Anarchism in Vietnam first emerged in the early 20th century, as the Vietnamese, through demonstrations, strikes and armed insurrection, continued their struggle against the Frenchcolonial government and itspuppet feudal dynasty. Some popular anti-colonial figures such asPhan Bội Châu andNguyễn An Ninh were exposed to strands ofanarchist thought inJapan,China, andFrance. But in the course of the 1920s and 30s, such influence these may have had upon popular movements were more than countered by theMarxism-Leninism of the emergingVietnamese communist movement.[1] In recent years, Anarchist ideas in Vietnam has attracted new adherents.
The roots of anarchism in Vietnam lay in the early resistance to French colonial rule, organized among various secret societies. Among these were theHeaven and Earth Society, which in 1884 had assassinated a colonial collaborator in Saigon.[2] Other attacks against the French colonial authorities included theCần Vương movement, which attempted to overthrow the French during the late 1880s, theHanoi Poison Plot, in which indigenous Vietnamese troops attempted to assassinate the entire French garrison in theCitadel of Hanoi, as well as subsequent anti-colonial uprisings inCochinchina andTonkin.
Official French colonial publications implied that these Vietnamese secret societies and religious sects could be easily coopted by revolutionaries, due to their status as indigenous methods of organizing, echoingMikhail Bakunin's claim thatsocial bandits were "instinctive revolutionaries".[3]
Anarchism was first introduced to the Vietnamese anti-colonial movement during the 1900s[1] by the early nationalist leaderPhan Bội Châu.[4] In January 1905, Phan moved toJapan, where he was exposed to a variety of new political ideas being propagated among Chinese expatriates, including theconstitutionalism ofLiang Qichao, therepublicanism of theTongmenghui, and the anarchism of theTokyo group.[5] Initially autilitarian, Phan began to rapidly move through a variety of political ideologies and made acquaintance with a number of politically diverse groups and individuals in Japan.[6] In 1907, Phan founded the Constitutionalist Association (Vietnamese:Cong Hien Hoi), an organization of Vietnamese expatriate students which advocated forconstitutional monarchy, but by 1908 it was forcibly disbanded by the Japanese authorities, at the request of the French. That same year, Phan joined the Asian Friendship Association, an organization founded by the exiled Chinese republicans and anarchists, as well asJapanese socialists. The Association was largely directed byLiu Shipei, a prominent member of the Tokyo anarchist group and editor of its newspaperNatural Justice, and included many other Chinese anarchists such as Chang Chi, who was a close friend of Phan's.[7]
But by 1909, Phan Bội Châu was ordered to leave Japan and spent the subsequent years drifting around East Asia. After the overthrow of theQing dynasty during the1911 revolution, Phan was invited to the newly establishedRepublic of China by his old Chinese republican friends from Japan,Zhang Binglin andChen Qimei. In January 1912, Phan arrived in China and settled inGuangdong, now under the governorship of his friendHu Hanmin, who was actively providing a place of refuge for Vietnamese exiles. Here, with the financial aid of the Guangzhou anarchistLiu Shifu, Phan formed a new republican and nationalist organization called theVietnamese Restoration League (Vietnamese:Việt Nam Quang Phục Hội), modeled afterSun Yat-Sen'sTongmenghui and drawing its name from Zhang Binglin'sRestoration Society. Shifu also encouraged Phan to establish theAssociation for the Revitalization of China, an organization dedicated to soliciting Chinese support for the independence movements in colonized Asian countries, includingIndochina,India,Burma andKorea.[8] Upon moving toShanghai, Phan joined theWorldwide League for Humanity, a clandestine anarchist organization which went unrecognized by the newBeiyang government due to its "extreme-left program."[9]
