Repression and Decline
Ta Thu Thau emerged from prison in poor health but still the most popular leader of the worker's movement in the South and the best known Trotskyist in Vietnam. Returning to Saigon from a consultation with the new Vietminh Government in Hanoi, he was assassinated by Vietminh adherents near Quang Ngai in September 1945.
The methodical assassination of Trotskyists in Saigon was reported in 1947 by Dwight Macdonald's politics magazine. "Virtually all of Trotskyist leaders" were murdered by Stalinists, according to Alexander, who wrote, "Although in August 1945 the Vietnamese Trotskyists were an element of substantial importance in the country’s politics, within a few months they had been virtually exterminated—politically and for the most part physically—by the Communist government headed by Ho Chi Minh. The few Trotskyists escaping this holocaust were forced to flee abroad."
Read more about this topic: Vietnamese Trotskyism
Famous quotes containing the words repression and/or decline:
“People with a culture of poverty suffer much less from repression than we of the middle class suffer and indeed, if I may make the suggestion with due qualification, they often have a hell of a lot more fun than we have.”
—Brian Friel (b. 1929)
“Families suffered badly under industrialization, but they survived, and the lives of men, women, and children improved. Children, once marginal and exploited figures, have moved to a position of greater protection and respect,... The historic decline in the overall death rates for children is an astonishing social fact, notwithstanding the disgraceful infant mortality figures for the poor and minorities. Like the decline in death from childbirth for women, this is a stunning achievement.”
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