Was Ho Chi Minh a socialist or communist?

It's hard to answer this question because, in term of policies, the term socialism and communism are, by themselves, very hard to define and, in most cases, country-specific. read more

Beyond policies, whether Ho Chi Minh was a communist or not should be put into the context that Vietnam is a small country in a messy world at that time. At Yalta, even Stalin did not plan to have a communist country in SEA. read more

Ho was an enormously pragmatic Communist, a doer rather than a theoretician. His speeches and articles were brought together in a four-volume "Selected Works of Ho Chi Minh" issued in Hanoi between 1960 and 1962. read more

William Duiker's Ho Chi Minh: A Life (2000) presents much information on Ho's relationships. : 605, fn 58 The government requested substantial cuts in the official Vietnamese translation of Duiker's book, which was refused. read more