Trường Chinh

In the school, Trường Chinh was inspired by the French philosophers’ works such as Jean-Jacque Rousseau and Montesquieu as well as the French revolution in 1789 and the Chinese revolution in 1911.

In Nam Định, he lived with a poor labour family who worked in the industrial factory.

His childhood experience urged him to set up a student movement with his schoolmates, Nguyễn Văn Hoan, Đặng Châu Tệ, Phạm Năng Độ, Nguyễn Khắc Lương, and Nguyễn Đức Cảnh.

This group, later on, joined the student movement in Tonkin.

They published newspapers in order to spread their thoughts on the anti-colonial movement.

Trường Chinh's mother was Nguyễn Thị Từ (1880-1964) who grew up in a Confucian mandarin family of the Nguyễn court.

Trường Chinh married Nguyễn Thi Minh, who remained loyal and carried on the burden of looking after the family, especially her husband's family after he was jailed for his political beliefs.

In the midst of the political and social transition in Indochina, particularly the spread of French educational system in the nineteenth century.

Trường Chinh was sent to educate in the French school, which was the starting point for his political movement.

Trường Chinh (, born Đặng Xuân Khu; 9 February 1907 – 30 September 1988) was a Vietnamese communist political leader and theoretician.

He was one of the key figures of Vietnamese politics.

He played a major role in the anti-French colonialism movement and finally after decades of protracted war in Vietnam, the Vietnamese defeated the colonial power.

He was the think-tank of the Communist Party who determined the direction of the communist movement, particularly in the anti-French colonialism movement.

He was born on February 9, 1907, in the Hành Thiện village, Xuân Hồng sub-district, Xuân Trường district, Nam Định province (in the area of the Red River delta, 120 kilometers from Hanoi).

He was the oldest son among five children of the Đặng family which was an important family of the village.

His siblings were Đặng Thị Yên, Đặng Thị Uẩn, Đặng Thị Tường, and Đặng Xuân Đỉnh.

He grew up in a Confucian family which was not wealthy.

His family background and his father highly shaped his knowledge and influenced him to join the anti-colonial movement.

He had learned Hán script (Classical Chinese) from his father and was sent to the district school.

His grandfather, Đặng Xuân Bảng, was a Confucian intellectual who worked for the Nguyễn court under the reign of Emperor Tự Đức and published many books about history, literature and Confucian ideology written in Hán scripts.

His father was Đặng Xuân Viện who was a famous Confucian scholar and wrote many history books.

Unlike his grandfather, Viện was not interested to work for the Nguyễn court.

Instead, he participated in the Đông Kinh Nghĩa thục (Tonkin Free School) movement against French colonialism in 1907.

In 1923, he was sent to Thành Chung secondary school, the first secondary school for the local people and taught in the Western educational system, located in Nam Định province.

In 1925, when Phan Bồi Châu, the respectful nationalist, was captured in China and brought back to Vietnam, Trường Chinh was in the second year in high school.

He joined the nationalist movement and printed leaflets together with his friends demanding the release of Phan Bồi Châu.

This was the first time he personally participated in a political movement.

His second involvement was a year after that.

In 1926, the death of Phan Chu Trinh (Phan Châu Trinh), the well-known nationalist, led to the huge protests all over Vietnam.

Trường Chinh and his schoolmates asked a permission from the local authority to organize a mourning for Phan Chu Trinh.

Trường Chinh became the head of the student movement in Nam Định and cooperated with other schools.

He changed his name from Đặng Xuân Khu to Trường Chinh, which means Long March, in honor of the Long March which was the 6,000-mile military retreat of the Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) between 1934 and 1936 led by Mao Zedong.

During the transitional period in Vietnam between 1941 and 1956, Trường Chinh was the General Secretary of the Communist Party as well as the real leader of the communist party in terms of designing strategies as well as implementing them.

After the declaration of independence in September 1945, Trường Chinh played an important role in shaping the politics of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and creating the socialist structure of the new Vietnam.

In 1957, after the failure of the Land Reform program, he was dismissed from his post of General Secretary and had less power.

Hồ Chí Minh selected Lê Duẩn to succeed him as the General Secretary and he became the most powerful person after the 1960s.

However, Trường Chinh remained an influential force in the Party during the Second Indochina War and after the reunification of Vietnam; he was head of state of Vietnam from 1981 to 1987.

Following the death of Lê Duẩn in 1986, he succeeded Duẩn as top party leader.

His last vital role was to carry forward the Đổi Mới renovation that still affects Vietnam to this day.

Trường Chinh was named as Đặng Xuân Khu.