Customer Reviews

Following Ho Chi Minh: The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel

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As a North Vietnamese colonel and high ranking Party member, the author accepted the surrender of Saigon on April 1975. He continued to work for Hanoi until 1990, when disillusioned with the communists he moved to Paris and hoped to see a free and democratic Vietnam.

In his memoir, he talked about communism being elevated to the rank of a "blind faith", the purges within the Party, the errors, greed, and corruption of communist leaders, the "arrogance of the Party" and so on.

This book is recommended to those who are interested in the inner world of the Vietnamese communist Party and the causes of its failure. It is not the ideal world painted by the communists, not the people's rule but the rule of five or six men who imposed their dictatorship on the people.

The rarest of gifts -- a credible account from a Vietnamese communist cadre! Bui Tin has done a great service to all of his countrymen, regardless political faction or religion. His assessments of legendary Vietnamese cadres, including Ho Chi Minh, Le Duan and Le Duc Anh are stunningly frank. Those interested in Vietnam or Cambodia should place this title on the top of their reading lists. There is simply no other work of its kind, although we can always hope that another courageous figure will follow in the author's footsteps.

Bui Tin has written a remarkable story about the Vietnamese government and the social chaos that went on which no one outside of Viet Nam ever knew about it after 1975. Thanks to him we now know that life was easier during the time of war than peace time.

This has been an amazing read for me. My fellow helicopter pilot buddy (from our tour in Vietnam) sent it over from Vermont. We were both New England college grads when we flew
D-model Hueys out of Vinh Long, in the Mekong Delta during 1966-67. Since that time, we have devoured many books commenting on our mutual Army experience, especially when the Vietnamese side of things often illustrates our time well. Fred Stetson continues to remain close to Vietnamese immigrants in the Burlington, VT area, and knows I have represented our experience well in my book, OUTLAWS IN VIETNAM. We both delight in finding out information from and about the Hanoi leadership, and were absolutely surprised to find their intrigue with the Chinese communists that is so fervently exposed in Bui Tin's masterful work. He was always in the significant place at the right time, and reveals behind-the-scenes politics with the North Vietnamese from 1945 on. What a journalist, and I am glad he has connected with leaders like Senator John McCain, to flesh out the reality of the VC and NVA we were fighting against. Apparently our suspicions that the Chinese were very involved in this war were very correct, indeed! I had thought the two nation-states too opposed to each other (culturally) to have ever played such a strong hand. Makes you wonder what we could have done militarily otherwise; maybe ole chicken LBJ might have been right to worry about escalating events after all....

As a former Marine Sniper who served two tours in Nam and who is still trying to understand what I went through this is an okay read. Not as good as some and a bit over blown at times but worth understanding the other side. It does make you want to better understand the other side of our current crisis in terrorism and see what makes them tick. Our leaders in Nam were a little lazy and self serving when it came to history. That is the leaders in Washington. Makes you wonder what might have been?