"My Only Goal Is To See My People Free"

"My Only Goal Is To See My People Free"

Ho Chi Minh learned of the October Revolution while in Paris. The young revolutionary had visited many countries in the six years since he left his homeland. What he witnessed every where was the underprivileged and poverty of working people and their oppression by the powers that be? Reading Lenin’s works and talking with French Communists, Nguyen Ai Quoc (as Ho Chi Minh was cooled then) looked forward to visiting the land of the October revolution. But such a journey was no simple thing then.

Nguyen Ai Quoc became a distinguished figure among the Vietnamese emigrants in Paris. He initiated the establishment of the Association of colonial peoples comprising representatives of a number of French overseas territories who were living in the parent state. He also began publishing the newspaper Le Paria which advocated the unification of the colonial peoples with the proletariat of other countries and the working people of Soviet Russia. Ai Quoc was shadowed by the police. His activity attracted the attention of Albert Surratt himself, France’s colonial minister, who had been governor-general in Indo-China. In the August 1, 1922 issue of Le Paria the Vietnamese revolutionary published his open letter to Surratt angrily exposing the inhuman regime the colonialists had established in Annam (as Central Vietnam was called in those years). As a consequent, the “insolent trouble- maker”, was summoned to the minister.

“MY NLY GOAL…”

…The noise from the street could hardly be heard in the enormous office decorated with silk tapestries. A majestic- looking old man, with luxurious mustache, was sitting at a massive ebony desk. The door opened and a young Vietnamese entered. A proudly- set head, shining dark eyes in a lean face… The minister stared at him coldly as he approached the desk, walking on a carpet runner. Pointing to a gift armchair, the minister said, “Be seated.” Nguyen had neither timidity nor fear, but only intense curiosity: “What’s this cunning fox after, I wonder?”
The police had failed to arrest Nguyen the day before; the threat of Marcel Caching and Paul Valliant- Couturier to create a fur ore in the press had caused the procurator of the 17th Parisian Arrondissement to revoke the other.

The minister picked up a copy of Le Paria from the desk.
“I’ve looked through your newspaper. You seem to be discontent with practices in your homeland?”

Surratt put a magnifying-glass to the newspaper.
“And one more thing rather witty, I’d say. While showing concern for France’s budget you deny privilege of being taken care of by our agents.”

“Yes, indeed, Mr. Minister.” There was a touch of irony in Nguyen’s voice. “Is there any sense in spending so much when my daily schedule is no secret to anybody: editorial board library- museum?”

“We know more of it than you think,” Surratt interrupted him. “For instance, your intention to make trip to Bolshevik Russia:”

“They’ve got wind of it, these sleuths,” thought Nguyen and then said: “I simply want to be closer to my homeland.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Surratt spread his hands theatrically.

“The Marseille- Saigon line operates smoothly. You’re an able and energetic young man. Who knows, with time you could well be one of the indigenous representatives at the Cochin China Assembly. And what is in store for you in Russia? There is hunger, misrule.. Just look at this.” Surratt plucked a poster from a file. It showed a furious- looking bandit with a shaggy cap on and a blood- stained knife clenched between his teeth. “Bolshevik,” read the caption.
Nguyen shrugged his shoulders:

“These posters are pasted on all walls in Paris, Mr. Minister.”
“It was only a miracle that helped the Bolshevik hold out for five years,” continued Surratt, getting angrier. “But their days are numbered. What example can they give you?”
“What example?” Nguyen repeated the question. He still looked impassive. “Apparently, it proved most contagious for the soldiers of the Indo china Battalion you sent to Siberia to fight revolutionary Russia. And for the Vietnamese sailors of the French squadron in the Black Sea. They all refused to fight the Bolsheviks.”

“Propaganda!” yelled Surratt. “It’s only from France that Indochina will get all the benefits of civilization. It will transform your land, without it you’ll eke out a slavish and miserable existence.”

