Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh (1890 – 1969) was a Vietnamese Communist revolutionary leader and statesman. He was prime minister and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from 1954 until his death in 1969. The former capital of South Vietnam, Saigon, after the Fall of Saigon, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in his honor. Although he was socialist, he had a completely different view of reality from that of the Chinese leader Mao Tse-Tung, who lacked empathy and adhered strictly to the dictate of the communist dogma. Ho Chi Minh loved his people, their culture and tradition, which was more important than the rigid political doctrine of the extreme left. In this regard, he can roughly be compared with the leader of Yugoslavia, who was Josef Broz (Marshal Tito).

Ho Chi Minh’s real name was Nguyen Sinh Cung and was born in 1890 in Hoàng Trù Village, central Vietnam. Since he was five year old, he grew up in his paternal hometown of Kim Liên Village, Nam Dan District, Nghe An Province, Vietnam. He attended primary school in Hue and later became apprenticed to a technical institute in Saigon. But most of his education came from reading history and philosophy. Thus, he became a Confucian scholar, teacher and later an imperial magistrate in the remote district of Binh Khe.

In 1911, Ho Chi Minh left for Europe and lived in England until 1919. After the war he traveled to Paris where he worked as a cook and waiter. In the 1920’s he was active in socialist organizations. Then, he visited the Soviet Union where he studied revolutionary tactics and was sent to China to spread communism throughout Asia. In 1930, he founded the Indochinese Communist Party and spent the rest of the decade living in China and the Soviet Union.

When World War II broke out, Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam and became commander of the Viet Minh forces that fought against the Japanese Army from 1941. After the war, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam with himself as president. From 1946, he commanded the Viet Minh guerrilla movement against the French Far East Expeditionary Corps during the French Indochina War. In 1954, Ho Chi Minh defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu.

At the Geneva Conference of 1954, Vietnam was devided in two different political entities: North Vietnam and South Vietnam. So, he became president and political leader of the northern half. Although he lost political power inside North Vietnam in the late 1950s, he remained as the highly visible figurehead president until his death in 1969.