Ho Chi Minh: A Life

Rating:
Summary: Nationalist or Communist?
Review: This has been a good year of biographies for us social studies teachers. Short's excellent look at Mao, Bix's bio of Hirohito, and a tough but neccessary read on Ataturk. After all of that reading and bucks spent on books I was looking forward to reading some fun stuff. But how could any good global studies teacher pass a new biography of Ho Chi Minh. He, like Ataturk, has only been on every New York State Global Regents for the last 6 years! And I certainly could not resist after seeing Duiker on c-span discussing the book.

First and foremost...is it a good book? YES! It was very informative and highly readable once you made it past the opening chapters and got used to reading the endless Vietnamese names. Also, please note that while the book is readable, it is not a fast read. This book took me over three months to read, and I am a pretty avid reader with a decent background in Vietnamese history. So be warned, great book but time consuming.

The book is well researched and documented. To me the highlights of the book dealt with Ho Chi Minh's political views, his history as a communist in not just Vietnam, but France, and the USSR. I enjoyed learning about all his various identities and all the places he travelled. But the best parts of the book I felt dealth with Ho Chi Minh at the end of WWII and his attempts to gain independence for Vietnam, his attempts to win over US support, and to negotiate with the French. Duiker did a great job with this time period. Also, Duiker points out which I did not know, how much more radical other members of the Vietnamese revolutionary movement were by the 1960's. I had always thought he was in complete charge like a Stalin or Mao and had no idea about the various leaders and views to surface towards the end of his life.

Duiker also does a great job discussing how Ho tried to deal with both the Russians and Chinese. Anyone who stills believes in a singular monolethic communism should read this.

But the big question...was Ho more communist or more nationalist? Should the US have supported Ho like a Marshall Tito in Asia? Duiker does an awesome job on this.

Yes, HO was a communist. Ho was an active communist in Vietnam, France, and even studied in the USSR. Ho believed in communism and felt the capitalist system would collapse. Duiker shows how Ho's growing up under French colonialism lead to his views on capitalism and communism.

However, Ho was a nationalist also. Ho clearly did everything he could to gain independence for Vietnam. He even courted the US and even negotiated as much as he could with the French.

Duiker shows clearly that Ho was both. He was a nationalist and a communist, not one or the other but both. Duiker also points out that Ho Chi Minh felt a world wide communist revolution was going to happen eventually and that it was neccessary for Vietnam to gain independence first and industrialize before communism could really happen there. So Ho's nationalisn was clearly linked to his communism. Almost like a Yin and Yang....they were a apart of each other.

Duiker shows that it was not as simple as some make it for the US to back Ho Chi Minh over the French at the end of WWII. However, it is clear that whatever the risk of backing Ho Chi Minh it would have been a better option then the one we took. 55,000 brave American's died in Vietnam. How might history have been different if we backed an indepenedent Vietnam over re-establishment of French colonialism.

Duiker points out how the Europeanists in the state dept. one over the Asia specialists who backed dealing with Ho Chi Minh. Again, hindsight is 20/20 but its food for thought. because in the end 55,000 Americans died, Vietnam became entirely communists as well as Laos and Cambodia at that time.

This summer, i have the opportunity to visit Vietnam as a teacher and as someone born after the war. I feel this book gave me some excellent background for my trip and lots of food for thought.

So, if you have a lot of time and want to read a good book about an interesting figure in history I highly recommend Ho Chi Minh by William Duiker. It was worth the money and the time spent reading it.

Rating:
Summary: Read This Book!!
Review: This is a thoroughly researched biography of one of the most important figures of our time. It is well balanced and provides insight into Ho's political, psychological and personal life. All other English language books on Ho pale in comparison. Here we learn of Ho's days in Moscow, as a Comintern agent, his life in China, his struggle to free Vietnam from colonialism and his leadership in the wars of Vietnam. It explicitly leaves the reader to make her/his own decision on issues regarding Ho. Nationalist? Vietnamese Patriot? Democratic Socialist? Communist Puppet? You decide. But, YOU must read this book!!

Rating:
Summary: A thoroughly researched, well-balanced account
Review: This is a very readable and well-balanced account of a fascinating man, synthesized from a vast number of sources around the world. Duiker comes to the job with impeccable credentials and his admiration for Ho Chi Minh shines through: he sheds light and an informed opinion on contentious historical issues surrounding the man and the myth.

A minor complaint: detail on HCM's personal life is weak for the period 1954 until his death.

The book includes copious footnotes and a rich index.

