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p After his voyages to Siam and Malaya, Nguyen Ai Quoc, this time with papers in the name of Sung Manchou, returned to Hongkong. What may be described as a Vietnamese commune was installed at 186 Sanlung (Three Dragons) Road, Kowloon: eight young men and women who had come from Vietnam for political training, and Nguyen and Mau. Among them, Nguyen was happy to recognise a few of his “nephews” and “nieces” who had been Young Pioneers in Canton.

p Often, Nguyen went to another part of Kowloon, three miles from Three Dragons Road, where the Comintern’s Far-Eastern Secretariat had its mission on the second floor of a modest stone building under the umbrella of some commercial firm. One of the two Vietnamese girls attending the political courses, who were Nguyen’s messengers, was darkskinned, large-eyed Minh Khai, who would one day become the chief of the Saigon party organisation. At that time she was only 20.

p Sung Manchou often went to Shanghai and Canton. There were many Vietnamese in the French concessions of those two Chinese cities, most of them Tonkin riflemen guarding French offices or servants in rich French homes. They had had contacts with the Association, and were now under the Party’s influence. Nguyen helped them put out underground papers, explained the current political situation, and the tasks of the Party. In the first few months after the Party was founded, some Communists, especially those who had lived a long time abroad and had 102 only a vague idea of the stale of affairs al home, succumbed to the " infantile disorder" of leftism. Encouraged by the founding of the Party, by the headway il was making, man) young Vietnamese Communists like their comrades in other, especially Eastern countries were impatient to take up arms. They wanted socialism at once, and their recklessness found a read}’ response, especially among those who had only recently espoused the cause. Nguyen never tired of explaining the harm ol these sentiments.

p “What is the use of bandying about such words as ’proletariat’, ’peasantry’, ’social liberation’, and ’socialism’,” he used to sa\. "Our task is to drive out the French colonialists and win national liberation. ’Flic main thing, therefore, is to ignite patriotism in the heart of every Vietnamese."

p But Nguyen never forgot, and constantly reminded his comrades that, as Lenin said, the independence of the proletarian movement, even il embryonic, should always be protected.

p Every party propagandist, Nguyen held, should spread the truth about the Soviet Union, the world’s first socialist country. Early in 1930, he began writing a book about life in the USSR. In his notes, he wrote: "I he Vietnamese, above all the working people, want to know about Russia. But the French imperialists have banned revolutionary newspapers and books. Furthermore, most workers and peasants in Vietnam cannot read. And those who can, know no other language but their own. It is our duty, therefore, to tell them about that worker-peasant country. To do so, I intend to write a book in Vietnamese naturally in the form of a travel account with many episodes. I want the book to be lively, engaging, and easy to read."

p The book, entitled Diary of a Survivor from a Shipwreck, was a tale of three shipwrecked friends a European, an African, and a Vietnamese who were saved by Soviet seamen and brought to Russia. They saw how the Soviet people were building their new society, and got to know those whom "the revolution turned from slaves into free men”. The book was produced lithographic-ally, and disseminated in Vietnam clandestinely.

p After the founding of the Communist Party, and especially during the uprising in Central Vietnam, the French colonial police called on most ol its agents to spot and capture the Party’s leaders. In those clays, a colonial kind of Interpol was active in South China and Southeast Asia, in which the British, French and Dutch secret police collaborated. They kept each other informed about revolutionaries, especially those connected with the Comintern, and exchanged prisoners. The arrest in 1925 ol Phan Boi Chan in the International Settlement of Shanghai, for example, was the result of an operation jointly planned by the French secret 103 service and the Shanghai Municipal Police, which was mostly British. The French repaid their colleagues by handing over a number of Indian and Burmese patriots.

p Nguyen Ai Ojioc was at the lop of the wanted list. In Siain, one day, French agents managed to spot him and came to terms with the local authorities on his extradition. Dressed in a Buddhist monk’s clothes, Nguyen barely managed to escape and found refuge in a temple until things blew over. In Hongkong, however, his enemies finally managed to lay him by the heels.

p Early one June morning in 1931, the door of the house on Three Dragons Road was rudely Hung open, and an English officer accompanied by several Chinese police constables rushed in.

p Ihe ollicer, his pistol drawn, ordered everybody to raise their hands. Fortunately, only two were at home at that hour Nguyen and the 17- year-old girl, Ey ’Fain.

p The police searched the house from top to bottom. They tore up the walls and the tiles on the roof in search of arms, and cut up clothes, pillows and even pieces ol soap in search of secret papers and explosives.

p “Do you two live alone here?"

p Nguyen nodded, but the ollieer pointed at the pantry and asked whytwo people should want so much rice and salt.

p The long search yielded no results. The police (bund nothing. They led Nguyen and Ey Tarn outdoors and pushed them into a vehicle with barred windows. At police headquarters, they were placed in dillerenl cells.

p It was a puzzle how Nguyen, a past master at camouflage, should have been caught olFhis guard. There are several versions. According to one, the French police had captured a Parly member, Nguyen Thai, some weeks before. A letter signed by Nguyen Ai Ojioc was found on his person, indicating that he was in Hongkong. A few days later, the Colonial Aflairs Minister in Paris was urgently informed that Nguyen Ai Ojioc’s whereabouts had at last been established.

p Then there was this second version: on June ’2, 1931. the Singapore police detained Comintern “agent” Serge Eefranc (alias Ducroux). The arrest was carried oil’ brilliantly, the papers wrote. Caught unawares, Eefranc had had no time to destroy documents that lifted the veil on some Comintern activities in Southeast Asia. It may well be assumed, that a sljp of paper with Nguyen’s address may have been found on Eefranc, who had probably met Nguyen in Hongkong.

p But the third version seems to be the likeliest. A man named Earn Due I hu, who had infiltrated the ranks of the Vietnamese active in South China at thai time, was later found to have been a French police stoolpigeon. He had come to Canton early in 1924 and had taken part in the 104 revolutionary activities of the Vietnamese emigres. True, his behaviour had aroused suspicion even at that time. He married the daughter of a rich Chinese businessman, and lived an idle life of luxury. Not until many years later, however, were his ties with the French Consulate in Hongkong finally discovered. The French had him start a photo studio and provided the necessary funds. He promised his Vietnamese comrades that all profits would go to the Party treasury, and that, besides, the place was convenient for clandestine meetings. In fact, however, he took advantage of the studio to surreptitiously photograph Vietnamese patriots and gave their pictures and names to the French Consulate. Nguyen Ai Quoc was one of those who were trapped by him. The French lost no time to inform the Hongkong police of the whereabouts of Nguyen Ai Quoc.

