In
order to understand the political evolution of Ho Chi Minh it is important to
understand the ideological environment in which he was born and raised. It was
his young life, and his teachers that shaped him into a driven patriot so committed
to a nationalist dream that he would never marry. It was this dream, empowered
by a sharp intellect and wisdom that Ho Chi Minh would try to clothe with
several political systems, finally determining that Leninist Communism, with
Vietnamese accents, fit best.
Ho
Chi Minh was born on May 19, 1890, Ho was given the “milk name” Nguyen Sinh
Cung and was the second son to Nguyen Sinh Sac and Hoang Thi Loan. His older
brother had raised Sac until the age of fifteen when he was noticed and adopted
by a visiting scholar named Hoang Xuan Duong. It was not an unusual occurrence
for the poor son of a farmer to be adopted by a scholar for formal training in
preparation for the civil service exam. Sac showed great promise as a Confucian
scholar, and in 1883 he married his teacher’s daughter. Over the next seven
years they would have three children.[1]
They
lived a typical life for the family of a Vietnamese scholar. Sac continued his
studies and Loan worked the small rice fields and family garden, and raised the
kids. In 1891, Sac took the civil service exam for the first time and failed,
but did well enough to encourage him to keep working. In 1894, he passed with
the equivalent of a Masters of Arts degree. This was a great honor, which the
local village wanted to celebrate. Sac insisted that the instead of the
celebration, meat be distributed to poor families.[2]
Sac
could have joined the bureaucracy at this point and earned a substantial
living, but he chose instead to teach locally and continue his studies. In
1895, he attempted the imperial examinations which he failed but chose to
remain in the city of Hue to study at the Imperial Academy. In 1898, after a
second failure, Sac accepted a position as a teacher in the city. This was the
first time that Sac’s two sons were formally introduced to “the Confucian
classics in the Chinese language.”[3]
In
late 1900, Sac was given an official position in a city over five hundred miles
away from Hue. Loan stayed in Hue where she gave birth to their fourth child
named Nguyen Sinh Xin. The birth weakened her body and in early 1901 Loan died.
For several weeks ten year old Cung worked hard to find sustenance for his
youngest brother. When he heard about the death of his wife, Sac left his
official position, picked up his kids, and returned to his wife’s home village.[4]
After
spending a few months in the village, Sac returned to Hue where he eventually
passed the Imperial Examinations at the level of doctorate second degree. During
this time Sac’s children stayed in their mother’s village being taken care of
by their grandmother. When Cung turned eleven, his father gave him the name
Nguyen Tat Thanh (he who will succeed). [5]
At
first Thanh studied with his father, but was eventually sent to study with
Vuong Thuc Qui. Both rejected the methods of route memorization which characterized
the classical methods of Confucian education. Instead Qui emphasized the
humanitarian nature of the Confucian writings and a deep patriotism and
nationalism. Under Qui, Thanh wrote a number of patriotic essays and was
allowed to serve the number of guest lecturers who would visit Qui’s school. Qui’s
patriotism was such that he soon closed his school to embrace rebel activities.[6]
Thanh
returned to study with his father who held similar views. Sac is known to have
said, “Why should I force my students to memorize the classics just to take the
exams? I won’t teach my kids that way.” This allowed Thanh to immerse himself
in the popular heroic tales he preferred over the classics. Thanh would also
join the other village children around the forge of the local blacksmith who
would tell tales of the heroes of Vietnam’s past. Thanh also learned to forge
and hunt from this man.[7]
All
of this together formed the foundation of a personal calling to patriotic nationalism
that would drive this boy to become Ho Chi Minh, “He Who Enlightens.” He would
explore several political systems with the primary purpose of finding an
adequate expression for this calling. It is probably Phan Boi Chau who was most
influential to Thanh’s move away from traditional models for the realization of
his nationalist dreams.
Chau
was a friend of Sac and when he would visit Thanh served the men while they
talked. Chau was contemptuous of the monarchy and felt strongly that Vietnam
needed to abandon the traditional models and look abroad for modern systems. Chau
looked to Japan and the Japanese Emperor Meiji who used foreign models to
modernize Japan. Thanh however turned down an offer to join Chau’s movement
because Chau wanted to invite the Japanese to drive out the French. It is said
that Thanh felt such an action would be like “driving the tiger out the front
door while welcoming the wolf in through the back door.” This was not the only
reason for Thanh to reject Chau’s offer. When Thanh asked Chau how Japan was
able to take the technological steps necessary for its modernization, Chau told
him they learned from the West. In 1905 Thanh was able to begin his journey of
understanding the West, he began studying the French language and culture with
a group of his father friends who taught him “if you want to defeat the French,
you must understand them. To understand the French, you must study the French
language.”[8]
In
1906 Sac was once again summoned to court to accept an official appointment. He
had been able to refuse such appointments in the past, but he felt he could no
longer escape such service. It is possible that his continual refusals had
brought him negative attention at court. He was granted a position that allowed
him to supervise the students of the Imperial Academy. It seems he grew to
question the meaning of traditional phrase “loyalty to the king, love of
country” when the king was nothing more than a puppet to a foreign ruler. He
talked openly about this to his friends and advised his student against
pursuing an official career.[9]
When
they reached Hue Thanh and his brother were enrolled in the Dong-Ba upper-level
elementary school where classes were taught in Vietnamese, Chinese, and French.