As more Vietnamese expatriates joined up with internationalist organizations in China, they increasingly came into contact with anarchist individuals and groups.[10] Phan Bội Châu himself, who had developed ties with the Tokyo strand of Chinese anarchism led by Zhang Binglin and Liu Shipei, was inspired by their traditionalist approach to anarchism and socialism.[11] Phan was particularly inspired by the anarchist positions onanti-imperialism anddirect action, leading him to defend the violent overthrow of the French colonial authorities, even to the chagrin of his republican allies like Hu Hanmin and Chen Qimei. Developing onpropaganda of the deed, Phan admired past assassination attempts against state officials and encouraged the targeting of French colonial officials, leading to a series of bombings inHanoi, which brought both increased publicity and reprisals against the Restoration League. Several of the League's activists were executed, internationalist organizations in China began to disintegrate and Phan himself was arrested and imprisoned by the Beiyang government.[12] While Phan was in prison, Liu Shifu died of tuberculosis in 1915, Chen Qimei was assassinated in 1916 and Zhang Binglin abandoned anarchism and gave up on political pursuits, leaving Phan politically isolated by the time of his release in February 1917. After briefly coming under the influence of a collaborationist advocate, Phan turned his interests towards socialism, inspired by the socialist currents of the Russian and Chinese revolutions.[13]
Following the end ofWorld War I, many more Vietnamese radicals went into exile, looking for knowledge that was being suppressed in French Indochina. People fromAnnam andTonkin largely went toChina orJapan, where they were exposed tosocial anarchist tendencies, whilst those fromCochinchina went toFrance, where they became influenced by French strands ofindividualist anarchism.[14] While Vietnamese expatriates that took up the Chinese strand of anarchism tended to employ aspects of traditionalism, expatriates inspired by French anarchism employed a more radical, youth-oriented and forward-looking philosophy.[15]
This diversity of opinion among Vietnamese anarchists was reflected upon the exiles' return to Vietnam. Political opposition was harshly repressed in the northern colonies of Annam and Tonkin, the anti-colonial movement turned to illegal activism and violent actions against colonial authorities. This, combined with the social anarchism brought back from abroad, laid the groundwork for the formation of political organizations. But in the southern colony of Cochinchina,freedom of the press existed, allowing Vietnamese radicals to participate in open political discourse, which defused political tensions. Upon his return from France, the individualist anarchistNguyễn An Ninh found a place in radical journalism, publishing political tracts in his journalLa Cloche Fêlée which encouraged the synthesis of the social struggle for individual liberties with the national struggle for Vietnamese independence.[5] Ninh called for the youth of Vietnam to reinvent itself and take control of its own destiny, becoming incredibly popular amongst his peers, as his rhetorical tone marked a stark contrast to the tendency towards moderation and compromise.[16] Ninh critiqued the Confucian family values of parental authority and gender inequality, as well as traditional morality, encouraging people to "break with the past and free themselves from tyranny of all kinds" and create a genuinely new culture.[17] He also attacked thebureaucratism of the colonial state, the native Vietnamese bourgeoisie and traditional Confucian society.[18] Ninh explicitly expounded his anarchist views in his articleOrder and Anarchy, quoting such authors asRabindranath Tagore andLeo Tolstoy.[19] Ninh's anti-authoritarianism also extended into his personal life, as he got himself into a number of conflicts with colonial officials.[20] In addition, while Ninh admired the Soviet Union, he positioned himself firmly against a Bolshevik-style revolution due to its human cost, preferring the route of individuals directly undermining social inequalities rather than partaking in revolutionary violence. However, as time passed, Ninh increasingly saw revolution as inevitable and began to agitate for organized resistance to achieve social justice.[21]
By this time, Phan Bội Châu's political influence was largely marginalized and his followers in the Restoration League began to leave him behind.[13] Despite attempts to keep the League alive, its prominent members started to criticize it for itselitism and called for Vietnamese revolutionaries to immerse themselves among the common people.[22] In 1923, the Society of Like Hearts (Vietnamese:Tam Tam Xa emerged from these critical anarchist currents of the revolutionary movement, inspired in particular by the works of Liu Shifu, and attempted to unite disparate Vietnamese anti-colonial activists around collective decision-making.