ABSTRACT
The short piece by Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969), Vietnamese nationalist leader and President of North Vietnam from 1954-69, reveals the influence of Parisian intellectual life on his thinking. It tracks his development from patriotism to socialism and communism and the manner in which he saw these ideologies as quite inseparable. Ho’s views speak to the debates that raged in the Comintern (abbreviation of the Communist International, the name given to the Third International founded by Lenin in 1919) which are discussed by Ronald Suny in Chapter 14 of this volume. A description of Ho Chi Minh’s role in the Vietnamese struggle against the French, and subsequently against the USbacked governments in the south, can be found in Stein Tønneson’s essay, Chapter 18 of this volume.
