Rise of Communism: Subtext

Tran Tu Binh. The Red Earth: A Vietnamese Memoir of life on a colonial Rubber Plantation. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985.

Tran Tu Binh was an early revolutionary in the communist movement in Vietnam. He voluntarily chose to work on a colonial rubber plantation to become “proletarianized”. The memoir shows the organization of the worker cells in these plantations as they fought for their rights as workers. There were progresses and setbacks in the three years that he was at the plantation. One important aspect of the memoir is it shows the influence from the outside communists and the way they used propaganda to gather the masses to become part of a bigger revolution.

David Marr, Vietnamese Traditions on Trial, 1920-1945. Berkley: University of California Press, 1984.

David Marr has focused on 20^th century Vietnam and other revolutions in Asia similar to the Vietnam model. In this book he focuses on how the educated youth of the early 1920’s were searching for a new political ideology. Many different books were written in this time trying to find a system that could pull the masses together. The educated youth had become agitated at the elders in Vietnam for failing to keep the country independent. Vietnamese Traditions on Trial becomes a supplement to Khanh’s work by showing the intellectual world conditions that were present at the time in which many political systems were thought about in Vietnam.

Martin Bernal, “The Nghe-Tinh Soviet Movement 1930-1931,” Past and Present, No. 92 (Aug., 1981), pp. 148-168

Martin Bernal, A scholar of modern Chinese history, looks at the movement in the providences of Hghe-An and Ha-Tien in the early 1930’s. His thoughts are formulated by talking to veterans of the movement and looking at documents from Hanoi and Paris. Bernal shows the chronology of the movement starting with the political agitation in these rural areas as early as 1930. The police presence in these areas was minimal which allowed the movement to gain momentum. He shows how the movement was able to successful penetrate intimidate the French until the finally staged a movement to pacify the movement. The focus of the essay is to answer the question of why this movement arose. It shows the conditions of the area and the historic effort to resist the French in this area. Hghe-An is an area where the first six members of the Thanh Nien hailed from showing the anti-French feelings in this area.

Hy Van Luong, “Agrarian Unrest from an Anthropological Perspective: The Case of Vietnam,” Comparative Politics, Vol.17, No. 2 (Jan., 1985), pp. 153-174

Luong, a professor and chairman of the anthropology department at Harvard, explores the role of the peasants in the Vietnamese revolution. He critically examines three major works that focus on the sociological and political aspect of the Vietnamese revolution, specifically the agrarian unrest. These works include Jeffery Paige’s Agrarian Revolution, James C. Scott’s The Moral Economy of the Peasant, and Samuel Popkin’s The Rational Peasant. The piece focuses on the Nghe-Tien areas and shows the factors that went into the agrarian movement in these areas. Luong argues “that without an in-depth analysis of the ambiguities and contradictions in the structural principals and ecological parameters […] the Nghe-Tien movement cannot be fully understood.” [i]

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[i] Hy Van Loung, “Agrarian Unrest from an Anthropological Perspective,” p. 153.

Rise of Communism: Text

Huynh Kim Khanh’s Vietnamese Communism 1925-1945 examines the rise of communism as a political player in Vietnam from 1925-1945. Khanh seeks to show the complex relationships that were present in the molding of this movement. The Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) was bound to two separate entities: the Vietnam people and the Comintern. Khanh argued “to achieve political legitimacy and pursue its social mission, the youthful Communist movement had to constantly maintain a delicate political balance between patriotism and proletarian internationalism.”[i] This was a difficult task that caused many problems for the development of the party. The radicalism of the late 1920’s for an independent state ostracized many of the peasants. By focusing on independence and not the social issues of Vietnam, it left the peasants on the outside of the movement. In the 1930’s however the roles were reversed. The push for social upheaval isolated many of the urban and rural support that was needed to win the struggle. A balance was instrumental for the movement to succeed.

