In effect, Lenin was calling on his fellow Communists in the West to join hands with Asian and African nationalists in a common revolutionary endeavor. The alliance was temporary; once imperialism and its feudal allies in underdeveloped societies were overthrown, the Communist movement should detach itself from its alliance with the bourgeois political forces, who would now become increasingly reactionary, and struggle to achieve the second, socialist stage of the revolution.
Lenin was offering assistance to the Vietnamese and other peoples at a time when they sorely needed it. And he was clearly enunciating the view—so central to Nguyen Ai Quoc’s own worldview—that the colonial areas were a vital defense line in the world capitalist system. Cut off the tentacles of colonialism in the far-flung colonies, and the system itself could be overthrown.
Socialists in Paris, with few exceptions, tended to dwell on words rather than deeds. Lenin was not a theorist, but a man of action. To Nguyen Ai Quoc, he was clearly an extraordinarily inspiring figure, and one worthy of his allegiance.
With the help of French acquaintances like the radical journalist Gaston Monmousseau and Jean Longuet, who helped to polish his distinctive unadorned and direct style, Nguyen Ai Quoc began to contribute articles to leftist journals in Paris in the late summer of 1919, and continued to be a prolific supporter of progressive causes until his departure from France nearly four years later. His first article, entitled “La question indigène” and printed in L’Humanité on August 2, 1919, was a critique of French policies in Indochina, policies that, in his words, had brought the Vietnamese people nothing but misery. Although in theory the French were performing a civilizing mission, in actuality their educational policies were simple indoctrination and kept the Vietnamese people unprepared for future competition with their neighbors. In the meantime, the Japanese government had astutely prepared its own people to develop their economic capacities. Eventually, he noted prophetically, Japanese businessmen will arrive in Indochina and make Vietnamese lives even more difficult.
Nguyen Ai Quoc had a point. At the end of World War I, the educational system that had recently been put in place by the French to provide their Indochinese subjects with exposure to Western knowledge reached only a small percentage of the population. Only 3,000 of the more than 23,000 communes in Vietnam had a village school in the Western style. Traditional education in the Chinese classics continued to be offered by Confucian scholars in rural areas, but after the civil service examinations were abolished at French order in the second decade of the century, such an education had lost its primary vocational purpose. Education at the higher level was available to Vietnamese living in the cities, but it was essentially limited to a handful of high schools that catered to the sons and daughters of the elite class.
As for Sarraut’s strategy of broadening political participation, Thanh continued, it was actually no policy at all. When people attempt to stand up to protest, as they did in 1908, they are bloodily repressed. Don’t the French realize, he concluded, that it is time to emancipate the natives and help prepare them for future competition from their neighbors?31
Nguyen Ai Quoc followed up that article with another entitled “Indochina and Korea” in Le Populaire and then with “Lettre à Monsieur Outrey” in the same journal in October. Like its predecessor, these two pieces, while harshly critical of some French policies, were essentially moderate in terms of proposed solutions. They made no reference to the use of violence or of a Leninist alliance between peasants and workers. In the October article, the author refers favorably to the policies and remarks of former Governor-General Albert Sarraut and declares his opposition to Maurice Outrey, a colonial official and representative of Cochin China in the French National Assembly, who was rumored to be eager to replace Sarraut as governor-general. Outrey had criticized the Association of Annamite Patriots in that chamber, while denying that the French colonial regime suppressed the Annamites. Whom, Nguyen Ai Quoc asked satirically, do you represent? The twenty million Annamites whom Outrey did not know even by name, except for a few functionaries and a fistful of wealthy electors in Cochin China? Between Outrey’s views and those of Sarraut, he concluded, there is “an immense distance.”32
Nguyen Ai Quoc’s job as a photo retoucher apparently did not require long hours for, while writing these short pieces, he also began to prepare a longer manuscript titled Les opprimés (The Oppressed), a lengthy critique of French policy in Indochina. Seldom, it would seem, has an author’s abortive efforts to write a book been so well documented, since the police were amply informed of his progress through periodic reports by agents. He began writing it in late 1919 with the help of the anticolonial publicist Paul Vigné d’Octon and pored over newspaper and periodical articles in the Bibliothèque Nationale to obtain useful statistics and quotes. When an acquaintance warned Quoc against unattributed quotations, he retorted that he hoped other publishers would demand compensation for such quotes, since that would help publicize the book. Another advised him against using such a confrontational title, but he insisted on retaining it.
According to agent reports, Nguyen Ai Quoc lacked adequate funds to obtain editorial help and intended to publish the manuscript himself. Shortly after finishing it, however, he returned home one night to find it missing. Some biographers have speculated that it was stolen by a police agent. That seems probable, although there are no such indications in police files. Although there are no clear indications of the contents, it is likely that he used much of the material from his notes in a later book called Le procès de la colonisation française (French Colonialism on Trial), which he published in 1925. This book was a much harsher critique of French colonial policies and reflected clearly the influence of Marxism on his worldview.33
Nguyen Ai Quoc had moved into Phan Chu Trinh’s apartment on the Villa des Gobelins in July 1919, shortly after the publication of the petition to the Allied powers. Located in a comfortable middle-class district near the Place de l’Italie on the Left Bank, it was undoubtedly a step up from his previous seedy accommodations. He shared it not only with Phan Chu Trinh but several other colleagues as well.