[23] The Society also employed the use of direct action to destabilize the colonial administration, withPhạm Hồng Thái launching an assassination attempt againstGovernor-GeneralMartial Henri Merlin. Although the attempt itself failed, it reinvigorated the Vietnamese anti-colonial movement and Thái became known as a revolutionary martyr.[24] In response, Phan Bội Châu attempted to open a military academy to train Vietnamese revolutionaries, meeting with the anarchist elderCai Yuanpei and agents of theCommunist International to discuss this project, but it ultimately did not materialize.[25] With the Restoration League failing to reform itself along the lines of theChinese Nationalist Party and the Society of Hearts unable to successfully follow the assassination attempt, both organizations began to decline into irrelevance.[26] Following a reorganization in 1924, the Phuc Viet party attempted to mobilize public opinion towards anti-colonialism, with Ton Quang Phiet writing the articleSouthern Wind, highlighting the need for organization.[27] However, none of these anarchist organizations had presented a clear vision of a future society and had not developed a solid analysis of the present society, thus were left without a strong ideological foundation to unite behind.[28] In 1925, French agents seized Phan Bội Châu inShanghai. He was convicted of treason and spent the rest of his life under house arrest inHuế. On March 21, 1926, Nguyễn An Ninh was also arrested and only days later,Phan Chu Trinh died, causing mass protests against the government in April 1926.[29] It was in this atmosphere that a youngMarxist calledNguyễn Ái Quốc emerged onto the scene, having links to both strands of Vietnamese anarchism and taking on a role as a fierce critic of radicalism.[25]
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The first known instance of the introduction of the word "revolution" into Vietnam came through the writings of the Chinese activistLiang Qichao,[30] (1873-1929). In the midst of China'sNew Culture Movement of the 1910s and 1920s, Qichao advocated for a widespread cultural revolution, rather than for a violentpolitical revolution. The definition of "revolution" as adopted in Vietnam meant "changing theMandate of Heaven" (Vietnamese:cách mạng), which was interpreted in many different ways.[30] One of the first revolutionary tracts wasNguyễn Thượng Hiền'sOn Revolution, published on January 3, 1925, in which he called for a peaceful boycott movement, inspired by theSwadeshi movement organized byMohandas K. Gandhi, but in which he also failed to define the means nor the ends of a revolution in Vietnam.[31] The restriction of the distribution of French-language literature, such as documents of theEnlightenment or ofMarxism, meant that only French-educated urban elements were exposed to them, which reinforced the elitist tendencies that pervaded Vietnamese radicalism and ensured the continuation of the idea that the revolution was a top-down affair organized by intellectuals, rather than a mass uprising.[32]
Revolutionary socialist ideas began to work their way into Vietnam through the writings ofVladimir Lenin and its affinity with Vietnamese collectivist living. By the 1920s, socialism and anarchism,initially hyphenated and synonymous, grew into disparate ideological currents.[33] The rise of communism in China and in France provided considerably more exposure to pro-Bolshevik currents which, combined with the fallout from the suppression of theKronstadt rebellion of March 1921, increased hostility towards anarchist ideas.[34]
Nguyễn Ái Quốc (1890-1969) solicited aid from theCommunist International (founded in 1919) for support in the Vietnamese anti-colonial struggle, but himself was skeptical of forming an openly communist movement in the country, due to what he saw as a "political naïveté" among Vietnamese radicals. He particularly criticized Nguyễn Thượng Hiền's work, insisting on a particular need to rejectreformism and evolutionary change in favor of a political revolution, and further critiqued the use of non-violent boycott-movements.[35] In early 1925, Quốc established theVietnamese Revolutionary Youth League to organize young Vietnamese people towards collective action.[36] Anarchism, as championed byNguyễn An Ninh, still presented a significant challenge to Quốc's nascent communist movement, as it appealed to the same young people that the communists were trying to recruit. Quốc himself presented a fierce criticism of anarchism:[37]
Nowadays, anarchism is nonsense; to spread anarchism is as stupid as proposing to a dying man that he should fight in hand-to-hand combat, or run a race.
