The “Appeal for National Resistance” was written by President Ho Chi Minh in the house of Mr. Nguyen Van Duong in Van Phuc village, Ha Dong district, Ha Tay province (now Ha Dong district, Hanoi), on two ivory-coloured unlined pages. Its aim was to rally the whole nation to the cause of resistance to French colonial rule and the defence of national independence.
In this manuscript, in addition to handwritten notations in brown ink by President Ho Chi Minh himself, there are corrections in blue ink inserted by Truong Chinh, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam. The appeal was broadcast on the Voice of Vietnam, our Viet Minh (Mặt trận Việt Minh) resistance movement’s earliest official radio network, which was based in Tram padoga (in former Ha Tay province). The Appeal was also published on the front page of the Viet Minh newspaper Cứu Quốc (Save the Nation). It was also disseminated in the form of thousands of posters distributed to many localities across the country. The title “Appeal for National Resistance” was conceived by Xuan Thuy, Editor-in-chief of the Cứu Quốc newspaper, the original by President Ho Chi Minh was untitled.
This important historic manuscript, carefully preserved and displayed as a major artefact of our nation’s history, formed part of the collection of the former National Museum of Vietnamese Revolution (now the Vietnam National Museum of History).
Dương Hà