ANÁLISIS A LA LUZ DE LOS PRINCIPIOS CONSTITUCIONALES

A small booklet from 194253 _{describes the reasons behind the formation of the Việt}

Minh, and the way in which the Association is organised, what it takes to be a member, formation of cells, need for secrecy, and so forth. The name of the booklet is Việt Minh Ngũ tự kinh (“Việt Minh five-character book” or “Việt Minh book of pentameters”),54

which title is possibly related to the name of a well-known booklet used to teach Chinese, and particularly Confucian, culture Tam Tự Kinh (“Three-character Book”).55 _{Each line in}

the Việt Minh book is five characters long and each of the ten verses has twelve lines, making 600 syllables (or Hán-Nôm characters) in total (excluding the opening four-line introduction). The first line of each verse rhymes with the last line of the previous verse, and the rest of the lines are rhyming couplets. The printed copies of the booklet were reproduced from a hand-written stencil and the whole is finished off with a hand-drawn five-pointed star. There is no direct evidence but staff at the Museum of the Revolution have told me that they assume that it was initially written by Hồ Chí Minh,56 _{however it is}

not included in the 1983 edition of the collected works of Hồ Chí Minh. Alexander Woodside notes that the Việt Minh Ngũ tự kinh was used as a text for teaching reading. Of the 1942-1943 period, he writes:

Everywhere that Viet Minh organizations appeared, noontime or evening reading classes were held for illiterate adult peasants, as well as daytime classes for children. The text used in these literacy classes was a new “Five Character Classic” especially written for them by Ho Chi Minh. Like classical primers, it was an instrument of indoctrination.57

The transmission of ideas and ideology fostered by this little booklet is further discussed below. A transcription and translation of the booklet appears as Appendix E.

53 _{The copy of the booklet that I have has been photographed from that in the Museum of the Revolution in}

Hanoi and is dated 1944, but it was advertised as being for sale two years prior to this. See Phạm Mai Hùng (ed.) Báo Việt Nam Độc Lập (1941-1945), p. 63.

54 _{Việt Minh Ngũ Tự Kinh. Cao Bằng: V.M. Tuyên Truyền Bộ, 1944. Possibly available for viewing at the}

Museum of the Revolution, Hanoi.

55 _{See, for example, Đoàn Trung Còn. Tam tự kinh. Biên Hòa: NXB Đồng Nai, 1999. A version with English}

language is also available, see Zhang Lizhong and Wang Zhongshu. Three-Character-Chinese Poem, 2nd edition. (Originally published: 1992, Bilingual Press, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia). Beijing: Morning Glory Publishers, 1998.

56 _{Personal interview with Ngô Thị Ba, Museum of the Revolution, Hanoi, September 2002.}

57 _{Alexander B. Woodside. Community and Revolution in Modern Vietnam. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976,}

The booklet on which the title is modelled, the Tam tự kinh has 380 lines of 3

characters, a total of 1140 characters. It was written during the Song (Tống) Dynasty in China (960-1279), a time when “the availability of cheaper and a vastly increased number of reading materials was a boon to education and brought about a significant increase in literacy”.58 _{It was probably written by, or by members of the school of, Lu Hsiang-shan}

(more contemporary spelling Lu Xiangshan, 1139-1193). During the Song dynasty there was a Neo-Confucian revival,59 _{and at least one copy of the Tam tự kinh currently available}

in Vietnam has a picture of Khổng Phu Tử (Confucius) on the back cover.60 _{Two main}

schools of thought developed during this twelfth Century Neo-Confucian revival:

...a definite cleavage developed between the two wings of Neo-Confucian thought, the school of Principle or Reason and the school of the Mind or Intuition.61

The writings of this latter school seem to have informed the Tam tự kinh, possibly those of Lu Hsiang-shan in particular. The Tam tự kinh (in Vietnamese translation) begins:

Người ta lúc ban đầu, thì cái tánh vốn lành.

Our people from the beginning are basically of good character.62

And goes on to affirm other worthy characteristics of people in general and to praise the worth of education. This is a similar thought to that which is contained in the writings of Lu Hsiang-shan:

The human mind is most intelligent and principle is most clear. All people have this in mind and all minds contain this principle in full.63

and his principles have been summed up as:

...recalling Mencius’ doctrine of the nature’s innate goodness64

58 _{Charles A. Peterson. “Printing and the successful application of technology” in The Cambridge}

Encyclopedia of China, pp. 187-188, edited by Brian Hook and Denis Twitchett. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1991, p. 188.

