Trotskyism in Vietnam ( vi, Trăng-câu Đệ-tứ Đảng) was represented by those who, in left opposition to the
Indochinese Communist Party
The Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), km, បក្សកុម្មុយនីស្តឥណ្ឌូចិន, lo, ອິນດູຈີນພັກກອມມູນິດ, zh, t=印度支那共產黨 was a political party which was t ...
(PCI) of Nguyen Ai Quoc (
Ho Chi Minh
(: ; born ; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), commonly known as ('Uncle Hồ'), also known as ('President Hồ'), (' Old father of the people') and by other aliases, was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman. He served as Prime ...
), identified with the call by
Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
to re-found "vanguard parties of proletariat" on principles of "
proletarian internationalism
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is the perception of all communist revolutions as being part of a single global class struggle rather than separate localized events. It is based on the theory that ...
" and of "
permanent revolution
Permanent revolution is the strategy of a revolutionary class pursuing its own interests independently and without compromise or alliance with opposing sections of society. As a term within Marxist theory, it was first coined by Karl Marx and ...
". Active in the 1930s in organising the Saigon waterfront, industry and transport, Trotskyists presented a significant challenge to the Moscow-aligned party in
Cochinchina
Cochinchina or Cochin-China (, ; vi, Đàng Trong (17th century - 18th century, Việt Nam (1802-1831), Đại Nam (1831-1862), Nam Kỳ (1862-1945); km, កូសាំងស៊ីន, Kosăngsin; french: Cochinchine; ) is a historical exony ...
. Following the September 1945 Saigon uprising against the restoration of
French colonial rule, Vietnamese Trotskyists were systematically hunted down and eliminated by both the French ''
Sûreté
(; , but usually translated as afety" or "security)"Security" in French is ''sécurité''. The ''sûreté'' was originally called ''Brigade de Sûreté'' ("Surety Brigade"). is, in many French-speaking countries or regions, the organizational ...
'' and the Communist-front
Viet Minh
The Việt Minh (; abbreviated from , chữ Nôm and Hán tự: ; french: Ligue pour l'indépendance du Viêt Nam, ) was a national independence coalition formed at Pác Bó by Hồ Chí Minh on 19 May 1941. Also known as the Việt Minh Fro ...
.
The Emergence of Left Opposition
An identifiable Trotskyist tendency among Vietnamese revolutionary circles emerges first in Paris among the student youth of the Annamite Independence Party.
[Alexander, Robert J. (2001), ''Vietnamese Trotskyism'' (https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/alex/works/in_trot/viet.htm). Retrieved 10 October 2019] Following the bloody suppression of the
Yên Bái mutiny
The Yên Bái mutiny ( vi, Tổng khởi-nghĩa Yên-báy, "Yên Bái general uprising") was an uprising of Vietnamese soldiers in the French colonial army on 10 February 1930 in collaboration with civilian supporters who were members of the Vi ...
, their leader
Tạ Thu Thâu
Tạ Thu Thâu (1906–1945) in the 1930s was the principal representative of Trotskyism in Vietnam and, in colonial Cochinchina, of left opposition to the Indochinese Communist Party (PCI) of Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh). He joined to Left Oppo ...
expressed their view of the revolution in
Indochina
Mainland Southeast Asia, also known as the Indochinese Peninsula or Indochina, is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west an ...
in the pages of the
Left Opposition
The Left Opposition was a faction within the Russian Communist Party (b) from 1923 to 1927 headed ''de facto'' by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet fou ...
''La Verité'' (May and June issues, 1930). The revolution would not follow the precedent the
Third International
The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by a ...
had set in supporting the
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...
in China. A commitment to a broad nationalist front ("
Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen (; also known by several other names; 12 November 1866 – 12 March 1925)Singtao daily. Saturday edition. 23 October 2010. section A18. Sun Yat-sen Xinhai revolution 100th anniversary edition . was a Chinese politician who serve ...
ism") would betray the revolutionary interests of the anti-colonial struggle. For the colonised the choice was no longer between independence and slavery, but between socialism and nationalism. As "the ''social'' enemy of imperialism." the worker and peasant masses would free themselves from oppression under the French overseer only through their own organised action. "Independence is inseparable from proletarian revolution."
