Ho Chi Minh: the missing years

This book explores Ho's pre-power political career, from his emergence at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to his organization of the Viet Minh united front at the start of the Second World War. Using previously untapped sources from Comintern and French intelligence archives, Sophie Quinn-Judge examines Ho's life in the light of two interconnecting themes -- the origins and institutional development of the Indochinese Communist Party, and the impact on early Vietnamese communism of political developments in China and the Soviet Union.

Paris: The Emergence of Nguyen Ai Quoc (1919-23) -- 1919: the path to the Paris Peace Conference -- The radical solution (1920-3) -- The Comintern Recruit (1923-4) -- First contacts in Moscow -- The development of Comintern policy for colonial countries -- Ho Chi Minh and his place in the Comintern -- The Fifth Comintern Congress -- The Comintern and the United Front in China -- Ho's assignment to Canton -- The Canton Period and its Aftermath (1924-8) -- The first organizational steps -- The Guangdong peasant movement -- The growth of Thanh Nien -- The collapse of the United Front -- From the Old to the New Course (1927-9) -- Ho Chi Minh's travels -- The Sixth Comintern Congress -- In Siam -- The progress of Thanh Nien -- The evolution of the Chinese Left -- The Thanh Nien rift -- The Revolutionary High Tide (1930-1) -- The return of the Comintern trainees -- The unification process -- The New Year's uprisings -- New assignments -- The revolutionary upsurge in China and the Nanyang.

The revolutionary wave in Vietnam -- The October Plenum and Tran Phu's consolidation of power -- The March Plenum and the end of the 'high tide' -- Death in Hong Kong, Burial in Moscow? (1931-8) -- Th…