— Nguyễn Ái Quốc,Youth, 26 July 1925
Quốc also critiqued theanarcho-communism proposed byPeter Kropotkin, taking theOrthodox Marxist line that the state could only wither away after wealth was redistributed and the people re-educated.[38] Although he admired the ideal of creating a post-revolutionary society without laws, he concluded that anarchist theories would only serve to "sow disorder in society", particularly attempting to refute the anarchist critique ofpolitical parties, a critique which presented the greatest challenge to his own ambitions.[39]
Despite these challenges from the emerging communist movement,Nguyễn An Ninh (1900-1943) set about building a revolutionary populist movement to advance the anarchist cause, establishing theNguyen An Ninh Secret Society in 1926.[40]Ninh envisaged a revolutionary vanguard, but in contrast to the political-party system advanced byLeninism, he advocated a loose movement resulting from the moral and intellectual transformation of individuals.[41] He sharply criticized theauthoritarianism of political parties that sought power, while also growing more hostile to the bourgeoisie. Instead ofparty politics, he saw the path to an anti-authoritarian liberation movement as lying in anarchistpopulism, embracing the concept ofrevolutionary spontaneity. Ninh also followed theBakuninist school of thought regarding the revolutionary potential of thelumpenproletariat (a class which Orthodox Marxists largely neglected) and sought to organise the Vietnamese underclasses. Ninh's revolutionary populism began to spread rapidly throughHóc Môn, his home district ofSaigon.[2] Following Ninh's release from prison in 1927,[42]he began to actively agitate among workers and peasants in and around Saigon. In 1928 he began travelling from place to place by bicycle with the aid of local monks and peasants.[43] By March 1928 theSûreté had discovered the existence of Ninh's Secret Society, known publicly as the "Aspirations of Youth Party".[44] The Society recruited people into its mutual-friendship and mutual-aid associations while also (according to theSûreté) establishing militia structures organized by local villages.[45] Although the organizational structure of the Secret Society was very loose-knit, Ninh's associates managed to recruit up to 800 members from the workers and peasants of Saigon.[46] Ninh proposed that the Society merge with a number of revolutionary political parties. TheRevolutionary Party of New Vietnam turned down the proposal, preferring to retain a small and ideologically homogenous membership, despite the potential offered by the Society's much larger size. TheNationalist Party of Vietnam also rejected this proposal, as it was turned off by the extremism of Ninh's anarcho-populist politics.[47]
On September 28, 1928, Nguyễn An Ninh and his associatePhan Văn Hùm were arrested after an altercation with the police and given prison sentences. TheSûreté subsequently exposed Ninh's Secret Society and detained 500 of his followers, with 115 standing trial over the following year.[47] While Ninh was in prison, some activists managed to keep the Society going, but when aseries of uprisings, strikes and demonstrations broke out in March 1930, many of Ninh's followers gravitated to theIndochinese Communist Party[48] (founded in October 1930).
Upon his release from prison in October 1931, Nguyễn An Ninh returned to his organizing work in the countryside. Ninh served as a unifying non-partisan presence for anti-colonial elements to join in aunited front and legally oppose the government in the Saigon municipal elections of 1933, uniting members of the Communist Party with nationalists, Trotskyists and anarchists. They rallied support through the publication of the newspaperLa Lutte and succeeded in electing two members of the alliance to the Saigon city council.[49] In October 1934, Ninh revived theLa Lutte collaboration to run various campaigns and participate in elections, "focused squarely on the plight of the urban poor, the workers and peasant labourers."[50]
In theCochinchinese parliamentary election of March 1935, theLa Lutte group received 17% of the vote,[51] although they failed to win a seat.[52] There was also aLa Lutte candidacy that ran in the May 1935 Saigon municipal election, in which four members of the alliance were elected, but three were invalidated due to their communist sympathies. The alliance also went on to organize a number of strikes in the subsequent years.[51]
However, the united front was soon brought to an end in 1936, when thenewly electedPopular Front government failed to deliver on its promises of colonial reform.[53][54] The Trotskyists led byTạ Thu Thâu, who took an oppositionist stance towards the new French government, soon became the dominant tendency withinLa Lutte,[55] leading the Communist Party to split off from the alliance in 1937, launching their own newspaper and publishing attacks against the Trotskyists.[53][56] In the1939 Cochinchinese parliamentary election, the Trotskyists ofLa Lutte and the Communist Party ran on different lists. The Trotskyist "Workers' and Peasants' Slate" were victorious, electing three candidates with around 80% of the vote, whereas the Communist-backed "Democratic Front", which included Nguyễn An Ninh himself, was defeated with only 1% of the vote.[57]
Following the signing of theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the outbreak ofWorld War II, the amicable relations between France and the Soviet Union were severed, leading France to undertake a repression of any seditious factions in Vietnam – sentencing Nguyễn An Ninh to 5 years inCôn Đảo Prison. During the war,Phan Bội Châu and Nguyễn An Ninh both died in captivity, bringing a definitive end to the leadership of anarchism in Vietnam.
