Phan Văn Hùm

Phan Văn Hùm (9 April 1902 – 1946) was a Vietnamese journalist, philosopher and revolutionary in French colonial Cochinchina who, from 1930, participated in the Trotskyist left opposition to the Communist Party of Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh).

Phan Văn Hùm first became a public figure when in 1929 his account of imprisonment with Nguyen An Ninh for agrarian agitation was circulated among patriotic youth. As a student in Paris In 1930, influenced by Tạ Thu Thâu's left opposition to the united front policies of the Comintern he joined the Trotskyist Communist League. After a period of uneasy co-operation with “Stalinists” on the Saigon paper La Lutte, with Thâu he triumphed over the Communists in the 1939 elections to the Cochinchina Colonial Council on a platform that opposed a policy of defense collaboration with the French. After the surrender of the occupying Japanese in August 1945, Hum participated in the independent Trotskyist resistance to a French restoration. Taken prisoner by the Communist Viet Minh, he was executed in early 1946.