After Nguyen Ai Quoc concluded his speech, Jean Longuet took the floor once again and reiterated that he had publicly supported the Vietnamese cause in the National Assembly and said that the issue was now being debated in that body. But Paul Vaillant-Couturier, a rising star in the radical movement and one of Nguyen Ai Quoc’s most vocal supporters, retorted that what was needed now was not simply parliamentary debate, but action by the congress on behalf of the oppressed nations.42
On the twenty-seventh, Marcel Cachin formally proposed that the FSP accept Lenin’s conditions for joining the Comintern, and Nguyen Ai Quoc spoke in support of the motion. Two days later, the motion carried by a majority of over 70 percent of the delegates. Those delegates who opposed entry into the Comintern stormed out of the hall in protest. Those who remained voted to bolt from the FSP and found a new French Communist Party (FCP). But there was no further discussion of the colonial question and the leadership rejected a proposal, undoubtedly promoted by Nguyen Ai Quoc, to issue a public declaration of support to the colonial peoples.43
At the Tours congress, Nguyen Ai Quoc had put his colleagues on notice that he was determined to become an outspoken advocate of greater attention to the needs of the colonial peoples as a crucial component of the struggle to overthrow capitalism. He had demonstrated in both public and private comments that he was concerned not simply about the success of the world revolution, but also about the fate of his own country. That spirit was reflected in a comment to one of his acquaintances at the time: “I have not had the good fortune to follow courses at the university. But life has given me an opportunity to study history, the social sciences, and even military science. What should one love? What should one despise? For we Vietnamese, it is necessary to love independence, work, and the motherland.”44
But it did not take long for him to become disillusioned in his hope that all the new members of the new party would follow his lead. In February 1921, he became ill and spent some time in the hospital. After his release, he penned an article titled “Indochine” for La Revue Communiste, which was published in April. In the article, he criticized some members of the FCP for not giving enough attention to the problems of promoting revolution in the colonies and for not studying the problem in a systematic manner. He argued that although the French were trying to destroy the spirit of the people of Indochina, the peoples of Indochina were not dead, and indeed “the peoples of Indochina still live and will live forever”—hardly an expression of Marxist proletarian internationalism. The article demonstrated clearly that he had abandoned the hope that change could be brought about without violence. While conceding that Indochina was not yet ripe for revolution—primarily because the people lacked education and had no freedom of speech or action—he contended that under the mask of passive docility “there is something that is bubbling and rumbling and that will at the appropriate moment explode in a formidable manner.” It is up to the elites, he argued, to hasten that moment. “The tyranny of capitalism,” he concluded, “has prepared the terrain; socialism has only to sow the seeds of emancipation.”45
In a second article with the identical title in May, Nguyen Ai Quoc discussed the question of whether communism could be applied in Asia in general, and in Indochina in particular. This was a particularly pertinent issue, because at that time most European radicals still believed that in most “backward” countries revolution would be long delayed. Even Joseph Stalin, in an article published in Pravda the same month, had said that the advanced nations, after liberating themselves, had the duty to liberate the “backward peoples.”
In his article, Nguyen Ai Quoc took issue with such views, arguing that Marxisr and Leninist doctrine and strategy had current relevance in Asia as well as in the West. In Japan, he pointed out, the first Asian country to become capitalist, a socialist party had just been formed. China, still under the thrall of European and American capital, had just awakened, and a new revolutionary government led by the rebel leader Sun Yat-sen in south China promised to give birth to “a reorganized and proletarianized China.” Perhaps one day soon, he predicted, Russia and China will march together. As for other suffering peoples in Asia, Korea was still at the mercy of Japanese capital, while India and Indochina were in the hands of English and French exploiters.
