By Albert Johnson
To what extent was Ho Chi Minh a nationalist rather than a communist?
The Vietnam revolution, on 1945, was launched by Ho Chi Minh against the French colonial rule due to the fact that Ho was a nationalist rather than a communist. A Nationalist is a person who advocates political independence for a country. Ho Chi Minh helped found the Indochinese communist party, the league for the independence of Vietnam and was a leader in the August revolution.
In 1919 Ho hi Min worked to found the Association for Annamite Patriots, an organization composed of Vietnamese nationals living in France who opposed the French colonial occupation of Vietnam. He authored a petition demanding the end of the French colonial exploitation of Vietnam, which he attempted to present to the world powers at the Versailles Peace Conference held in the aftermath of World War I. His petition was never officially recognized, but his effort was well known in Vietnam.
Ho travelled to China in 1938 to serve as a military advisor for the Chinese Communist Party after the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. The Chinese Communist Party and the Guomindang, previously entangled in civil war, had agreed to an armistice until the Japanese were defeated. With these experiences Ho Chi Minh was just beginning to become a Nationalist and use his knowledge on Vietnam.
In Ho Chi Minh's life he was surrounded by nationalist and communism. For example, Ho travelled to Moscow, the nerve centre of world Communism. He went there first in 1922 where he met Lenin and became a member of the Comintern's Southeast Asia Bureau. Ho returned to Vietnam for the first time since he left the country in 1911. There, he founded the Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh (“League for the Independence...