For organising protests against the execution of Yên Bái insurgent leaders, in May 1930 Tạ Thu Thâu and eighteen of his compatriots were arrested and deported back to
Cochinchina
Cochinchina or Cochin-China (, ; vi, Đàng Trong (17th century - 18th century, Việt Nam (1802-1831), Đại Nam (1831-1862), Nam Kỳ (1862-1945); km, កូសាំងស៊ីន, Kosăngsin; french: Cochinchine; ) is a historical exony ...
.
In Saigon the deportees found several groups of militants open to the theses of
Left Opposition
The Left Opposition was a faction within the Russian Communist Party (b) from 1923 to 1927 headed ''de facto'' by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet fou ...
, some within the PCI. In November 1931 dissidents emerging from within the Party formed the October Left Opposition (''Ta Doi Lap Thang Moui'') around the clandestine journal ''Thang Muoi'' (October). These included Hồ Hữu Tường, Dao Hung Long (alias Anh Gia ), and
Phan Văn Hùm Phan Văn Hùm (9 April 1902 – 1946) was a Vietnamese journalist, philosopher and revolutionary in French colonial Cochinchina who, from 1930, participated in the Trotskyist left opposition to the Communist Party of Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh).
...
. Declaring that, "being at all times a reactionary ideology, nationalism cannot succeed but to forge a new chain for the working class", in Paris in July 1930 they had formed an Indochinese Group within the Communist League
'Lien Minh Cong San Doan''/''Groupe indochinois de la Ligue Communiste (Opposition'') the French section of the International
Left Opposition
The Left Opposition was a faction within the Russian Communist Party (b) from 1923 to 1927 headed ''de facto'' by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet fou ...
.
Once considered "the theoretician of the Vietnamese contingent in Moscow," Tường was calling for a new "mass-based" party arising directly "out of the real struggle of the proletariat of the cities and countryside." But in the presence of "the real struggle of the proletariat in the cities and countryside"—in Saigon-Cholon strikes and protests by all sectors of labour and a peasant ''jacquerie'' in the surrounding districts—the repression was such that for all factions organisational activity proved near impossible. Between 1930 and the end of 1932, more than 12,000 political prisoners were taken in Cochinchina, of whom 7,000 were sent to the penal colonies. The structures of the Party and of the Left Opposition alike were shattered.
''The Struggle'' and the ''Internationalist League''
![La Lutte frontpage](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/La_Lutte_frontpage.jpg)
In 1933, several factional representatives, including Tạ Thu Thâu, Nguyễn Văn Tạo of the PCI
ater to be labour minister in Hanoi Ater (Hebrew אֲתַר) is an Old Testament male name.
#A descendant of Hezekiah, who returned from Babylon ;
#An Israelite, who subscribed to Nehemiah
Nehemiah is the central figure of the Book of Nehemiah, which describes his work in reb ...
and the anarchist Trinh Hung Ngau, regrouped around charismatic figure of
Nguyễn An Ninh
Nguyễn An Ninh (September 5, 1900 – August 14, 1943) was a radical Vietnamese political journalist and publicist in French colonial Cochinchina (southern Vietnam). An independent and charismatic figure, Nguyen An Ninh was able to conciliate ...
, and took the initiative of legally opposing the colonial regime in the Saigon municipal elections of April–May 1933. They put forward a common "Workers's List" and briefly published a newspaper (in French to get around the political restrictions on Vietnamese), ''
La Lutte'' (The Struggle) to rally support for it. In spite of the restricted franchise, two of this Struggle group were elected (although denied their seats), the independent (later Trotskyist) Tran Van Thach and Nguyễn Văn Tạo.
In 1934 the ''La Lutte'' the collaboration was revived on the basis of a formal Party-Oppositionist ''entente'': "struggle oriented against the colonial power and its constitutionalist allies, support of the demands of workers and peasants without regard to which of the two groups they were affiliated with, diffusion of classic Marxist thought,
ndrejection of all attacks against the USSR and against either current." In the March 1935 Cochinchina Colonial Council election candidates supported by ''La Lutte'' obtained 17% of the votes, although none were elected. Two months later in the Saigon municipal elections four of six candidates on a joint "Workers's Slate," including Tạ Thu Thâu and Nguyễn Văn Tạo, were elected, although only Tran Van Thach as the ostensible non-communist was allowed his seat.