Nguyen Ai Quoc’s prediction of future collaboration by the Russian and Chinese people was certainly prophetic. For the moment, he was commenting on recent events in China, which had led Sun Yat-sen to form an alliance with a military leader to establish a revolutionary regime in the southern port city of Canton. Sun had been living in exile for several years, after the military leader Yuan Shikai aborted the effort of Sun’s followers to build a Westernized China and seized control over the reins of power himself. After Yuan’s death in 1916, China fell into civil disorder, with military warlords seizing control of various parts of the country.
There were solid historical reasons, Nguyen Ai Quoc argued, why communism could acclimatize itself more easily in Asia than in Europe. In his view, Asians, although viewed by Westerners as backward, better understood the need for a total reform of contemporary society. They also harbored an historical sympathy for the idea of community and social equality. Ancient China had practiced the “equal field” (in Chinese, jing tian) system, dividing all farmland into equal parts and setting aside a separate plot for common ownership. More than four thousand years ago, the Xia dynasty had inaugurated the practice of obligatory labor. In the sixth century B.C. the great philosopher Confucius anticipated the Comintern and preached the doctrine of equality of property. World peace, the Master had predicted, would not come until the establishment of a universal republic. “One need not fear of having little,” he preached, “but of not having equal distribution of goods.” Confucius’ disciple Mencius continued to follow the Master’s doctrine, formulating a detailed plan for the organization of production and consumption. In response to a question by his sovereign, Mencius said that the needs of the people came first, those of the nation next, while those of the monarch came last.
Such traditions, Quoc asserted, continued to influence Asian societies. Vietnamese law, for example, placed limits on the sale and purchase of land, and a quarter of all farmlands were reserved as communal property. So, he concluded, on the day when millions of oppressed Asians wake up, they will form a colossal force capable of overthrowing imperialism, and they will aid their brothers of the West in the task of total emancipation from capitalist exploitation. Asia would play an active role in carrying out the world revolution.46
Nguyen Ai Quoc also used his pen to puncture the myth of the grandeur of French civilization. In an article written in September entitled “La civilisation supérieure,” he ridiculed the French revolutionary trinity of liberty, equality, and fraternity, citing specific examples of French cruelty as recounted in the diary of a French soldier. In a short piece published in October in Le Libertaire, he recounted a personal example that he had witnessed as a student at the National Academy in Hué in 1908, where a fellow student was brutally humiliated by one of his French instructors. This took place, he remarked sarcastically, under a sign in every classroom that said, LOVE FRANCE, WHICH PROTECTS YOU (Aimez la France qui vous protège).47
Nguyen Ai Quoc’s increasing radicalism kept him under the watchful eyes of the French authorities. Sometime in early 1921 he was summoned once again to the Ministry of Colonies for an interview with Albert Sarraut. “If France returned Indochina to you,” the minister declared, “you would not be able to govern yourselves because you are not sufficiently well armed.” “To the contrary,” Quoc replied. “Look at Siam and Japan. These two countries do not have a civilization more ancient than our own; yet they rank among the nations of the world. If France returned our country to us, it would see without doubt that we would know how to govern it!” At these words, Sarraut changed the subject.48
Nguyen Ai Quoc’s decision to join the French Communist Party added to existing tensions at the apartment on the Vil
la des Gobelins, where not all of his colleagues agreed with his opinions. During the congress at Tours, Tran Tien Nam, once one of his closest friends, remarked to a female acquaintance that Quoc’s extremist views were not approved or widely shared by others at the flat. During the next several months police agents contined to report that angry discussions periodically took place there.49
The dispute between Nguyen Ai Quoc and his colleagues finally reached a climax in July, after growing more intense for several months. On June 6, he had taken part in a demonstration at the Père Lachaise Cemetery, in a working-class district in eastern Paris, to commemorate the deaths that had occurred there during the suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871. Quoc was badly beaten by the police, but managed to flee the scene. News of the incident made a number of his acquaintances nervous to be seen in his company. A couple of weeks later Tran Tien Nam, one of the more moderate members of the group, moved out of the apartment, claiming that Nguyen Ai Quoc’s political views had become too radical for his comfort.
