* Ho’s speech to the French socialist congress in 1920 was 12 minutes long and delivered without notes.
* It got some applause but that was about it.
* He realised that French socialists were more worried about affairs at home than they were about colonialism in a distant land.
* When a group of socialists broke off to form the French Communist Party, Ho went with them.
* He had read Lenin’s “Theses on the National and Colonial Questions,” a document that attracted him as a means of liberating Vietnam and other oppressed countries from colonial rule.
* Other Marxist writers whose work he knew seemed concerned only with how to achieve a classless utopia.
* Only Lenin spoke powerfully about the connection between capitalism and imperialism and about the potential for nationalist movements in Africa and Asia.
* Only Lenin offered a cogent explanation for colonialist rule and a viable blueprint for national liberation and for modernizing a poor agricultural society such as Vietnam’s.
* Lenin’s message was simple and direct.
* In their struggle to overthrow the capitalist system in advanced industrial countries, Communist parties in the West should actively cooperate with nationalist movements in colonial areas in Asia and Africa.
* He understood that Many of these movements were controlled by the native middle class, who, in the long run, were not sympathetic to social revolution.
* But the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
* Who said that first?
* The earliest known expression of this concept is found in a Sanskrit treatise on statecraft, the Arthashastra, which dates to around the 4th century BC, while the first recorded use of the current English version came in 1884
* The king who is situated anywhere immediately on the circumference of the conqueror's territory is termed the enemy.
* The king who is likewise situated close to the enemy, but separated from the conqueror only by the enemy, is termed the friend (of the conqueror).
* So any alliances with bourgeois nationalist groups should be implemented with care, and only on the condition that local Communist parties maintain their separate identities and freedom of action.
* But given such limitations, Lenin viewed the national liberation movements of Asia and Africa as natural, albeit temporary, allies of the Communists against the common enemy of world imperialism.
* It was the ability of the Western capitalist countries to locate markets and raw materials in underdeveloped countries that sustained the world capitalist system and prevented its ultimate collapse.
* Cut off the tentacles of colonialism in the far-flung colonies, and the system itself could be overthrown.
* Ho Chi Minh assured his Vietnamese allies in Paris that Communism could be applied to Asia,; more than that, it was in keeping with Asian traditions based on Confucian notions of social equality and community.
* On top of that, Lenin had pledged Soviet support, through the Comintern, for nationalist uprisings throughout the colonial world as a key first step in fomenting worldwide socialist revolution against the capitalist order.
* What could be more relevant to Indochina’s situation?
* Years later speaking of Lenin’s pamphlet, he said “What emotion, enthusiasm, clear-sightedness and confidence it instilled in me. I was overjoyed to tears. Though sitting alone in my room, I shouted aloud as if addressing large crowds: ‘Dear martyrs, compatriots! This is what we need, this is our path to liberation.’ ”
* Ho stayed in Paris for a few years - writing plays, writing articles for many magazines, reading victor Hugo and Voltaire and Shakespeare.
* Then he finally came to the conclusion that the French Communists cared for the plight of the Vietnamese only slightly more than the other French socialists, so in 1923 he moved to Moscow, hoping to meet Lenin.
* U
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