On this occasion, we were fortunate to visit the Headquarters of the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association - the place where the first core cadres of the Vietnamese revolution were trained. It was also here that the Thanh Nien Newspaper was founded and published by leader Nguyen Ai Quoc, marking the birth of the Vietnamese revolutionary press.
Sacred relics
The first cadre training school of the Vietnamese revolution is located at house number 13 (now number 248 - 250) Van Minh street, Dong Son district, Guangzhou city, in a large and quiet neighborhood. This is a place associated with the revolutionary career of President Ho Chi Minh in Guangzhou, China from 1924 to 1927. Over the past 99 years, this neighborhood has experienced many events, many ancient houses have been demolished, replaced by high-rise buildings, but only house number 250 Van Minh street, where President Ho Chi Minh founded and published Thanh Nien newspaper - the mouthpiece of the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association, still has the original architecture of that time, still standing over the years and being carefully preserved.
After getting off the bus, the members of the delegation slowly walked into each room of the house. We felt a sacred atmosphere lingering… The young, beautiful tour guide from Guangzhou enthusiastically welcomed the delegation and recounted that in December 1924, from Moscow (Soviet Union), comrade Nguyen Ai Quoc returned to Guangzhou. Every day, Uncle Ho worked at the Communist International Headquarters located in Guangzhou City.
In 1925, Uncle Ho reformed the organization “Tam Tam Xa” to gather patriotic Vietnamese youth to educate and spread the revolution to them. This was the predecessor of the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association (Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association).
To have a place to study and stay for the students, Uncle Ho borrowed rooms on the third floor of this house to open three political training classes, training 75 Vietnamese revolutionary cadres. He was in charge of the class and directly taught and lectured on revolutionary ethics to the students. His lectures were compiled and published in the book “The Revolutionary Path” - one of the first theoretical documents of the Communist Party of Vietnam. In the difficult conditions of accommodation and study, the students had to keep absolute secrecy to avoid any surveillance by secret agents.
The house has 3 floors, the “top floor” has no roof, and is used as a kitchen to cook for the students. In the past, the top floor had a passage to the houses next door and in the back, so that in case of an accident or “disruption”, everyone could disperse to the houses next door and evacuate safely.
Uncle Ho's resting and working room was tiny, just enough to fit a personal bed and an entrance, his suitcase had to be placed under the bed. The middle floor had many rooms, Uncle Ho chose the largest room as a classroom, arranged four rows of small tables with chairs and a small wooden board for books, notebooks, and pens.
After nearly 100 years, since comrade Nguyen Ai Quoc lived and worked in Guangzhou, this house number 13 is associated with sacred relics, including many faded and old chairs, but still carrying the warmth of Uncle Ho and the first soldiers of the Vietnamese revolution when they studied here...
This is an important cultural and historical relic identified by Guangzhou City as a City-level Cultural Relic Conservation Site since 1999. In 2008, the former Headquarters of the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association was upgraded to a Cultural Relic Conservation Site of Guangdong Province.
In early 2022, the leaders of Guangzhou City launched a project to restore and reconstruct the relic site using various resources. After more than two years of restoration efforts, based on the memories of witnesses and historical documents, locations such as the political training class for Vietnamese youth, the Thanh Nien Newspaper printing room, the bedroom which was also Uncle Ho's office, the meeting room... have been restored to their original state of that period.
Vietnam Revolutionary Press Day
In 1971, the house at 13 Van Minh Street was decided by the People's Republic of China to be preserved as a memorial site of President Ho Chi Minh, named "Headquarters of the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association". The site is under the management of the Guangdong Museum of Revolutionary History and is ranked as a National Historical and Cultural Site of China.
From the first floor to the upper floor of the house, we had to go through the Thanh Nien Newspaper printing room. Stopping here, we saw with our own eyes valuable artifacts such as a rattan chair, a typewriter, a Roneo printing machine, handwritten manuscripts still showing corrections and edits, a bamboo bookshelf containing Thanh Nien Newspaper publications, the desk and chairs of Uncle Ho and the comrades who directly participated in writing, editing and publishing the Newspaper.
Stopping here for quite a while, the tour guide continued to tell that on June 21, 1925, right here, comrade Nguyen Ai Quoc published Thanh Nien newspaper - the mouthpiece of the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association - the first secret newspaper of Vietnamese revolutionaries in Quoc Ngu script. Later, comrades Le Hong Son, Ho Tung Mau, Le Duy Diem, and Truong Van Linh participated in publishing the newspaper.
Thanh Nien Newspaper was so representative of the revolutionary organization that people often called the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association the Youth Party. In nearly 5 years, Thanh Nien Newspaper published 202 issues, the first issue was published on June 21, 1925, and issue 202 was published on February 14, 1930.
In the early days, Thanh Nien Newspaper was published once a week, printing over 100 copies. Later, due to many difficulties, each issue was 3 to 5 weeks apart from the previous one, and the newspaper's mansheets were written in Vietnamese and Chinese. Pointing to the printed copies of Thanh Nien Newspaper, the tour guide introduced that the number of each newspaper was written in a 5-pointed star, most of each issue had two pages of average size 13x19cm, some had 4 pages.