At the end of 1935, unwilling to enter into a further accommodation with the "Stalinists, " the October Group of Hồ Hữu Tường, Lu Sanh Hanh and of
Ngô Văn (the chronicler of the Trotskyist struggle in later exile) formed the core of the League of Internationalist Communists for the Construction of the Fourth International (''Chanh Doan Cong San Quoc Te Chu Nghia--Phai Tan Thanh De Tu Quoc''). The League maintained a "complete system of clandestine and legal publications" including its own weekly “organ of proletarian defence and Marxist combat,” ''Le Militant'' (this carried Lenin's Testament with its warnings against Stalin, and Trotsky's polemics against the
Popular Front
A popular front is "any coalition of working-class and middle-class parties", including liberal and social democratic ones, "united for the defense of democratic forms" against "a presumed Fascist assault".
More generally, it is "a coalition ...
), topical pamphlets in both French and Vietnamese (including Ngô Văn's denunciation of the
Moscow Trials
The Moscow trials were a series of show trials held by the Soviet Union between 1936 and 1938 at the instigation of Joseph Stalin. They were nominally directed against "Trotskyists" and members of "Right Opposition" of the Communist Party of th ...
) and an agitational bulletin, ''Thay Tho'' (Wage and Salary Workers).
[Van (2010), pp. 168-169.] After Le Militant was suppressed, from January 1939 the League/the Octobrists began clandestinely publishing ''Tia Sang'' (The Spark).
The title, ''The Spark'', may have been a reference to ''Tia Sang'' (the Spark) group in Hanoi, and suggests an organisational connection. In 1937-38, this northern group had put out a weekly, ''Thoi Dam'' (Chronicles), with a call to workers and peasants to set up "unified people's committees in the struggle for rice, freedom and democracy." Octobrists are reported to have been active in labour organising in Hanoi, Haiphong and Vinh.
While the Stalinists urged respect for the law to the peasants who had begun to agitate in a violent manner against direct and indirect taxes and for a reduction in rents, the League's call for "action committees" was met with widespread arrests. The "first trial of the Fourth International", the trial League activists, opened in Saigon on 31 August 1936. Following publicised testimony of their torture and maltreatment, Lu Sanh Hanh and seven of his comrades received moderated sentences of 6 to 18 months.
In Saigon, with a renewed upsurge culminating in the summer of 1937 in general dock and transport strikes, the tide on the left seemed to be running in favour of the Trotskyists. Judging by the frequency of the warnings in the clandestine Communist press against Trotskyism the influence of the oppositionists in the organised unrest was "considerable" if not "preponderant."
Tạ Thu Thâu and Nguyễn Văn Tạo came together for the last time in the April 1937 city council elections, both being elected. Together with the lengthening shadow of the Moscow Trials (obliging the Party loyalists to denounce their erstwhile colleagues as "the twin brothers of fascism"), growing disagreement over the new PCF-supported Popular Front government in France ensured a split.
The ''La Lutte'' group had entered its own Popular Front known under the name of the Indo Chinese Congress Movement (Phong-tiao-Dong-duong-Dai-hoi) with the bourgeois Constitutionalist Party, in order to draw up demands relating to the political, economic and social reforms that were to be presented to the new government in Paris.
But the leftward shift in the French national Assembly in Thâu's view had not brought meaningful change. He and his comrades continued to be arrested during labour strikes, and preparations for a popular congress in response to the government's promise of colonial consultation had been suppressed. Colonial Minister Marius Moutet, a Socialist commented that he had sought "a wide consultation with all elements of the popular
ill ILL may refer to:
* '' I Love Lucy'', a landmark American television sitcom
* Illorsuit Heliport (location identifier: ILL), a heliport in Illorsuit, Greenland
* Institut Laue–Langevin, an internationally financed scientific facility
* Interlibra ...
" but with "Trotskyist-Communists intervening in the villages to menace and intimidate the peasant part of the population, taking all authority from the public officials," the necessary "formula" had not been found.
Thâu's motion attacking the Popular Front for betraying the promises of reforms in the colonies was rejected by the PCI faction and in June 1937 the Stalinists withdrew from ''La Lutte.''
Labour unrest culminated in the general strike of 1937 that included workers in the arsenal at Saigon, of the Trans-Indo Chinese Railway (Saigon-Hanoi), the Tonkin miners and the coolies of the rubber plantations. Their demands were for an eight hour day, trade union rights, rights of assembly, a free press, etc. The government resorted to repression and in October the Indochinese Congress Movement was itself dissolved. Trotskyist and Stalinist papers that had sometimes been able to appear in the Vietnamese language were banned once more, and the labour legislation remained a dead letter.
