Vietnamese Trotskyism

Vietnamese Trotskyists were involved in the earliest efforts to build a revolutionary movement in Indochina. During the 1930s in Saigon the Vietnamese Trotskyists were a strong rival movement to the Indochinese Communist Party. In 1939, after the Hitler-Stalin pact communist organisations were banned in France and Indochina. Hundreds of stalinist communists and trotskyists were arrested but the Trotskyists were all but extnguished as a political force while the ICP although severely weakened continued underground organising. In 1945, the ICP emerged as the principal organised political force within the Vietminh national front and led the struggle for power in the 1945 August Revolution.

The two trotskyist parties ("La Lutte" or Struggle and the International Communist League led by Ho Huu Tuong) regrouped in 1945 and proceeded to rebuild their forces and prepare for the approaching conflict with the British occupation forces under General Gracey and the incoming French forces moving to re-establish colonial rule. Ta Thu Thau emerged from prison in poor health but still the most popular leader of the worker's movement in the South and the most well known trotskyist in Vietnam. Returning to Saigon from a consultation with the new Vietminh Government in Hanoi, he was murdered by Vietminh adherents near Quang Ngai in September 1945. Many other prominent trotskyists were also murdered throughout Vietnam.

ources

*Ngo Van (2000) "Viet-nam 1920-1945: Révolution et contre-révolution sous la domination coloniale", Paris: Nautilus Editions [in French] .

External links

"Vietnamese Trotskyism" by Robert J. Alexander [http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/alex/works/in_trot/viet.htm]