Ngo Van
Encyclopedia
Ngô Văn Xuyết alias Ngo Van (Vietnamese Ngô Văn) was a Vietnamese Trotskyist
leader. Born in Vietnam
, he joined the Trotskyist movement as a young man. After the repression of Trotskyism in Vietnam in 1945, he moved to France, where he wrote about his experiences and recent Vietnamese history.
Ngo Van left his village at the age of 14 to work in a metallurgical works in Saigon, and soon became involved in the strikes and demonstrations and strikes that erupted periodically against the French colonial power in support of freedom of assembly
, of the press, of travel and of education. There was already a history peasant revolts against colonialism, which were brually repressed, by the execution of leading activists, or their deportation to the infamous penal colony of Poulo Condore.
He was forced to end his formal education, but, enrolled under a false name, he read Marx
in the Saigon municipal library after work. He came into contact with the Trotskyist left opposition group in Saigon opposed to the general line of the Indochinese Communist Party
, emphasizing the importance of a movement based on the working class as against the nationalist oriented policy of Nguyen ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh
).
In Saigon, the Trotskyists and Stalinists cooperated for three years (1933-36) in a united front around the legal newspaper La Lutte, which was published weekly in French to get around laws banning publications in the vernacular quoc nu or Vietnamese. Their candidates were elected to the municipal council. But after the French (she says the Popular Front govt was only from 1936) government signed a pact with Stalin’s Soviet Union in May 1935, the French, and soon the Indochinese, Communist Parties gave up their opposition to French militarism and colonialism. Following the October group led by Ho Huu Tuong, Ngo Van and some activists formed the League of Internationalist Communists for the Construction of the Fourth International, while other Trotskyists remained in the La Lutte alliance. Ngo Van set type for the new group’s clandestine literature.
Ngo Van also organised amongst workforce in his factory, who met under the guise of wedding and birthday parties – as all gatherings of more than 19 were illegal – and found himself the spokesperson when a strike for better wages broke out. Militant friends were arrested one after the other. The longer Van remained at liberty, the more acutely he appreciated their courage under torture.
At the age of 24, Ngo Van was arrested in the factory storeroom, where he secretly discussed anti-colonialist campaigns with other activists and hid underground literature and revolutionary publications from abroad. Van was imprisoned in the dreaded Maison Centrale in Saigon, where he, too, was tortured. Stalinist and Trotskyist prisoners were held together: Van later recalled that relations between them were wary, but civil, to avoid provoking tension to the advantage of the common enemy. He joined in a hunger strike demanding political prisoner status equal to that in France.
As a consequence, the prisoners were occasionally allowed French newspapers. This was how they learned about the Moscow Trials
, in which Stalin was destroying what remained of the leadership of Lenin’s Bolshevik Party
. The Trotskyists were ‘overcome with a profound unease, and a thousand questions without answers kept going round in our heads’, Van wrote in his memoirs. In 1937 the Vietnamese Stalinists, under orders from Moscow, abruptly left the La Lutte group and denounced the Trotskyists as ‘agents of fascism’.
Van and his comrades were constantly being arrested, tortured, imprisoned then briefly freed once more. Once, he was sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment simply for recommending books by Trotsky to a friend in a letter, and greeting in the street the well-known Trotskyist Ta thu Thau. Exiled to Travinh, in an island in the Mekong delta, at the end of 1940, he found himself in the middle of a peasant uprising that had engulfed western Cochinchina. Almost 6000 were arrested, over two hundred publicly executed, and thousands killed by bombing authorised by the Vichy governor general, Decoux. At about this time, Van discovered that he was suffering from tuberculosis.
The Japanese moved into south Vietnam in March 1945 and imposed a regime of martial law; allied forces bombed Saigon. The north of the country was by this time controlled by the Vietminh, as the armed front led by the Communist Party was called. They advocated an alliance with the imperialist Allies as a road to ‘national liberation’; the Trotskyists denounced this as an illusion and called on workers and peasants to rise up against all imperialist oppressors, of whatever nationality. Van and his comrades were elated when 30,000 miners in the Hon gai-Cam pha region set up elected councils to run the mines, public services and transport, and organised a literacy campaign.
Vietnamese Trotskyism
In the history of twentieth-century communism, Vietnam was one of the few countries where Trotskyism had a large movement. Its leaders and most of its members were exterminated by the Communist Party of Vietnam beginning in September 1945.-Origins:...
leader. Born in Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, he joined the Trotskyist movement as a young man. After the repression of Trotskyism in Vietnam in 1945, he moved to France, where he wrote about his experiences and recent Vietnamese history.
