Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh's name given to him at birth was Nguyen Sinh Cung. Shi Ming is a pseudonym that means "Enlightener". He was born in a small Vietnamese village. His parents were involved in the anti-colonial movement. Vietnam was a French colony. Ho Chi Minh was educated at a French colonial school. For his freedom-loving views and statements, he was expelled from school, in 1911 he got a job on a steamship and went on a 30-year journey around the world. In Paris, Ho Chi Minh became close to the communists and began to study the works of Marx and Lenin. He saw communism as the key to the liberation of the Vietnamese people. And after visiting Moscow at the invitation of the Comintern in 1923 and graduating from the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, Ho Chi Minh became a convinced communist for life. From 1924 to 1927, he lived in China, established connections with revolutionary-minded Vietnamese emigrants, then, due to the threat of arrest, he moved to Moscow and again went to Europe. Finally, he settled in Hong Kong, where he founded the Indochina Communist Party. In 1941, during the Japanese occupation of Indochina, he founded the military-political organization Viet Minh, and during the Second World War he waged a guerrilla war against the Japanese.

By the summer of 1945, the Viet Minh controlled six provinces of North Vietnam. In August, as a result of the revolution, the power of the Japanese occupiers and local collaborators was overthrown. On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh, speaking at a rally of half a million people in Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi, on behalf of the Provisional Government, solemnly proclaimed the Declaration of Independence of Vietnam, which marked the birth of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

However, France planned to restore its power in the colonies. The British troops that landed in Vietnam provided them with every possible assistance in this. In 1946, the Viet Minh leadership headed for war with the French.

The colonialists had an advantage in weapons and equipment, but Ho's speeches inspired the Vietnamese people to continue the struggle. A puppet state was created in the south of the country with the participation of the Americans. In 1954, Vietnamese forces won a decisive victory over the French army at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. The surrender of the almost 11,000-strong garrison was the last straw for Paris. France withdrew from Indochina, and North Vietnam became an officially recognized state. But the south remained, where the regime created by the colonialists, now supported by the United States, remained. Ho Chi Minh turned out to be consistent. After South Vietnam was essentially torn away from the country, he declared non-recognition of the split. In the south, the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam began to operate, with its goal of overthrowing the pro-American regime and restoring the unity of the country.

The Vietnam War lasted from 1957 to 1975. The Americans entered it in 1965 and officially left it in 1973 after signing the Paris Agreements, setting a course for the “Vietnamization” of the war. However, by the end of April 1975 it was all over.

Ho Chi Minh did not live to see victory. He died in September 1969, and Saigon, the former capital of South Vietnam, was renamed Ho Chi Minh.