Tạ Thu Thâu
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Tạ Thu Thâu (1906–1945) in the 1930s was the principal representative of
Trotskyism in Vietnam Trotskyism in Vietnam ( vi, Trăng-câu Đệ-tứ Đảng) was represented by those who, in left opposition to the Indochinese Communist Party (PCI) of Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh), identified with the call by Leon Trotsky to re-found "vanguard ...
and, in colonial Cochinchina, of 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 ...
). He joined to Left Opposition to the
United Front A united front is an alliance of groups against their common enemies, figuratively evoking unification of previously separate geographic fronts and/or unification of previously separate armies into a front. The name often refers to a political a ...
policy of the Commintern as a student in Paris in the late 1920s. After a period of uneasy co-operation with "Stalinists" on the Saigon paper '' La Lutte'', he triumphed over the Communists in the 1939 elections to the Cochinchina Colonial Council on a platform that called for radical
land reform Land reform is a form of agrarian reform involving the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution, generally of agricultural ...
and
workers' control Workers' control is participation in the management of factories and other commercial enterprises by the people who work there. It has been variously advocated by anarchists, socialists, communists, social democrats, distributists and Christian ...
, and opposed defense collaboration with the French. He was executed by the Communist
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 ...
in September 1945.


Early life

Tạ Thu Thâu was born in 1906 in Tân Bình, An Phú, (near
Long Xuyên Long Xuyên () is the capital city of An Giang province, in the Mekong Delta region of south-western Vietnam. History In 1789, a group of explorers established a small outpost in the Tam Khe canal, naming it Dong Xuyen. Sooner after a marketpl ...
) in the French colony of Cochinchina (southern Vietnam), the fourth child of a large and very poor family: his father was an itinerant carpenter. As a scholar student he attended a high school in Saigon, and (with a ''Baccalauréat Franco-Indigène'') in 1925 began work as a teacher. In 1926, at age 20 he joined the ''Jeune Annam'' (Young Annam), and wrote for the nationalist newspaper ''Annam.'' In April Thâu took part in a week of protests attended by thousands of workers, and by students, sparked by the death, after 18 years penal servitude, of the veteran nationalist
Phan Châu Trinh Phan Châu Trinh ( Chữ Hán: 潘周楨, 9 September 1872 – 24 March 1926), courtesy name Tử Cán (梓幹), pen name Tây Hồ (西湖) or Hi Mã (希馬), was an early 20th-century Vietnamese nationalist. He sought to end France's colonial ...
and by the arrest 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 ...
.Văn, Ngô (1991),
Ta Thu Thau: Vietnamese Trotskyist Leader
' ''Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line: Revolutionary History'' accessed 10 October 2019
Nguyễn An Ninh was an important influence on Thâu. From the pages of his journal ''La Cloche Fêlée'' (from Baudelaire's ''Broken Bell''), Ninh exhorted young people to "leave the home of your fathers." Only then could they hope to shake off the "suffocating ignorance" in which they were trapped by obscurantism: "our oppression comes from France, but so does the spirit of liberation." In 1927 Thâu sailed for France, where he enrolled in the Faculty of Science, University of Paris.


"Nationalism or Socialism", Paris 1927–1930

Tạ Thu Thâu clashed with Moscow-aligned Communists from the very outset of his political engagement in Paris as a member, and from early 1928 as the leader, of the Annamite Independence Party (''An Nam Độc lập Đảng''). He accused "salaried Annamites of the Colonial Commission of the
French Communist Party The French Communist Party (french: Parti communiste français, ''PCF'' ; ) is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its MEPs sit in the European Unit ...
" of infiltrating his party in order to turn members into "puppets carrying out the Communist Party's dictates." If the oppressed of the colonies" were to secure their "place in the sun," Thâu argued they would have to "unite against European imperialism--against Red imperialism as well as White." In 1929, after attending a conference of the Anti-Imperialist World Congress in Frankfurt, Germany, and contact with the philosopher and human rights activist, Felicien Challey, and the Communist Party dissidents
Alfred Rosmer Alfred Rosmer (born Alfred Griot, 23 August 1877 – 6 May 1964) was an American-born French Communist political activist and historian who was a leading member of the Comintern. Rosmer is best remembered as a political associate of Leon Trotsky a ...
and
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 ...
, Thâu expressed his view of the Indo-Chinese revolution in 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 Vérité''. The revolution would not follow the precedent set by 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 ...
in China, where support for a broad nationalist front, 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 ...
, had led Communists "to the graveyard." The "'
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 ...
-ist' synthesis of democracy, nationalism and socialism" is "a kind of nationalist mysticism." It obscures "the concrete class relationships, and the real, organic liaison between the indigenous bourgeoisie and French imperialism," in the light of which the call for independence is "mechanical and formalistic." "A revolution based on the organisation of the proletarian and peasant masses is the only one capable of liberating the colonies ... The question of independence must be bound up with that of the proletarian socialist revolution." Arrested during a public protest in front of the Élysée Palace over the execution of the leaders 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 ...
on 22 May 1930, Thâu and eighteen of his compatriots were deported back to Saigon.


