Ho Chi Minh and his five colleagues around that table in the cave in Pac Bo were Communists, convinced that Marxism-Leninism represented the best path of development for their country. But it was their country. They saw no contradiction between their Communism and their fervent desire to make Vietnam Vietnamese again. “By founding the Viet Minh,” historian Pierre Brocheux writes in denying any contradiction, “Ho Chi Minh brought together—or at least into synergy—the dynamism of nationalism and that of international communism.”
