President Ho Chi Minh in memories of Russian people

Hanoi (VNA) – On Ho Chi Minh Square in Russia’s capital city of Moscow there is a monument of Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh which has been a popular place for public gathering of Vietnamese people on special occasions.

The monument was inaugurated on May 18, 1990 on the occasion of President Ho Chi Minh’s 100th birth anniversary.

Russian sculptor Vladimir Efimovich Tsigal, one of the two creators of the monument, visited Vietnam in 1985 to research for his project. After witnessing what are going on in the country, he had come up with an entirely new idea for the monument. According to him, the round disc symbolizes Vietnam’s sun, representing the halo of President Ho Chi Minh always shines light for Vietnamese men to stand up for the country. The creator’s initial intention was for the man to hold a rifle, but after the visit, he decided to remove the rifle to imply the strong rise of Vietnam in peacetime.

He also used the image of bamboo trees, the emblematic tree of Vietnam, to represent the will and strength of the country as the bamboo tree can be bended, but it is difficult to break.

When one of the three birch trees growing in front of the Ho Chi Minh monument died, a Vietnamese man named Truong Quang Giao and his wife Sveta travelled more than 80km to bring another birch tree from their garden to replace it. Giao, now 82 years old, serves as president of the association of Vietnamese people in Russia this year.

In 1955 and 1957, President Ho Chi Minh visited Irkutsk, now part of Russia. Vera Pavlovna, then an elementary school student, was among those greeting him in welcoming ceremonies. “He came hugging each of us and we put a red scarf around his neck,” Pavlovna recalled, “I could not forget his face.”

The president also came talking to lecturers and students of the Irkutsk State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages, under the Irkutsk State University, said Nguyen Quang Duong, president of the association of Vietnamese people in the province. His speech in Russian and French received big applause from the audience. After the president passed away in 1969, the institute asked to be named after him.

President Ho Chi Minh was warmly greeted everywhere he visited in Russia, said Sergey Levchenko, first secretary of the Russian Communist Party organisation in Irkutsk. Vietnam is developing and gaining many great achievements, he noted, hailing the country’s socio-economic success over the last decade./.