Ho Chi Minh, too, evidently accepted this third version. In any case, he refused to see Lam Due Thu, when the latter, who must have thought no one knew of his betrayal, returned to Vietnam after the revolution won and came to the President’s office as an "old comrade" wishing to offer his services to the new government. Ho Chi Minh, though foreign to any thoughts of revenge, looked at him coldly, and said: "Those who chew betel nuts arc betrayed by the colour of their lips. As you see, the revolution has won despite your treachery."

2

p Under the scenario worked out by the French and British police, Nguyen Ai Quoc was to be shipped to Vietnam in a special boat sent to Hongkong, so that the death sentence passed on him in absentia could be carried into effect. Counting on this course of events, the police chief in Hongkong did not bother to obtain a warrant for Nguen’s arrest. He figured that the fewer papers there were pertaining to the case, the better.

p At first, things had gone smoothly. Word of Nguyen’s arrest reached the Colonial Ministry in Paris two days later. A French ship left Haiphong for Hongkong to pick up the man kept in solitary confinement with no hope of outside help. The French bourgeois press was jubilant. On July 7, L’Opinion of Saigon wrote: "The British Intelligence Service picked Nguyen Ai Quoc like a flower off a meadow. An excellent catch, for which we must be grateful to our English friends. It means that the communist headquarters in Indochina has been captured, and the Communist Party is now paralysed."

p But outside help did come, and from an entirely unexpected quarter. The plans of the Hongkong police were frustrated by an Englishman, head of an influential firm of lawyers and a man of liberal views, Francis 105 Loseby. He knew a number of Vietnamese patriots, and on one occasion before had by his brilliant performance in court secured the release of an arrested Vietnamese revolutionary. When the Hongkong representatives of (he Comintern learned of Nguyen’s arrest, they contacted Loseby and secured his legal services.

p Loseby took on the case. On the very same day he asked the police for an interview with his client, a foreign citizen, Sung Manchou. This came as an unpleasant surprise for the police. They had not expected anyone to know about the arrest, which they thought had been skillfully and secretly carried off. They could not permit Loseby to see the prisoner. He would then discover that Sung had been arrested unlawfully, without a warrant, and would immediately intervene. So Loseby’s request was turned down without an explanation.

p Knowing that the lawyer would now take the matter further, the police chief was compelled to report the case to his superiors. A post-dated warrant was issued over the Hongkong Governor’s signature, with the result that the official date of the arrest was June 12.

p Loseby, naturally, continued to insist on seeing Sung Manchou. On his third try, after the police had “legalised” the arrest and carried out other formalities, his persistence was rewarded. In the visitor’s room, Loseby met a lean man with a dry, sickly cough, whose face, with its tightly drawn parchment-like skin, was lit up by a pair of strikingly large, bright eyes. He recalled later that at first Sung Manchou aroused a sense of pity, which changed to respect and reverence after their 30-minute conversation, and the wish to help the prisoner at any cost.

p “A fellow-countryman of mine,” Loseby said when they were seated at the table in the visiting room, "saved the life of Dr. Sun Yatsen when, as you may recall, Sun was kidnapped by his enemies in London. Now I want to help you, and ask you, therefore, to trust me. You must tell me everything about your case. It will enable me to defend you in court. But don’t tell me any more than is necessary, because, as I know, a revolutionary has his secrets."

p On obtaining the essential information, Loseby realised that the main thing was to prevent Sung Manchou’s extradition to Vietnam. He submitted the case to the Supreme Court of Hongkong.

p The case was heard in open session. But guards were placed in and around the courtroom to prevent escape. The trial proceeded in the best traditions of British justice. The judge, his aides and the lawyers, dressed in black gowns and wearing powdered wigs on their heads, dominated the scene. On the tables before them lay thick volumes of law. The prosecutor and defender kept paging through them and citing precedents to back up their arguments. None but the prosecutor and defender were allowed to speak. The defendant and his lawyers communicated in 106 writing. Loscby handled the case, but his colleague. Dr. Jenkins, was the defender in court.

p “The second lime I met Sung Munchon was in the courtroom,” Loseby reciilled. "He stood in the dock behind bars, and 1 noticed that lie had been handcuffed. I told Jenkins about it. Jenkins asked the judge to let the defendant show his hands to the court. Sung Manehon raised his handcufled hands. 1 hen Jenkins said that handcuffing any defendant in the courtroom was contrary to the law. The judge ordered the handcuffs to be removed. Then Jenkins began his speech in Snug Manchou’s defence."

p The lawyers’ job was not easy. The prosecutor raised stereotype charges that the defendant was a “Bolshevik”, a "Moscow agent" who had come to Hongkong in order to overthrow the govern men I of the Crown Colony. He asked lor a long term of imprisonment or, if possible, deportation to Indochina. He said the French authorities in Indochina were interested m the case and had sent their people to Hongkong to assist in the trial and secure the extradition of the Vietnamese revolutionary.

p Loseby and his colleague decided to make the most of the British judicial rule that required scrupulous observance of procedural regulations. They argued that 1) Sung Manchou’s arrest had been unlawful ( because it look place on June 6, while the Governor had not signed the official warrant until June 12); 2) the investigators acted unlawfully by asking impertinent questions (according to British justice, a detained person could be asked no more than 5 questions his name, occupation, and so on. Loseby had found out. besides, that in addition to those live general questions the police had asked Sung Manchou several times whether he had been to Russia, and why); 3) the prosecutor’s demand of deporting the defendant to Indochina, where he would be executed, wiis contrary to the law (British law and, among other things, official documents of the Crown concerning the colonies, said that if a criminal condemned by, say, a Shanghai court, appeared in Hongkong, the Hongkong authorities should turn him over to the Shanghai authorities. But this applied exclusively to British subjects. Sung Manchou, however, wiis a foreigner, and this procedure did not apply to him.)

Initially, the authorities had counted on securing the defendant’s extradition to Indochina aboard a French ship that had already dropped anchor in the Hongkong harbour, at the very first sitting of the court. But the defence frustrated their designs. Its arguments extended the ease to nine sittings, which lasted from June to October. Finally, the court adopted a dual decision: all charges against Sung Manchou were dropped, but he was to be expelled from the British colony and deported to Indochina.

