NGUYEN AI QUOC, THE COMINTERN, AND THE VIETNAMESE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT (1919-1941) Submitted by Sophia Quinn-Judge For the Ph.D. Degree To The University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies 2001 ProQuest Number: 10672676 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10672676 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 2 ABSTRACT This thesis, is an examination of Nguyen Ai Quoc’s (Ho Chi Minh’s) role in transmitting communism to Vietnam in the period between the First and Second World Wars. As the Third International (Comintern) provided the theory and much of the organizational support for this task, it is also a study of the Comintern’s changing policies towards revolution in colonial countries. It has grown out of research in the Moscow archives of the Comintern, which first became available to researchers in late 1991-1992. It also makes extensive use of the French colonial archives at the Centre d’Archives d’Outre-Mer in Aix-en-Provence. This study begins with Nguyen Ai Quoc’s appearance in Paris in 1919, when he lobbied the Paris Peace Conference for greater Vietnamese freedom and was then drawn into the political world of the French left. It follows his first contacts with the Comintern in Moscow (1923- 1924), through his two-year sojourn in Canton during the Communist-Guomindang United Front, when he established the first training courses for Vietnamese revolutionaries. Chapters IV and V cover his return to Asia in mid-1928, his founding of the Vietnamese Communist Party in 1930, and the 1930-31 insurrectionary movement in Vietnam. Chapter Six deals with his June 1931 arrest and his long period of political inactivity in Moscow, from mid-1934 until the autumn of 1938. The final chapter covers his return to southern China and his efforts to regain his influence in the Vietnamese communist movement from 1939 to 1941. The thesis concludes that, with the benefit of the documentary evidence now available, it is necessary to readjust the perception of Nguyen Ai Quoc as an influential communist during his early political career. Initially he received little financial support from Moscow and he never became a member of the Comintern Executive Committee. Nor did he exist entirely within the world of the Comintern. Although the latter was an essential force in the creation of Vietnamese communism, there were other factors which shaped its growth, including family and regional ties, as well as Chinese and French left-wing politics. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for giving me a grant in 1994 to carry out research in Moscow and Aix-en-Provence. The University of London’s Central Research Fund contributed to my subsequent research in Aix-en-Provence in 1998. The archivists at the Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Modem History also deserve my deep gratitude, for their patient assistance in conditions which were not always easy. Friends in Vietnam, Russia, the United States, England and France have given me priceless encouragement in the pursuit of my study of Nguyen Ai Quoc, a project which often seemed quixotic and which I began in relative ignorance. During my years at the School of Oriental and African Studies I benefited greatly from the intellectual stimulation of fellow students in the Vietnam history seminar. My husband and two daughters have also been unfailingly supportive of my studies. I would like to dedicate this thesis to the late Huynh Kim Khanh, who first piqued my curiosity about Nguyen Ai Quoc’s relations with the Comintern; and to the late Ralph B. Smith, who provided the friendship, advice and example of painstaking scholarship which were so essential to its completion. Sophia Quinn-Judge January 2001 4 A NGUYEN AI QUOC, THE COMINTERN AND THE VIETNAMESE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT (1919 -1941) Table of Contents.................................................................................................................... 4 Abbreviations.........................................................................................................................6 Introduction..............................................................................................................................7 Chapter I - The Emergence of Nguyen Ai Quoc (1919—1923).................................. 19 1. The Path to the Paris Peace Conference.......................................... ...19 2. The Radical Solution.................................................. 35 Chapter II - The Comintern Recruit (1923 - 1924).......................................................49 1. First Contacts in Moscow..............................................................................49 2. The Development of Comintern Policy for Colonial Countries..............52 3. Nguyen Ai Quoc and his Place in the Comintern......................................56 4. The Fifth Comintern Congress......................................................................61 5. The Comintern and the United Front in China.........................................66 6. Quoc's Assignment to Canton..........................................................................69 Chapter III - The Canton Period and its Aftermath (Nov. 1924 - June 1928).........74 1. The First Organizational Steps.................................................................... 76 2. The Guangdong Peasant Movement.............................................................90 3. The Growth of Thanh Nien............................................................................ 95 a. Expectations of Revolt................................................................................95 b. The Cochinchina-Cambodia Branch of the Nanyang Committee ...97 c. The Second and Third Thanh Nien Training Courses.........................99 4. The Collapse of the United Front in China................................................. 109 Chapter IV - From the Old to the New Course (1928-1929).........................................118 1. Nguyen Ai Quoc’s Travels...................................................... 118 2. The Sixth Comintern Congress......................................................... 122 3. Nguyen Ai Quoc in Siam................................................................................128 4. The Progress of Thanh Nien.........................................................................131 5. The Evolution of the Chinese Left.............................................................. 134 6. The Thanh Nien Rift.......................................................................................143 5 Chapter V - The Revolutionary Hightide (1930-1931)....................................................151 1. The Return of the Comintern Trainees...................................................151 2. The Unification Process....................... 155 3. The New Year’s Uprisings.........................................................................160 4. New Assignments.........................................................................................162 5. The Revolutionary Upsurge in China and the Nanyang............. 165 6. The Revolutionary Wave in Vietnam.......................................................171 7. The October Plenum and Tran Phu’s Consolidation of Power.......... 177 8. The March Plenum and the End of the High T ide................................183 Chapter VI - Death in Hongkong, Burial in Moscow? (1931—1938)....................... 190 1. The Prisoner..................................................................................................190 2. In Hiding/ New Political Currents................................................ 194 3. Return to Moscow........................................................................................199 4. The Seventh Comintern Congress....................................................... ....206 5. The United Front in Indochina................................................................. 209 6. Nguyen Ai Quoc’s Last Years in Moscow.............................................. 214 Chapter VII - The Return of Nguyen Ai Quoc and the Path to the Eighth Plenum (1937-1941)......................................................................................... 218 1. The Political Prelude to Nguyen Ai Quoc’s Return (1937-1938)..........219 2. Nguyen Ai Quoc’s Travels/ Vietnamese Politics: 1939......................... 224 3. The Changing International Situation.....................................................229 4. The Sixth Plenum and the 1940 Uprisings...............................................231 5. The Move to the Border and the Eighth Plenum.................................. 241 Conclusion...............................................................................................................................247 Bibliography...........................................................................................................................