59 _{Ian McMorran. “Confucianism” in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of China, pp. 301-304, edited by Brian}

Hook and Denis Twitchett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 304.

60 _{See Đoàn Trung Còn, Tam tự kinh, back cover.}

61 _{Wm. Theodore de Bary, Wing-tsit Chan and Burton Watson, eds. Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol. 1 of 2.}

New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1960, p. 509.

62 _{Đoàn Trung Còn, Tam tự kinh, p. 7.}

63 _{Wm. Theodore de Bary (et al), Sources of Chinese Tradition, p. 510.} 64 _{Ian McMorran, “Confucianism”, p.304.}

Why should the Việt Minh, an organisation founded on the ideals of independence and nationalism and by people with Marxist leanings, refer to a Confucian text for the title of one of their booklets of principles? In Vietnamese the title would be something like Sách năm chữ của Việt Minh but instead it is given a Sino-Vietnamese title Việt Minh Ngũ tự kinh, recalling the Confucian title Tam tự kinh.65 _{I think that one answer to this can be}

found in the prestige that Confucianism enjoyed in the Vietnamese countryside, and a certain similarity between Confucian and Marxist thought, at least in the perceptions of some Vietnamese. Nguyễn Khắc Viện writes:

Marxism was not baffling to Confucians in that it concentrated man’s thoughts on political and social problems. By defining man as the total of his social relationships, Marxism hardly came as a shock to the Confucian scholar who had always considered the highest aim of man to be the fulfilment of his social obligations.66

Further, local village scholars were often the first leaders of independence movements:

During the second half of the nineteenth century, Vietnam faced colonial aggression. The split between mandarins and [village] scholars widened. The monarchy and mandarins hurried to make a pact with the enemy because the throne and mandarins’ ranks were more important to them than national independence. Yet, despite the court’s appeals to “remain calm,” scholars in the villages, confident of support from the people, and heir to many centuries of national struggle, proceeded to mobilize the peasants and organize the resistance. Scholars from North and South became warriors67

It seems that at least some of the leadership of the Việt Minh saw that organisation as something of the custodians of the Confucian ideal, at least as it was expressed by village scholars of the late nineteenth Century. David Marr points out that there was a number of texts produced in the 1920s and 1930s that “attempt[ed] to return directly to the Neo- Confucian classics” by republishing them, or commentaries on them, in the quốc ngữ script rather than the original nôm or Chinese scripts.68 _{Many of these texts reflected on matters}

65 _{tam is Sino-Vietnamese for “three”, and ngũ is Sino-Vietnamese for “five”.}

66 _{Nguyen Khac Vien (1962). “Confucianism and Marxism in Vietnam”, translated by Linda Yarr, Jayne}

Werner and Tran Tuong Nhu in Tradition and Revolution in Vietnam, pp. 15-52, edited by David Marr and Jayne Werner. (Originally published: La Pensée, No. 105, October 1962). Berkeley: Indochina Resource Center, 1974, p. 47.

67 _{ibid., p. 41.}

68 _{Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, p. 89. See also pp. 88-93 for wider discussion on “Traditionalist}

related to human relationships in the Neo-Confucian context, so the idea of going back to traditional sources was not particular to the Việt Minh.

Although the title of the Việt Minh Ngũ tự kinh shares something of a Confucian heritage with Tam tự kinh, that is not quite the end of similarities between the two

publications. The Tam tự kinh is concerned with social organisation, an individual’s place in society, the value of education and the correct way to raise children. The Việt Minh Ngũ tự kinh mainly covers the political situation in Vietnam, yet it does express the aspirations of what life could be like in an independent Vietnam and is concerned with aspect of morality and ethics. It was, as mentioned above, used for educational purposes.

Verses one and two of the Ngũ tự kinh are concerned with the colonial situation in Vietnam and succinctly sum up the reasons why the French and Japanese troops are there, according to the Việt Minh account. That is, the French are cruel robbers and oppressors, whereas the Japanese are simply thieves. “They make of us fools” and push opium and alcohol on to the people destroying Vietnamese society. The third verse of the Ngũ tự kinh uses much of the same language as the Lịch sử Nước ta discussed earlier in this chapter, referring to anh hùng dân tộc (people’s heroes), and talk of the non sông tổ quốc (hills and rivers of the fatherland) coming out to fight the invader. This is visionary material using a powerful symbol of the land – the hills and rivers of Vietnam, a symbol also widely used in the Lịch sử Nước ta, but in a more poetic vein there, and in Vietnamese (giang-san) rather than the Sino-Việt of this publication.