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p All was lost, it seemed. But once more international solidarity came to the lore. Acting through the French branch of the International Organisation lor Aiding Revolutionaries, the Comintern Lxecutivc had I.oscby appeal against the ruling of the Hongkong court before the Privy Council in London. At Ins request. Sung Xlanchou’s defence there was undertaken b\ Noel Prill, then one of the best known lawyers in Britain.

p All they could do now was to await results. Nguyen spent his monotonous and lonely days and nights in single confinement ill Victoria prison, iin austere three-storeyed building with long narrow corridors and barred cells on both sides. Nguyen’s cell was barely large enough for ii person to he in. Near the ceiling three metres above the floor, was a narrow barred window through which ill night, he could sec the bright stars of the black tropical sky.

p Each day, like all other prisoners, Nguyen was allowed a l.l-nnnule walk. The warden was a bearded Gurkha. The prison yard, with tall w;ills around it, was reminiscent of the bottom of a deep well. Still, the walk w;is pleasant: Nguyen heard people talk, and was able to talk himself, he saw people’s faces, and a bit of the sky.

p Fairly often, Nguyen was visited by Loseby and his wife, who had become fond of him. In a letter to Sung Manchou’s friends, Loseby wrote:

p “I should like to point out llial my client is a most knowledgeable person and that for a number of reasons I am the only one he can trust (this applies to my stall’, but not all of it). Out of humanitarian feelings, I visit him as often as possible and I can say that a warm relationship has arisen between us. I would therefore take it as a personal loss if lie were handed over to the French or if he were killed by their agents.

p “That he might be killed by a French agent worries us. We have seen to it that no one apart from myself and my wife should be able to visit him. I know from a trustworthy source that a reward of 75,000 piastres has been posted on my client’s head... So, even if the appeal is granted and my client will be given his freedom, he will still be in danger of being killed by the French. He must not stay in the Crown Colony, because most of the Hongkong police know him. There is only a small chance ol his leaving the colony without the knowledge of the French, who are paying good money for any information about him."

p Though Loseby took every precaution and no one apart from himself and his wile could visit Sung Manchou, the number of the latter’s 108 Hongkong acquaintances increased unexpectedly by two two persons well known in Hongkong.

p After several months of solitary confinement, Sung Manchou’s lung troubles returned. Loscby had him removed to the prison hospital. One day, on the way to the hospital, Loseby’s wife dropped in at a florist’s to buy flowers for the sick man. There she met the wife of Hongkong ViceGovernor Thomas Sowton, better known in the Crown Colony’s literary and theatrical world as Stella Benson. The two ladies were close friends, and Mrs. Loseby finally told Stella about Sung Manchou. Under the impression of that story, Stella said she wanted to visit the prisoner. And the next time, Mrs. Loseby came to the hospital with her celebrated friend. The latter talked to Sung Manchou and did not hide her delight over his good English and his good manners. On coming home, she vented her outrage on her husband, saying that so knowledgeable a man, and a foreigner to boot, should never be kept in prison. She took her husband to the hospital, and had him speak to the prisoner. Nguyen made a favourable impression on him. Later, this played an important part in the happy conclusion of the "Sung Manchou case".

p Early in June 1932, a year after the trial of Sung Manchou first began, Loseby received welcome news from London: his appeal was granted. A colleague told him that Stafford Cripps, who represented the Hongkong authorities, decided that in the event of another trial, the Hongkong police would lose the case because of the absence of any conclusive evidence. To save their face, Cripps settled the matter out of court, as it were, and agreed to the release of the Annamite.

p The Hongkong newspapers reported that the trial was over, that the Annamite convict had won his freedom, that he would not be deported to Indochina, etc. One paper said that the appeal in the Privy Council on behalf of Sung Manchou, charged of being an Annamite revolutionary, had been granted on the strength of the Habeas Corpus Act. The case was dropped, and the Crown would not insist on the earlier decision of deporting the defendant to Indochina. A compromise was reached, under which Sung Manchou would be deported to any place of his own choice. Everyone concerned, with the sole exception of the French authorities, the paper said, was gratified.

p The long-awaited day of Nguyen’s release finally came. Now he had to leave Hongkong without the least delay, and without anyone knowing. At a family council at the Loseby’s, they decided to buy him a ticket for the next ship leaving for Europe, which he would abandon at the very first opportunity. The parting was a little sad Mr. and Mrs. Loseby had become very fond of Nguyen during the past year. The ship raised steam, crossed the picturesque Hongkong harbour, and faded away on the horizon.

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p A few days later, however, Loseby received a letter from Sung Manchou, saying he had been arrested the moment he set foot in Singapore, and was brought back to Hongkong under guard.

p “I was outraged,” Loseby recalled. "I sat up late at my desk, wondering what I could do. Finally, I made up my mind. In the morning I went to the Governor’s residence. I told Sir William Peel what I thought of the authorities not keeping their word. I asked him to let Sung go to Hsiamen, a little Chinese seaside resort northeast of Hongkong. I said I would choose the ship and the sailing date. The following day I received a personal note from the Governor that he had given oral orders to release Sung, but added that he feared the waterfront police, which checked the list of passengers before a ship’s departure, would again detain him."

p After his second release, Loseby arranged for Nguyen to stay at the Chinese YMCA hostel. He was given typically Chinese clothes to wear a wide-sleeved long gown of the educated class, a black mandarin cap, and soft shoes. Nguyen also wore a false beard and moustaches, and was unrecognisable.

p Now the question was how to leave Hongkong unnoticed. To avoid the police it would probably be best, though a little adventuresome, to take Sung out into the open sea on a motorboat or junk, and wait for the next ship heading for Hsiamen. But this was hardly feasible without outside help. The Losebys decided to take a chance and ask Thomas Sowton. And the Vice-Governor did, indeed, agree to do what he could. He asked Sir William Peel for the use of his personal launch, while Loseby bought two first-class tickets on a Japanese ship sailing for Shanghai: one for Sung Manchou and the other for his Chinese clerk whom he trusted and had asked to accompany his Vietnamese friend as far as Hsiamen.

p On the day the ship was departing, some time before dawn, the Governor’s launch flying his flag and with an armed guard aboard, tied up at Hsihuang jetty in Hongkong’s aristocratic quarter. A fashionably dressed Chinese and his secretary came aboard. He embraced the two Europeans, a man and a woman, who had come to see him off, and the launch headed for the open sea. When they sighted the Japanese ship, they radioed its captain, asking him to stop and take aboard two guests of the Governor, for whom a cabin had been reserved. The captain met the high-ranking guest beside the ladder lowered to the launch, and showed him the way to his cabin. A few hours later, the ship tied up in Hsiamen, where neither the British nor French arm of the law could reach Nguyen.

