Ho Chi Minh's Contibutions to Vietnamese Society
... bearing heavily on the poor. 8. Establish democratic liberty. 9. Provide universal education. 10. Establish equality between men and women. Over the next few years, as a result of these policies, membership in the ICP grew enormously, as did the number of worker’s syndicates and peasant organizations. Coinciding with these changes, shockwaves from the American Depression were beginning to hit Vietnam hard. Industrial workers lost their jobs and the peasant populations suffered due to crop failures and the French policy of short-selling Vietnamese crops on the world market . However, out of this misery began a revolution. The ICP, which was organized and ready to rebel, began a hunger march led by Ho, towards the town of Vinh, taking with them over six thousand peasants. Enroute they seized large estates and redistributed them amongst the poor. People’s councils were set up under the name of “Xo-Viets” and peasant demonstrations began and were backed by strikes in the factories . This was the largest and most effective revolution in Vietnamese history to date. In May of 1941, the ICP met at Ho’s headquarters located south of the Chinese border in a village called Pac Bo. Here they established a strategy for fighting for independence by using an organized front which was named the Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi, or Vietminh. The Vietminh, which was led by Ho Chi Minh, consisted of dedicated communists and ardent nationalists. Together, this group set policies that enabled their small minority to capture the nationalistic spirit of Vietnam . Under Ho’s mandate, the Vietminh began to seek the objectives of national independence for Vietnam and the implementation of major social reforms . For Ho, liberation for his country was paramount to all other objectives. In June of 1941, Ho Chi Minh penned a letter which he circulated across the country emphasizing the importance of his nationalist foundation movement. As a direct result of this, he managed to raise an army of over five thousand men. Ho put this army to use quickly, and while the French and Japanese were caught up in World War II, he began occupying government headquarters in Hanoi. Ho then led Vietnam in a nationalist revolution, called the August revolution. Ho and his Vietminh used this revolution to take control of local, district, and provincial governments . Between the 18th and 28th of August, the Vietminh took control of sixty district and provincial capitals, and then on August 29th, Ho Chi Minh, and the Vietminh began forming a national government called the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) . However, the independence that Ho proclaimed for Vietnam was highly fragile. Only in the remote Northern provinces where the Vietminh was very active did the communist have solid control . Moreover, Ho did not receive the recognition for his new government that he had hoped for from the Allied powers. In October of 1945, French troops returned to southern Vietnam to drive the Vietminh out of Saigon. Ho Chi Minh then engaged in negotiations with the French to try to reach a compromise and avoid war. Those talk failed and in December 1946, Vietminh troops attacked the French troops stationed in DRV territory, thus beginning the First Indochina War. The Vietminh had the advantages of experience from fighting the Japanese, material aid from Mao Zedong’s Communists in China, and of operating in a region where the population was on their side. The French although convinced of their superiority, soon realized it would not be an easy win when Ho warned “You can kill 10 of my men for every one I kill of yours, yet even at those odds, you will lose and I will win” . The war lasted the next eight years, with Vietminh fighting the French in the mountains, the rice paddies, the coastal regions, and the cities. During this time, Ho was regarded as being of vital importance to the anti-French revolutionary movement. Ho was a symbol to the people of someone who could not only embody values they admired but also simultaneously ruthlessly fight against the enemy. In this manner, Ho managed to mobilize a national resistance movement to colonial rule and created a broad base of support which made it possible for the Vietnamese Communists to triumph against the French. After being exhausted by the Vietnamese for over eight years, the French tired of war and withdrew in 1954, after peace negotiations in Geneva. This left Ho Chi Minh as president of North Vietnam, which he renamed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. After this partition, Ho and his government completely changed the social structure of society in North Vietnam. Private property was eliminated, and peasants and workers were given a new dominance in the social order. Ho Chi Minh then began devoting his efforts to reunifying the country under his party’s rule. However, Ngo Dinh Diem, the leader of South Vietnam, who was very anti-Communist refused to call national elections for fear that Ho would win . During this time the Diem regime began to crush support for the Vietminh in the South. This drew the support of the United States who was sympathetic to his anti-Communist beliefs. Fearing that the Communist base in the South would be eliminated, Ho adopted a policy of revolutionary war to topple Diem’s government and bring about national reunification . An army was created, which was backed by the Communists in order to do the job. This army was popularly known as the Viet Cong. This policy of civil war resulted in an increase in military assistance to Diem’s government from the U.S. Moreover, after Diem’s death in an army coup, the U.S. fearing that the Communists would take over, began intensive bombing of North Vietnam and dispatched their troops into the South. Although the U.S. intervention in Vietnam caused ...