The main content of Thanh Nien Newspaper is to clearly point out the irreconcilable contradiction between the Vietnamese people and the colonial peoples with imperialism; affirm Vietnam's revolutionary path; the revolutionary force is the entire people, with workers and farmers as the foundation; revolutionaries must sacrifice for the cause and must have the right revolutionary method...
In July 1927, the Chinese revolutionary situation experienced many unfavorable events, comrade Nguyen Ai Quoc was forced to leave Guangzhou for Wuhan and then to the Soviet Union. At that time, Thanh Nien Newspaper had only published 88 issues, after that the Headquarters of the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth League had to move to Hong Kong, continuing to print and publish Thanh Nien Newspaper.
According to historical documents, Thanh Nien Newspaper was secretly transported to Vietnam by ship and circulated in the branches of the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association.
In the book “Contributions to the History of Political Movements in French Indochina”, published by the Department of Political and Public Security Affairs under the Governor-General of Indochina in 1933, Louis Marty wrote: “It must be said right away that Nguyen Ai Quoc’s newspaper was read by all party members abroad, in the country and by a large number of sympathizers. These readers not only read Thanh Nien newspaper themselves but also copied it over and over again for others to read.
Comrade Dong Phuoc An, the class leader of the Training Class, after looking at all the memorabilia, pointed to the Thanh Nien newspaper published on June 21, 1925 posted on the board (which has been digitized) and asked: "Is Thanh Nien newspaper now the newspaper of the Vietnam Youth Union?". I explained specifically to Comrade Dong Phuoc An that it was correct! Thanh Nien newspaper is now the Forum of the Vietnam Youth Union. From Thanh Nien newspaper founded by Uncle Ho and published on June 21, 1925, to date, our country has had a powerful revolutionary press system under the leadership of the Party, always standing side by side with the country and the people with more than 800 press agencies and more than 41,000 journalists...
Benefits in the present, merits in eternity
At the end of the visit to the Headquarters of the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association, especially directly seeing the images, artifacts and listening to the introduction about the birth and the process of organizing and producing publications of Thanh Nien Newspaper, we - the journalists today, always express our infinite gratitude to the great contributions of leader Nguyen Ai Quoc - President Ho Chi Minh - the one who laid the foundation for the birth of Vietnam Revolutionary Journalism.
Through Thanh Nien Newspaper, Uncle Ho skillfully combined the dissemination of Marxism-Leninism with the national salvation line, appropriately applying theory to the practice of the Vietnamese revolution, creating a persuasive newspaper that changed perceptions as well as mobilized the masses to follow the Party and the revolution.
Although the contents of Thanh Nien Newspaper have been published for nearly a century, they still retain their value in strongly promoting the passionate patriotic tradition of the Vietnamese people, proposing revolutionary strategies and tactics, and the leadership role of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
Thanh Nien Newspaper at that time helped Vietnamese youth and people to enthusiastically participate in the revolution, believe in the leadership of the Party and the bright future of our nation. Through reading the contents of Thanh Nien Newspaper, generations of journalists today have learned from Uncle Ho many things that are still valuable, such as revolutionary ideals, how to organize a newspaper, using the press to build trust and create consensus among the people, etc.
At the end of the visit to the Headquarters of the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth Association, we, the journalists today, were able to see very simple objects, recalling the images of patriotic revolutionary youth - the outstanding sons of the Vietnamese people, still looming somewhere nearby.
The image of Uncle Ho - the teacher of Vietnam's Revolutionary Journalism with a thin body, quick steps, large and unusually bright eyes still appears in front of the Thanh Nien Newspaper printing room. The images and artifacts in the house are as simple as any other house in this city, but it itself carries a noble mission as a school to train generations of Vietnam's elite revolutionaries - the cradle that trained the first outstanding revolutionary journalists of Vietnam.
On the occasion of the 99th anniversary of Vietnam Revolutionary Press Day (June 21, 1925 - June 21, 2024), the Vietnamese press has been inheriting his invaluable assets in terms of style, ideology, ethics... of revolutionary journalism.
Up to now, President Ho Chi Minh's views on the functions, tasks, and nature of revolutionary journalism; on the role, obligations, and ethics of journalists; on the art of "writing" to create a valuable journalistic work and newspaper that always retains its value, are being studied, creatively, and flexibly applied in practice by each press agency and journalist.
Using Ho Chi Minh's ideology and journalism style to illuminate the current practice of revolutionary journalism, it can be seen that his journalism legacy continues to be the "compass" guiding revolutionary journalism and journalists to continue to effectively contribute to the cause of building and defending the socialist Vietnamese Fatherland, building a professional, humane, and modern press and media in the digital age in the spirit of the Resolution of the 13th National Party Congress.
On February 5, 1985, at the request of the Vietnam Journalists Association, the Party Central Committee Secretariat issued Decision No. 52 to mark the date of publication of the first issue of Thanh Nien Newspaper as Vietnam Press Day. On June 21, 1985, for the first time, the press community nationwide held a ceremony to celebrate Vietnam Press Day and the 60th anniversary of the publication of Thanh Nien Newspaper's first issue. On June 21, 2000, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Vietnam Press Day, at the request of the Vietnam Journalists Association, the Politburo of the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam agreed to call Vietnam Press Day Vietnam Revolutionary Press Day.
Source: https://kinhtedothi.vn/tham-noi-xuat-ban-bao-thanh-nien-to-bao-cach-mang-dau-tien-cua-viet-nam.html
Comment (0)