Using mainly primary sources, Khanh tries to show this balance in the framework of the Indochinese Communist Party. He investigated many of the original ICP documents “to avoid being misled or identifying too closely with the subject.”[ii] Although he does credit many of his colleagues with writing beautifully on the subject, he feels that the primary sources paint a much clearer picture. The sources show the triumphs of the party as well as many of the negatives which almost led to the downfall of the party itself.

A central theme that Khanh tries to illustrate is the years before the creation of the communist party. The radical youth of the era had rejected reformism and began pursuing a new political system. A Marxist-Leninist system was introduced that adhered to the principals of the radical youth. Communism had an outlet into Vietnam and became the main political ideology of the time, which still remains today. An important thing to note is the political turmoil that surrounded the time of introduction. The youth of the time were Western-educated and they brought a system that could gather the masses. The Marxist-Leninist system was able to appeal to the majority of people in Vietnam. The peasants and the proletariat would be able to rise out of the oppression of the bourgeois, and the whole country could become independent by ousting out the French.

Upon reading Huynh Kim Khanh’s history of the rise of Vietnamese communism, it shows the struggle that the party endured to rise to power in August 1945. The French were constantly trying to end anti-colonial sentiments throughout Vietnam and almost succeeded in that goal in the early 1930’s. They had arrested most of the key figures and made the movement dormant for almost five years. It was at this time that Ho Chi Minh left Vietnam because he was looked down upon for failing to direct the party. Rumors spread through Vietnam that he was dead. The people thinking he was dead, criticized some of his ideas during this turbulent time

The international hand also played a huge role in shaping the party. The Comintern’s policies caused factions in the party which hindered it from reaching the true goal of independence. This communist movement was created in Vietnam as a means to end colonial rule. Along the way people became tied up in the details of how that goal would be reached. The goals of the proletariat in the international agenda interfered with the goals of independence for Vietnam, causing many setbacks.

It is clear that the idea of class struggle was a key element in the ICP. You cannot deny it or minimize its impact on the political landscape, but it seems that the Vietnam model is different in regards to the social revolution aspect of other communist countries. I say this because of how the ICP eventually pulled the masses together to a common goal. Huynh Kim Khanh emphasizes how class struggle was put on hold by the ICP in 1941 to put their attention on pushing the imperial powers out. In that respect it seems that communism was not the policy that allowed Vietnam to take control of the country in August 1945, but more of a nationalist model. The party put its political agenda on hold to achieve an important step for Vietnam. Nguyen Ai Quoc and other leaders saw that social reform and independence could not be done at the same time. They focused on bringing as many people as they could into the movement and turning their attention to their enemies. By ousting their enemies they could begin to implement their social agenda on a free Vietnam.

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[i] Huynh Kim Khanh, Vietnamese Communism 1925-1945, London: Cornell University Press, 1982, 21.

[ii] ibid, 24.

Rise of Communism: Context

In the mid 1920’s Vietnam experienced two events which would forever shift the face of Vietnam politics. Imprisonment of Phan Bui Chau and the death of Phan Chu Trinh, both anti colonial Confucian, brought an end to the traditional anti-colonial movements. Communism rose out of a need to end French Imperial rule in Vietnam. A radical youth movement arose in the mid 1920’s after the end of the traditional anti colonial Confucian models had failed. The educated youth (Thanh Nien) attempted to fuse Marxist-Leninist ideologies with the goal of making Vietnam an independent state.

Many barriers were persistent through the twenty year rise to power of the communist party in Vietnam. The Thanh Nien dissolved due to conflicts in how the party should reach their goals. With no dominate communist party to follow the Communist International (Comintern), two parties emerged. The Annamese Communist Party and the Indochinese Communist Party vied to represent Vietnam. A conference, led by Ho Chi Minh, was held in 1930 to unite the two parties; with The Indochinese Communist Party emerging as the united party.

Early in the decade, a large uprising occurred in the Nghe-An and Ha-Tinh provinces. It would be called the Nghe-Tinh Soviet Movement. For several months the groups staged uprisings and workers strikes within the region. The movement was able to have early success due to the limited French presence in the region. The Nghe-Tinh Soviets began to bomb offices and depots of the French. This caused the French to retaliate with bombings and eventually troops arrived to kill the movement.