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With the defeat and dissolution of theFrench Third Republic in theBattle of France, and the subsequentJapanese invasion of French Indochina, created an opportunity for Vietnamese anti-colonial activists to begin making preparations for independence.[58] On May 19, 1941,Hồ Chí Minh established theLeague for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet Minh), an anti-imperialist coalition brought together to oppose both French colonialism and the Japanese occupation.[59] Following theliberation of Paris byAllied forces, in March 1945 the Empire of Japan launched acoup d'état in Indochina, establishing theEmpire of Vietnam as a puppet state.[60] The new government led byTrần Trọng Kim oversaw widespread reforms including the expansion of education, territorial reunification, the encouragement of mass political participation and the even release of political prisoners, many of whom went over to the Viet Minh and began to actively agitate for the fall of the Empire.[61] In August 1945, due to the resignation of the Vietnamese government and the subsequentsurrender of Japan, the Imperial regime in Vietnam fell apart and the EmperorBảo Đại officially abdicated.[62]
The Viet Minh responded by launching theAugust Revolution, seizing control of most of the country andproclaimed the independence of theDemocratic Republic of Vietnam on September 2, 1945. However, within a month theFrench Republic reasserted colonial rule over Vietnam, triggering a mass anti-colonial uprising inSaigon on September 23. Led by theInternational Communist League (ICL), the city's populace armed themselves and organizedworkers' councils, which they declared to be independent from any political parties.[63] But by October, the workers' militias were defeated by the returning French colonial army.[64] Forced into a retreat into the countryside after surviving a massacre by British and French colonial troops, members of the ICL includingPhan Văn Hùm andTạ Thu Thâu were hunted down and executed by the Viet Minh.[65] After theFirst Indochina War, Vietnam waspartitioned between the communist-heldNorth and the anti-communistSouth.
Some of those who survived escaped toFrance, one of whom wasNgo Van, who met a number ofSpanish anarchists andPoumistas that were also in exile inParis. The encounters with the Spanish anarchist exiles and the stories of their experiences during theSpanish Civil War, which Van noted parallels with the Vietnamese experience, led him to permanently distance himself fromBolshevism, criticizingcommunist parties as seeking to form "the nucleus of a new ruling class and bring about nothing more than a new system of exploitation."[66] Van found a political home with theInternational Workers' Association (IWA), which supported his criticisms of the Vietnamese Trotskyist exiles that remained supportive of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.[67] He also joined aLibertarian Marxist group aroundMaximilien Rubel and was introduced to the works ofFriedrich Nietzsche, who had previously inspired the individualist anarchist philosophy ofNguyễn An Ninh.[68] Van would later go on to participate in afactory occupation during the events ofMay 1968.[69] He retired a few years after theFall of Saigon and thereunification ofVietnam, and was finally able to return to his home country in 1998, where he noted that Vietnamese workers "still do not enjoy collective ownership of the means of production, nor [have] time for reflection, nor the possibility of making their own decisions, nor means of expression."[70]
Another important anticolonial group that emerged in the mid 1920s was the Nguyen An Ninh Secret Society (Hoi Kin Nguyen An Ninh). Organized along the lines of a Chinese-styleHeaven and Earth Society in 1926, the Nguyen An Ninh Secret Society disseminated anti-French propaganda and recruited hundreds of workers and peasants [...].
1926 [...]Cochinchina: Nguyen An Ninh is arrested; released in 1927, he goes to France until early 1928.