Rating:
Summary: Not definative but a good read
Review: This is quite and entertaining and interesting book it does however have some faults. The main one is that he author has some trouble establishing what Ho's role was in the Government of North Vietnam from the granting of independence onwards. This of course is not a fault of the author but rather it reflects the problems with the documentation of the period. A lot of the minutes and documents of the government of Vietnam have not been made public. Ho was a person who was generally respected in Vietnam because of his long association with the Nationalist cause. He was clearly used as a figurehead for the regime and the author suggests he also played the role of a diplomat. The author suggests that the way Vietnam was run was by a shifting coalition of the leading group. He seems to think that Ho may not have been responsible for the land reform policies that led to bloodshed in the 50's. It is also clear that the move to a wholly state run economy occurred after his death in the 70's. The reality is however that it is not possible at this point to write an accurate biography of Ho as so much of his later political life is a matter of speculation.

Despite this the book is a fascinating picture of the early life of Ho up to the take over of power in what was to become North Vietnam. This period is fairly richly detailed as Ho himself wrote two autobiographical works and there is material available from the places in which Ho lived.

Reading this book one realizes how tough Communists were. Ho was the son of a provincial mandarin. He early was an opponent of French Colonialism and decided to go to France. He worked as an assistant cook on a boat for a year to finance his trip. In France he became active in the Vietnamese Community there and in fact wrote a letter to the allies at Versailles requesting consideration for the cause of Vietnam. This led him to being branded as a dangerous revolutionary. He moved to Moscow and was educated in a revolutionary school run by the Commitern. He then traveled to South China and was responsible for setting up the communist movement in Vietnam. His life from this point resembles a James Bond novel with him using disguises to move around, using false identities and being pursued by most colonial governments. On one occasion he was arrested in Hong Kong. The French sought his extradition and would no doubt have executed him if they had succeeded. British lawyers (probably paid for by Russia) worked to free him. He returned to teach in Russia and then as the second world war closed moved back to Vietnam to run the movement he had set up.

The success of Communism in Vietnam was a close run thing. In China the communists faced a corrupt and fragmented regime. In Vietnam the Communists had to content initially with the Japanese, the Nationalist Chinese and the French. The French put in an army of 200,000 to retain their colony. Their troops were well trained and they were supplied with American weapons. Vietnam was not a big country and there was not the room to move around, that had existed in China. The critical event seems to have been the success of Mao that allowed the Vietnamese to be supplied with modern weapons particularly artillery.

The book does not lead to one having any sympathy with the French as a colonial power. Prior to the French conquest the literacy rate in Vietnam was very high comparable with some western countries. Under the French it collapsed. In much the same way the French were brutal in the actions they took against Vietnamese fighting for their liberation. The book is a fascinating biography and well worth a read. It will probably not be the definitive biography of Ho Chi Min and that book won't come out until historians can access the records of Vietnam. In the meantime however it is a good examination of the period and what was a remarkable life.

Rating:
Summary: We Needed This Book
Review: William Duiker has performed a great service to those of us who study and teach the Vietnam War. Prior to the publication of "Ho Chi Minh: A Life," there was no biography of Ho that I felt comfortable recommending to my students. The problem with Ho-biography has always been the seemingly infinite maleability of its subject: Ho was perfectly happy to reinvent himself--and his public face--to serve his tactical ends. He actively participated in the creation of a mythology of "Uncle Ho," the selfless leader of a his nation. As a result, it has always been a challenge to disentangle the reality from the story that best suited his ends at any given time. Was he the monastic patriot who sacrificed family and home for his only love, the Vietnamese nation? Or did he actually have a wife hidden away somewhere? Did his visit to New York as a young man cause him to admire America, or was this a convenient story to tell the OSS's "Deer Team" during the fight against Japanese occupation? And just which of those names that appeared on Vietnamese nationalist pamphlets in the inter-war years were penned by "Nguyen the Patriot" (Ho Chi Minh)?

I used to tell my classes that Ho was the leading figure of the 20th Century about whom we knew the least. Duiker has admirably taken on these issues, filled in many gaps, and provided credible "guesstimates" where we are unlikely to ever have rock-solid proof. Ho--as Nguyen--spent so much time in the shadow world of Indochinese nationalist expats in Paris, Moscow, and South China that some things must be given up as lost.

