Ho Chi Minh | Biography, Presidency, & Facts | Britannica

Founding of the Indochinese Communist Party

Meeting in Hong Kong in May 1929, members of the Thanh Nien decided to form the Indochinese Communist Party (PCI). Others—in the Vietnamese cities of Hanoi, Hue, and Saigon—began the actual work of organization, but some of Ho’s lieutenants were reluctant to act in the absence of their leader, who had the confidence of Moscow. Ho was brought back from Siam, therefore, and on February 3, 1930, he presided over the founding of the party. At first it was called the Vietnamese Communist Party, but, after October 1930, Ho, acting on Soviet advice, adopted the name Indochinese Communist Party. In this phase of his career, Ho acted more as an arbiter of conflicts among the various factions, allowing the organization of revolutionary action, rather than as an initiator. His prudence, his awareness of what it was possible to accomplish, his care not to alienate Moscow, and the influence that he already had achieved among the Vietnamese Communists can be seen in these actions.

The creation of the PCI coincided with a violent insurrectionary movement in Vietnam. Repression by the French was brutal; Ho himself was condemned in absentia to death as a revolutionary. He sought refuge in Hong Kong, where the French police obtained permission from the British for his extradition, but friends helped him escape, and he reached Moscow via Shanghai.

Quick Facts Original name: Nguyen Sinh Cung (Show more) Also called: Nguyen Tat Thanh or Nguyen Ai Quoc (Show more) Born: May 19, 1890, Hoang Tru, Vietnam, French Indochina (Show more) Died: September 2, 1969, Hanoi, North Vietnam (aged 79) (Show more) Founder: Viet Minh (Show more) Political Affiliation: French Communist Party Indochinese Communist Party Vietnamese Workers’ Party (Show more) Role In: First Indochina War Geneva Accords Vietnam War (Show more) See all related content Show More

In 1935 the Seventh Congress of the International, meeting in Moscow, which he attended as chief delegate for the PCI, officially sanctioned the idea of the Popular Front (an alliance with the noncommunist left against fascism)—a policy Ho had advocated for some time. In keeping with this policy, the Communists in Indochina moderated their anti-colonialist stance in 1936, allowing for cooperation with “antifascist colonialists.” The formation of Premier Léon Blum’s Popular Front government in France in the same year allowed leftist forces in Indochina to operate more freely, although Ho, because of his condemnation in 1930, was not permitted to return from exile. Repression returned to Indochina with the fall of the Blum government in 1937, and by 1938 the Popular Front was dead.