout supporter of the Kuomintang’s alliance with Soviet Russia. That was why, indeed, he was the first on the Chinese reactionaries’ blacklist.

p Nguyen’s activity in Canton did not escape the watchful eye of the French secret police. The archives of the French Colonial Affairs Ministry contain the following confidential message; from Hanoi, dated February 27, 1925:

p “Hanoi police headquarters has been informed of an Annamite who has come to Canton from Europe, and established tics with revolutionary elements. He calls himself Li Chui and associates with the Russian Communists. He is well informed about Annamite revolutionaries in Europe and about Russian revolutionary methods... He is highly energetic and has organised a federation which is training Communists with the help of a few Annamites who settled in South China. They have issued leaflets, a few of which have reached Indochina, calling on people to join their federation."

p The secret agent who wrote this message was certainly observant: though very far from the Soviet Union, Nguyen had not relinquished ties with it for a single moment. He acted on Manuilsky’s advice and contacted Borodin as soon as he arrived. This was easy to do. The Canton papers regularly carried want ads for translators inserted by the Soviet mission. Nguyen had a ilucnt command of French, English and Chinese, and a smattering of Russian. Holding a copy of the Canton Cazette in his hand (as camouflage) he came to Borodin’s offices, and was given a job.

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p Borodin was respected and liked in Canton. An old-time Bolshevik, he had joined the Party at 19 in 1903, and had lived a long time abroad. After the Revolution he returned to Russia, where he was put in charge of the Party’s international relations, and was active in the world communist movement and the Comintern. He knew Lenin, and enjoyed his trust.

p A friendship developed between Nguyen and Borodin. Borodin was always ready to counsel and guide the Vietnamese Communist as the latter was building up ideological and political structures for Vietnamese patriots living in South China. He helped Nguyen to pick out the worthiest young people for study in Moscow’s Eastern University. The first group of five such young people, which included Le Hong Phong, left for Moscow in early 1926. It was also on Borodin’s recommendation that Soviet instructors of the Whampoa Academy lectured at Nguyen’s political courses. Among the lecturers was the future Soviet Marshal Vassily Bliicher, known in China by the name of Galin, P. A. Pavlov, M.V. Kuibyshev (V.V. Kuibyshev’s brother), V. M. Primakov, and others.

p The offices of the Canton government’s chief political adviser were in a fashionable villa behind a tall wall with an arch gate, opposite the Kuomintang’s Executive Yuan. Borodin and his family lived on the first floor. The translation bureau, which was on the ground floor, was headed by Chiang Tailei, Borodin’s consultant and aide, and future hero of the Canton Commune. Here, Nguyen spent most of his time, gathering information from Chinese and English newspapers for transmission to the Soviet news agency ROSTA, whose non-staff correspondent he had become when leaving Moscow.

p V. V. Vishniakova-Akimova, a member of Borodin’s staff, wrote in her book, Two Years in Rebel China:

p “I am privileged to have known one of the remarkable people who were then in Canton: the Vietnamese Li. In jest, we called him Li Annam.

p “I recall his slight frame in a white linen suit that hung on him loosely. He spoke good French, good English, and knew the Kwangtung dialect. He also knew Russian. He gave me lessons in Vietnamese, and enjoyed giving them. He was friendly but restrained, and never said anything about what he was or had been doing. We knew nothing about him except that the French had promised a large sum for his head and that the Kuomintang government had granted him political asylum. He was quite at home in Borodin’s house... It was not until much later that I learned from Borodin’s wife that our Li Annam was none other than Ho Chi Minh."

p Early in 1927, a pamphlet by an unknown author, The Revolutionary 88 Road, was published in Canton under the auspices of the Union ol Oppressed .Asian Peoples. Those who attended the political courses instantly guessed that it was written by Comrade Vuong. as Nguyen called himself, because it summed up his lectures on Leninism and the tasks facing (he Vietnamese revolution. The pamphlet was a logical continuation of French (./iliiin^alnni on /rial. In that lirsl book, Nguyen Ai Quoc’ had exposed the crimes ol’the French imperialists in their far-Hung colonial possessions, and in the second, The Rentlnlionarv Raad, he charted the concrete ways of liberating his nation.