The ''Workers'' vs. the ''Democratic'' Platform
In April 1939, together with the Octobrists, the now wholly Trotskyist ''La Lutte'' group celebrated what a reviewer of Ngô Văn's later account describes as "the only instance prior to 1945 in which the politics of 'permanent revolution' oriented to worker and peasant opposition to colonialism won out, however ephemerally, against Stalinist 'stage theory' in a public arena." In elections to the colonial Cochinchina Council a "United Workers and Peasants" slate, led by Tạ Thu Thâu, triumphed over both the Communist Party's Democratic Front and the "bourgeois" Constitutionalists with fully 80 per cent of the vote.
Revolutionary theory had not been the issue for the restricted property-and-business-tax-payer electorate. Rather it had been the colonial defence levy that the PCI, in the spirit of Franco-Soviet accord, had felt obliged to support.
Nonetheless the contest illustrated the ideological gulf between the Party and the left opposition. The Workers and Peasants platform had been revolutionary (calls for workers control and radical land re-distribution) and reflected the analysis Tạ Thu Thâu had outlined in ''La Verité''. The "real, organic liaison between the indigenous bourgeoisie and French imperialism" was such that the organisation of "the proletarian and peasant masses" was the only force capable of liberating the country. The question of independence was "bound up with that of the proletarian socialist revolution."
The Democratic platform, with its calls for national unity and relatively modest demands for constitutional change, was presented by a party whose leading cadres "emphasised much more the exterior development of capitalism", "used the word 'imperialism' much more often in their discussions," talked about “nonequivalent exchange,” and of "the continuing feudal nature of Vietnamese society." It was a party for whom the immediate object of anti-colonial struggle was national, not socialist.
At the same time, the Democratic platform had represented a party with a much greater national organisation and presence. The Trotskyists were concentrated in industrial and commercial centres, and in French direct-rule Cochinchina, where it was possible to have a keener sense of proximities to France. (Ho Huu Thuong's vision was of a revolutionary general strike coordinated with the French proletariat).
The greater resilience of the PCI—their ability to regroup and rebuild in the face of repression—was due to its organisation in the countryside and across Annam (central Vietnam) and Tonkin in the North. In these "protectorates" the French, under the titular authority of the
Bảo Đại
Bảo Đại (, vi-hantu, , lit. "keeper of greatness", 22 October 191331 July 1997), born Nguyễn Phúc Vĩnh Thụy (), was the 13th and final emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty, the last ruling dynasty of Vietnam. From 1926 to 1945, he was em ...
had retained traditional elements of rural administration. Their rule had the calculated appearance of being external to a still extant indigenous culture, and allowed greater play to the idea of a ''national'' society that might be mobilised against the foreign overseer.
Such as it was, the political opening against the Communist Party closed with the
Hitler-Stalin Pact of August 23, 1939. Moscow ordered a return to direct confrontation with the French. In Cochinchina the Party obliged with a disastrous peasant revolt.
Belatedly, the ''Luttuers'', then numbering then perhaps 3000, and the smaller number of Octobrists united as the official section of the newly constituted Fourth International. They formed the
International Communist League (Vietnam)
The International Communist League (LCI) was a Trotskyist political party in Vietnam. It was founded as the October Group in 1932, by a split in the Indochinese Bolshevik-Leninist Group, which also produced the Struggle Group. The group acquired ...
(ICL), or less formally as The Fourth Internationalist Party (''Trăng Câu Đệ Tứ Đảng''). But the French law of September 26, 1939, which legally dissolved the French Communist Party, was applied in Indochina to Stalinists and Trotskyists aiike. The Indochinese Communist Party and the Fourth Internationalists were driven underground for the duration of the war.
The North and the Hòn Gai-Cẩm Phả "Commune"
Opportunity for open political struggle returned with the formal surrender of the occupying
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
in August 1945. But events then moved rapidly to demonstrate the Trotskyists' relative isolation. There was little intimacy with developments to the north where, in Hanoi on September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh and his a new Front for the Independence of Vietnam, the
Viet Minh
The Việt Minh (; abbreviated from , chữ Nôm and Hán tự: ; french: Ligue pour l'indépendance du Viêt Nam, ) was a national independence coalition formed at Pác Bó by Hồ Chí Minh on 19 May 1941. Also known as the Việt Minh Fro ...
, proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
The lack of connection was made "painfully clear" when Ngô Văn and his comrades found they had "no way of finding out what was happening" following reports that in the
Hòn Gai-
Cẩm Phả
Cẩm Phả () is a city of Quảng Ninh Province in the north-east region of Vietnam. It is an important coal exporting port of Vietnam (UNCTAD: VNCPH). As of February 2012, the city had a population of 195,800. The city covers an area of 486 ...
coal region north of Haiphong, under the indifferent gaze of the defeated Japanese 30,000 workers had elected councils to run mines, public services and transport, and were applying the principle of equal wages for all types of work, whether manual or intellectual. Later they were to learn that, after three months of revolutionary autonomy, the commune had been forcibly integrated into "the military-police structure" of the new republic.
Released from detention in 1944, in April 1945 Tạ Thu Thau and a small band had travelled to the
(famine-stricken) North. They were introduced to clandestine meetings of mine workers and peasants by a "fraternal group" publishing the bulletin in Hanoi ''Chiến Đấu'' (Combat). This was the rump of the ICL in the north, many of their comrades having chosen to join the Viet Minh. Now styling themselves the Socialist Workers Party of Northern Vietnam (''Dang Tho Thuyen Xa Hoi Viet Bac''), their call, as in the South, was for workers' control, land redistribution and for armed resistance to a return of the French. Whether they, or other Trotskyist groups, played any role in the Hongai-Camphai events is unclear. On Ho Chi Minh's orders they were already being rounded up and executed.
Hunted and pursued south by the Viet Minh, Tạ Thu Thâu was captured in early September at Quang Ngai. A year later in Paris, the French socialist
Daniel Guérin
Daniel Guérin (; 19 May 1904, in Paris – 14 April 1988, in Suresnes) was a French libertarian-communist author, best known for his work '' Anarchism: From Theory to Practice'', as well as his collection ''No Gods No Masters: An Anthology of ...
recalls that when he asked Ho Chi Minh about Tạ Thu Thâu's fate, Ho replied, "with unfeigned emotion,“ that "'Thâu was a great patriot and we mourn him." But he then added, "in a steady voice, 'all those who do not follow the line which I have laid down will be broken.'”
The September 1945 Saigon Uprising
![Flag of the Struggle Group of the Trotskyist League of Vietnam, Saigon (21-08-1945)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Flag_of_the_Struggle_Group_of_the_Trotskyist_League_of_Vietnam%2C_Saigon_%2821-08-1945%29.jpg)
On August 24 the Viet Minh declared a provisional administration, a Southern Administrative Committee, in Saigon. When, for the declared purpose of disarming the Japanese, the Viet-Minh accommodated the landing and strategic positioning of British and British-Indian troops, rival political groups turned out in force. On September 7 and 8, 1945, in the delta city of
Cần Thơ
Cần Thơ, also written as Can Tho or Cantho (: , : ), is the fourth-largest city in Vietnam, and the largest city along the Mekong Delta region in Vietnam.
It is noted for its floating markets, rice paper-making village, and picturesque rur ...
the Committee had to rely on what had been the Japanese-auxiliary, ''Jeunesse d'Avant-Garde/Thanh Nien Tienphong''
anguard Youth They fired upon crowds, joined by the ICL, demanding arms against a French colonial restoration.
In Saigon, the brutal reassertion of French authority under the protection of British, British-Indian and British-commandeered Japanese, forces triggered a general uprising on September 23. Under the slogan "Land to the Peasants! Factories to the workers!," the ICL called on the population to arm themselves and organise in councils. To co-ordinate these efforts the Internationalists established a Popular Revolutionary Committee, an "embryonic soviet that placed its stamp upon the region of Saigon-Cholon, Gia-dinh and Bien-Hoa." Delegates issued "a declaration in which they affirmed their independence from the political parties and resolutely condemned any attempt to restrict the autonomy of the decisions taken by workers and peasants."
With other League comrades, Ngô Văn joined in arms with streetcar workers. In the "internationalist spirit of the League," the workers had broken with their union, General Confederation of Labour (renamed by the Viet Minh "Workers for National Salvation"). Refusing the yellow star of the Viet-Minh, they mustered under the unadorned red flag "of their own class emancipation." They placed themselves under the overall command of Tran Dinh Minh, a young Trotskyist from the north.