"The Struggle" in Saigon, 1930-1939

Tạ Thu Thâu's first attempt to challenge to the Indochinese Communist Party (PCI) from the left, the Indochinese Communism Union (''Đông Dương Cộng Sản''), was broken up in 1932 with his arrest. On his release early in 1933 Thâu decided to explore the limited opportunities for "legal" political activity. To the surprise of some of his comrades, for this purpose he was willing to work not only with independent nationalists but also with "Stalinists"—with members of the PCI. The focus for cooperation was the spring 1933 elections Saigon municipal elections. Thâu and his associates put forward a "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 nationalist (later Trotskyist) Tran Van Thach and Nguyễn Văn Tạo, previously a member of the French Communist Party (PCF), now in the PCI. In the autumn of 1934, partly through the intercession 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 ...
, the Struggle Group was revived with '' La Lutte'' being published as a regular weekly. In March 1935 Cochinchina Council elections their united "Worker's List" won no seats but 17 percent of the vote. Those unwilling to accept the accommodations involved in this unique Trotskyist-Stalinist entente rallied to 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 die hards included
Ngô Văn 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 Commu ...
(Ngô Văn Xuyết), who in later exile was to memorialise Tạ Thu Thâu in his history of the revolutionary struggle. 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 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 ...
, their growing disagreements over the new PCF-supported
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 ...
government in France ensured a split. The leftward shift in the French
National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repre ...
in Thâu's view had brought little. 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 Marius Moutet (19 April 1876 – 29 October 1968) was a French Socialist diplomat and colonial adviser. An expert in colonial issues, he served as Minister of the Colonies for four terms in the 1930s and 1940s and was president of the Gener ...
, 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 * Interlibrar ...
" 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 the Stalinists withdrew from ''La Lutte''. They established their own paper, ''L'Avant-garde'', in which they denounced their erstwhile Trotskyist colleagues as "the twin brothers of fascism." With ''La Lutte'' now as ''Tranh Dau'' (Struggle) an openly Trotskyist paper, Thâu 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). ...
led a "Workers' and Peasants' Slate" into victory over both the Constitutionalists and the PCI's Democratic Front in the April 1939 Cochinchina Council elections. The ''lutteurs'' programme had been openly revolutionary (radical land redistribution, workers control). But the key was their opposition to the "national defence levy" that the Communist Party, in the spirit of Franco-Soviet accord, had felt obliged to support. On May 20, 1939, Governor-General Brévié (who set the election results aside) wrote to Colonial Minister Mandel: "the Trotskyists under the leadership of Ta Thu Thau, want to take advantage of a possible war in order to win total liberation." The Stalinists, on the other hand, are "following the position of the Communist Party in France" and "will thus be loyal if war breaks out." Such as it was, the political opening against he PCI closed with the Hitler-Stalin Pact of August 23, 1939. Moscow ordered a return to direct confrontation with the French. In Cochinchina the Party in 1940 obliged, triggering 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 (''Trang Cau De Tu Dang''). With the outbreak of World War II Communists of every stripe were repressed. The French law of September 26, 1939, which legally dissolved the French Communist Party, was applied in Indochina to Stalinists and Trotskyists alike. Tạ Thu Thâu was arrested and was incarcerated in the penal colony Poulo-Condore. He was held until March 1945 when the occupying Japanese finally dispensed with the
Vichy French Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its terr ...
administration.