But the move presented some problems. As early as December 1919, a police agent within the group’s entourage reported that an angry debate had taken place between Nguyen Ai Quoc and Phan Chu Trinh at the flat over the proper course to follow. Quoc argued that Vietnamese officials were as docile as sheep and had become the accomplices of the French in attempting to restrain the masses and exploit them. Trinh retorted that this was too superficial a view. The Vietnamese people, he felt, were still too weak and lacked the capability to oppose the French. Opposition at this point, he argued, would be tantamount to suicide. “Brother Quoc,” he admonished, “allow me to observe you are still very young, and all can see that you are too headstrong. You want twenty million of our compatriots to do something when they have no weapons in their hands to oppose the fearsome weapons of the Europeans. Why should we commit suicide for no purpose?”
To Phan Chu Trinh, it was still necessary to rely on the French to hasten the modernization of Vietnamese society, which remained under the influence of the dead hand of Confucian tradition. But Quoc felt that the French were the primary enemy and could not be trusted to carry out their promises of reform. “Why,” he asked,
don’t our twenty million compatriots do anything to force the government to treat us as human beings? We are humans, and we must live as humans. Anyone who does not want to treat us as his fellow man is our enemy. We don’t want to live together with them on this earth. If others don’t want to live with us as fellow humans, then it is really useless to live humiliating lives and be insulted on this earth.
As for the view that the Vietnamese had to rely on the French to carry out needed reforms, Nguyen Ai Quoc argued that they had done very little to educate the populace or prepare it for self-rule. “You are all older and more experienced than I,” he conceded, “but our compatriots have been demanding that for sixty years and hav
e received what? Very little!”34
Despite the growing gap between their political views, Nguyen Ai Quoc still respected Phan Chu Trinh and tried to persuade him to change his views. On several occasions, he took his older colleague to radical meetings in Paris. The police now kept Quoc constantly under surveillance and continued their efforts to obtain precise information on his background. The authorities remained convinced that Nguyen Ai Quoc was the same Nguyen Tat Thanh who had taken part in the disturbances in Hué in the summer of 1908. They had interviewed his father, his sister, and his brother, and were looking for telltale markings on his body to verify his identity. For example, they heard he had a scar on his ear from a childhood accident. While he was in the hospital in 1920 for an abscess on his right elbow, the police attempted to photograph him.35
On August 17, 1920, Albert Sarraut, now minister of colonies, wrote a note to the prefect of police asking for more precise information on Nguyen Ai Quoc. “He has no right,” exclaimed Sarraut in exasperation, “to meddle in our politics under an assumed name.” The following month, Quoc was called into the ministry again for interrogation. According to his own later account of the incident:
One day I wrote a letter to a man of letters and four days later, I received a letter from the Ministry of Colonies, signed by a Monsieur Guesde, in which he told me he had received my letter and asked me to come to his office. What, I wondered, I don’t know M. Guesde! I have never written to him not to any one in the Ministry. Then an idea came to me. I told myself, M. Guesde does not know me, so to make my acquaintance and buy me off, he seeks an excuse to have me come to his office.
A few days later I went to the Ministry of Colonies. M. Guesde was not there, and in fact was on a trip to England. M. Pasquier [then a senior ministry official] received me and inquired whether I wanted something from the government. If so, he would try to help me.
I need nothing, I replied, except the eight articles of the petition that I ptesented to the peace conference. If you could intervene with the French government to grant our demands, we would be infinitely grateful. M. Pasquier did not reply to my question and changed the conversation.36
Pasquier’s reaction to this conversation is unknown. But the growing frustration of the authorities is revealed in a report about Nguyen Ai Quoc written by Pierre Guesde to the minister of colonies on October 12. Quoc had been summoned to the prefecture of police three days after his interview at the Ministry. At the police station, he declared that he had been born on January 15, 1894, in Vinh, and that his six brothers and sisters were all dead.
“Who is this Nguyen Ai Quoc?” Guesde exploded.
He frequently changes his name and is currently hiding his identity behind an assumed name that cannot fool anyone who is even slightly familiar with the Vietnamese language. He claims that he has no documentation from the administrative authorities of Indochina that would identify him, but he interferes in our politics, takes part in political groups, speaks in revolutionary reunions, and we don’t even know in whose presence we are! The information that he provides is clearly false.
In fact, Guesde said, after exhaustive efforts the authorities were in possession of clear evidence that Quoc was actually Nguyen Tat Thanh, “a dangerous agitator” who took part in the demonstrations in Annam in 1908.37
For over a generation, the socialist movement in France had been composed of progressive thinkers of varying hues: activist followers of the nineteenth-century revolutionary Auguste Blanqui, who advocated immediate insurrection and ignored the problem of building a future society; reformists, who followed the evolutionary road of Eduard Bernstein and the Second International; theoretical radicals, who traced their roots more to the French Revolution than to the thought of Karl Marx; and trade union leaders, who waged a class struggle aganst the captains of industry but had little use for ideology. World War I dealt a fatal blow to whatever lingering degree of common interest had previously existed within this heterogeneous group, and when Lenin issued his challenge to socialists everywhere to follow him in a holy war against capitalism, he forced party members to choose sides.