The communist movement suffered great hardship in the 1930’s. Uprisings occurred early in the decade, but were not organized enough to cause great harm to the establishment. The French quickly squelched the uprisings and threw thousands of communists in prison for their actions. The party had become too reliant on the goals of the Comintern and had abandoned the goals of an independent Vietnam. The party idea of a social revolution clouded their judgment and made them forget about independence. Without the main leaders and a direction to travel, the party was at an all time low.

It was at this time when Ho Chi Minh was ostracized from the party. The Comintern was unhappy with the way he was directing the Communist Party in Vietnam. From the early 1930's to 1940 he was not in Vietnam.

Ironically the party was revived by the Comintern’s seventh congress. A new “people’s front” policy was created in which people from all political parties unite against a particular enemy. In the Comintern’s case this meant fascism, but for Vietnam it could be translated to imperial oppressors. In the past the communist movement in Vietnam had excluded the non worker and peasant classes as part of the revolution. Ho Chi Minh, fresh upon his return to Vietnam, founded the Viet Minh. This new movement had the goal to liberate Vietnam of French and Japanese control. With this new policy the Vietnamese could turn their focus to ridding themselves of colonialism. This new policy was the catalyst that allowed the communist party to emerge once again and ultimately win independence.

The new nationalist policies coupled with the Second World War were factors that allowed the communist movement to succeed. Japan began occupation in 1940 greatly weakening the French stronghold on Indochina. The Vietnamese saw that the French gave up control as if it were nothing and began to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The Viet Minh put out propaganda and trained the followers. As they organized the French power dwindled, culminating with the Japanese taking control of the country in March of 1945. They locked up all French officials and ended the French control. Unfortunately for Japan their control over Vietnam lasted only five months as they were forced to surrender to the allied forces. The Viet Minh were able to walk into to all public buildings and take control of the land while all the French officials remained in prison. This event is known as the August Revolution. In twenty years the communist movement had taken control of an “independent” country.

Although it can not be argued that the Communist Party liberated the country, there is controversy in their victory. Some scholars argue that the liberation was the result of nationalism. Starting in the early 1940's the party moved away from the idea of a class struggle. They began to appeal to a much wider audience in Vietnam. By pushing the idea of independence, the party was able to appeal to a larger audience. This audience was highly motivated for the new cause. Without a class struggle and a platform for independence, it can be argued that the victory was due to nationalism.

Radicalism: Context

When the Vietnamese revolution broke out in 1945 it was dominated by the Communist-led Viet Minh. Due to the ‘triumph’ of Marxism-Leninism over rival anti-colonial ideologies little has been written on the radical movements that subsequently failed to mobilize the majority of the population. The period in which Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution focuses begins in the 1920s; this period is traditionally viewed as a transition between the scholar-gentry of Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chu Trinh’s generation to the emergence of the Indochinese Communist Party and Nguyen Ai Quoc/Ho Chi Minh in the 1930s.

The generation of Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chu Trinh were concerned with questions of long-term modernization and Westernization in Vietnam as a result of French colonialism. While Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chu Trinh were ultimately seeking the same goal, an independent Vietnam, their arguments were characteristically different. Phan Boi Chau can be characterized as an ‘anti-imperialist’ determined to throw the French out completely whereas Phan Chu Trinh can be viewed as ‘anti-feudal’, seeking to learn from the French in order to later overthrow them. According to David Marr, these “men set the guidelines for most later debate on anticolonial tactics, strategy, and doctrine. The next generation would be better equipped intellectually and would have the advantage of improved objective circumstances . . .” as well as learning from the past mistakes of their predecessors.”[1] David Marr characterizes the period 1925-1945 as the merging of Phan Boi Chau’s ‘anti-imperialism’ and Phan Chu Trinh’s ‘anti-feudalism’ into one stream of anticolonial thought exemplified by Ho Chi Minh.

