President Ho Chi Minh spent time reading, commenting on and editing articles of the Vietnam News Agency. - Photo: VNA/VNS
HANOI: Long before he became the revered leader of an independent Vietnam, President Ho Chi Minh was a journalist with a mission: to give a voice to the voiceless, to expose injustice and to connect the Vietnamese struggle with the broader currents of global liberation.
His pen, as sharp as his political instincts, became his first weapon in the long fight against colonialism.
A documentary titled Journalist Ho Chi Minh, produced by the People’s Army Cinema in 2020, highlighted that President Ho was not only an eminent political leader and a great cultural figure, but also a brilliant journalist who laid the groundwork for Vietnam's revolutionary press.
The establishment and growth of Vietnamese journalism have been firmly rooted in the ideology of revolutionary Nguyen Ai Quoc, an alias of President Ho since its earliest days.
By the end of 1917, President Ho Chi Minh, then known as Nguyen Ai Quoc, embarked on his revolutionary journalist journey.
From those early days in France, he clearly understood that the press was a sharp moral weapon against the enemy and a vital means of communication for promoting revolutionary movements.
He began writing articles that denounced colonialism and fought for the independence and justice of colonised peoples worldwide, including those in Vietnam.
In 1922, after overcoming numerous challenges, Nguyen Ai Quoc, and his comrades in the Intercolonial Union established the newspaper Le Paria in France.
The preface of its first issue, published on April 1, 1922, stated its motto as a "fighting weapon, its mission is clear: to free the people".
Nguyen Ai Quoc's contributions to Le Paria were tremendous, and his writing remains compelling to this day, according to French writer and historian Jean Lacouture in the documentary.
President Ho Chi Minh reading a Chinese newspaper during a visit to China in 1953. - Photo: VNA/VNS
He described the writing as that of a master strategist.
The documentary noted that Nguyen Ai Quoc’s articles in Le Paria resonated deeply with readers in the colonies, earning widespread support and praise.
Letters poured in from around the world, containing donations for the newspaper and requests for long-term subscriptions.
A fateful bond
“Ho Chi Minh never identified himself as a poet, journalist or writer. Instead, he only considered himself as someone with a 'fateful bond' with the press, a political commentator, a propagandist and a professional revolutionary," said Bui Dinh Phong, PhD, associate professor at the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics.
Spanning 50 years of journalistic activities, President Ho wrote over 2,000 articles, more than 270 poems, and 500 pages of memoirs and short stories in different languages, all dedicated to one sole mandate: national liberation.
"The great revolutionary journalist Ho Chi Minh established a legacy of record-breaking achievements that few in his field have matched over the last century,” Phong told a national seminar recently held to mark 100 years of revolutionary journalism in the country.
He founded or co-founded numerous publications, including Le Paria (1922), Thanh Nien (1925), Linh Kach Menh (1927), and Vietnam Doc Lap (1941), among others.
Furthermore, he contributed articles to many domestic and international newspapers, writing in various languages such as Vietnamese, French, Russian and Chinese, Phong said.
According to the article Keeping the Revolutionary Fire Through Each Letter, published in the Quan doi nhan dan (People's Army) newspaper in 2021, Nguyen Ai Quoc’s earliest piece in archive was Van de ban xu (The Indigenous Question). It was published in the French daily newspaper L'Humanité on August 2, 1919.
His final article Nang cao trach nhiem cham soc va giao duc thieu nien, nhi dong (Enhancing Responsibility for the Care and Education of Teenagers and Children), was run in the Nhan Dan (The People) newspaper on June 1, 1969.
“His themes, content, forms and writing styles were incredibly diverse and rich, featuring a unique and creative authorial technique.
"However, they were consistently unified in their guiding principles, purpose, viewpoints and political ideology," added Phong.
An exceptional journalist
In an article in Tap chi Lich su Dang (Journal of Vietnam Communist Party History, issue No 4, 2010), Hoa Dinh Nghia of the Ho Chi Minh Museum wrote that Ho Chi Minh's articles always demonstrated profound knowledge, rich life experience and a swift grasp of information and current events.
"His writing style was concise, simple and clear. When writing for newspapers, he always upheld a high sense of social responsibility, thinking deeply about his content and being meticulous with his words and ideas to ensure that the masses could easily understand and engage with the information," Nghia wrote.
"In his early days as a writer, he would revise an article many times to perfect it. At first, he would write at length, then edit it down to be concise and succinct while still retaining all necessary and important content," Nghia wrote.
"This became such a habit that even as President, after finishing an article, he would often read it aloud to those around him for feedback.”
One of the most important reasons Ho Chi Minh achieved the stature of a brilliant journalist, according to Phong of the National Academy of Politics, was that when writing, one must always understand who they are writing for and what the purpose is.
Some sketches by Nguyen Ai Quoc (1922-1942) at the Vietnam Press Museum in Hanoi. - Photo: VNS
Ho Chi Minh's career and journalistic legacy provided a convincing answer to these questions, Phong said.
"Ho Chi Minh wrote for numerous newspapers, each with different contexts, audiences, purposes and methods of expression," he said.
"His experience in journalism was a reverse experience: he first learned to write journalism in French, then in Chinese and only after that did he learn to write in Vietnamese."
During his years in France, when writing for the newspaper La Vie Ouvrière (The Worker's Life) and even when he was the editor-in-chief, publisher, distributor and seller for Le Paria, his primary target audience was the fellow oppressed and the Vietnamese workers who could not read French.
In the newly released photo book 100 Years of Vietnam’s Revolutionary Press, published by the Vietnam News Agency Publishing House, it is noted that after a period of study and work in the Soviet Union in 1923-1924, where he wrote for Pravda (The Truth) and other publications, Nguyen Ai Quoc moved to Guangzhou, China, in November 1924.
His mission was to prepare for the launch of a new political newspaper and to train a new generation of Vietnamese revolutionaries.
The following year, he founded the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League and launched its official publication, the Thanh Nien (Youth) newspaper.
This milestone marked the birth of Vietnam's revolutionary press. - Vietnam News/ANN