At the FSP conference held in Strasbourg in February 1920, a major discussion took place over whether to follow the relatively moderate Second International or Lenin’s new Third International, the Comintern. Nguyen Ai Quoc was present, but took no part in the debate. Put to a vote, a strong majority wanted to leave the Second International, but a similar majority expressed opposition to joining the Comintern. As yet, the French left was not ready to make a choice.
During the following months, the debate over the future course of the socialist movement intensified. That summer, two prominent members of the party, Marcel Cachin and General Secretary Louis Frossard, attended the Second Comintern Congress in Moscow, which had approved Lenin’s “Theses on the National and Colonial Questions.” On their return to France they convened a massive rally on August 13 to discuss the results of the congress. Among the thirty thousand who jammed the grounds of the Paris circus in the western suburbs of the city was Nguyen Ai Quoc. He heard Marcel Cachin speak strongly in favor of adhesion to Lenin’s new Communist International, claiming that it alone would liberate the enslaved peoples of the world and carry the struggle to the heart of global imperialism.38
Such words were undoubtedly welcome to Nguyen Ai Quoc, although he may have been disappointed that Lenin’s eighth condition for admission to the new Comintern—calling on Communist parties in imperialist countries to carry on an active struggle against the imperialist policies of their own governments—received little attention at the meeting. He was probably heartened in September, however, to hear the news regarding the recent Conference of the Nationalities of the East held in Baku, where Platovich, a speaker representing the Comintern, had called for an active struggle to liberate the oppressed peoples of Asia.39
The FSP had scheduled a national congress to take place at Tours in late December to decide on possible affiliation with Lenin’s Comintern. In the months leading up to the congress, Nguyen Ai Quoc attended all the district sessions and heard all the arguments on either side of the issue. There were three factions within the party, with moderates and radicals at each extreme and a group identified with Jean Longuet in the middle. Nguyen Ai Quoc contributed rarely to the debates. When he did, it was invariably to complain about the lack of attention to the colonial question. On one occasion, according to his own account, he appealed for unity of purpose in pursuit of the common cause:
Dear friends, you are all good socialists. You all wish to liberate the working class. Well, whether it is the Second International, the Second and One Half International, or the Third International, it all comes down to the same thing. Are they not all revolutionary? Don’t they all struggle in favor of socialism? Whether you prefer one or the other, you must in any case unite. So why all the controversy? While you spend your time debating, comrades, my compatriots are suffering and dying.
When selections for representatives to the congress were made, he managed to get invited as the representative of a small group of party members from Indochina.40
The congress opened on December 25, 1920, in a large riding school next to the St. Julian Church on the south bank of the Loire River. The cavernous hall was festooned with portraits of the old socialist warhorse Jean Jaurès and banners proclaiming the unity of the working class throughout the world. The speakers’ platform at the front of the hall consisted of a makeshift table composed of planks stretched across saw-horses. The 285 delegates and other assorted guests—representing more than 178,000 members throughout the country—were seated at long wooden tables arranged according to their political persuasion. Nguyen Ai Quoc was seated with the leftist faction, led by the fiery Marcel Cachin.
Debate began that day, with the decision on whether to join the Comintern the main topic on the agenda. As the only Asian, dressed in a dark suit many sizes too large for his slim physique, Nguyen Ai Quoc must have seemed out of place among the hundreds of
bearded Europeans. Indeed, it did not take long for him to create a commotion at the congress. On the first day, a photographer took his picture, and the photograph was printed in the next day’s issue of the Parisian newspaper Le Matin. Alerted to his presence, the police appeared immediately with orders to place him under arrest, but several of the delegates gathered around him and prevented them from seizing him. Eventually the police abandoned the effort.41
Nguyen Ai Quoc rose to speak on that same day. He spoke for twelve minutes without the use of notes. He went straight to the point, criticizing French colonial policies for oppressing and exploiting his compatriots. Anyone who protests, he said, is arrested, and prisons outnumber schools and are always jammed with detainees. The people have neither freedom of speech not the right to travel. They are forced to smoke opium and drink alcohol for the profit of the French government, which taxes both products. French socialists, he said, must take action to support the oppressed colonial peoples.
At this point, Nguyen Ai Quoc was interrupted by Jean Longuet. The socialist leader protested that he had already spoken in favor of the natives. “I have imposed the dictatorship of silence,” Quoc replied in a humorous play on Marx’s concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and added that the party must actively promote socialist propaganda in all colonial countries. He said that a decision to join the Comintern would affirm that the party had correctly estimated the importance of the colonial question. He ended with an appeal: “In the name of all humanity, in the name of all socialists of the right and the left, we appeal to you, comrades, save us!”
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