Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam

About the Author

The Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was authored by Ho Chi Minh, who played a crucial role in the founding of the Vietnamese Communist movement. Ho was born as Nguyen Sinh Cung in the province of Nghe An, now in central Vietnam, in 1890. His father, a relatively poor scholar-official, inculcated in him patriotic and anti-French views. In 1911 he sailed to France but failed to be admitted to the École Coloniale in Paris, thereafter earning his living aboard ships. After a short time in London, at the end of World War I he arrived in Paris and circulated in the Vietnamese expatriate community and in French Socialist circles. He adopted a new name, Nguyen Ai Quoc (Nguyen the Patriot), and became a founding member of the French Communist Party in 1921. During this period he worked as a writer, journalist, and newspaper publisher.

Trained as a Comintern (Communist International) agent in Moscow in 1923, Ho was assigned positions in southern China and Southeast Asia beginning in 1925. He created the proto-Communist Youth League (Thanh Nien) in Guangzhou (Canton), China, in 1925, while on assignment for the Comintern. In February 1930, in Hong Kong, he helped prevent a permanent fissure within the movement by reconciling two rival factions, along with another party, into the Vietnamese Communist Party. That party was soon reconfigured against Ho's wishes as the ICP, which shows that he was not uncontested in his leadership. After he was arrested because of his Communist militancy in Hong Kong in 1931, he was released by the British authorities in 1933 and returned to the Soviet Union. He went to China in 1938 and reestablished contact with the ICP, founding the Vietminh in 1941. At about the same time, he adopted the name Ho Chi Minh (He Who Enlightens). He served as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's first president until his death on September 2, 1969. Although he had wished to have his ashes distributed in four urns in the four corners of Vietnam, his body lies embalmed and on public display in the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, which is symbolically located at the head of Ba Dinh Square.