On July 11, 1921, police agents reported that an angry discussion had taken place betweeen Nguyen Ai Quoc and his friends; it lasted from nine in the evening until early the following morning. The next day, trailed by police agents, Quoc left the apartment to stay with his friend Vo Van Toan at 12 Rue Buot. A week later, his friend Paul Vaillant-Couturier assisted him in finding a small apartment at 9 Impasse Compoint, a cul-de-sac in the Batignolles, a working-class area in northwestern Paris.50
Nguyen Ai Quoc’s new lodgings were spartan in the extreme, a significant step down from the relatively spacious and comfortable accommodations he had shared on the Villa des Gobelins. The one-room apartment was just large enough to hold a bed, a small table, and a wardrobe. Its single window looked out on the wall of the adjoining building, and he had to crane his neck out of the window to see the sky. There was no electricity, so he used an oil lamp; no water, so he used a basin to wash his face, and washed his clothes outside. For heat he used a brick that he warmed up in his landlady’s furnace and then wrapped in a newspaper. His meals consisted of a little salted fish or meat twice a day. Sometimes he limited himself to a piece of bread and cheese.51
Nguyen Ai Quoc’s break with the group on the Villa des Gobelins and the move to a new location apparently also necessitated a change of job. He had continued to work as a photo retoucher with Phan Chu Trinh until July 1920. Then, according to his written statement to the police on September 17, he became a decorator of Chinese frescoes for a Chinese furniture maker in the Latin Quarter. When the employees at the shop went out on strike in September, he took a new job at a photo shop on Rue Froidevaux. Then, after moving out of the Villa des Gobelins in the summer of 1921, he took a job at a photo shop a few doors from his new apartment on Impasse Compoint. As an apprentice, he earned only forty francs a week.52
Nguyen Ai Quoc’s straitened circumstances did not appreciably affect his life. He continued to attend political meetings regularly, to attend art shows, and to frequent the Bibliothèque Nationale. In the course of his acrivities, he met such celebrities as the singer-actor Maurice Chevalier and the short story writer Colette. According to police reports, he often entertained visitors, cooking dinners of green vegetables mixed with soy sauce, accompanied by jasmine tea, at a small stove on a table in the corner of his apartment. Although his salary left him with little excess after paying his monthly rent, he still managed to travel to various meetings around the country, suggesting that he was receiving a subsidy from the Communist Party.
Nguyen Ai Quoc’s break with the Gobelins group may have been precipitated in part by the disagreement over the decision of the FCP to form a new Colonial Study Commission (Comité des Etudes Coloniales) to promote Marxism in the French colonies. Nguyen Ai Quoc became an active member and in the middle of June 1921, he took Phan Chu Trinh to one of the meetings of the commission, A few weeks later, he attended a second meeting at Fontainebleau, thirty-five miles southeast of Paris. It was on his return two days later that he had the final fight at the apartment.53
One of the immediate results of the formation of the Colonial Study Commission was the creation of a new organization to represent colonial subjects living in France, the Intercolonial Union (Union Intercoloniale). For several months Nguyen Ai Quoc had been considering the establishment of such a group. In a conversation with an acquaintance while he was in the hospital in February 1921, he mentioned the need to form an organization under cover of a mutual assistance association to unite the colonial peoples in their struggle for independence. For several months, his Association of Annamite Patriots had been cooperating informally with a group of nationalists from the French colony of Madagascar and had created an action committee to coordinate their joint political activities. Similar groups had been established by other Africans living in Paris and London. Now, at the behest of the commission, this pattern of informal cooperation was formalized with the creation of the Intercolonial Union, which proclaimed itself as the primary voice for the interests of all the colonial peoples residing in France. At its inception in July 1921, the union consisted of about two hundred members. Most came from Madagascar and Vietnam, although there were also a few North Africans and West Indians. The stated goals of the organization were moderate—according to its manifesto, it sought only to inform the colonial peoples of events taking place in France and to research all political and economic problems in the colonies—but its ultimate objective was to seek the destruction of the French colonial empire.54
