The revolutionary who spent thirty years in exile organizing for Vietnamese independence, then led the movement that defeated French colonial rule and outlasted the United States — founding the Communist state of North Vietnam and becoming the revered 'Uncle Ho' of national legend, while his movement also built a one-party regime whose land-reform purges and suppression of rivals remain a contested part of his record. He died in 1969, six years before the 1975 reunification his cause achieved.
He left Vietnam as a young cook on a French steamship and did not come home to stay for thirty years. In between he washed dishes in London, retouched photographs in Paris, helped found the French Communist Party, and petitioned the victors of the First World War to free his country. They ignored him. When he finally returned in 1941, he built the movement whose army, under General Vo Nguyen Giap, beat France at Dien Bien Phu and would later outlast the United States. To Vietnam he became 'Uncle Ho,' the father of the nation. To his critics he was the architect of a one-party state that purged its own. Both portraits are of the same man, and he did not live to see his side win.