But the militias were hit hard by the returning French. Ngô Văn records two hundred alone being massacred, October 3, at the Thi Nghe bridge.
As they fell back into the countryside, they and other independent formations (armed groups of independent nationalists and the syncretic
Hoa Hao
The Hoa people (Vietnamese: ''Người Hoa'', or ) are citizens of Vietnam of full or partial Chinese origin. Chinese migration into Vietnam dates back millennia but most Hoa today derive their recent ancestral Chinese heritage from the 18th ...
and
Cao Dai
Caodaism ( vi, Đạo Cao Đài, Chữ Hán: ) is a monotheistic syncretic new religious movement officially established in the city of Tây Ninh in southern Vietnam in 1926. The full name of the religion is (The Great Faith or theThird Univ ...
sects) were caught in the crossfire as the Viet-Minh returned to surround the city. Dương Bạch Mai, who had been among the Stalinists on the original editorial board of ''La Lutte'',
[Alexander, Robert J. (1991), ''International Trotskyism, 1929-1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement''. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 961-962] led Vietminh security in hunting down his former colleagues on the paper. By the end of October they had captured and executed, among others, Nguyen Van Tien, the former managing editor, and
Phan Văn Hùm Phan Văn Hùm (9 April 1902 – 1946) was a Vietnamese journalist, philosopher and revolutionary in French colonial Cochinchina who, from 1930, participated in the Trotskyist left opposition to the Communist Party of Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh).
...
.
Vietnamese Trotskyism in Exile
Forsaking his revolutionary principles, Hồ Hữu Tường took refuge with the French Bảo Đại puppet government (later he became a deputy in the "farcical 'opposition'" under the military regime of
Nguyen Van Thieu
Nguyễn () is the most common Vietnamese surname. Outside of Vietnam, the surname is commonly rendered without diacritics as Nguyen. Nguyên (元)is a different word and surname.
By some estimates 39 percent of Vietnamese people bear this su ...
).
But "harassed by the Sûreté in the city and denied refuge in a countryside dominated by the two terrors, the French and the Viet-Minh," most ICL survivors appear to be those who, like
Ngô Văn, sought exile in France.
In 1946, as many as 500 exiles were reported to be members of the ''Groupe Communiste Internationaliste de Vietnam'' (GCI — Internationalist Communist Group of Vietnam). They published a paper titled, in the tradition of ''La Lutte'', ''Tranh Dau'' (Struggle).
In what, presumably, was a still smaller exile publication, ''Thieng Tho'' (Workers' Voice), Ngô Văn wrote an opinion piece under the name Dong Vu (October 30, 1951) "Prolétaires et paysans, retournez vos fusils!"
orkers and Peasants, Turn Your Guns in the Other Direction! If Ho Chi Minh won out over the French-puppet Bảo Đại government, workers and peasants would simply have changed masters. Those with guns in their hands should fight for their own emancipation, following the example of the Russian workers, peasants and soldiers who formed soviets in 1917, or the German worker's and soldiers' councils of 1918-1919. But this clearly, was a minority position.
In line with continued defence of the Soviet Union by Trotskyists internationally as a "(degenerated) workers' state," Vietnamese Trotskyists muted their criticism of the Viet Minh regime. The slogan, adopted as
Ngô Văn noted "despite the assassination of almost all their comrades in Vietnam by Ho Chi Minh's hired thugs," was "Defend the government of Ho Chi Minh against the attacks of imperialism."
As the Indochinese war intensified in the late 1940s, the
French government
The Government of France ( French: ''Gouvernement français''), officially the Government of the French Republic (''Gouvernement de la République française'' ), exercises executive power in France. It is composed of the Prime Minister, who ...
began massive deportations of Vietnamese, including about three-quarters of the Trotskyists. The latter "simply disappeared after their return to Vietnam, presumably through capitulation to the Viet Minh Stalinists or liquidation by either the Stalinists or the French." By 1951-52 there were only about 70 Vietnamese ostensible Trotskyists left in France. ''La Lutte'' and League supporters combined in the Bolshevik-Leninist Group of Vietnam (BLGV). This continued to exist, at least in some form, until as late as 1974.
By the early 1980s the history of the Vietnamese Trotskyist movement, which in the 1930s may been the most important expression of left opposition in Asia (possibly greater in its scope than in China and in advance of its emergence in India),
had been "all but forgotten by the Trotskyists themselves." Robert Alexander suggests two reasons for this.
