Ho Chi Minh
May 19, 1890 – September 2, 1969
Ho Chi Minh was a Vietnamese communist revolutionary and statesman who founded the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945. He served as its first president from 1946 until his death in 1969 and as its first prime minister from 1945 to 1955. A committed Marxist-Leninist, he played a central role in establishing the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930.
Biography
Ho Chi Minh was born Nguyễn Sinh Cung in central Vietnam in 1890. In 1911 he left for the West and worked in France, where he became a founding member of the French Communist Party. He trained in Moscow and organised communist movements in Asia, founding the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930.
He returned to Vietnam in 1941 and founded the Viet Minh to fight the Japanese and French. On 2 September 1945 he declared the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The war with France ended in the Viet Minh victory at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, and the Geneva Accords left him in control of the North.
As president of North Vietnam he led the struggle to unite the country against the American-backed South. He died in 1969, six years before North Vietnamese troops took Saigon, which was renamed Ho Chi Minh City.
Offices held
Trường Chinh Succeeded by
Lê Duẩn
Affiliations
Party membership
- Jan 1, 1919 – Jan 1, 1921 French Section of the Workers' International
- Jan 1, 1921 – Jan 1, 1925 French Communist Party
- Jan 1, 1951 – Jan 1, 1969 Communist Party of Vietnam
