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Ho Chi Minh: Selected Writings 1920-1969

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Reprint. Originally published: Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1973.

372 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

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Hồ Chí Minh

89 books118 followers
Vietnamese Communist revolutionary and statesman who was Prime Minister and President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam).

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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Profile Image for Nhi.
36 reviews50 followers
January 10, 2021
his love and reverence for the Vietnamese people gives me strength
Profile Image for Huck.
70 reviews2 followers
July 28, 2023
It's simply amazing to read about his life, from farms to academia to guerilla mastery against Western forces.

This really beats anything I've read from other revolutionaries such as Che Guevara or Mao Zedong.

His intellect and wisdom is something to be heavily admired. Five stars for this man.
Profile Image for Static.
168 reviews3 followers
July 28, 2025
"Johnson y su camarilla deberían darse cuenta de que podrán mandar 500.000 soldados, un millón o aun más para ampliar la guerra de agresión en Vietnam del Sur.

Podrán utilizar miles de aviones para intensificar sus ataques aéreos contra Vietnam del Sur. Podrán utilizar miles de aviones para intensificar sus ataques contra Vietnam del Norte. Pero nunca serán capaces de quebrar la voluntad de hierro del heroico pueblo vietnamita para luchar contra la agresión norteamericana y por la salvación nacional.

La guerra puede durar diez, veinte años o más, (...) pero el pueblo vietnamita no se dejará intimidar. No existe nada más valioso que la independencia y la libertad. Cuando llegue la victoria, nuestro pueblo reconstruirá el país y lo dotará de construcciones más grandes y más bellas.

(...)

Presidente Johnson, responda públicamente al pueblo norteamericano y a los pueblos del mundo. ¿Quién ha saboteado los acuerdos de Ginebra que garantizan la soberanía, la independencia, la unidad y la integridad territorial de Vietnam? ¿Acaso las tropas vietnamitas han invadido EE.UU. y han asesinado a los norteamericanos? ¿Acaso no es el gobierno de EE.UU. quién ha enviado tropas norteamericanas para invadir Vietnam y asesinar vietnamitas?

Que EE.UU. termine su guerra de agresión en Vietnam, que retire de este país todas las tropas norteamericanas y satélites, y entonces se restaurará la paz aquí. La posición de Vietnam es clara: los cuatro puntos del gobierno de la República Democrática de Vietnam del Norte y los cinco puntos del FLNVs. No existe otra alternativa.

El pueblo vietnamita ama la paz, la verdadera paz, la paz en independencia y libertad, no la paz simulada, la paz norteamericana.

Para la defensa de la independencia de la Patria y por el cumplimiento de nuestra obligación para con los pueblos que luchan contra el imperialismo norteamericano, nuestro pueblo y nuestro ejército, unidos como un solo hombre, lucharán resueltamente hasta la victoria total, cualesquiera que sean los sacrificios y las penurias que puedan haber.

En el pasado, derrotamos a los fascistas japoneses y a los colonialistas franceses en circunstancias mucho más difíciles. Ahora, la situación en el país y en el extranjero es más favorable: la lucha de nuestro pueblo contra la agresión norteamericana para la salvación nacional logrará con certeza la victoria total.

Queridos compatriotas y combatientes: Somos fuertes por nuestra justa causa, por la unidad de todo nuestro pueblo de norte a sur, y por la amplia simpatía y apoyo de los países socialistas hermanos y de los pueblos progresistas de todo el mundo. ¡Venceremos!".

Esta compilación demuestra que, sin lugar a dudas, Ho Chi Minh era el Lenin vietnamita.

Respetos absolutos a la lucha anticolonial del pueblo vietnamita, sepulturero de imperios. Capaz de haberle hecho frente a Japón, Francia, Estados Unidos y China, viviendo para contarlo hasta hoy.

Como conclusión me quedo con una frase de la segunda parte de la edición que he leído: "Si se tiene la piel blanca se es automáticamente un civilizador. Y cuando se es un civilizador, pueden cometerse los actos de un salvaje sin perder la categoría de civilizado".

Esta última cita no pertenece a Ho Chi Minh, sino a Bernard B. Fall (comp.): "Sobre la revolución. Escritos de Ho Chi Minh". México, Siglo XXI Editores 1985, pp. 47‐123 (que compone la segunda parte de mi edición), pero es esclarecedora para comprender cuál era la situación de Indochina o de cualquier otra colonia europea del mal llamado "tercer mundo".
144 reviews2 followers
September 12, 2024
In "Ho Chi Minh: Selected Writing (1920 - 1969)" Ho Chi Minh reveals himself as a Vietnamese nationalist leader with decent values and concerns. Unfortunately, he thinks that the enemy of his enemy is his friend. Because the Soviet Union supported the independence movements of colonies ruled by Western democracies, he became a Marxist Leninist.

He does not seem to wonder how Russia became the largest country in the world. He does not seem to have noticed that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republicans preserved the empire conquered earlier by czarist Russia. The U.S.S.R. included a number of countries, such as Ukraine, that wanted to be independent.

In his essay "Appeal on the Occasion of the Founding of the Indochinese Communist Party" (February 18, 1930) Ho includes as a goal, "To bring democratic freedom to the masses."

Then in "The Party's Line in the Period of the Democratic Front" he writes, "With regard to the Trotskyites there can be no compromise, no concession. we must do everything possible to unmask them as agents of fascism and annihilate them politically."

I bought this book during the War in Vietnam. I should have read that to my Trotskyite friends in the anti war movement.

My own view about the War in Vietnam then and now is that it was a morally ambiguous conflict the United States should have avoided. I thought we should have negotiated would have amounted to a conditional surrender to North Vietnam. One of the conditions would have been our right to evacuate those Vietnamese who did not want to live under Communism, and to settle them in the United States. I have known Vietnamese war refugees. They are good people.

In Ho's "Political Report at the Second National Congress of the Vietnam Workers' Party" (February 1951) Ho writes:

"As is well known, the world is divided into two distinct camps: the democratic camp headed by the Soviet Union [and] the anti democratic camp headed by the United States."

Anyone who could see the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin as a democracy needed to be asked how he or she defines "democracy."

In President Eisenhower's Memoires, "Mandate for Change, page 372 Eisenhower wrote, "I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80 per cent of the populations would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader."

https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/i...

Lenin and Stalin knew that they lacked popular support in the Soviet Union, so they needed to use dictatorial methods to stay in power. Ho Chi Minh should not have modeled his government after the Soviet Union. With his popularity he did not need to rule as a Communist. He could have governed as a democratic socialist, allowing a loyal opposition and an adversary press.

Ho Chi Minh could have united Vietnam under his leadership without a war.
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