They Couldn't Break, by Ngo Van (tr.Harry Ratner) Index Books London 1995. 234pp £11.95;
Reviewed by K.Govindan Ngo Van deserves our sincere thanks. As an eyewitness and participant in the events he restores a forgotten chapter in the cial emphasis on the role of history of the interna- Trotskyist activists.
New Eight is shed on the tional workers moveorigins and formation of the ment.
Indo-chinese Communist Revolutionaries They Party (PCI), fore-runner of Couldn t Break is a gripping the Communist Party of Vietaccount of the struggles that nam. exploded between 1930 and An amalgam of national1945 in Vietnam, with speIsm and stalinism, the PCI was a devoted follower of the twists and turns of the Soviet bureaucracy. Far from leading the masses. the PCI was often way behind the consciousness of workers and peasants in their struggle against French 1934 and 1936 in the publication of a common paper, he wrote to the Comintern in 1939 that the time would come soon to "politically exterminate" the Trotskyists.
In September and October 1945 he delivered on his promise, arresting and killTa thu Thau. The repression destroyed the groups. The handful who survived in Vietnam had no choice but to abandon active politics.
The Trotskyists of La Lutte (The Struggle) and the League of international Combureaucratic Communist Party is maintained by their comrades in France who publish Chroniques VietThe recovery of BolshevikLeninist ideas and the conrevolutionary marxist party Ngo Van's book helps that Other reading:
Revolutionary History Vol.3 No.2 (Autumn 1990)
Vietnam and Trotskyism