Ho Chi Minh was grateful to the Losebys all his life. As President of Free Vietnam, he sent them New Year’s cards and flowers every year. In January 1960, Loseby, an old man by then, his wife and daughter, 110 visited Hanoi on Ho (’hi Mmh’s invitation, spending a monlh in ilie Democratic’ Republic ol Vietnam as Ins quests, visiting various parls ol North Vietnam, and celebrating the let holiday with Ho (’hi \linh and his colleagues.

4

p In Hsiamen, Nguyen lived the idle life of a rich vacationing Chinese. The Hongkong press had no news of him. Kvidcntly, his disappearance had passed unnoticed. Alter a while, Nguyen decided that it was safe to move to Shanghai. There he counted on boarding a Soviet ship going to Vladivostok. That, indeed, was the road taken by groups of young Vietnamese patriots en route to the Eastern University in Moscow.

p Shanghai was in the hands ol the imperialist powers. Japanese. American, French and British warships rode anchor along the Whangpoo. A municipal council consisting of men ofdilferent nationalities, British, American, Italian, and so on, ran the International Settlement and had its own police force. The French concession was like a little piece of France, but with a predominantly Chinese population. The ruins of Chapei, a workers’ quarter in the Chinese part of the city, made a painful impression. The year before, the people of Chapei had held oil’a Japanese naval landing party, and to avenge the setback, Japanese warships had shelled it.

p To board a Soviet ship, Nguyen had to make contact with someone from the Comintern. But how? Somewhere in the European part of the city Nguyen’s comrades were doing their work unnoticed such Comintern representatives with the Communist Party of China as Arthur Kwe.rt, Otto Braun and Manfred Stern (or General Kleber, as he came to be known among his comrades during the Spanish Civil War). But Nguyen could not reach them. To try and find them in the International Settlement, which teemed with secret police agents, would have been the height of folly.

p But to hide out in the Chinese part of the city was also ha/ardous, for Chiang Kaishek’s spies were everywhere. Nguyen continued to pose as a rich Chinese, staying at a fairly expensive hotel. But this could not go on forever. His money was running out. After nightfall he used to retire to his room for a frugal meal, and laundered his precious Chinese gown, lor he had no change of clothes.

p One morning he learned from the local papers that a delegation of European MPs opposing war, had come to Shanghai. On that delegation, to Nguyen’s joy, was Paul Vaillant Couturier. Here was an extraordinary stroke of luck! But how to gel in touch with him? Who could he 111 ask to deliver a letter stating the time and place of a meeting. The paper said Sung Chinglmg, Dr. Sun Yatsen’s widow, had met the delegation. In the continuous infighting that went on in the Kuominlang, Sung Chingiing was always on the side ol the left. After Chiang Kaishek’s coup, in fact, protesting against breaches of Sun Yatsen’s ideals, she had gone to the Soviet Union and stayed there for a number ol" years. That, Nguyen decided, was a woman he could trust.

p He wrote a letter to Vaillanl Couturier, and (hough it was unsigned, the recipient would be sure to understand who it came from. Nguyen reminded him of episodes from their previous meetings known only to the two of them. He then took a cab to Sung Chingling’s residence. People knew this modest building in a tree-grown garden in the French Concession. The house had been a gift to Dr. Sun Yatscn made in 1919 by his overseas Chinese admirers at a most difficult moment in his life. As the taxi pulled up, Nguyen jumped out, dropped his message in the letterbox, and drove away.

p Late at night on the following day, in Jessheld Park on the border between the Chinese part of town and the International Settlement, he finally saw his first friend in Shanghai.

p “Even a thousand li’s from home you need a close friend,” Nguyen exclaimed as he embraced Paul Vaillant Couturier.

p “Mon Dieu, Nguyen, so yon are alive! And we had buried you. Which, so Frenchmen believe, means that you are going to live a long time.” Paul slapped him on the shoulder. And, responding to Nguyen’s pu/./.led look, added: "Yes, of course, you don’t know about it."

p Paul told him that a short lime after his disappearance from Hongkong a report of Sung Manchou’s death in a Hongkong prison appeared in the French papers. IS Opinion wrote, for example:

p “The much spoken of Bolshevik chief Nguyen Ai Quoc has died of tuberculosis in a prison hospital.” The paper carried Nguyen’s picture and an obituary, giving a sketch of his political activities. Praising his gift of leadership, the paper wrote: "This frail Annamile who has just died in a prison hospital in Hongkong could, if he had chosen the right way, been a true helper to his countrymen, and to France."

p The report coincided in time with the death of ’Fran Phu in a Saigon prison. ISIIumamte commented: "Like Comrade Nguyen Ai Quoc, Comrade ’Fran Phu was a great fighter in the ranks of our International.” Soviet newspapers, too, picked up the news of the death of the two revolutionary leaders of Indochina. A commemorative meeting was held by the Vietnamese group of Eastern University students, some of whom had been personally seen off to Moscow by Nguyen or had studied with ’Fran Phu. Representatives of the Comintern and the Eastern University administration spoke at the meeting.

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p The report of Nguyen’s death had probably been invented by the French police to save face after the collapse of the Sung Manchou case. On the other hand, they may have wanted to create confusion in the communist movement in Indochina.

p In an interview to a Reuters correspondent in 1969 at the time of Ho Chi Minh’s death, Loseby’s wife claimed, however, that rumours about the death of Sung Manchou were specially spread by her and her husband to throw the French off his trail. This seems to be closer to the truth. And evidently the French secret police did believe the rumour, because for many years Nguyen’s name never appeared either in the police records or the French press. It was not until the early 1940s that a Surete agent informed his superiors in Hanoi that in Caobang Province of North Vietnam a revolutionary leader named Ho Chi Minh had appeared, whom some people consider to be Nguyen Ai Quoc. The answer he received was that his report was groundless, because Nguyen Ai Quoc had died in Hongkong in 1932.

p The secret police had evidently not seen (or did not believe) a small report that appeared in the Saigon paper L’Opinion on April 18, 1933, when Nguyen was already in Hsiamen.

p “The man... by name of Nguyen Ai Quoc,” it said, "whose death the press reported a year ago, is alive and free. He is out of prison. The Hongkong court had sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment, but since he suffered from TB everybody thought he would die in his (’ell. This did not happen, however."

p Nguyen told Paul he had spent two years on what was for him a desert island, cut off from world events and from the cause. He wanted to know what had happened in his country during that time.