First, there was "the very thoroughness of the Stalinist extermination of the Trotskyist leadership in Vietnam." This "left no outstanding figure of the movement alive to tell about it outside the country, and to continue to be active in one or another faction of the international Trotskyist movement."
Ngô Văn is probably the most commonly cited witness to the story. But Văn's memoirs are prefaced with a repudiation of "Bolshevism-Leninism-Trotskyism." In France, experiences shared with refugees from Spanish Civil War, anarchists and veterans of the
POUM
The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification ( es, Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, POUM; ca, Partit Obrer d'Unificació Marxista) was a Spanish communist party formed during the Second Spanish Republic, Second Republic and mainly active a ...
(The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification), "permanently distanced" Văn from the politics of "so-called 'workers' parties."
[Văn (2010), p. 2]
The second reason, however, is precisely that which
Ngô Văn underscored in his ''Thieng Tho'' article (and in his later memorials for fallen friends and comrades). It is what Robert Alexander recounts as "the passion, effort and attention paid by Trotskyists of virtually all countries and all factions to support of the Stalinist side during the long and cruel Vietnam War, which in one form or another went on for thirty years, from 1945 to 1975. With such strong commitment to the 'degenerated workers state' of Ho Chi Minh and his successors, any memories of what he had done to fellow Trotskyists had to be at least a source of discomfort if not outright embarrassment to the world Trotskyist movement."
See also
*
Anarchism in Vietnam
Anarchism in Vietnam first emerged in the early twentieth century, as Vietnamese radicals such as Phan Bội Châu and Nguyễn An Ninh became exposed to strands of anarchism in Japan, China and France. The spread of anarchism through Vietnam was ...
*
Communism in Vietnam
Communism in Vietnam is linked to the Politics of Vietnam and the push for independence. Marxism was introduced in Vietnam with the emergence of three communist parties: the Indochinese Communist Party, the Annamese Communist Party, and the Ind ...
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International Communist League (Vietnam)
The International Communist League (LCI) was a Trotskyist political party in Vietnam. It was founded as the October Group in 1932, by a split in the Indochinese Bolshevik-Leninist Group, which also produced the Struggle Group. The group acquired ...
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La Lutte
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Ngo Van
Ngô Văn Xuyết (Tan Lo, near Saigon, 1913–Paris, 1 January 2005), alias Ngô Văn was a Vietnamese revolutionary who chronicled labour and peasant insurrections caught "in the crossfire" between the colonial French and the Indochinese Commun ...
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Phan Văn Hùm Phan Văn Hùm (9 April 1902 – 1946) was a Vietnamese journalist, philosopher and revolutionary in French colonial Cochinchina who, from 1930, participated in the Trotskyist left opposition to the Communist Party of Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh).
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Socialism in Vietnam
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Ta Thu Thau
References
External links
*Robert J. Alexander, "Vietnamese Trotskyism." https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/alex/works/in_trot/viet.htm
*Manfred McDowell, "Sky without Light: a Vietnamese Tragedy." https://newpol.org/review/sky-without-light-vietnamese-tragedy/
Reading
*Robert J. Alexander, ''International Trotskyism 1929–1985: A documented analysis of the movement''. Duke University Press, Durham NC, 1991.
*Wiliam J. Duiker: ''The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam'', Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1981.
*Daniel Hémery, ''Révolutionaires vietnamiens et pouvoir colonial en Indochine'', François Maspero, Paris, 1975.
*Hue-Tam Ho Tai, ''Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution'', Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA. 1996.
*Anh Van and Jacqueline Roussel, ''National Movements and Class Struggle in Vietnam'', New Park Publications, London 1987.
*Ngo Van '', Viet-nam 1920-1945: Révolution et contre-révolution sous la domination coloniale'', Paris: Nautilus Editions, 2000. Excerpts appear in English as ''Revolutionaries They Could Not Break: The Fight for the Fourth International in Vietnam''. London: Index Pr. 1995.
*Ngô Văn,''In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary''. AK Press, Oakland CA, 2010.
{{Vietnam topics
1930s in French Indochina
1930s in Vietnam
1940s in French Indochina
1940s in Vietnam
20th century in Vietnam
Communism in Vietnam
History of the Communist Party of Vietnam
Political history of Vietnam
Political repression in Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
Politics of Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...