Ho Chi Minh

Born as Nguyen Tat Thanh and known by several names associated with his political career, Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) was a revolutionary against French rule in then-Indochina, who became President of the (Communist) Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) after the partition of Indochina in 1954. He remained the national leader, certainly symbolically and at least part of the time operationally, through the rest of his life.

While he died before the forcible unification of North Vietnam and South Vietnam in 1975, his symbolic importance was such that the former Southern capital of Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

Early life

Born to a former French colonial official who had resigned in protest, his early education was in Ho attended school in Hue and Phan Thiet. He traveled abroad, working as a cook on a French ship, in 1911, and then worked in Europe while participating in politics.

Following World War I, underpseudonym Nguyen Ai Quoc (Nguyen the Patriot), he was among te founders of the French Communist Party, received training in Moscow, and went to China in 1924, where he organized a revolutionary organization among Indochinese exiles.

Ejected from China in an anticommunist crackdown, he returned, in 1930, and founded the Indochinese Communist Party.