Northern mission, arrest and execution 1945

While Tạ Thu Thâu was in Poulo-Condore, in
Tonkin Tonkin, also spelled ''Tongkin'', ''Tonquin'' or ''Tongking'', is an exonym referring to the northern region of Vietnam. During the 17th and 18th centuries, this term referred to the domain ''Đàng Ngoài'' under Trịnh lords' control, includi ...
, Nguyen Ai Quoc, now known as Hồ Chí Minh , was laying the foundations for national power. He created 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 ...
(“Viet Nam doc lap dong minh hoi”—-Vietnam Independence League). A purportedly broad nationalist front, the Viet Minh remained (in contrast to the Chinese ''Kuomintang'') entirely a creature of the Party (even after this was formally dissolved in 1945). Subordinating all other social interests, the objective was “To expel the French and Japanese fascists and to establish the complete independence of Vietnam." On his release from Poulo-Condore, Ngô Văn records that Thâu and a small group secretly travelled north to
Tonkin Tonkin, also spelled ''Tongkin'', ''Tonquin'' or ''Tongking'', is an exonym referring to the northern region of Vietnam. During the 17th and 18th centuries, this term referred to the domain ''Đàng Ngoài'' under Trịnh lords' control, includi ...
. They encountered a fraternal group publishing a bulletin, ''Chien Dau'' (Combat) and were received into clandestine meetings of mine workers and peasants. But
famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, Demographic trap, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an Financial crisis, economic catastrophe or government policies. Th ...
was rife. On May 14 he managed to get an appeal published in the daily ''Saigon''. He called on his "brothers in Cochinchina to eat only what you need to stay alive and to send here everything you possibly can, immediately. His young comrade, Ðỗ Bá Thế, drew on their northern mission in his 1960 novel, ''Thím Bảy giỏi'' ("The Good Auntie"). In August, hunted and pursued as "anti-worker elements" by the Viet Minh, Thâu and his group turned south. On September 14, at Quang Ngai, he fell into their hands. There were reports that Thau was put on trial before a “people’s court”, but that on the personal instruction of Hồ, Tran Van Giau, of the southern Viet Minh command, overrode the court when it refused to convict Thau, and had him summarily executed. His fate was shared at Quang Ngai by large numbers of Caodaists, independent nationalists and their families. Interviewed in 1989, Giau, who allowed that he had known Thâu since their days in Paris and been helped by him when on the run from the ''
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 ...
'' in Saigon, refused to answer questions about the fate of Trotskyists at the hand of the ''Viet Minh'' and denied any connection to Thâu's death. In September, during the general uprising in Saigon against the restoration of the French, Thâu's reconvened ''La Lutte'' grouping formed a workers' militia. Of these, Ngô Văn records two hundred alone being "massacred" by the French, on October 3, at the Thị Nghè bridge. Caught between the French and the Viet Minh, there were few survivors. A year later in Paris, Daniel Guerin asked Ho Chi Minh about Tạ Thu Thâu's fate. Hồ Chí Minh had replied, "with unfeigned emotion," that "Thâu was a great patriot and we mourn him, but then a moment later added in a steady voice ‘All those who do not follow the line which I have laid down will be broken.’"


Commemoration in South Vietnam

Up until the capitulation of the South Vietnamese regime to the
North Vietnamese army The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN; vi, Quân đội nhân dân Việt Nam, QĐNDVN), also recognized as the Vietnam People's Army (VPA) or the Vietnamese Army (), is the military force of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the armed win ...
and their Việt-Cộng auxiliaries in August 1975, streets in a number of southern towns and cities were named in honor of Tạ Thu Thâu. From March 22, 1955, these included the street leading to the East Gate of
Bến Thành Market Bến Thành Market ( vi, Chợ Bến Thành) is located in the center of Hồ Chí Minh City, Vietnam in District 1. The market is one of the earliest surviving structures in Saigon and an important symbol of the city. Ben Thanh Market is a fam ...
in old Saigon/
Ho Chi Minh City , population_density_km2 = 4,292 , population_density_metro_km2 = 697.2 , population_demonym = Saigonese , blank_name = GRP (Nominal) , blank_info = 2019 , blank1_name = – Total , blank1_ ...
, which now bears the name of the
Hanoi Hanoi or Ha Noi ( or ; vi, Hà Nội ) is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. It covers an area of . It consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi is ...
-approved "patriotic intellectual" Lưu Văn Lang. There is, however, a small street in District 9 of the city, near the Thu Duc intersection, that continues as ''đường Tạ Thu Thâu''. The year before the fall of Saigon, in January 1974 a biography of Tạ Thu Thâu, ''Nhà cách mạng Tạ Thu Thâu, 1906-1945'' (The Revolutionary Tạ Thu Thâu), was published in the city written by Phương Lan. Thâu had a wife who died in Paris in 2010 at the age of 101.


See also

*
Trotskyism in Vietnam Trotskyism in Vietnam ( vi, Trăng-câu Đệ-tứ Đảng) was represented by those who, in left opposition to the Indochinese Communist Party (PCI) of Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh), identified with the call by Leon Trotsky to re-found "vanguard ...
*
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 ...
*
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 ...
*
Nguyen An Ninh 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 ...
*
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). ...


Notes


References

*Bà Phuong-Lan ui-The-My1974) ''Nhà Cách Mang:Ta Thu Thâu'', Saigon: Nhà Sách KHAI-TRĺ n Vietnamese *Ellen Hammer (1954) ''The Struggle for Indochina'', Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. *Daniel Hemery (1974) ''Révolutionnaires Vietnamiens et Pouvoir Colonial en Indochine: Communistes, trotskystes, nationalistes à Saigon de 1932 à 1937'',Paris: François Maspero. *Huynh kim Khánh (1982) ''Vietnamese Communism 1925-1945'', London: Cornell University Press. *Alexander Richardson (2003) ''The Revolution Defamed: A documentary history of Vietnamese Trotskyism'', London: Socialist Platform Ltd. *Ngo Van (1995) ''Revolutionaries they could not break: The fight for the Fourth international in Indochina 1930-1945'', London: Index Books. *Ngo Van (2010) ''In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary''. AK Press, Oakland CA.


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/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Ta, Thu Thau 1906 births 1945 deaths Assassinated Vietnamese politicians People executed by the Viet Minh People murdered in Vietnam Vietnamese nationalists Vietnamese revolutionaries Vietnamese Trotskyists People from Ho Chi Minh City People from An Giang Province Vietnamese democracy activists 1940s murders in Vietnam 1945 crimes in Vietnam 1945 murders in Asia