p The story he heard was a tragic one. The colonialists had brutallysuppressed the revolutionary action in Nghe-an arid Hatinh provinces. The Foreign Legion had been deployed against the rebels, and many of the villages that had set up Soviets were wiped off the face of the earth by the French air force.

p After the Soviets were crushed, the colonialists launched a reign of terror throughout the country, spearheaded against the newly-founded Communist Party. Many of its primary organisations and governing bodies were destroyed. Tran Phu and a few other members of the Party’s Central Committee were killed in September 1931. Nguyen’s faithful friend and comrade, Le Hong Son, lost his life on the guillotine in 1932. So did Nguyen’s favourite “nephew”, little Ly Tu Trong. At a public meeting he had shot and killed a French police officer, and was sentenced to death despite being a minor. Little Trong went to the guillotine with proudly raised head, singing the Internationale. Four years before, 113 in Canton, he and his friends had learned the words of that proletarian anthem from Comrade Yuong, who had translated it into Vietnamese.

p “Unfortunately.” Paul Yaillant Couturier said bitterly, "revolutions always take a loll of life. But the Communist Part) of Indochina is doing good work. Many of its organisations are back in action. And the French Party, loo. is gaming strength. Socialism is making headway all along the line in Russia. Do you know the words industrialisation, collectivisation, and the live-year plan.? Yon will soon see what tremendous changes these words stand for."

p A few days later Nguyen was visited by a man who brought him greetings from his comrades. The long-awaited contacts, without which a revolutionary is in fact ineffective, had at last, after so main hardships, been restored.

The subsequent train of events was simple. A Soviet merchantman, which dropped anchor in Shanghai lor repairs, took Nguyen aboard. A lew days at sea, and the panorama ol Vladivostok harbour opened belore his eves.

HIS SECOND HOMELAND

p Nguyen emerged from Yaroslavsky Railway Station on to the large Moscow square and glanced at the familiar little spires topping the imposing building of Ka/an Railway Station across the way. It seemed to him lie had never lelt the city.

p Moscow seemed the same as seven years before. Hut in some way it was unrecognisable. Signs of innovation were in evidence wherever Inlooked. To begin with, there were more cars in the streets. The square between the railway stations had a tower ringed by a wooden fence at the site of the future subway station.

p In Okholny Riad lie missed a familiar church, and on the left-hand side they were building a large hotel in place of the old shops. Along Tverskaya Street he saw buses and trolleybuses in addition to the tramcars. On the corner of Ca/.elm Lane, where there had been the unfinished brick walls of a cinema where homeless kids, unwashed and unmanageable, had made their home, now towered the impressive Central Telegraph building.

p The changes in the life of Soviet people were still more striking. On streamers and posters, and on the front pages ol newspapers, lie read slogans and appeals that thrilled him: "The live-year plan in four years!”, "Industrialisation forward!”, "Collective farms are the future!" and "Cadres are crucial!"

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p The question of who beats whom had already been settled in socialism’s favour. Now it was a matter of eliminating all exploiting classes, doing away with the exploitation of man by man, and building socialist society. The second five-year plan envisaged unprecedentedly high rates for the production of means of production. Their output was to be nearly doubled. The papers carried blazing news of the big building projects the Magnitka, Azov Steel, Zaporozhye Steel, the Urals Engineering Works, and so on. The countryside, too, was embarking on the socialist road. New collective farms were springing up all over the country. The Arctic regions were being developed.

p After his two agonising years in the Hongkong prison and his lonely life in Hsiamen and Shanghai, and after the sense of bereavement that gripped him on learning about the death of some of the finest members of the Party, his friends and pupils, everything Nguyen saw in the Soviet Union was like a soothing ointment, giving him new faith, new strength and vigour.

p At the Comintern’s Eastern Secretariat, Nguyen Ai Quoc was given a hero’s welcome. He was warmly greeted by its head, Otto Kuusinen. Like all other Soviet people, those in the Comintern were still stirred by the grand battle fought all over the world for the lives of the Bulgarian anti-fascists Georgi Dimitrov, Popov, and Tanev, who had been the central figures in the Reichstag fire trial in Leipzig. The battle ended in a complete triumph: Georgi Dimitrov and his friends were set free and had come to the Soviet Union. Now, said Kuusinen, one more witness of the power of international proletarian solidarity had reached Moscow this time from the Far East. Haggard, sick, a feverish glow on his parchment-like cheeks, but with a happy glitter in his eyes and a joyous open smile.

p The Eastern Secretariat shipped Nguyen off to a Crimean sanatorium: he needed long and serious medical treatment. But after a short rest he was eager to rejoin his friends in Moscow, and take up his work of professional revolutionary.

p On the Comintern’s recommendation, he was admitted to the International Lenin School. In the questionnaire he had had to fill in, he wrote of his social status that he was a revolutionary and ofhis basic profession that he was a Party worker. As a student of the Lenin School, hepicked a new alias. Now he was Linov, and remained Linov throughout his stay in the Soviet Union.

p Linov quickly became the recognised head of the now fairly large community of Vietnamese revolutionaries in Moscow. Eor many of them he was not only the legendary Nguyen Ai Quoc but also a senior in age. There were Vietnamese in the Comintern’s Eastern Secretariat, and Vietnamese in the Lenin School, and many also in the Institute of 115 National and Colonial Problems founded in 19.32 in place of the colonial department of Eastern University. Nguyen Khanh Toan, a Party veteran who was in Moscow at the time, recollected:

p “A Vietnamese comrade and I were summoned to the headquarters of the Comintern. We were taken to the office of the comrade in charge of the Vietnamese group at the Institute, on the fourth floor of a building on Mokhovaya Street. Uncle Ho was there.

p “Thenceforward, Uncle Ho was the leader of the Vietnamese group at the Institute... he kept in very close touch with us. In the evenings, he often came to talk to us about his experiences putting heavy emphasis on revolutionary morals, especially solidarity. Among the younger students squabbles occurred of a mostly personal character, and he arbitrated. What he sought to weed out was arrogance, egoism, indiscipline. He wanted us to be united and to put the interests of the revolution above everything else. He often said to us: ’If even this little group of ours cannot live in harmony and solidarity, how can we hope to unite and rally the masses against the colonialists to save the nation?’"

p Though Linov was the eldest among them, Nguyen Khanh Toan recalled, he always took part in their various undertakings—writing articles for the wall newspaper, taking part in their singing and amateur theatricals, visiting museums, hiking, and translating Comintern resolutions into Vietnamese.

p In 1935, the Institute suggested that Linov should lecture on party history and the fundamentals of organisation in the Vietnamese group. He followed the progress of his students very closely, and was especially watchful with those who had had no proper education. After a lecture, he would make sure that the students had understood him, then asked how they would tie up their new knowledge with practice, and checked if they had grasped the new terminology.

