Ta Thu Thau

Tạ Thu Thâu (1906–1945) in the 1930s was the principal representative of Trotskyism in Vietnam and, in colonial Cochinchina, of left opposition to the Indochinese Communist Party (PCI) of Nguyen Ai Quoc. He joined the Left Opposition to the United Front policy of the Comintern as a student in Paris in the late 1920s. After a period of uneasy co-operation with "Stalinists" on the Saigon paper La Lutte, he triumphed over the Communists in the 1939 elections to the Cochinchina Colonial Council on a platform that called for radical land reform and workers' control, and for opposition to defense collaboration with the French authorities. He was executed by the Stalinist Viet Minh in September 1945.