- 01 Sep 2003 08:09
#24909
Cuban piece on Ho Chi Minh.
Ho Chi Minh: the man who founded a nation
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2003/agosto ... /34ho.html
HE was a teacher. He was 21 years old when he decided to go into voluntary exile with limited resources to search for the truth that would allow him to understand the poverty of his country, colonial Viet Nam. He traveled throughout 1911. He was in France, Britain and also came to America. On visiting the Statue of Liberty he realized and commented on the metaphorical significance of this symbol. A Vietnamese delegation recently visited the house where he lived during his time in this U.S. city, preserved as a reminder of this fact.
He held many posts but for him, the only truly important thing was learning, so that he could later establish the strategy that he would take back to liberate his country.
For 30 years (1911-1941), he visited countries throughout the world - in Europe, Asia and Africa – and only returned to his homeland when he was completely prepared theoretically to initiate the independence struggle against French colonialism.
In 1922, he founded a newspaper, Le Paria, of which he was both editor and news editor. He was living in Paris. He helped to establish the French Communist party between 1921 and 1922. Even though Ho Chi Minh had no knowledge of Marxism at that time, he was the Vietnamese representative at the 3rd Communist International. On behalf of the French Communist Party he went to Moscow as a delegate to work at the International. Arriving just after Lenin’s death in 1924, he attended his interment. The works of Lenin clearly demonstrated the essence of imperialism and illuminated Minh’s understanding of the struggle. He understood the different political tendencies of the 1920s and drew sustenance from the most advanced theories. He was never a member of a Vietnamese political party although he was aware of three of them and in February 1930, after convening a congress in Canton, he brilliantly proposed that they should join forces and attempt to combine their ideas into one single goal: liberation from colonialism and creating leaders to guide the patriotic movement.
He realized that unity was essential to achieve victory. From then on, he was known as the Great Leader as, right up to the end, it was he who defined and directed the ideological line. He traveled throughout Indochina. In 1939 he was imprisoned by Chiang Kai-Shek and wrote his prison diary in Chinese verse.
He was set free in 1940 but was forced to reside in Hong Kong. In his absence, he was sentenced to death by the French colonial government. These were dangerous times. Using a variety of pseudonyms, he arrived clandestinely from Chinese territory at the Vietnamese border in 1941.
Then the decisive stage of the independence struggle began, brilliantly taken up by General Vo Nguyen Giap. Ho Chi Minh never wrote his memoirs; what is known of him was written by his friends. After the French were expelled from the country, he was offered a residence within the former governor’s palace but he refused. Instead he asked that they build him a small house in the same style as the inhabitants of the mountains. A wooden house on stilts with two rooms: a bedroom and a study. He would receive visitors in the space below the house. This was the extent of his modesty. In 1990 – the anniversary of his centenary – UNESCO acknowledged him as a celebrated cultural figure.
He died on September 2, 1969, the very same day that the country was founded. For diverse reasons, it was said that he died on September 3 and that remained the official version until, after reunification in 1976, the Party decided to let it be known. Purely historical chance, but the founder of what is known today as the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam died on the same day his country was born.
History remembers him as young Ba, Li Rui or Thau Chin; he who walked around the world, searching for the truth in order to defeat his country’s enemy and provide an example of simplicity and virtue to revolutionaries everywhere.
Ho Chi Minh: the man who founded a nation
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2003/agosto ... /34ho.html
HE was a teacher. He was 21 years old when he decided to go into voluntary exile with limited resources to search for the truth that would allow him to understand the poverty of his country, colonial Viet Nam. He traveled throughout 1911. He was in France, Britain and also came to America. On visiting the Statue of Liberty he realized and commented on the metaphorical significance of this symbol. A Vietnamese delegation recently visited the house where he lived during his time in this U.S. city, preserved as a reminder of this fact.
He held many posts but for him, the only truly important thing was learning, so that he could later establish the strategy that he would take back to liberate his country.
For 30 years (1911-1941), he visited countries throughout the world - in Europe, Asia and Africa – and only returned to his homeland when he was completely prepared theoretically to initiate the independence struggle against French colonialism.
In 1922, he founded a newspaper, Le Paria, of which he was both editor and news editor. He was living in Paris. He helped to establish the French Communist party between 1921 and 1922. Even though Ho Chi Minh had no knowledge of Marxism at that time, he was the Vietnamese representative at the 3rd Communist International. On behalf of the French Communist Party he went to Moscow as a delegate to work at the International. Arriving just after Lenin’s death in 1924, he attended his interment. The works of Lenin clearly demonstrated the essence of imperialism and illuminated Minh’s understanding of the struggle. He understood the different political tendencies of the 1920s and drew sustenance from the most advanced theories. He was never a member of a Vietnamese political party although he was aware of three of them and in February 1930, after convening a congress in Canton, he brilliantly proposed that they should join forces and attempt to combine their ideas into one single goal: liberation from colonialism and creating leaders to guide the patriotic movement.
He realized that unity was essential to achieve victory. From then on, he was known as the Great Leader as, right up to the end, it was he who defined and directed the ideological line. He traveled throughout Indochina. In 1939 he was imprisoned by Chiang Kai-Shek and wrote his prison diary in Chinese verse.
He was set free in 1940 but was forced to reside in Hong Kong. In his absence, he was sentenced to death by the French colonial government. These were dangerous times. Using a variety of pseudonyms, he arrived clandestinely from Chinese territory at the Vietnamese border in 1941.
Then the decisive stage of the independence struggle began, brilliantly taken up by General Vo Nguyen Giap. Ho Chi Minh never wrote his memoirs; what is known of him was written by his friends. After the French were expelled from the country, he was offered a residence within the former governor’s palace but he refused. Instead he asked that they build him a small house in the same style as the inhabitants of the mountains. A wooden house on stilts with two rooms: a bedroom and a study. He would receive visitors in the space below the house. This was the extent of his modesty. In 1990 – the anniversary of his centenary – UNESCO acknowledged him as a celebrated cultural figure.
He died on September 2, 1969, the very same day that the country was founded. For diverse reasons, it was said that he died on September 3 and that remained the official version until, after reunification in 1976, the Party decided to let it be known. Purely historical chance, but the founder of what is known today as the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam died on the same day his country was born.
History remembers him as young Ba, Li Rui or Thau Chin; he who walked around the world, searching for the truth in order to defeat his country’s enemy and provide an example of simplicity and virtue to revolutionaries everywhere.
- By ingliz
- By wat0n
- By Negotiator