Ho Chi Minh
Vietnamese communist leader, founder of North Vietnam (1890–1969)

Hồ Chí Minh (born Nguyễn Sinh Cung; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), colloquially known as Uncle Ho (Bác Hồ) among other aliases and sobriquets, was a Vietnamese communist revolutionary and statesman who founded the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 (known as North Vietnam after 1954). He served as its first president from 1946 until his death in 1969 and as its first prime minister from 1945 to 1955. A committed Marxist–Leninist, Hồ played a central role in establishing the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930 and later led its successor, the Workers' Party of Vietnam (renamed Communist Party of Vietnam after 1976), as chairman until his death.
The details of Hồ's life before he came to power in Vietnam are uncertain. He is known to have used between 50 and 200 pseudonyms. Information on his birth and early life is ambiguous and subject to academic debate. At least four existing official biographies vary on names, dates, places, and other hard facts while unofficial biographies vary even more widely. It is believed Hồ was born in Nghệ An province, Annam in French Indochina, and received a French education. Starting in 1911, he worked in various countries overseas, including France where he was a founding member of the French Communist Party in 1920. After studying in the Soviet Union, Hồ moved to China where he founded the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League in 1925, which became the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930.
“Ho Chi Minh” enters the record as vietnamese communist leader, founder of North Vietnam (1890–1969). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Minh, Vietnamese and communist can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Ho Chi Minh” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Minh, Vietnamese and communist provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q36014. VIAF identifies the subject as 39391273. The Library of Congress control number is n80126088. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1890, 1969, 1945 and 1954.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ho Chi Minh” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.