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In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary
In 1936, Ngo Van was captured, imprisoned, and tortured in the dreaded Maison Centrale prison in Saigon for his part in the struggle to free Vietnam from French colonial rule. Five years later, Vietnamese independence was won, and Van found himself imprisoned and abused once more—this time by the Stalinist freedom fighter Ho Chi Minh. Five years after that, Van was in Paris, working with the surrealists. In the Crossfire documents Ngo Van's incredible life in Vietnam during the two world wars, and his subsequent years spent in the midst of the Parisian intelligentsia. This is the first English translation!
" In the Crossfire is a story that is so many a tale of personal courage, despair and hope; a piece of political history that is both a document of revolution and betrayal. Like so much of the struggle against colonialism, for every victory there seems to be a defeat. Yet, history moves forward because, as Van makes clear, people make it move forward."—Ron Jacobs, author of The Way the Wind A History of the Weather Underground
" In the Crossfire is a story that is so many a tale of personal courage, despair and hope; a piece of political history that is both a document of revolution and betrayal. Like so much of the struggle against colonialism, for every victory there seems to be a defeat. Yet, history moves forward because, as Van makes clear, people make it move forward."—Ron Jacobs, author of The Way the Wind A History of the Weather Underground
296 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 27, 2021
Some people claim that Trotskyism is a movement of white men in the West. But that reveals a terrible ignorance of struggles against colonialism. The Trotskyist movement was strong not only in the Soviet Union, but also in Bolivia, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. This is the autobiography of a Vietnamese Trotskyist who was active in the mass struggles against French Imperialism in the 1930s and 1940s. Vietnam was one of just a few countries where the Trotskyists were stronger than the Stalinists, for obvious reasons: before and during World War II, the Stalinists were supporting French Imperialism, and that meant supporting taxes, conscription, and repression in its colonies. Few people remember that after the collapse of Japanese imperialism in 1945, Ho Chi Minh insisted on welcoming the Americans as a force that would guarantee Vietnam's independence. The Stalinists also used their military forces to prevent any attempts at land reform, hoping for an alliance with "patriotic" landlords. The Trotskyists, in contrast, were supporting strikes, land occupations, and uprisings in order to win independence. This is why they were massacred by the colonialists and the Stalinists alike. It is ironic that Ho Chi Minh is remembered as the father of Vietnam's independence, when his greatest contribution was delaying independence it by several decades. This book offers a very colorful look into these intense factional battles in the framework of the heroic struggles by the workers and peasants of Vietnam for independence.
April 25, 2021
Fantastic description of little-known events and brave revolutionaries lost to history. I had no idea (but should have, in hindsight) that Trotskyists were active in Vietnam and (shocker) murdered by the Vietnamese Communist Party. The enemy (National Liberation Front of South Vietnam) of your enemy (The United States) is not necessarily a friend.
December 13, 2021
Brilliant, beautifully written and haunting memoir of a Vietnamese Trotskyist turned council communist.
Ngo Van was a fighter for national independence, a revolutionary, artist, writer, author, historian, memoirist, lover of French literature (especially Baudelaire) victim of torture by the agents of French colonial rule, and a witness of May '68.
In the Crossfire is the account of his life and times, and includes several pictures of his paintings.
A little background information to whet the appetite of potential readers of Van’s memoir:
'In March 1945 the Japanese occupied South Vietnam. The Trotskyists called on the Vietnamese masses to rise up against all oppressors whatever their nationality, unlike the Communist Party, which called for an alliance with the Allies. 30,000 miners set up councils to run the mines, public services and transport and started a literacy campaign.
After the collapse of the Japanese occupation, a wave of revolutionary action swept through the country. The Trotskyists called for the arming of the people, and the setting up of workers’ and peasants’ councils. The Saigon Commune was born. By October the uprising had waned. The Stalinists slaughtered hundreds of Trotskyists. Van fled Vietnam in spring 1948. He later learned that some of the comrades he had left behind had been horribly tortured to death by the Stalinists.
