El Servicio Nacional de Contratación Pública ( SERCOP)

The agitation materials from the period prior to 1941 were mainly in the form of leaflets – other forms of propaganda and mobilisation materials generally appeared after 1941 and are discussed in later chapters. I have access to three sources for the leaflets: (a) photographs I have taken at libraries in Vietnam and at the Museum of the Revolution in Hanoi; (b) a collection from the Vietnamese National Archives Number 1, published in

69 _{Quinn-Judge, Ho Chi Minh, pp.172-173.} 70 _{ibid., p. 173.}

2001;71 _{(c) a collection from the Museum of the Revolution in Hanoi, published in 2004.}72

The collection from the Archives is replete with the dates and places of production of the material, but the Museum collection indicates dates mainly in the form of time periods, only 19 percent of the leaflets in the collection having a specified date of production, and the place of production is very rarely indicated. Neither of the collections has had a large print run (800 copies printed for the Archives collection and 600 for that from the

Museum), hence copies may not be easily available. A possible source which I have not been able to access is material in French Archives, such as captured documents and mobilisation material. The numbers of leaflets for different years, where the date of production is known, is shown in Table 2-2 and only 28 of the 146 leaflets from the Museum’s collection are represented in the table.

Table 2-2: Numbers of leaflets by year

Year Archives Collection Museum Collection Total Percent 1929 12 1 13 11% 1930 31 1 32 26% 1931 0 4 4 3% 1932 0 1 1 1% 1933 0 0 0 0% 1934 0 0 0 0% 1935 0 1 1 1% 1936 33 1 34 28% 1937 0 0 0 0% 1938 0 0 0 0% 1939 2 2 4 3% 1940 4 0 4 3% 1941 5 4 9 7% 1942 6 1 7 6% 1943 0 0 0 0% 1944 1 4 5 4%

71 _{Dương Văn Khảm, Ngô Thiếu Hiệu, Đào Thị Diến, Vũ Văn Thuyên and Lê Huy Tuấn (Editorial Board).} Tuyên truyền cách mạng trước năm 1945, sưu tập tài liệu lưu trữ. Hanoi: NXB Lao Động for Cục Lưu Trữ

Nhà Nứơc Trung Tâm Lưu Trữ Quốc Gia I, 2001.

72 _{Phạm Mai Hùng, Triệu Hiển, Trần Hải Nhị, Nguyễn Thị Sáu, Nguyễn Trọng Hậu and Ngô Thị Ba}

(Compilers). Truyền Đơn Cách Mạng Trước Tháng 9 Năm 1945 [Revolutionary Leaflets prior to September 1945]. Hà Nội: NXB Chính Trị Quốc Gia for the Bảo Tàng Cách Mạng Việt Nam, 2004.

Year Archives Collection Museum Collection Total Percent 1945 0 8 8 7% Totals 94 28 122 100%

Because of this uncertainty surrounding the dates of leaflets in the Museum’s collection, only general remarks can be made about patterns seen in the table. None of the leaflets in either the Museum or Archive collections, nor those in my photographic collection, relate directly to the Yên Bái mutiny and uprising but there is evidence that some agitation material was produced in association with that event.73 _{Apart from that, there are obvious}

peaks in the production of leaflets at the time of the other two important events of the 1930s, the Nghệ-Tĩnh Soviets in 1930-1931 (40 percent of leaflets were produced in this period, if 1929 is included), and the Popular Front Government in France in 1936 (accounting for 28 percent of the leaflets that have survived), well over half (that is, 68 percent) of the production of leaflets occurring during the years of these two events.

Some of the early leaflets and pamphlets urge the celebration of particular events, many of which are international events, not directly related to Vietnam. The events typically being commemorated in the earliest posters are chosen from the Russian or international revolutionary history. Of the 146 leaflets reproduced in the Museum collection 22 (15 percent) commemorate such events (see Table 2-3) and all of these commemorative leaflets were produced prior to 1941. Some of the propaganda materials refer to the First World War (the “Great War”) and, in this material, that war is usually referred to as the “Imperial War”, the war where the imperial powers used ordinary working folk to do the fighting. The Russian workers are celebrated because they took Russia out of the fighting and formed the Soviet Government.

73 _{See Hy Van Luong, Revolution in the Village, pp. 27, 29, 99-100 for first-hand references by Hy Van Luong’s}

Table 2-3: Leaflets Commemorating Particular Events

Commemoration Event Number of leaflets

International Labour Day, 1st May 4

Russian October Revolution 1917 8

International Women’s Day 8th March 2

Start of the First World War 1st August 3

Paris Commune of 1871, 18th March74 ₂

Rural Nghệ-Tĩnh Soviets in Vietnam 1930-1931 3

The focus on specific events and on international matters in the agitation materials diminished as time went by and, as the Second World War affected Indochina more and more, the leaflets became concerned with the situation in Indochina. Of the leaflets produced between 1941 and 1945, only nine percent of them were concerned exclusively with international events (see Table 2-4), whereas nearly forty percent of the leaflets produced prior to this had an international focus.

Table 2-4: Leaflets concerned with Indochina only

Period Number of Leaflets Number concerned solely with Indochina Proportion concerned solely with Indochina 1924-1935 68 44 65% 1936-1940 11 5 45% 1941-1945 67 61 91% Total 146 110 75%

74 _{The Paris Commune was a local government formed in Paris at the end of the Franco-Prussian war. It}

lasted from 18 March 1871 to 28 May 1871. “The working class became politically isolated and the socialist movement [in Europe] virtually outlawed” as a result of the Commune, but the Commune has been celebrated since by socialists and its failure seen as a cogent reason for propaganda among the people. See Robert Gildea. Barricades and Borders: Europe 1800-1914, 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp 223-225, the quote from p. 225.