[ndlr] L’étude de Hoang Van Chi sur l’évolution du communisme vietnamien et l’application brutale de la réforme agraire au Nord Viêt-Nam paraît en langue anglaise la première fois en 1964 (1). L’ouvrage est réédité en 1965 et 1968 chez Praeger. Il constitue un témoignage unique à cette époque sur l’emprise des méthodes chinoises adoptées et appliquées par le Parti des Travailleurs du Viêt-Nam (Lao Dong). Présentation de l’éditeur ci-après.

Combining scholarly depth with a highly readable, personal style of writing, From colonialism to Communism is the detailed inside story yet published of the establishment of Communism in North Vietnam. The author was an active participant in Indochina’s national struggle for independence from the French. Along with his fellow nationalists who believed a genuine democratic society could be brought into being by co-operation in war and peace between communists and non-Marxists progressives, he experienced the bitter disillusionment of seeing the Vietminh movement transformed into a regime modeled on Mao’s China.

Hoang Van Chi surveys the various nationalist movements in Indochina since the turn of the century and the history of the Comintern’s efforts in the inter-war period to establish a strong Communist Party in the country. The key-role of Ho Chi Minh in these developments is discussed in detail. After a brilliant description of the way in which the communists seized the initiative in the struggle against France, the author moves to his main themes: the aims and methods of Maos’s imitators in North Vietnam.

Collating his own eye his own eye-witness testimony with documentary evidence from communist sources, he traces the steps whereby Ho Chi Minh and his associates made by the Vietminh movement an instrument for achieving complete communist control of the newly independent country’s economy, political and cultural life. Presenting information hitherto unpublished in English, Hoang Van Chi examines in detail the motives, methods and consequences of the “Land Reform” campaign and its attendant terrorism. His treatment of this and of the techniques of “thought-reform”, together with his account of the Communist Party’s methods of exacting obedience from all strata of Vietnamese society, make this book a definitive study of the penetration of a South Asian society by militant communism, directed by the policies and philosophy of Mao Tse-tung. It is essential reading for all who interested in the problem of Asia and the triple confrontation of traditionalist, democratic and communist forces in former colonial territories.

(1) La notice en langue anglaise sur Hoang Van Chi dans en.Wikipedia mentionne une première édition en 1962 mais la version en langue vietnamienne rappelle la date de 1964 : vi.Wikipedia. En outre une notice de l’ouvrage sur World Cat évoque la date de 1963 entre crochets. 1964 apparaît être la date de première édition la plus probable ce que confirme Talawas. L’ouvrage a été traduit et publié en vietnamien dans les années 1980 [1983?] aux Etats-Unis par un certain Mac Dinh qui n’est autre que le pseudonyme de l’auteur lui-même (voir ci-dessous).

La version vietnamienne est en ligne sur Talawas.

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