“They for your concern. Mr. Minister,” Nguyen gave a slight bow.
“I’ll take account of your wishes.”
“France forgives a great deal,” the minister said ominously. “But it will never forgive trouble-makers who establish contacts with the Russian Bolsheviks and seek to incite unsuspecting crowds in Indochina to commit acts of lawlessness.

“My only goal, Mr. Minister,” said Nguyen rising from the armchair “is to see my people free”.
Several months had passed since that conversation. The house where Nguyen Ai Quoc lived, at 9 Rue Compoint, was watched day and night. Yet despite this he managed to slip away unnoticed from his tiny room on the second floor.

With papers bearing the name of entrepreneur Tren Vang he shortly after showed up in Hamburg. German Communists made arrangements for him to sail abroad a boat bound for Russia.

IN BOLSHEVIK RUSSIA
From my first in U.S.S.R Ho Chi Minch recalled, “I realized how difficult it was for the Soviet Republic to start a new life. Even then, the Soviet people already had achievements to their credit. The Soviet country’s swift progress and each of its successes made every revolutionary proud for the cause of the Great October Revolution.”

In Soviet Russia, Ho Chi Minh witnessed the unparallel enthusiasm of the builders of socialism. There he saw his youthful dream about freedom and equality coming true. “Neither in childhood nor in my mature years,” he later told his jungle comrades-in –arms,” have I experienced such feelings of freedom, infinite joy and happiness as in Moscow in those days.”

The stay in the USSR contributed immensely to shaping the world outlook of Ho Chi Minh and of many his associates, Vietnamese Communists. They thoroughly assimilated the Leninist Party’s experience in order to creatively apply it in Vietnam.

Today, we read with excitement the lines written by the Indochina delegation that attended the 6th Comintern Congress in Moscow in 1928.
“We had lived through long and dramatic years, daily witnessing the ordeals that fell to the lot of our people. Since our first days in the USSR we found ourselves in new environment calm, fraternal, humane. A singularly interesting journey across the USSR has given us fresh strength.
“When back in our Indochina Peninsula we shall prepare for our own battle so as to fight to the last drop of blood to people imperialism and capitalism and to build a socialist country in the Far East.”

During the short existence of the Democratic Front of Indochina, in the mid-1930s, when the Vietnamese Communists had won the freedom to conduct propaganda legally, they started publishing Soviet magazines Soviet Construction Sites, Stakhanovism Drive, Soviet women and other in Vietnamese.

“The USSR’s example shows,” the newspaper Vo San Wrote in 1933, “that the proletariat is powerful enough to create a society ruling out the exploitation of man by man.”
Vietnamese revolutionaries’ internationalism was vividly manifested during the Great patriotic War of the Soviet people (1941-1945). On the day after Nazi Germany’s perfidious attack on the USSR the Communist Party of Indochina circulated leaflets expressing confidence in the triumph of the Soviet people’s just cause. Verses by an anonymous poet were very popular then: “The Soviet Union is unparalleled courage. The Red Army is death to Hitler.”

In the grim autumn of 1941, when the Nazi hordes were approaching the Soviet Capital. Moscow, an international Regiment was formed there. It comprised revolutionaries from various countries who worked or studied in the USSR. Six Vietnamese youths were among the first volunteers.

Underground newspapers of the Vietnamese Communities wrote then; “We unhesitatingly declare that the Red Army men shedding their blood in battles against Nazism are also fighting for the peoples of Indochina. Only the Soviet Union’s victory will give us hope that our revolution will be victorious.”

The six Vietnamese volunteers died a hero’s death on the distant approaches to Moscow. The real names of four of them came to light only recently.

The drawn of the new life that broke over the planet in October 1917 is still illuminating the road to the future for the Vietnamese working people. The Vietnamese people have associated and continue to associate, their victories and accomplishments with the Leninist teachings and the ideas of the October Revolution, with friendship and cooperation with the country in which this great revolution occurred.

Article By: Sreekumar, St.Albert's College