David G. Marr’s Vietnamese Anticolonialism, 1885-1925 and Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945 provide the standard views of this period of intellectual foment beginning with the above-mentioned Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chu Trinh. Marr states that the “twentieth-century history of Vietnam must be understood within the context of fundamental changes in political and social consciousness among a significant segment of the Vietnamese populace in the period 1920-45.”[2] While these changes are not decisive they serve as a precondition for mass mobilization and successful strategies for a people’s war. One drawback to Marr’s texts is the centralized focus on the communist intelligentsia and the lack of focus on the non-communist intelligentsia. This gap in the history of Vietnamese radicalism has been taken up by Hue-Tam Ho Tai in Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution.

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[1] David G. Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism, 1885-1925, 275.

[2] David G. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945, 2.

Radicalism: Text

Hue-Tam Ho Tai’s Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution examines the role of radicalism during the early phase of the Vietnamese Revolution and “its eventual displacement by Marxism-Leninism as the dominant force in reshaping anticolonial politics and as the source of language for discussing cultural, social, and political issues.”[1] The author defines radicalism as “an essentially nonideological current of reaction, both to colonial rule and to native accommodation to that rule, whose chief characteristics were iconoclasm and the marriage of the personal and the political.”[2] Radicalism as labeled by Tai emerged during the mid-1920s in a time when many urban Vietnamese youth left home searching for knowledge and freedom overseas in countries such as, France, China, and Japan. Tai demonstrates two intertwining themes evident in a series of student strikes that led to the mass departure of these young students searching for answers: (1) the desire for freedom, in its various forms, by the newly urbanized and Westernized Vietnamese youth and (2) searching for the future of Vietnam and the Vietnamese.

Using a variety of sources, Tai seeks to analyze the relationship between political culture and cultural politics and the relationship between rhetoric and action in the 1920s. Some of the sources Tai utilizes are journals, newspapers, and contemporary fiction written in French and Vietnamese, official records from the French archives, and what she calls personal sources—her father’s unpublished memoirs, his published works, interviews with her parents, other family members and their contemporaries. Being the child of two revolutionaries from the 1920s offers Tai a valuable insight that not many scholars can lay claim to.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai makes Nguyen An Ninh, a non-Marxist intellectual, the central figure of her study in order to challenge the assumption that the Vietnamese Revolution can only be understood in terms of the history of communism. Tai states that Nguyen An Ninh epitomized the experience of exile in France for young Vietnamese during the 1920s. Ninh rejected Governor General Sarraut’s argument that national sovereignty was the end result of a long, slow process of political maturation. He argued that the crisis facing Vietnamese society was not one of tradition versus modernity but rather a crisis of moral knowledge. Ninh wanted “Vietnamese youth to reinvent itself, to create its own destiny; not merely to turn its back on the past but to look forward to the future.”[3] Aside from focusing on Nguyen An Ninh, Tai also looks at other non-Marxist revolutionaries such as Pham Quynh and Bui Quang Chieu.

A central theme of Tai’s monograph is the impact of colonial rule on the education system of Vietnam—a country previously dominated by the Confucian examination system. While the French never succeeded in replacing the Confucian structure with a logical Western alternative, they were successful in creating a demand for non-traditional schools that were geared towards producing modern scholars that would serve in the colonial bureaucracy. A small number of Vietnamese were allowed to attend French-language schools in Vietnam while an even smaller number were allowed to achieve a higher education in France. The French also emphasized the importance of teaching quoc ngu (Romanized Vietnamese script). Through this ‘New Learning’, young Vietnamese began to see parallel struggles in both their national and personal lives—the national struggle for independence from colonial rule and the personal struggle for independence from tradition. Out of these struggles developed the radicalism of the 1920s.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai suggests that Marxism-Leninism triumph over radicalism can be attributed to a “peculiar conjunction of international trends and domestic problems.”[4] The majority of Vietnamese revolutionaries did not convert to Marxism-Leninism until the late 1920s, a time in which other revolutionary organizations were in disorder. Also, as Tai points out, upon the failure of the United Front in China the Comintern adopted a more revolutionary strategy that was directed at agrarian countries going through decolonization.

