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)
“Reckoned physiologically, everything ugly weakens and afflicts man. It recalls decay, danger, impotence; he actually suffers a loss of energy in its presence. The effect of the ugly can be measured with a dynamometer. Whenever man feels in any way depressed, he senses the proximity of something “ugly.” His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride—they decline with the ugly, they increase with the beautiful.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)