Van ended up in Paris, where he joined the Union Ouvriere Internationale (UOI).This group included the Spaniard Grandizo Munis, the leading Surrealist Benjamin Peret who had fought with the Durruti Column (named after Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durruti) in the Spanish Civil War and Revolution, and Sophie Moen. This group had left the Trotskyist Parti Communiste Internationale because they could not agree with its defence of the USSR as a “degenerated workers’ state.”
Van and Moen became partners. The UOI collapsed in 1954 and Van and Moen joined an informal discussion group around Maximilien Rubel and the writer Jean Malaquais. Most of the group were factory workers and they adopted many council communist ideas. The group corresponded with Pannekoek and Paul Mattick, among others. Readings of the council communists made Van break completely with the need for a Leninist party elite. Van preferred the term Marxian to Marxist, and like Rubel had an anti-authoritarian reading of Marx.'
https://libcom.org/history/xuhat-ngo-...
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol...
Ngo Van was a fighter for national independence, a revolutionary, artist, writer, author, historian, memoirist, lover of French literature (especially Baudelaire) victim of torture by the agents of French colonial rule, and a witness of May '68.
In the Crossfire is the account of his life and times, and includes several pictures of his paintings.
A little background information to whet the appetite of potential readers of Van’s memoir:
'In March 1945 the Japanese occupied South Vietnam. The Trotskyists called on the Vietnamese masses to rise up against all oppressors whatever their nationality, unlike the Communist Party, which called for an alliance with the Allies. 30,000 miners set up councils to run the mines, public services and transport and started a literacy campaign.
After the collapse of the Japanese occupation, a wave of revolutionary action swept through the country. The Trotskyists called for the arming of the people, and the setting up of workers’ and peasants’ councils. The Saigon Commune was born. By October the uprising had waned. The Stalinists slaughtered hundreds of Trotskyists. Van fled Vietnam in spring 1948. He later learned that some of the comrades he had left behind had been horribly tortured to death by the Stalinists.
Van ended up in Paris, where he joined the Union Ouvriere Internationale (UOI).This group included the Spaniard Grandizo Munis, the leading Surrealist Benjamin Peret who had fought with the Durruti Column (named after Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durruti) in the Spanish Civil War and Revolution, and Sophie Moen. This group had left the Trotskyist Parti Communiste Internationale because they could not agree with its defence of the USSR as a “degenerated workers’ state.”
Van and Moen became partners. The UOI collapsed in 1954 and Van and Moen joined an informal discussion group around Maximilien Rubel and the writer Jean Malaquais. Most of the group were factory workers and they adopted many council communist ideas. The group corresponded with Pannekoek and Paul Mattick, among others. Readings of the council communists made Van break completely with the need for a Leninist party elite. Van preferred the term Marxian to Marxist, and like Rubel had an anti-authoritarian reading of Marx.'
https://libcom.org/history/xuhat-ngo-...
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol...
December 15, 2010
I loved this book. You often forget that Vietnam was a hub of Trotskiest and other anti-stalin socialist activist versus the colonial regime, and was brutally wiped out by their so-called Stalinist allies. Pretty good and a fascinating look at a very forgotten chapter in history.
June 17, 2020
No longer using this website, but I'm leaving up old reviews. Fuck Jeff Bezos. Find me on LibraryThing: https://www.librarything.com/profile/...
Read the Appendices first, it will dramatically improve the understanding of the narrative.
Read the Appendices first, it will dramatically improve the understanding of the narrative.
July 21, 2025
A few months ago, I read Joseph Andras’ magnificently styled Faraway the Southern Sky, which chronicles a young Ho Chi Minh’s time in Paris, in the 1920s. As in the manner of all brilliant books that are about historical subjects, Faraway the Southern Sky cast a dazzling light upon the figure of Ho Chi Minh, in his formative years as an anti-colonial revolutionary. This is of a piece, of course, with the position that the Vietnam War has come to occupy in the popular anti-colonial imagination, chronicled (for example) by Salar Mohandesi in Red Internationalism. I also recall, vividly, how in the Thawra podcast, Abdel Razzaq Takriti notes that in the Arab world, it is called Thawra-e-Vietnam (the Vietnamese Revolution), and not the “Vietnam War.”