Even more admirable than his painstaking piecing together of Ho's wherabouts and activities prior to World War II is Duiker's attempt to answer the trickiest interpretive questions presented by this very mysterious and contradictory man. This is, after all, the kindly old "Uncle Ho" who set his trrops on the unarmed protesters at Vinh, protesters who came from the same region and same background as Ho himself. Hardly an act of great sympathy for suffering peasants.

Duiker's conclusion that Ho was both deeply nationalist AND deeply communist provides the only satisfactory answer that I can find to the contradictions of his actions. This serves as a useful corrective, as well, to those who would overdo the "Lost Opportunity" thesis. America might have been able to deal on some level with Ho's Vietnam from the 1940's. But those who would argue this case will need to do so with more nuance and less stridency in the future. On this matter--as on everything else, it appears-- Ho would have made his decisions tactically, while continuing to pursue his long-term strategic goals for Vietnam. Goals determined by BOTH nationalist and communist ideologies.

I agree with a previous reviewer that the amount of detail in this book is formidable. This was necessary to achieve what Duiker has sought to do. But his publisher may want to consider a scaled-down paperback version of this book for classroom use and the general reader. Most people will not be very interested in the details of Ho's father's professional frustrations or the workings of the French Communist Party after WWI. But I would gladly assign a "classroom version" of this book to my students in the future.

This is how history should be done.

Rating:
Summary: Not for the faint hearted
Review: William Duiker researched extensively thru all available archives to compile all the information into this book about Ho Chi Minh, the myth and the patriot. If the readers enjoyed every little details about the developments of Uncle Ho, parties that he set up, meetings that he attended, negotiations that took place, etc., you would love this book. But for someone like myself who wanted to learn about Uncle Ho and Vietnam along the way, I find the book to be very time consuming to read and heavy handed to remember all those party names, Vietnamese names, small towns names. But the author did provide the readers with a heavy dose of pictures, maps of Vietnams in different periods, close ups of areas such as Dien Bien Phu which was significant for the creation of the modern Vietnam. In this book, we read about Uncle Ho's humble upbringing; his brief & tragic love life; his capture in Hong Kong which would almost cost him his life; his tireless efforts within the jungles trying to gain local support from small villages for his small but growing fast army; his extensive travel abroad; the exploitation of his own image as a simple person leading a simple life but fighting tireless for the betterment of his people; his assistance of the United States during the World War 2 campaign and along the way, he earned respects of many Americans but working relationships couldn't be carried thru due to the changes of Presidents; his pragmatism in clinging to countries that were willing to help him in attaining independence from France; and later on, his shrewdness in playing off a country with the other to obtain assistance to reunite North & South as one Vietnam entity; his last will to be cremated not adhered to but ended up embalmed in a Mausoleum. Many decisions he had made, some rite & some wrong & towards the end, the author analysed if Uncle Ho is in fact a Communist or a patriot. In the book, it said that despite Uncle Ho is not as revered by the younger Vietnamese generations these days, and that his legacy is not remembered in the South as much as in the North, his contribution towards Vietnam and that region is unmistakable, and the greatness of him doing anything for his country is to be admired and revered of. It also said that his replacements such as Le Duan simply lacked the charisma and the actions taken by him was bordering towards extremes rather than moderation, and therefore, further along, the support for his party seemed to wane, and the impacts caused by Le Duan's actions simply devastated Vietnam, and thus, the exodus of boatpeople, seeking a better life elsewhere. In this biography, readers would also understand why United States wouldn't intervene in France's colonialism of Vietnam after the World War 2 as it required its available force there to prevent the spreading of Communist power along the North, both USSR & China. But later, as the red power is gaining in force along the North, only then, the United States intervened in the South to prevent communism to be spread all around the world. But that was a marriage in hell with the Dien brothers as they supported the Catholics and therefore, they had a bad blood with the Buddhists and corruption was rampant, and that the population there was suffering. Moreover, with Khrushev in power in Russia, with his denouncement of Stalin, he wanted to keep the peace around the region & therefore, refused to endorse Vietnam engaging in war with the United States but China, on the other hand, reckoned a war was imminent and all this while, Uncle Ho, wished to keep concile both countries as inner conflict would give the Communism a bad name. Should readers simply want to learn about Vietnam, I do recommend another great book, which certain parts of the book is used as excerpts in Ho CHi Minh biography anyway: The Sacred Willow written by Duong Van Mai Elliott. It told the story of a Vietnamese family spanning 4 generations and by reading the plights of the family members who comprised of both Northerners and Southerners and the situations happening around them, you would get a feel of the developments of Vietnam towards the end. A superb effort.