Though Linov was under medical care, his appearance was sickly and he was just as frail as ever. But strangely, no one had ever seen him sick and in bed, though the severe Russian winter was not easy for the Vietnamese to bear. He always looked sprightly, his way of life was austere, and he kept scrupulously to a fixed routine, did his exercises every day, and had dumb-bells and a chest expander in his room.

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p From January 1935 on, all services and institutions of the Comintern in Moscow launched preparations for its 7th Congress. The Vietnamese Communists looked forward to it with impatience, for it would be the first since the founding of their Party. Soon, an official party delegation 116 arrived from distant Vietnam. It was headed by Le Hong Phong, who had grown to adulthood. He came with two companions the darkskinned large-eyed and very youthful Minh Khai, and a little known youth by name of Hoang Van Non, who represented Vietnam’s northernmost Caobang Province that had a fairly strong communist organisation ever since the Party was founded, well backed in the countryside.

p It was decided that every member of the delegation would speak, and they worked together on the texts—members of the delegation and local activists under Linov. Le Hong Phong would make the main report, "Struggle of the CPIC and the Nghe-Tinh Soviets”, while Hoang Van Non would speak about the revolutionary struggle in Indochina and the emergence of a democratic front. Minh Khai, who was the youngest of the few Asian women delegates, was asked to speak on behalf of Eastern women.

p The Vietnamese in Moscow celebrated the first communist wedding. At the district register office, in modest surroundings and in the presence of just a few close friends, Phan Lan (Minh Khai) and Hai An (Le Hong Phong) were married. The young revolutionaries cherished the lovethat had flared up between them in Moscow throughout their short but dramatic lives.
 

p The 7th Congress of the Comintern opened on July 25, 1935, in the House of Trade Unions. Though Linov was not formally a member of the Vietnamese delegation, he took part in the Congress as a member of the Comintern’s Eastern Secretariat. There he again met his old friends Nadezhda Krupskaya, Dmitry Manuilsky, losif Pyatnitsky, Marcel Cachin, Vasil Kolarov, and Sanzo Nosaka (Okano), and got acquainted with such distinguished personalities of the world communist movement as Georgi Dimitrov, Klement Gottwald, Bela Kun, Wilhelm Pieek, Palmiro Togliatti, Maurice Thorc/., and others.

p The resolutions of the Congress were invaluable for the Vietnamese revolution. The Congress produced a full-scale definition of fascism as an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, and most imperialist elements of monopoly capital, and set forth the tasks of the communist and workers’ movement in face of the looming fascist peril. Though the matter concerned the European communist parties most of all, the Congress resolution on the fascist peril subsequently helped the Vietnamese Communists to follow a consistent policy vis-a-vis Japanese militarism, which was even then driving farther and farther south in China and becoming a dangerous potential enemy of the Vietnamese revolution.

p The popular anti-imperialist front policy in colonial and dependent 117 countries, as formulated in Dimilrov’s report and the Congress resolutions, was especially important for the Communist Party of Indochina. The 7th Congress had, indeed, revived and elaborated upon a thesis of the Comintern’s 4th Congress worked out with Lenin’s help on the united anti-imperialist front of colonies and dependent countries as a form of uniting the forces of national liberation.

p What was most important for Nguyen Ai Quoc and his mates was that the 7th Congress repudiated the earlier ultra-leftist principles urging "worker-peasant revolutions" and the establishment of "Soviet governments" in colonial and dependent countries. This call was obviously premature in the case of most of the countries concerned, and clearly under-rated the national anti-imperialist tasks.

p The first step for most colonies and dependencies in a real people’s revolution, the Congress said, was to fight for national liberation against the imperialist oppressors. It would be an unforgiveable mistake, it said, to put off national liberation until the country was ripe for workerpeasant power; it was essential to work for a united popular front: to enlist the greatest number of people in the fight against the mounting imperialist exploitation, against colonial oppression, and for the expulsion of imperialists, and the country’s independence, on the one hand, and to participate in mass anti-imperialist movements headed by nationalrevolutionaries and national-reformists, on the other.

p In Vietnam, to be sure, there was no mass movement headed by nationalist elements nor any organised national bourgeoisie. The existing bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties were weak politically and organisationally, and incapable of advancing a political programme of nationwide impact that would fire the broad mass of the people. The Vietnamese Communists, therefore, did not face the question of whether or not to participate in some movement, which usually caused agonising discussion and debate. They had what may be described as a virgin land in that respect a land they had to turn up and cultivate, that is, put forward national and general democratic slogans, find an acceptable form for a united front, and waste no time in recruiting all those willing to join the fight against the colonialists, including the national bourgeoisie, most of which, like the rest of the nation, was oppressed by the French.

p Today, when we know how and why national liberation revolutions triumphed in Vietnam and other lands, the aforesaid may appear elementary, though, indeed, the question of a united popular front is still relevant in quite a number of countries. For the Vietnamese Communists, however, who were looking avidly for what Lenin called the transition or the approach to the proletarian revolution, the basic propositions of the 7th Congress on united front tactics became central guidelines. They discussed them again and again at Party plenums and congresses.

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p United national front tactics carried out flexibly and with an eye to the maturity of the national liberation movement and the specific tasks facing it, were the decisive factor that led to the victory of the people of Vietnam in August 1945, and then in two wars of resistance first against the French colonialists and then against the U. S. aggressors.

p For the Vietnamese delegates, the 7th Congress was also important because it recognised the newly-formed Communist Party of Indochina internationally. When young Minh Khai ended her tale of how quickly the downtrodden women of Indochina were responding and joining the revolution, other women delegates rose from their seats and embraced her as the hall applauded. And in the interval between sittings she was heartily greeted by Nade/.hda Krupskaya.

p While the Congress proceeded, lasting for nearly a month, the Vietnamese delegates were welcome guests at Moscow factories and Red Army barracks, and also met Communist Party delegations of other countries.

p At the closing session, the Congress endorsed the Executive’s admission of the Communist Party of Indochina to the Comintern. The Vietnamese delegation was overjoyed. And this for yet another reason: Le Hong Phong was elected member of the Comintern Executive. Henceforth, the growing communist movement in Indochina would be represented on the governing body of the international communist organisation.