Upon reading Hue-Tam Ho Tai’s treatment of the non-communist revolutionary movements, it becomes understandable why general histories of Vietnam omit the non-communist anticolonial leaders during this period.[5] It does not make for easy, clean history. Hue-Tam Ho Tai’s Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution is well-researched and received positive reviews across the board, but it is extremely dense and complicated. There existed numerous strands of radicalism throughout this period all supported with their own outlets for propaganda—newspapers, journals, pamphlets, etc. These various strands and thinkers may also have played a large role in the ‘triumph’ of the ICP as the major revolutionary force to come out of this period. Also the Vietnamese communists were more attune with the peasantry whereas the radicals of the 1920s came from the urban, educated elite and were detached from the village, unlike their predecessors Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chu Trinh.

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[1] Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992, 1.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid, 73.

[4] Ibid, 4.

[5] Excluding of course Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chu Trinh.

Radicalism: Subtexts

William J. Duiker. Vietnam: Revolution in Transition. 2^nd ed. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995.

Duiker is a former US Foreign Service officer and current professor of History at Penn State University. This work focuses on the Vietnamese revolution, which Duiker states from start to finish “was strongly influenced by the strategy and tactics of Marxism-Leninism.”[1] Aside from Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chu Trinh, Duiker does not recognize the non-Marxist-Leninist strains of the revolution that evolved during the same time period. The author does mention Hue-Tam Ho Tai’s Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution in the written work as well as an annotated bibliography, but the revolutionary figures that Tai discusses fail to appear in Duiker’s work. This work exemplifies the traditional narrative of tracing the histories of the successful revolutionaries—those that won, the Marxist-Leninists.

Truong Buu Lam. Colonialism Experienced: Vietnamese Writings on Colonialism, 1900-1931. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.

The author is an associate professor of history at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. Truong Buu Lam has collected twenty documents that were written during the late-colonial period of Vietnamese history. The documents vary from propaganda pamphlets, open letters to government officials, manifestos from political or cultural organizations, newspaper columns, poems, and more. These documents have been translated from the original Vietnamese, French, or classical Chinese by the author and given introductions in order to contextualize the documents. This anthology provides a glimpse into the conflicting ideologies and political struggles experienced by various political activists during this time period. Authors include Phan Boi Chau, Phan Chu Trinh, Nguyen An Ninh, Nguyen Thuong Huyen, and Pham Quynh—all of which are discussed by Hue-Tam Ho Tai in Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution. This work serves as a nice companion to Tai’s book because it provides full English translations of documents written by many of the radicals she discusses.

David G. Marr. Vietnamese Anticolonialism, 1885-1925. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.

Marr, Emeritus Professor and Visiting Fellow in the Division of Pacific and Asian History at the Australian National University, has written extensively on Vietnam—in particular the history of 20^th century Vietnam. This work looks at the anticolonial scholar-gentry of Vietnam between 1885 and 1925, particularly focusing on Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chu Trinh—two of the more popular and well-known Vietnamese nationalists during this era. Marr points out that these two men, despite their differences in ideology “set the guidelines for most later debate on anticolonial tactics, strategy, and doctrine.”[2] Phan Boi Chau wanted to end foreign exploitation of Vietnam and remove the colonial overlords whereas Phan Chu Trinh was more interested in the modernization of Vietnam, which would eventually lead to Vietnamese independence—both wanted the same end but by different means. While Marr does discuss other radicals during this time period, the majority of this volume focuses on the afore-mentioned figures and how their work influenced Nguyen Ai Quoc, later Ho Chi Minh. Hue-Tam Ho Tai’s work helps to bring Marr’s ‘minor actors’ more to the forefront and paints a much fuller picture of Vietnamese radical thought during the early twentieth century.