Thanh was an exceptionally serious and disciplined student. He finished the
two-year program in one year. In 1907 both Thanh and his brother were accepted
to the highest-level school in Hue that focused on both French and Vietnamese
education. It was here that Thanh was introduced to such thinkers as Socrates,
“Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau.”[10] Thanh
is known to have been well like by his teachers, but it was during this time
that his anti-colonial activity really began.[11]
The
anti-colonial activity of Thanh and his brother eventually cause his father to
be closely watched by the authorities. Sac was transferred to a magistrate’s
position in a problematic city two hundred miles away from Hue in an attempt to
get rid of him. It worked, by 1910 he was officially removed from office. In
1914, Thanh’s brother was found guilty of treasonous activity and spent several
years in prison.[12]
Thanh
ended up blacklisted and on the run. He took a post at the Duc Thanh School
that espoused reformist ideals and a nationalist agenda. The school was divided
between the ideologies of Phan Chu Trinh, which taught that the French could be
trusted to act in a moral way if they were approached correctly, and that of
Phan Boi Chau who wanted Japan’s aid to oust the French. “According to one
Vietnamese source, he (Thanh) respected both Phan Chu Trinh and Phan Boi Chau,
but had resurvations about both approaches, dismissing the former’s trust in
the French goodwill as Naïve and the latter’s reliance on Japan and members of
the royal family as misguided.”[13]
In
1911 Thanh left the school without telling anyone he was leaving, for Saigon.
It is unclear why he left, but shortly after a French official showed up at the
school to ask about him. Thanh was able to contact his father who was also in
Saigon, and on his advise prepared to go abroad. He spent the next two years
mostly at sea where he discovered the horrors of colonialism in areas of Asia,
Africa, and Latin America.[14]
Thanhs’
time abroad solidified his determination to do whatever he could to realize a
free Vietnam. It is probable that he was first exposed to the writings of Karl
Marx during this time. Evidence is sparse for his activities during this time,
but he did live for a time in the United States and in London before arriving
in France.
Thanh
went to Paris after World War I where he organized the Association of
Vietnamese Patriots and took the name Nguyen Ai Quoc (Nguyen the Patriot). The
leaders of the AVP thought that the peace program of the victorious Allies
could provide opportunities for Vietnamese freedom. Quoc presented a petition
to the Allies calling for the recognition of Vietnam as an independent nation,
but it was officially ignored.[15]
It
is not as farfetched as it seems at first that Quoc would present such a
petition. Even though there was no official response to the petition, Colonel
House, President Woodrow Wilson’s senior advisor in the US delegation at the post
World War I meeting, acknowledged receipt of the petition and sent a note
stating that it would be brought to the attention of President Wilson. Wilson
was having a very hard time, meeting resistance at almost every turn. Colonialism
was a major issue at these meetings, but the compromises necessary to ensure
peace changed little.[16]
Even
though Quoc’s father and teachers had rejected the rigidity of the Confucian
system, it can’t be ignored that the culture of Vietnam was largely shaped by
Confucian ideals. From the perspective of Confucianism, Western capitalism is
its ideological opposite, while socialism embraces a morality much more
compatible. Like many from Asia, Quoc’s fist exposure to Western capitalism was
through exploitative colonialism. The horrors of colonialism created an
automatic, unconscious rejection of the potential for Western style capitalism
to be effective in serving his nationalist vision. Even given this socialist
tendency, it wasn’t until July 1920 that Quoc would find the spark and the
inspiration to build on his nationalist foundation. [17]
There
is evidence to suggest that Quoc was involved in socialist organizations even
while in London. While in Paris he was not accepted as a full member of the
French Socialist Party until after the impact of the petition had been felt.
The petition made Quoc something of a minor celebrity among socialist circles
by 1919. In 1920 Quoc was attending regular meetings and taking a more active
role in the political discussions of the French Socialist Party. What was
important to Quoc, what was an immediate concern to him, the exploitation of
colonial peoples, was a peripheral issue to the majority of the party and
European socialists who were most with the issue of world capitalism.[18]
It
seems the debates were disheartening for Quoc, and his friends would often
comment that he know nothing of socialist or communist theory. He asked a
friend to suggest what to read to gain the education he lacked. He read Karl
Marx’s Das Kapital (which he would
continue to study for the rest of his life), but it was not this masterwork
that provided the major shift Quoc needed.[19]
In
July 1920, Quoc read Lenin’s “Theses on the Nationals and Colonial Questions,”
and his life was give focus and purpose. Here was exactly what he had been
searching for years. Quoc is known to have said, “This is what we need, this is
the path to our liberation.” This document spoke directly to Quoc, it caused an
almost religious conversion experience. This is the moment where everything
changed, where evolution became refinement. The man who would come to be known
as Ho Chi Minh now had the ideological tools to build on the foundations of his
patriotic nationalism, and turn him into a legend during his own lifetime.[20]
No comments:
Post a Comment