p On the Executive’s instructions, Le Hong Phong was to take the Comintern resolutions to Vietnam, and launch preparations for his Party’s Central Committee plenum. Minh Khai and Non, who went home via France, left a few months later, posing as a married couple.

p Before their departure, they saw Linov. All three were in a good mood: shortly before, a Popular Front government had come to power in France, and the French Communist Party was a member of it. They did not know yet what effect this would have on the situation in Indochina, but were sure that new, favourable possibilities would arise for their Party.

p “The Popular Front victory in France, " Nguyen Ai Ojuoc said to his two companions, "is a rare chance, and we must not fail to use it. The main thing now is to secure complete unity inside the Party, especially between its homeside and overseas units. On reaching Saigon, please tell Le Hong Phong the following three things:

p “One. The Popular Front victory in France is sure to bring about positive changes in the situation in Indochina. For this reason the overseas Central Committee should go home at once and assume guidance of the patriotic movement. It should leave no more than a token group of comrades abroad to maintain contact with the outside world.

p “Two. The Trotskyites have betrayed their reactionary essence 119 everywhere, and in Vietnam as well. Our Parly must dissociate itself from them most resolutely. There must be no compromises.

p “Three. Every effort must be made to form an anti-fascist and antiwar democratic front. It must embrace all patriotic forces, all those who want to fight for the country’s salvation. But never forget when striking up alliances that the vital interests of the Party and the working class come first."

p In July 1936, Lc Hong Phong returned to Saigon from Shanghai in the guise of a rich Chinese merchant. He was accompanied by another member of the Party’s Central Committee, his Eastern University mate Ha Huy Tap. They called a Central Committee plenum to amend the resolution of the Party’s 1st Congress in line with the decisions of the Comintern’s 7th Congress. The plenum formulated the tasks of the revolution in Indochina in the first stage as follows: (o join the worldwide front for democracy and peace headed by the Soviet Union, and combat fascism and war. It reaffirmed the goal of establishing a national antiimperialist front (which came to be known as the Democratic Front of Indochina).

p The Democratic Front movement elicited unprecedented enthusiasm. Action committees sprang up all over the country to convene a congress of the peoples of Indochina. Meetings and other gatherings were held to draw up demands and send them to the French Popular Front government, calling for democratic reforms in Vietnam and a better life. A French governmental commission under Justin Codard reached Saigon in late 1936 to study the situation at first hand. All along the 1,500- kilometre route from Saigon to Hanoi, the commission was met at every train stop by crowds of people, who handed in petitions.

p The strike wave that rolled across Vietnam, backed up by meetings and demonstrations, called for freedom, democracy, and release of political prisoners. In the autumn and winter of 1936 hundreds of political prisoners, and among them prominent party leaders, were indeed released from prisons and forced labour camps. They returned to the movement and buttressed the democratic leadership. Hoang Qtioc Viet, a veteran of the Vietnam revolution, who was a Poulo Condor prisoner, recollected:

p “We learned of the brilliant Popular Front victory in the general elections of May 1936 from the French papers. Our hopes soared. The sounder nationalist elements shared our feelings. When the new French government was formed, the waiting became almost unbearable. At long last, the first group of amnestied prisoners was set free. The summer, which seemed endless, passed, and we had almost stopped hoping. Then, one morning, the chief of the guards summoned us. He was obviously vexed as he looked at us, especially at comrades Le Duan and Pham Van Dong.

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p “ ‘What.’ You too?" he said with distasle.

p “ ‘How else? You must know . there wasn’t a shred of evidence against us...’ "

p After six years ofhard underground work in a setting ofhrutal terrorism and persecution, the Communist Party of Indochina at last gained an opportunity to address the nation openly. The books and newspapers il was allowed to publish propagated the ideas of Marxism-Leninism, explained the policy of the CPIC and the Comintern, and printed Party and Comintern documents. Just a year or two belore, the Communists could not have hoped to publish these tilings unhindered in their Saigon and Hanoi papers.

p The police taboo on the subject of the Soviet Union was lifted too. And the Party’s press made up for the many years of silence by extensive and diverse coverage of the life and struggles of the world’s first workerpcasant state. In November 1937, shortly before the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia, the journal of the Indochina Communist Party’s Central Committee wrote:

p “The October Revolution ushered in a new era in (he history of tinworld the era of proletarian revolution and the building of socialism in the USSR, the common motherland of all proletarians and enslaved peoples. It is our duty to combat imperialist designs to destroy the Soviet Lnion. We must defend our first socialist state."

p Legal public activity and a public press enhanced the Party’s influence. The persecuted "handful of rebels" turned out to be- a strong, well-organised and disciplined political force. While fighting for democratic freedoms and for a better hie for the people, the Parly managed to shape a political army of millions of people in town and countryside, and to (rain a large contingent of party activists. In that sense, the Democratic Front had laid the requisite ideological and organisational groundwork for the founding soon of a united national front under whose banner the August revolution was, in fact, carried out.

p The three years ofhard work for the Democratic Front of Indochina (19136-1939), when the tactic of combining legal, semi-legal, and underground methods was first used, and when the Party was able to mount a truly massive political and ideological drive, when majorachicvemenls alternated with mistakes that were unavoidable during that swift course of events, enabled the CPIC to gather experience that it would otherwise have taken decades to gather. That, indeed, was why subsequently the Parly leadership described the time of struggle lor the Democratic Front of Indochina as the second dress rehearsal of the August Revolution, the firsi having been the Nghc-Tinh Soviets.
 

p Nguyen Ai Quoc followed events at home as closely as possible. He 121 did his best to help his comrades there with information and advice. His letters from alar, handwritten articles on litlle sheets of rice paper, covered the thousands of kilometres from Moscow to Hanoi or Saigon by many unfathomable ways, and appeared in .\otre I’oix and other legal party papers over the signature of P. K. Lin.

p The ideas he expounded about the ways of securing a single Democratic Front in Vietnam were summed up in a report he submitted to the Comintern Lxecutive. A Democratic National Front, he wrole, "should embrace not only Indochinese but also progressive French people residing in Indochina, and not only toiling people but also the national bourgeoisie.

p “The Party’s attitude to the national bourgeoisie should be tactful and flexible. Il is essential to draw them into the Front and keep them there, and urge them into action wherever possible, while’ isolating them politically wherever necessary. At any rate, they must not be left outside the Fronl, lest they should be recruited by the reactionaries, whose camp they would then strengthen."

