Founding of the Communist Party of Vietnam

Also called: Indochinese Communist Party

Nguyễn Ái Quốc (Ho Chi Minh) united several communist groups in Hong Kong into the Communist Party of Vietnam, renamed the Indochinese Communist Party later that year.

Under French rule in Vietnam, a new generation emerged after the independence efforts of Phan Bội Châu and others were crushed. Nguyễn Ái Quốc submitted a petition for Vietnamese rights to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, took part in founding the French Communist Party and worked in Moscow. In 1925 he set up the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League in Guangzhou, and on 3 February 1930 in Hong Kong he merged the rival communist groups into the Communist Party of Vietnam. In October, at the Comintern’s direction, it became the Indochinese Communist Party.

In the same year the Yên Bái mutiny of the nationalist Vietnamese Nationalist Party (February) and the communist-led peasant risings in Nghệ An and Hà Tĩnh (the Nghệ-Tĩnh soviets) were ruthlessly suppressed by France. In 1941 the party formed the League for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet Minh), a national front against Japan and France, and on 2 September 1945 Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi.