• Growing up in the French colony of Indochina, Ho Chi Minh recognized that the liberty and equality the French so gloriously touted at home were not shared with their colonial peoples, nor were the benefits of a capitalist economy. He therefore devoted his life to an independent Vietnam, under a socialist political and economic system that, at least in theory, promised his people freedom, equality, and more prosperous lives. In Turkey in the early twentieth century Mustafa Kemal sought to create a modern independent nation, free from the rule of Ottoman despots and free from the stifling traditions and customs that he believed prevented Turkey from taking its place among the leading nations of the world.

Ho Chi Minh, “The Path Which Led Me to Leninism”

“After World War I, I made my living in Paris, [and] would distribute leaflets denouncing the crimes committed by the French colonialists in Viet Nam. At that time, I supported the October Revolution only instinctively, not yet grasping all its historic importance. I loved and admired Lenin because he was a great patriot who liberated his compatriots. . . .

The reason for my joining the French Socialist Party was that [they] had shown . . . sympathy toward me, toward the struggle of the oppressed peoples. But I understood neither what was a party, a trade-union, nor what was Socialism or Communism.

Heated discussions were then taking place . . . about the question of whether the Socialist Party should . . . join Lenin’s Third International? . . . What I wanted most to know . . . which International sides with the peoples of colonial countries? . . . A comrade gave me Lenin’s “Thesis on the National and Colonial Questions” . . . to read.

There were political terms difficult to understand in this thesis. But by dint of reading it again and again, finally I could grasp the main part of it. What emotion, enthusiasm, clear-sightedness, and confidence it instilled into me! I was overjoyed to tears. . . . I shouted out aloud . . . : “Dear martyrs, compatriots! This is what we need, this is the path to our liberation!”

After then, I had entire confidence in Lenin. . . . From then on, I also plunged into the debates. . . . My only argument was: “If you do not condemn colonialism, if you do not side with the colonial people, what kind of revolution are you waging?” . . .

At first, patriotism, not yet Communism, led me to have confidence in Lenin. By studying Marxism-Leninism parallel with participation in practical activities, I gradually came upon the fact that only Socialism and Communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery.

There is a legend, in our country as well as in China, on the miraculous “Book of the Wise.” When facing great difficulties, one opens it and finds a way out. Leninism is not only a miraculous “book of the wise,” a compass for us Vietnamese revolutionaries and people: it is also the radiant sun illuminating our path to final victory, to Socialism and Communism.”

Mustafa Kemal, Speech to the Congress of the People’s Republican Party, 1927

“Among the Ottoman rulers there were some who endeavored to form a gigantic empire by seizing Germany and western Europe. One of these rulers hoped to unite the whole Islamic world in one body. . . . There is nothing in history to show how the policy of Pan-Islamism could have succeeded. . . .

In order that our nation should be able to live a happy, strenuous, and permanent life, . . . the State should pursue an exclusively national policy . . . : To work within our national boundaries for the real happiness and welfare of the nation . . . and expect from the civilized world civilized human treatment, friendship based on mutuality. . . . The people of New Turkey have no reason to think of anything else but their own existence and their own welfare. . . .

It was necessary to abolish the fez, which sat on our heads as a sign of ignorance, of fanaticism, of hatred to progress and civilization, and to adopt in its place the hat, the customary headdress of the whole civilized world, thus showing . . . that no difference existed in the manner of thought between the Turkish nation and the whole family of civilized mankind.

While the law regarding the Restoration of Order was in force there took place also the closing of the Tekkes [small Sufi teaching mosques], of the convents, and of the mausoleums, as well as the abolition of all sects and all kinds of titles such as Sheikh, Dervish, . . . Occultist, Magician, Mausoleum Guard, etc. . . . These measures [were necessary] . . . in order to prove that our nation as a whole was no primitive nation, filled with superstitions and prejudices.

Could a civilized nation tolerate a mass of people who let themselves be led by the nose by a herd of Sheikhs, Dedes, Seids, . . . Babas and Emirs; who entrusted their destiny and their lives to chiromancers [palm readers], magicians, dice-throwers and amulet sellers? Ought one to conserve . . . in the Turkish Republic, elements and institutions such as those . . . ? Would one not therewith have committed the greatest, most irreparable error to the cause of progress and reawakening?

Accordingly we [act] only from one point of view . . . : to raise the nation on to that step on which it is justified in standing in the civilized world . . . and in addition to destroy the spirit of despotism for ever.”

Sources: Ho Chi Minh, On Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920–66, ed. Bernard B. Fall (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967), pp. 5–7. Used by permission of Dorothy Fall; Mustapha Kemal, A Speech Delivered by Ghazi Mustapha Kemal (Leipzig, Germany: K. F. Koehler, 1929), pp. 377–379, 593, 721–723.

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