p To defeat their powerful enemy, revolutionaries in Vietnam had two cardinal tasks to accomplish without delay: to learn the advanced revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism, and to establish a revolutionary party.

p “There has got to be a revolutionary party,” the pamphlet said, "in order to arouse and organise the masses at home, and to contact I he oppressed peoples and working class abroad. The revolution can be successful only if the party is firm, and to be firm, the party must have an ideology which all its members understand and follow. A party without an ideology is like a man without intelligence, like a ship without a compass."

p Nguyen Ai Quoc set forth the basic principles of Lenin’s revolutionary doctrine to suit the conditions of colonial Vietnam. Vietnam, he pointed out, was on the brink of a national liberation revolution that would put the country on the road to a socialist revolution bypassing the stage of capitalist development. The main task of the future MarxistLeninist party in Vietnam, he wrote, was to light the colonialists. In view of this, Nguyen elaborated on Lenin’s proposition and introduced national elements of patriotism into the idea of merging the workingclass movement with socialism. The chief motive forces of the future Vietnamese revolution, Nguyen Ai Quoc declared, were the peasants and the burgeoning working class, that is, the bulk of the nation. In the Vietnamese setting, with the masses thirsting for liberation, patriotism was a people’s patriotism with a class complexion.

p This important point later became the determining guideline in Nguyen’s own activity and that of his associates, enabling the small party of Vietnamese Communists to put themseh es at the head of the people and secure victory first in a general armed uprising, and later in two long wars of resistance.

p To really appreciate the conclusions drawn by Nguyen Ai Quoc, we might recall that many other prominent personalities of the worldwide national liberation movement of his time did not see the connection between national liberation and the class struggle. They held that national independence could be won without socialism. For Nguyen, however, 89 those two objectives national liberation and socialism were closely connected. "Only socialism and communism can bring (he peoples full liberation.” he once said, and his words became the motto of the Vietnamese revolution.

p True patriotism, he continued, was not to be separated from proletarian internationalism. That was why it was the internationalist duty of Vietnam’s revolutionaries to study the experience of the Great October Revolution in Russia. He pointed out its main lessons: that there must be a strong and tenacious Marxist-Leninist party; that the working class and the peasantry were the chief motive forces of revolution, and that the mass of the people should be united and committed. The road of the Vietnamese revolulion, Nguyen wrote, was the same as the road of the October Revolution. The struggle of the Russian proletariat was an example for the people of Vietnam to follow. The national liberation movement in the colonies must seek alliance with the revolutionary proletariat in the metropolitan coutries. There must be no trace of any yellow racism or xenophobia which some Vietnamese patriots were prone to display in the past. To tie in the struggle of the Vietnamese people with the worldwide revolutionary movement, was an issue of strategic importance. “The Vietnamese revolution,” Nguyen wrote, “is a part of the world revolution. All revolutionaries are comrades of the Vietnamese people.”

p Nguyen Ai Quoc devoted a chapter to the question of revolutionary ethics and morality. This had always preoccupied him. No party could be tenacious and combative-, he pointed out, if it did ne>t follow the foremost revolutionary theory and did not consist of people who had all the finest qualities of revolutionaries. Among these- qualities the- author listed a consistently revolutionary spirit, devotion to the revolution, readiness for self-sacrifice, a striving for unity, diligence, thrift, selflessness, concern for (he common good, self-criticism, contempt of glory, absence of excess pride-, ability to endure- want, and indifference to mate-rial wealth.

p The Revolutionary Road WAS the first book by a Vietnamese showing thesubstance of Lenin’s doctrine, emphasising the importance of proletarian internationalism, and setting the objectives ol’the Vietnamese revolution. Complicated theoretical problems were set forth in popular form, so as to be understood by the broad mass of people.

p In the history of (he Vietnamese revolution Nguyen Ai Quoc’s book played the same role as Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? had played for the Russian revolutionary movement. According to Vietnamese historians it laid the foundation for a Communist Party in Indochina and became the basis for the Party’s political programme. Many leaders ol the CP ol Vietnam and of Socialist Vietnam had later advised those who wanted 90 to learn Marxism to start by reading Nguyen Ai Quoc’s The Revolutionary Road. For that was the book which had hitched their own lives to the revolutionary struggle of the working people.
 

p Two-and-a-half years of highly fruitful work in all but ideal conditions yielded splendid results: nearly 200 trained activists who would soon form the nucleus of a working-class party. What more could a professional revolutionary want? It was sad to note, however, that the end was approaching. Canton’s political horizon was clouded over. Having begun with acts of terrorism, reactionaries had finally gone on the offensive all along the line.

p On April 12, 1927, Chiang Kaishek started a counter-revolutionary coup in Shanghai. On the following day, his friend, General Li Chisheng, did the same in Canton. Rightist troops seized control of the Whampoa Academy. Three hundred of its trainees were put behind bars in a floating prison on the Pearl River. Roundups and arrests in the next several days saw more than 2,000 people being detained, with several hundred of them, mostly Communists, being put against the wall and shot. Even some members of the government and of the Kuomintang’s provincial committee, suspected of communist leanings, were taken into custody. In the Cantonese suburb of Tungshan, rightist troops blockaded the houses of the Soviet advisers.

p A few days after the coup, Borodin and his staff left for Wuhan, where the national government of Kuomintang left-wingers was still in power. Nguyen, who had stayed in Canton, looked for a new job and new lodgings. Again, as in distant Paris, he endured hungry days, with only casual earnings to support him—selling newspapers and cigarettes in the streets, and abiding by the rules of the underground, for Chiang Kaishek’s bloodhounds had somehow learned of his connections with Borodin and Kuomintang left-wingers.

p One warm night in May a Vietnamese by the name of Lym, employed in the Kuomintang’s security department came to Nguyen’s little room in the outskirts of Canton and told him there was an order out for his arrest. "Don’t waste time, go to some other town,” he said.

p A few hours later, Nguyen was on the Canton-Kowloon express. After a little over an hour, the train crossed the bridge joining Chinese territory with the British colony. But in Hongkong, the local police detained Nguyen. The police officer did not trust Nguyen’s Chinese papers, and, following local regulations, ordered him to leave within 24 hours.

p So Nguyen changed trains. This time his destination was Shanghai, where he joined a group of Soviet people who crossed all China and finally reached Soviet Russia after a long and exhausting march across 91 the Gobi. In so doing, they followed the route that Borodin had taken a little earlier.

p The reign of terror loosened in Canton by the reactionaries did not at first affect the Vietnamese emigres. Though the political courses were closed down, the Association continued to function. Many of its members still attended Whampoa Academy and were employed in various bodies of the Kuomintang and in the army.

p On December 11, 1927, a Communist-led uprising erupted in Canton, known in Chinese history as the Canton Commune. A Council of People’s Commissars was formed, which proclaimed the transfer of power in Kwangtung to Soviets of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ deputies. The Commune survived for only three days. It was crushed jointly by Chiang Kaishek’s people and the British and Japanese militarists, who killed or tortured to death more than 6,000 workers. At the height of the bloodbath the staff of the local Soviet consulate also laid down their lives.

Some Vietnamese students of the Whampoa Academy joined the insurrectionists and fought with them on the barricades. Chiang Kaishek’s secret agents, who had long since put the residence of the Association under surveillance, noticed one day that a Vietnamese with a red badge, like those worn then by members of the Canton Commune, had entered the premises. The police raided the Association and arrested all Vietnamese who were there. Among the arrested was Li Chui’s favourite “nephew”, Ly Tu Trong. That was when the 13-year-old boy performed his first act of heroism: despite blows and threats he betrayed nothing and no one to the gendarmes.