Verse four describes the guerilla tactics that will be employed to defeat the enemy, the destruction of the infrastructure of roads and telecommunications that will leave the enemy with no “ears” or “legs”. It foreshadows the scorched earth tactics of keeping food from the enemy and the surprise attacks on the enemy military. Verses five and six describe the “new utopia” of an independent Vietnam. The new Vietnam will be much more egalitarian, the people will elect the Government, significantly the ethnic minorities – the Thổ, the Mường, the Mán and the Nùng will have the same rights as the majority Kinh. In the way that the verse is written, the Kinh are simply another ethnic group, with no special advantages over other groups, and mutual love and respect will be their guide.

There will be equal rights for women, fair pay for all, taxes (unspecified) will be abolished and farmers will own land and cattle.

Verse seven discusses the way to increase the membership of the Việt Minh and the other affiliated cứu quốc (save the country) organisations. This is to be done by a mixture of propaganda and private networking, but people would be admitted only after “thorough investigation”, presumably to try to prevent Việt gian (spies) from entering. In later years, the Việt gian were to prove to be a big problem and some of the later propaganda was prepared to address the recruitment by the French colonisers of Vietnamese for spying and as members of the army. Recruitment to the Việt Minh is to be done by, first of all, “making friends (or acquaintances)”, investigating them and, only then, speaking openly with them about the need to fight the French and Japanese and retaking the country.

Verses eight and nine describe the Việt Minh organisation and rules. It is a secret, cellular organisation, each cell being made up of three to nine members, with a cell leader in each one. Each cell meets twice a month and monthly dues must be paid, although there is no mention of how much this is. There is an executive committee for each two to three cells. The last line of verse eight, in common with the thought behind Lịch sử Nước ta, declares that “The urgent business is unity”, and this is reinforced by a declaration that majority decisions must be followed by everyone and that “All the work of the association must be done [completed]”. People who join must take the organisation seriously and give up some of their time and money.69

Verse nine sets out what is expected of người cách mệnh (revolutionaries), that is, members of the “inner circle”, probably members of the Indochinese Communist Party. True revolutionaries:

• are called upon to sacrifice;

• must be faithful, resolute and united;

• must help and love their comrades as brother and sister;

69 _{During the early part of the twentieth Century, much of the Vietnamese peasantry had become}

“monetised” due to the taxation requirements of the French Colonial Government. See the comments in Chapter 2 concerning this issue.

• withstand criticism, and happily welcome others, even their critics.

The call for the revolutionary man to have particular virtues recalls the five cardinal virtues outlined in the Tam tự kinh:

• humaneness, mercy or charity (nhân); • righteousness (nghĩa);

• propriety, correct behaviour (lễ); • intellect, knowledge (trí);

• sincerity, trust (tín).70

There is more than this in the Tam tự kinh about the ideal person, but this will suffice for now. Both booklets have a vision of the possibility of the development of an ideal person, although the visions are not quite congruent. The Việt Minh booklet does not use the archaic language of the Tam tự kinh and expresses itself in more functional terms, describing what the ideal revolutionary must do, rather than prescribing what qualities must be possessed. If the revolutionary man can be found, then the power of the

association will be “extraordinary”. The description of the true revolutionary is similar to that used by Hồ Chí Minh in an earlier work of his. In the frontispiece of his publication Đường Cách Mạng (“The Road to Revolution”),71 _{produced between 1925 and 1927, he}

described the ideal revolutionary man:

Tư cách một người Cách mệnh Characteristics of a Revolutionary

Tự mình phải: Cần kiệm.

Hoà mà không tư. Cả quyết sửa lỗi mình.

Cẩn thận mà không nhút nhát. Hay hỏi.

Nhẫn nại (chịu khó) Hay nghiên cứu, xem xét. Vị công vong tư.

Không hiếu danh, không kiêu ngạo. Nói thì phải làm.

Giữ chủ nghĩa cho vững.

In himself he must be: Industrious and thrifty. Friendly and not selfish.

Determined to correct all mistakes. Careful but not timid.

Always questioning. Patient.

Constantly researching and seeking. For the public, not for oneself. Not vain, nor arrogant.