David G. Marr. Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

Marr’s thesis in Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945 is that in order to understand the political and strategic developments of 20^th century Vietnam, one must contextualize the period in relation to the “fundamental changes in political and social consciousness among a significant segment of the Vietnamese populace in the period 1920-45.”[3] Marr points out, as does Hue-Tam Ho Tai, that the intelligentsia of the 1920s faced some of the same problems as the scholar-gentry schooled under the traditional Confucian system, however the social and economic context had changed as did the education and types of thought utilized by the new intelligentsia—one that was a product of the French colonial system. Marr’s Vietnamese Tradition on Trial serves as a supplement to Hue-Tam Ho Tai’s Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution because different aspects of radical thought and thinkers are emphasized—while Marr and Tai discuss some of the same personalities, Marr focuses more on the Marxist-Leninist school of thought as they gave birth to the eventual revolution.

R.B. Smith. “Bui Quang Chieu and the Constitutionalist Party in French Cochinchina, 1917-30.” Modern Asian Studies, 3, no. 2 (1969): 131-150.

Smith (1939-2000), former professor of history at the School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS), trained in medieval English history before becoming one of the first scholars/historians to focus on Vietnam in the late 1960s. Smith wrote heavily on the Second Indochinese War (American-Vietnam War) and approached it from an internationalist perspective, which is evident in this article. Smith ends his article with suggestions for future studies by pointing out that very few American scholars have shown interest in the Constitutionalist Party led by Bui Quang Chieu, which he labels as the only anti-colonialist/pro-independence group that showed any real interest in developing a truly representative assembly with the power to bring about Vietnam’s eventual modernization. While this article is rather old, it still proves beneficial in supplementing Hue-Tam Ho Tai’s work on the early Vietnamese radicals of the 1920s and 1930s—of which Bui Quang Chieu is one of the subjects of her study.

Nguyen Khac Vien. Tradition and Revolution in Vietnam. Edited by David Marr and Jayne Werner. Translated by Linda Yarr, Jayne Werner, and Tran Tuong Nhu. Berkeley, CA: Indochina Resource Center, 1975 (Orig. pub. 1974).

Vien, the Communist son of a Confucian scholar, brings to light the underpinnings of how Confucianism left its mark on certain aspects of Marxist thought in both China and Vietnam. In translating a selection of Nguyen Khac Vien’s writings, the goal of the editors and translators was to foster a greater understanding of the Vietnamese “enemy” by the Western public [written at a time when the Vietnamese were considered enemies of America]. Hue-Tam Ho Tai mentions Vien in passing, most likely because Vien’s radicalism was of the Marxist-Leninist bent and she is attempting to show the ‘other side’ of Vietnamese radicalism. Tradition and Revolution in Vietnam is part of the traditional narrative of the years preceding the Vietnamese Revolution of the 1940s and alternative modes of thought in the 1920s and 1930s.

Sarah Whitney Womack. “Colonialism and the Collaborationist Agenda: Pham Quynh, Print Culture, and the Politics of Persuasion in Colonial Vietnam.” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2003.

Pham Quynh thought of himself as a patriot, a visionary, and a social revolutionary, other Vietnamese revolutionaries and historians have not shared this view—labeling him a collaborator of the French colonial period. Pham Quynh was the publisher of Southern Wind, a journal based in Hanoi sponsored by French Indochina’s Governor General Albert Sarraut in an attempt to win over northern neo-traditionalists. In her dissertation, Womack argues that indigenous actors that collaborated with colonial authorities were important negotiators between colonial states and colonial societies and that acts of collaboration arose from the personal agendas of those involved. Using Pham Quynh, the ‘arch-collaborator,’ as an example, Womack explores how accommodation-based models can further our understanding of colonialism and colonial societies. As Pham Quynh’s model was ultimately a failure, Womack also explores “the ways in which even failed histories shape the present, and how parts of them are salvaged and incorporated into other, more successful ones.”[4]

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[1] William J. Duiker, Vietnam: Revolution in Transition, 226.

[2] David G. Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism, 1885-1925, 275.

[3] David G. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945, 2.

[4] Sarah Whitney Womack, “Colonialism and the Collaborationist Agenda,” 218.