From the beginning, Nguyen Ai Quoc was the driving force behind the new organization. He was elected to the executive committee along with a number of other prominent members of the FCP, such as his compatriot Nguyen The Truyen, Max Bloncourt, a member from Madagascar, and the Algerian Hadj Ali. Quoc was a member of the steering committee and regularly attended its meetings, which were held initially on the Avenue de Valois, near Park Monceau. Partially funded by the FCP, the union’s headquarters were located at 3 Rue des Marché des Patriarches, a narrow street near the Gate d’Austerlitz on the Left Bank. With considerable effort, he was able initially to hold together the divergent interests represented by the group. As agent reports in French police files show, this was not easy. National jealousies and rivalries constantly disrupted the activities of the group, while leftists of European extraction sometimes complained that they were unfairly prevented from joining because of racial barriers. Some Vietnamese members charged that there was too much emphasis on cross-cultural activities and demanded the reestablishment of a purely Vietnamese organization. Africans retorted that Asian members were condescending and arrogant. Nguyen Ai Quoc was finding out that it was difficult to bring together the disparate force of the colonial peoples into a single disciplined organization.55
Attendance at the meetings of the general assembly gradually declined from a peak of 200 to fewer than 50 at each session. At one session in February 1923, there were only 27 members in attendance. Two were French, and two were women, both allegedly the mistresses of male activists. Nguyen Ai Quoc had his own female liaisons, although whether any of his women friends took part in radical activities is uncertain. He did have one small success: Phan Van Truong, his onetime collaborator in drafting the petition to the Allied leaders at Versailles, agreed to join.56
Organizational work within the Intercolonial Union was by no means Nguyen Ai Quoc’s only activity during his final years in Paris. Through his association with French radicals he had learned the value of the press in publicizing the revolutionary cause; in early 1922, with encouragement from the Colonial Study Commission and other members of the Intercolonial Union, he decided to found a new journal specifically directed to appeal to colonial subjects residing in France, and to serve as a mouthpiece for the colonial peoples throughout the French empire. Called Le Paria (The Pariah), it was printed in French, but the title on its masthead was also presented in Chinese and Arabic. The first issue appeared on April 1, 1922, and others followed monthly; later, as fin
ancial problems accumulated, it appeared less frequently. Simple in form and in style, its aim was to inform readers of news and views on colonial affairs.
The tireless Nguyen Ai Quoc was chief editor of the journal. He was also its primary contributor and, when others were not available, he occasionally even became its major distributor, drawing pictures, wrapping the journal, and delivering it to subscribers. As he later recalled:
There was one time when I was the editor, chief treasurer, and distributor of Le Paria as well as the person who sold it. The comrades from Asian and African colonies wrote articles and solicited contributions and I did practically everything else.
Through the pages of Le Paria Nguyen Ai Quoc continued to improve his journalistic style. In editorials for the paper—sometimes two or three to each issue—he wrote about world affairs. Sometimes it was an article of a critical nature on some aspect of colonial life, such as atrocities committed by the French administration in Africa or Indochina. At other times it would be a piece on life in Soviet Russia—always painted in idyllic terms, although, of course, he had never been there.
There was nothing fancy in his writing. He had learned the importance of employing a simple and direct writing style by reading Leo Tolstoy, whose novels ranked among his favorites. His articles had no subtlety. Relying heavily on facts and figures to make his point, he appeared to his readers to be a walking statistical dictionary on life in the colonies—from the level of capitation taxes in the Ivory Coast to the colonial budget for French Indochina. When he did not attempt to bury the enemy in statistics, he employed sarcasm, but his words lacked the ironic twist of his contemporary Lu Xun, the talented Chinese writer. He tended to ignore theory and relied instead on a straightforward and invariably indignant criticism of the colonial system and its brutal effects on those who were ground under its wheels.
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