Acts on his word. Holds beliefs faithfully.

70 _{Đoàn Trung Còn, Tam tự kinh, pp. 22,24.}

71 _{See Hồ Chí Minh. Dường Kách mệnh [Đường Cách mạng]. (Originally published: 1927). Hải Hưng: Ủy ban}

Kiểm tra Trung ương, 1975, p. ii. Note that in the original publication, Hồ Chí Minh uses a spelling which is unusual by modern Vietnamese standards, where the title would be Đường Cách Mạng.

Tư cách một người Cách mệnh Characteristics of a Revolutionary

Hy sinh.

Ít lòng tham muốn về vật chất. Bí mật.

Sacrifices.

Little desirous of material things. Keeps secrets.

Đối người phải:

Với từng người thì khoan thứ. Với đoàn thể thì nghiêm. Có lòng bày về cho người. Trực mà không táo bạo. Hay xem xét người.

Dealing with other people: Be forgiving, understanding. Follow strictly the organisation.72

Be generous to others. Just but not bold.

Always enquire about people. Làm việc phải:

Xem xét hoàn cảnh kỹ càng. Quyết đoán.

Dũng cảm.

Phục tùng đoàn thể.

Their work must be:

Investigate circumstances carefully. Be resolved.

Brave.

Comply with the organisation’s rules.

David Marr notes that, of these “The only maxim that might have been out of place in a Confucian primer or a boy scout manual was ‘Know how to keep secrets’”.73 _{Peter De}

Caro points to the Neo-Confucian elements of Hồ Chí Minh’s rhetoric and asserts that he wished to portray himself as a “sage man” or Chun Tzu.74 _{However, a careful analysis of}

the original sources shows that, while Hồ Chí Minh used Neo-Confucian elements in his writing – presumably to appeal to his intended audience – he was more concerned with using these factors to stir nationalist sentiment than in making an argument for

establishment of a Neo-Confucian polity. He was obviously imbued with deep Neo- Confucian personal values, as DeCaro has shown, and these were with him from his childhood, as William Duiker has shown.75 _{In any case, Hồ Chí Minh’s personal}

characteristics, by all accounts, seem to have transcended any narrow ideological description.76

72 _{The organisation referred to here is the Hội Việt Nam Cách Mệnh Thanh Niên, the Vietnamese}

Revolutionary Youth League, formed by Hồ Chí Minh in early June 1925. See William J. Duiker. Ho Chi

Minh. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2000, p. 121. 73 _{Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, p. 375.}

74 _{Peter A. DeCaro. Rhetoric of Revolt: Ho Chi Minh's Discourse for Revolution. Westport, Connecticut:}

Praeger, 2003, pp. 51-85. DeCaro obviously has a great deal of respect for Hồ Chí Minh, but he neither reads nor speaks Vietnamese and makes his claims based on some translated sources – see DeCaro,

Rhetoric of Revolt, p. 113.

75 _{See Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, pp. 17-24.} 76 _{See DeCaro, Rhetoric of Revolt, pp. 69-75.}

The front page of one of the original copies of Đường Cách Mạng is shown at

Illustration 4-5.77 _{The handwriting and the drawing are those of Hồ Chí Minh and can be}

compared with the copy of Lịch sử Nước Ta shown in Appendix B and discussed above. The Đường Cách Mạng was written in the mid-1920s when Hồ Chí Minh was in his mid-30s and the orthography of the Vietnamese language was still developing – Hồ Chí Minh uses “D” instead of “Đ”, “f” instead of “ph”, “k” where modern orthography would use “c” and the use of “Z”. It was only later, during the Việt Minh literacy campaign, that modern orthography became more widely-known and standardised.

According to the Ngũ tự kinh the Việt Minh organisation is not for everyone to join as a formal member, it has an element of exclusivity about it, and yet it is working for all, as it’s vision for the new independent Vietnam as portrayed in verses five and six shows.

77 _{The copy from which the picture was taken was a transcription made by the Central Inspectorate}

Committee in Hải Hưng in Nam Định province, where an original copy was found in the archives in 1975. When the transcription was made, the original front cover was attached.

Nevertheless, this organisation is seen as a leader in the struggle for independence and support is requested from everyone.

Summary

David Marr sums up Hồ Chí Minh’s approach to propaganda:

...Ho Chi Minh set the tone of Viet Minh propaganda by giving Vietnamese