Ngo Van left his village at the age of 14 to work in a metallurgical works in Saigon, and soon became involved in the strikes and demonstrations and strikes that erupted periodically against the French colonial power in support of freedom of assembly
Freedom of assembly
Freedom of assembly, sometimes used interchangeably with the freedom of association, is the individual right to come together and collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests...
, of the press, of travel and of education. There was already a history peasant revolts against colonialism, which were brually repressed, by the execution of leading activists, or their deportation to the infamous penal colony of Poulo Condore.
He was forced to end his formal education, but, enrolled under a false name, he read Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
in the Saigon municipal library after work. He came into contact with the Trotskyist left opposition group in Saigon opposed to the general line of the Indochinese Communist Party
Indochinese Communist Party
The Indochinese Communist Party was a political party which was transformed from old Vietnamese Communist Party in October 1930...
, emphasizing the importance of a movement based on the working class as against the nationalist oriented policy of Nguyen ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh
Hồ Chí Minh , born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc, was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader who was prime minister and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam...
).
In Saigon, the Trotskyists and Stalinists cooperated for three years (1933-36) in a united front around the legal newspaper La Lutte, which was published weekly in French to get around laws banning publications in the vernacular quoc nu or Vietnamese. Their candidates were elected to the municipal council. But after the French (she says the Popular Front govt was only from 1936) government signed a pact with Stalin’s Soviet Union in May 1935, the French, and soon the Indochinese, Communist Parties gave up their opposition to French militarism and colonialism. Following the October group led by Ho Huu Tuong, Ngo Van and some activists formed the League of Internationalist Communists for the Construction of the Fourth International, while other Trotskyists remained in the La Lutte alliance. Ngo Van set type for the new group’s clandestine literature.
Ngo Van also organised amongst workforce in his factory, who met under the guise of wedding and birthday parties – as all gatherings of more than 19 were illegal – and found himself the spokesperson when a strike for better wages broke out. Militant friends were arrested one after the other. The longer Van remained at liberty, the more acutely he appreciated their courage under torture.
At the age of 24, Ngo Van was arrested in the factory storeroom, where he secretly discussed anti-colonialist campaigns with other activists and hid underground literature and revolutionary publications from abroad. Van was imprisoned in the dreaded Maison Centrale in Saigon, where he, too, was tortured. Stalinist and Trotskyist prisoners were held together: Van later recalled that relations between them were wary, but civil, to avoid provoking tension to the advantage of the common enemy. He joined in a hunger strike demanding political prisoner status equal to that in France.
As a consequence, the prisoners were occasionally allowed French newspapers. This was how they learned about the Moscow Trials
Moscow Trials
The Moscow Trials were a series of show trials conducted in the Soviet Union and orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge of the 1930s. The victims included most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, as well as the leadership of the Soviet secret police...
, in which Stalin was destroying what remained of the leadership of Lenin’s Bolshevik Party
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
. The Trotskyists were ‘overcome with a profound unease, and a thousand questions without answers kept going round in our heads’, Van wrote in his memoirs. In 1937 the Vietnamese Stalinists, under orders from Moscow, abruptly left the La Lutte group and denounced the Trotskyists as ‘agents of fascism’.
Van and his comrades were constantly being arrested, tortured, imprisoned then briefly freed once more. Once, he was sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment simply for recommending books by Trotsky to a friend in a letter, and greeting in the street the well-known Trotskyist Ta thu Thau. Exiled to Travinh, in an island in the Mekong delta, at the end of 1940, he found himself in the middle of a peasant uprising that had engulfed western Cochinchina. Almost 6000 were arrested, over two hundred publicly executed, and thousands killed by bombing authorised by the Vichy governor general, Decoux. At about this time, Van discovered that he was suffering from tuberculosis.
The Japanese moved into south Vietnam in March 1945 and imposed a regime of martial law; allied forces bombed Saigon. The north of the country was by this time controlled by the Vietminh, as the armed front led by the Communist Party was called. They advocated an alliance with the imperialist Allies as a road to ‘national liberation’; the Trotskyists denounced this as an illusion and called on workers and peasants to rise up against all imperialist oppressors, of whatever nationality. Van and his comrades were elated when 30,000 miners in the Hon gai-Cam pha region set up elected councils to run the mines, public services and transport, and organised a literacy campaign.
Books
- Việt Nam 1920-1945, révolution et contre-révolution sous la domination coloniale (1997)
- Revolutionaries they could not break, the fight for the Fourth International in Indochina 1930-1945 (1995)
- In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary (2010)