p Speaking of CPIC ladies inside the From, Nguyen Ai Quoc stressed that the Party "cannol demand thai ihe Fronl recognise ils leadership. Il musl instead show itself to be the Front’s most loyal, active and sincere member. 11 is only through daily struggle and work, when the mass of the people acknowledges the Parly’s correct policy and its capacity for leadership, thai il can win leading positions... To carry out this lask the Parly must light sectarianism and organise systematic study of MarxismLeninism in order to raise the cultural and political standard of its members."
 

p The four years of Nguyen Ai Quoc’s life and study in the Soviet Union were years of extraordinary enthusiasm and grand achievements across the country. What the finest minds had dreamed of for centuries and what Marx, Lngcls and Lenin had predicted, was turning into fact. Socialism was winning once and for all on one-sixth of the Earth’s surface. Socialism’s victory not only confirmed the Marxist-Leninist idea lhal il was objectively inevitable for socialism to take- the place of capitalism. It also proved that socialism could be built in one country, and a fairly backward one. This was a source of inspiration for the Vietnamese Communists, lor all freedom lighters, lighters for socialism, all over the world.

p Like other foreign Communists working or studying in Moscow, Nguyen Ai Quoc thrived on the interests, joys, and aspirations of ihe Soviet people. The world’s first socialist country was, after all, the offspring of the world revolution, and therefore also their country. N. N. Golcnovsky, a former Comintern functionary, recalled his relationship with Nguyen Ai Quoc at thai time:

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p “One day, I got to know an Annamite who was called Linov. It was at the Eastern University hostel in Pushkin Square. He had friends among the Indonesian Communists for whom I was responsible, and eame to their room quite often. I remember him as a most gentlemannered, even-tempered young man. He spoke Russian quite well, though with an amusing accent, and was fond of jokes. He laughed infectiously.

p “When he had time, we’d sometimes play a game of chess. He had only just learned to play, and sometimes confused the chessmen by analogy with the national game of Vietnamese chess. (In Vietnam they play quo tyong, a variety of the ancient Chinese chess game }’e.fi.). But frequently he would come up with quite unexpected and original solutions that astonished me, a more experienced player."

p The Indonesian, Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, and Arab students lived in the hostel like one family. While dreaming of returning home and of active revolutionary work, they did not set themselves apart from, and shared the aspirations and interests of the Soviet people. Like the Soviet people, they took part in communist subbotniks, and went to the country on Sundays to tend their garden plots. They joined the hundreds of thousands of Muscovites on Gorky Street, giving a hero’s welcome to Chkalov, Baidukov and Belyakov, the Soviet fliers who had made the first non-stop flight to America via the North Pole. In the evenings, they went to Tscntralny Cinema in Pushkin Square to sec newsreels of the Spanish civil war, rejoicing or mourning for the Spanish Republicans who were the first to have come to grips with the fascist plague. They went to see “Chapayev”, the splendid film about the legendary hero of the civil war in Russia, several times over.

p “I was always astonished at the youthful ardour Linov displayed at our subbotniks”, Golenovsky recollected, "for he was older than most of the other Vietnamese, and at how he rejoiced over Soviet achievements, and at how close to heart he took the tragic events in Spain. In mid-1938 Indisappeared. And it was not until 1945 that I learned from an Indonesian Communist that Ho Chi Minh, President of the new Vietnam, was none other than our Linov."

p By the middle of 1938 important changes had occurred on China’s political scene. In face of the undisguised Japanese aggression, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China came to terms on joint action in the war of resistance. As a result, the united national front that the left in China had worked for, became a reality.

p This development was important for the Vietnamese. Now they could again plot a route back home to Vietnam via the Chinese lands under Kuomintang control bordering on their country. By the end of the 1930s a large number of Vietnamese Communists who had been studying in 123 the Soviet Union left for home. A few, it is true, were still in Moscow and faced the perils and hardships of World War II together with the Soviet people. When the Nazis came to the gates of Moscow, an International Regiment was formed on Georgi Dimitrov’s initiative, which distinguished itself in the fighting near Moscow as part of the Separate Special-Purpose Motorised Rifles Brigade. According to Ivan Vinarov, a veteran of the Bulgarian working-class movement, who had been the commissar of the International Regiment, there had been six Vietnamese among the German, Austrian, Spanish and Bulgarian anti-fascists who comprised the bulk of the unit.

p For years the names of those six had been unknown. There was not a single Vietnamese name in the regiment’s roll. For as a rule the Comintern Vietnamese had aliases. Nor had any photographs come down to us. It was not until 1985, the year of the 40th anniversary of Victory, that Soviet and Vietnamese historians and journalists finally identified five of the six Vietnamese who had taken part in the defence of Moscow. They were Vuong Thuk Tinh, son of Nguyen Ai Quoc’s first schoolteacher who had on Nguyen’s orders accompanied the first group of Vietnamese pioneers to Moscow, and three of Nguyen’s “nephews”: Ly Thuk Tiat, Ly Namh Thanh, and Ly An Tao. All of them hailed from Nghe-Tinh Province, and their names were listed in documents found in the Nghe-Tinh Soviets Museum in Vinh. They had defended Moscow bravely and laid down their lives somewhere at its approaches. The fifth was Ly Fu San, who had served in a military hospital during the war, and lived to see the Victory. He returned home in the early 1950s, where he was an active member of the Vietnamese-Soviet Friendship Society until his dying day.

p In December 1986, on the 45th anniversary of the Soviet counter- offensive at Moscow, the five Vietnamese were posthumously awarded the Patriotic War Order First Grade.

p It is said that on his death-bed the unforgettable Vuong Thuk Qui, Nguyen’s village teacher, having already lost the power of speech, scribbled eight characters with a faltering hand: "Father’s death has not been avenged... I’ve lived in vain.” But the facts repudiated these words. Not only had he himself gone down in history as the first teacher of Ho Chi Minh. His son laid down his life defending the capital of the world’s first socialist state, making his contribution thereby to the future national liberation and the victory of socialism in Vietnam.

p All in all, Nguyen Ai Quoc had spent more than six years in the Soviet Union. It became his second motherland.

p “I lived in Soviet Russia in an atmosphere imbued with Lenin’s thoughts,” he would write afterwards.

Those six years he remembered all his life. They made him a faithful 124 friend of the Soviet people. When he returned to Vietnam, he told his comrades-in-arms of distant and boundless Russia, of the great achievements of the Soviet people, and his stories warmed the hearts of his mates, giving them fresh strength and steeling their determination.