One can understand the utility - perhaps even, to an extent - the necessity of this framing in a certain time and place, but when I described what this book was about to someone in my life, their response was that they were “glad that this book exists,” and on finishing it, I’m glad too: because In the Crossfire is the Vietnamese version of Victor Serge’s defence of Kronstadt, Voline’s underground history of the Russian Revolution, or even Orwell’s account of the Spanish Revolution. Ngo Van belonged to the “left opposition” which - much like the Spanish anarchists - found themselves caught between the colonial (French) brutality on the one side, and the Stalinist front of the anti-colonial struggle (led by the likes of Ho Chi Minh on the other). For this, he faced imprisonment, torture, near-death, and eventually, exile. In the Crossfire, then, is the story of the Vietnamese anti-colonial struggle that was erased by Stalinist victory (and subsequently, by their assumption of the anti-colonial mantle in the Vietnam War) - it is the critique of the dominant Vietnamese narrative from the left, from the perspective of the insurgent, and - although Van disavows the label - of the anarchist.
And the links with Spain are everywhere: the Vietnamese struggle was almost contemporaneous with the Spanish Revolution and Civil War, and Van affirmatively speaks about how the Vietnamese revolutionaries were inspired by their Spanish counterparts; later in the book, during his exile in France, some of his closest comrades are anarchist refugees from the Spanish Civil War, fleeing from the Franco regime. “Internationalism” is a term that is much abused these days - but in In the Crossfire, we see a living, breathing example of internationalism at its best.
One can understand the utility - perhaps even, to an extent - the necessity of this framing in a certain time and place, but when I described what this book was about to someone in my life, their response was that they were “glad that this book exists,” and on finishing it, I’m glad too: because In the Crossfire is the Vietnamese version of Victor Serge’s defence of Kronstadt, Voline’s underground history of the Russian Revolution, or even Orwell’s account of the Spanish Revolution. Ngo Van belonged to the “left opposition” which - much like the Spanish anarchists - found themselves caught between the colonial (French) brutality on the one side, and the Stalinist front of the anti-colonial struggle (led by the likes of Ho Chi Minh on the other). For this, he faced imprisonment, torture, near-death, and eventually, exile. In the Crossfire, then, is the story of the Vietnamese anti-colonial struggle that was erased by Stalinist victory (and subsequently, by their assumption of the anti-colonial mantle in the Vietnam War) - it is the critique of the dominant Vietnamese narrative from the left, from the perspective of the insurgent, and - although Van disavows the label - of the anarchist.
And the links with Spain are everywhere: the Vietnamese struggle was almost contemporaneous with the Spanish Revolution and Civil War, and Van affirmatively speaks about how the Vietnamese revolutionaries were inspired by their Spanish counterparts; later in the book, during his exile in France, some of his closest comrades are anarchist refugees from the Spanish Civil War, fleeing from the Franco regime. “Internationalism” is a term that is much abused these days - but in In the Crossfire, we see a living, breathing example of internationalism at its best.
October 27, 2025
It's so moving and emotional. The book is non-fiction, and precisely because of that, the narrator, Ngô Văn's, emotions are clearly and genuinely depicted through each phase of the revolutionary struggle. His periods in prison, being constantly tortured and interrogated, and his times released and struggling to find work portray a very authentic image of a revolutionary: He cautiously mobilized workers and meticulously cared for the situation of each comrade. All the rawest emotions are clearly captured: from his disappointment from only making it to Marseilles and not Paris in the 30s, his embarrassment when he tried to talk to Nguyễn An Ninh only to be ignored in prison, to his joy when Tạ Thu Thâu was elected, and his reunions with his comrades in the crossfire—all contain profound sincerity. A must-read book for understanding the historical account of a Fourth International communist who was devoted to his country and the class struggle.
January 28, 2021
A compelling and rivetting story, In The Crossfire is a book that's hard to put down. It's rigorously detailed with the experiences of a Vietnamese Trotskyist facing against the rising power of the VietMinh, as well as his encounters in resisting French Colonialism.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews