THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CAMBODIAN REVOLUTION: THE RATIONALE FOR POL POT'S DEMOCRATIC KAMPUCHEA
by
KATE G. FRIESON
B.A., University Of British Columbia, 1984
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
in
THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
Political Science
We accept this thesis as conforming
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THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
October 1986
© Kate G. Frieson, 1986 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission.
Department
The University of British Columbia 1956 Main Mall Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Y3
Date
DE-6 (3/81) i i
Abstract
The full theoretical and historical significance of the
Cambodian revolution will not likely be revealed except with the passage and perspective of time and the uncovering of additional
relevant data. While the revolution itself brought
unprecedented and sweeping change to Cambodia, so much so that
the prerevolutionary society has been almost completely obliterated, there is precious little information available on
the architects themselves or on the moral and political impetus behind their actions. Indeed, many of the macabre political
battles that accompanied so much destruction in Democratic
Kampuchea are still only vaguely understood. In short, there
are many stray pieces of the puzzle of the Cambodian revolution
that have yet to be put in place to make the picture clear and
coherent.
This thesis attempts to add to the small but growing body
of scholarship that seeks to explain the rationale for one of
the most violent and radical revolutions of this century. The
narrative traces the major developments of the Cambodian
revolution from the inception of the civil war in 1970 to the
demise of Pol Pot's revolutionary regime in 1979, the latter
occasioned by the Vietnamese invasion and occupation of the
country.
The first chapter examines the origins and struggle of the
peasant-based communist revolution in Cambodia which culminated
in the seizure of power by the Communist Party of Kampuchea in
April, 1975. The socio-economic and political conditions which prevailed in Cambodia up to 1975 are analysed within the theoretical framework of revolutionary preconditions. The conditions generally believed to be necessary and sufficient for revolution to succeed were present in Cambodia.
The second chapter details the process of internal consolidation of the revolution in the post-victory period, from
1975 to 1979. The Communist Party of Kampuchea came to power as an ideologically and militarily fragmented party. The emergence of a dominant faction that insulated itself, temporarily, from internal and external threats, form the substance of this chapter.
The third chapter examines the ideas, policies, and actions of the Democratic Kampuchean regime. To explain the violent and radical policies of the period, this chapter investigates a matrix of intricately woven variables, such as the ideology and
intentions of the party elite; the need to defeat and purge
internal rivals; the ethnocentric orientation of the elite; and the perception of imminent external threats.
The final chapter offers some conclusions on the nature of the radical experiment carried out in Democratic Kampuchea. The conclusion reached is that the CPK leadership, while at times proclaiming communist beliefs, was in fact acting from motives
similar to those which have driven other Cambodian leaders
throughout history, a desire for national survival. The
Cambodian revolution is a story about how a zealous group of
individuals within the communist party came to impose an
ideology of nationalism on a communist organization. iv
Table of Contents
Abstract ii Glossary Of Terms And Abbreviations v List of Figures vi Acknowledgement vii Introduction 1
Chapter I THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CAMBODIAN REVOLUTION: 1960-1975 ..11
Chapter II
INTERNAL CONSOLIDATION AND THE RISE OF THE POL POT GROUP .54
Chapter III THE DEMOCRATIC KAMPUCHEAN REGIME: AN ANALYSIS OF CPK'S IDEAS, POLICIES AND ACTIONS 77 Chapter IV THE NATURE OF THE RADICAL EXPERIMENT: COMMUNIST, NATIONALIST, POPULIST, ANARCHIST...? 118
BIBLIOGRAPHY 150 v •
Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations
Angkar -- organization, term used by the Communist Party of
Kampuchea to identify itself after 1975.
Angkor — Khmer civilization (A.D. 802-1431)
CPK — Communist Party of Kampuchea (1960-1981)
DK Democratic Kampuchea, state-name of Cambodia between 1975 and 1979
DRV — Democratic Republic of Vietnam (1945-1976)
FUNK — United National Front of Kampuchea
GRUNK — Royal Government of National Union of Cambodia (1970-
1976)
ICP — Indochinese Communist Party (1930-1951)
Khmer Rouges -- colloquial name for Khmer communists
KPRP — Khmer People's Revolutionary Party (1951-1960)
PRK — People's Republic of Kampuchea (1979-)
SRV — Socialist Republic of Vietnam (1976-)
VCP — Vietnamese Communist Party (1976-)
VWP — Vietnamese Workers' Party (1951-1976) vi
List of Figures
1. Map of government and resistance held areas 37
2. Map of administrative zones in Democratic Kampuchea ..57
3. Map of zone leaders 58 vii
Acknowledgement
It gives me great pleasure to record my gratitude to all those who helped with the preparation of this thesis. Among the faculty members at U.B.C. who provided me with time, ideas, and stimulation are Terry McGee, R.S. Milne, and Alexander Woodside. John R. Wood has been an inspiring teacher for several years. I am particularly appreciative of his extensive comments and criticisms of Chapters One and Four which greatly improved the final presentation of analysis and argument. I would also like to thank David P. Chandler of Monash University who encouraged my research and whose own ideas and extensive knowledge of Cambodia are evident in many of the following pages. The thesis also benefitted from the substantive criticism offered by fellow students in Political Science.
My greatest debt is to my advisor, Diane K. Mauzy who first encouraged my interest in Cambodia and whose close supervision of this research project from beginning to end aided in immeasurable ways. I am grateful for the investment of time, the care, and the patience that was given by her the past year.
To my dear friends Mika Levesque and Lyn Vasey, who provided constant support from different sides of the world, my thanks are due.
Finally, I would like to express gratitude to the Cambodian friends I met in Phanat Nikom and Khao I Dang refugee camps, Thailand, who eagerly shared their personal histories, memories and insight into what was undoubtedly a very difficult period of Cambodian history to have lived through. 1
INTRODUCTION Oh will there be a dreadful bloodbath When the Khmer Rouge come to town? Aye, there'll be a dreadful bloodbath When the Khmer Rouge come to town.1
Bright red blood which covers towns and plains Of Kampuchea, our Motherland, Sublime Blood of workers and peasants Sublime Blood of revolutionary men and women fighters The Blood changing into unrelenting hatred And resolute struggle On April 17th, under the Flag of the Revolution, Free from slavery!
National Anthem of Democratic Kampuchea
On April 17, 1975, the five year civil war that had ensued since the overthrow of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970, and which had destroyed much of Cambodia, came to an end.2 Lon Nol's
Republican forces surrendered to the revolutionary forces of the
National United Front of Kampuchea (FUNK). FUNK was dominated militarily and ideologically by the Communist Party of Kampuchea
(CPK). Kyoto Press reported that day that "soldiers and people were seen shaking hands and in each other's arms. Refugees flocking into the city centre have returned home on jeeps escorted by soldiers. Fighting has stopped and the Cambodian civil war is now over."3
But, for the end of what some reporters have called the bloodiest war in Indochina, with acts of atrocity committed by both sides, the reconciliation between the victors and losers in
Phnom Penh was shortlived. For one thing, fears of a bloodbath were not unfounded. As early as 1972, five-hundred Lon Nol 2
soldiers had been captured en masse and machine-gunned to death." Evacuees from the southwest region of Cambodia under
Khmer Rouge control spoke of executions of poor peasants who resisted working on collectivized farms; cadres who disagreed with the more radical egalitarian rural policies implemented by the regional leadership were also killed. Khmer Rouge rule during the following four years was brutally harsh. At least one million of Cambodia's seven million people died by starvation, disease and execution over a four year period ending in 1979.5
The CPK leadership, composed of Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, and
Khieu Samphan, embarked on an ambitious and sweeping transformation of the political, economic and social fabric of
Cambodia, to make way for a new society, completely severed from its two-thousand year history. This was Year Zero. The features of the new society were spelled out by Pol Pot at a meeting of Cabinet Ministers and regional leaders on April 17,
1975, at which time he enumerated eight policy directives:
1. Evacuate people from all towns
2. Abolish all markets
3. Abolish Lon Nol regime currency and withhold the revolutionary currency that has been printed
4. Defrock all Buddhist monks and put them to work growing rice
5. Execute all leaders of the Lon Nol regime beginning with the top leaders.
6. Establish high level cooperatives throughtout the country with communal eating. 3
7. Expel the entire Vietnamese population
8. Dispatch troops to the borders, particularly the Vietnamese border.6
All of these policies except two, the derobing of the monks and the institution of communual eating, were carried out
immediately.7 On the same day of the April 17th meeting, the day of the final Khmer Rouge victory, urban centres throughout the entire country were evacuated. Phnom Penh's 2.5 million people were instructed to leave the city immediately, and to take with
them provisions for three days. Refugees recall being told the population had to evacuate the city because it was going to be
the target of American B-52 bombers for three days. They were also told by the Khmer Rouge soldiers that they would be allowed
to return when the area was safe. There were no B-52 bombers
and only a few thousand officials were allowed to return. Two million former peasants, who had fled to the cities to escape
the fighting, were told to return to their former villages or to
relocate to new districts. Urbanites were instructed by CPK
cadres as to where they should go. The roads leading out of
Phnom Penh were flooded with people, most of whom were
travelling on foot, to destinations throughout the country.
Apartments, offices, schools, cafes, shops, pagodas and
hospitals were closed; no one was permitted to stay in the city.
The casualties from the mass exodus numbered some 35,000 in
the first few weeks;8 they included those who had been suffering
from malnutrition and starvation in Phnom Penh prior to the end
of the war, the very old and the very young, the war-wounded and 4
those executed for disobeying orders.
The haste and disregard for the human suffering that accompanied the forced evacuations suggests that humanitarian motives were not the basis of the policy. Rather, it is the contention here, that the deurbaniztion policy was motivated by
ideological and strategic concerns. The Khmer Rouge believed that the cities were impure, parasitical and foreign-dominated, and were inhabited by those who were responsible for Cambodia's dependence on outsiders and the corruption of Cambodia's national integrity. The strategic consideration was simply this: the cities could not be gainfully used as a target of
Vietnamese subversion and attack as long as they were unpopulated and unproductive. In other words, the evacuations were a prepatory stage of what was to be an ongoing war in
Cambodia.
The well-known enemies of the regime were executed in the
first few weeks of its victory. Among them were General Sirk
Matak, Prime Minister Long Boret, and Lon Nol's brother, Lon
Non.9 Anonymous enemies of the new regime were also targeted.
Anyone who had directly -- or indirectly -- worked for the Lon
Nol regime (1970-1975), including professionals and
intellectuals, or whose family members were associated with the
regime, risked execution if their identities were revealed.
Following the deurbanization drive, the countryside was
rapidly transformed into a vast work site, with the population
forcefully organized into labour collectives. Private property was abolished; the use of currency was disallowed; and all 5
public buildings were closed permanently or used for administrative centres. No foreign aid was sought or accepted even though the threat of starvation was omnipresent for hundreds of thousands of people. Instead of requesting foreign aid the CPK made the decision to meet the nation's food needs by forcing the entire population to work in the agricultural sector. "Every facet of life is now secondary to the production of rice", Phnom Penh radio reported in early 1976.10
The population was then divided into three categories: first, the "old people", those who had lived in villages controlled by FUNK prior to 1973; second, the "reserved people", those who had lived in areas controlled by FUNK after 1973; and third, the "new people", sometimes referred to as the "April
17th people", all those who had remained in areas, mostly urban, controlled by Lon Nol forces up to the end of the war. The "new people", comprising almost half the entire Cambodian population, were considered to be traitors of the revolution; they were treated with contempt and suspicion by CPK cadres and soldiers.
Life for the "new people" was especially difficult as they were not accustomed to rural work and living conditions. And in many cases, the new people recieved less food than those in the other two social categories. As such, the traditional hierarchy was turned upside down. In Democratic Kampuchea, it was the peasant class, especially the poor peasant class, that was, theoretically at least, placed at the top of the social scale.
Further social divisions were established for productive work on the collectivized farms. Men and women worked 6
separately in the rice fields and were not permitted tcr engage in conversations. Adolescents were separated from their families and assigned to the wandering mobile youth teams, responsible for building dams and dikes, cutting wood, building roads and digging irrigation channels. Young children were put to work collecting human and animal manure to be used as fertilizer. Dawn to dusk work schedules were assigned to everyone; those who were unable to work received no rice ration.
The elderly stayed within the village compounds to look after the very young children. And everyone was looked after by
Angkar (Organization). No one knew exactly what or who Angkar was, except of course, the village, district and regional cadres whose positions and authority were determined by the CPK, the real authority behind Angkar. Food was rationed by Angkar; work intructions were given by Angkar; social relations were governed by Angkar; and death came from Angkar. "Angkor has eyes like a pineapple and can see everything" is a phrase many refugees recall in their testimonials of life in Democratic Kampuchea.
The identity of Angkar and its leaders remained a mystery until
September 27, 1977, at which time Pol Pot revealed to the nation and to the world over Phnom Penh radio the existence of the
Communist Party of Kampuchea.
The key slogan of the DK regime was to "build and defend" the country, to make it self-sufficient and self-reliant and, perhaps most importantly, strong enough to retake territory from its historic adversaries, Thailand and Vietnam. Not everyone within the CPK was convinced of the efficacy of these policies. 7
A violent struggle for power took place, which resulted in mass purges, and in some cases,the wholesale slaughter of village populations. At the time internal violence was spreading throughout the country, the CPK leadership, firmly controlled by
Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, and Khieu Samphan, ordered repeated attacks against Vietnam. Pol Pot's claims of the invincibility of his army and his regime were soon put to the test. Vietnam retaliated with the force of its massive army in December 1978.
By January 1979, the Vietnamese army effectively occupied
Cambodia and had installed Heng Samrin, a former DK official who had escaped to Vietnam in 1978 to avoid being purged, as the country's new leader.
From 1975 until the beginning of 1979, Cambodia, under the
Democratic Kampuchean regime, was a country of rural labourers, a large number of whom were worked and starved to death. They were terrorized by totalitarian methods of social control and educated to despise all foreigners, especially the Vietnamese.
The centuries-old society embued with Buddhist and royalist values was destroyed. The old Cambodia simply no longer exists.
Since 1979, under the People's Republic of Kampuchea, an uneasy coalition of Khmer communists and Vietnamese advisors,
Cambodia has been slowly recovering from an extremely traumatic historical period. 8
Notes
1 Song heard in Hotel Phnom during the last days of the civil war. Cited in William Shawcross, Sideshow: Nixon,
Kissinger and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1979), p. 354.
2 The name "Cambodia" was changed in 1976 to "Kampuchea", a derivative of the Sanskrit "Kambuja". I have chosen to use the name "Cambodia" throughout the thesis as it is still the most widely used name in English, except in those places where other authors specifically use the name "Kampuchea".
3 U.S. Department of Commerce, Foreign Broadcast
Information Service Daily Report for Asia and the Pacific
(hereinafter cited as FBIS), 17 April 1975.
* Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power. (The Thetford
Press Limited, 1985), p. 336.
5 This figure comes from Kiernan, whose thorough research
on this historical period is marked by a meticulous search of available facts and evidence, op. cit., p. 416. Estimates of
the human cost of the DK regime are difficult to determine and vary widely from tens of thousands up to three million. Michael
Vickery estimates the number to be closer to 400,000, based on available but dated census data, a projection of birth and death
rates, pre-1975 war dead, and repatriation figures. See his
book, Cambodia 1975-1982. (Boston: South End Press, 1984), pp.
178- 182.
6 Kiernan, op. cit. , p. 415.
7 According to Vickery's research, Buddhist monks were seen 9
in Battambang in 1976 and in Kratie in 1977. Communal eating was not established nation-wide until January 1, 1977. See
Vickery, op. cit., p. 180.
8 Martin Stuart-Fox. The Murderous Revolution: Life and
Death in Pol Pot's Kampuchea. (Chippendale: Alternative
Publishing Cooperative Ltd., 1985), p. 19. Ieng Sary, Deputy
Premier of Democratic Kampuchea, claimed that 2,000 to 3,000 people died during the evacuations and that "some thousands died
in the rice fields". See FBIS, 11 May 1977. Such an vague estimate leaves room for further speculation. In fact, the
World Health Organization noted that the plight of war refugees
in Phnom Penh was severe enough to warn of imminent starvation
for more than the "some thousands" Ieng Sary mentions. During
the last months of the war, rice had to be flown into the city as the productive bases of the counrty had been either laid waste by the bombing or were under CPK control. Only 450,000
refugees were registered to receive rice; the 1.5 million
refugees who were not registered, and who could not afford to pay the highly inflated black market price for rice, were
without any food. In one month alone, March 1975, an estimated
8,000 people had died of starvation in Phnom Penh. Without
immediate medical assistance and supervision many more thousands
of of these war refugees most probably did "die in the rice
fields". See George Hildebrand and Gareth Porter, Cambodia:
Starvation and Revolution. (New York: Monthly Review Press,
1976), pp. 25-29.
9 Lon Nol fled Cambodia on April 1st; acting president, 10
Saukham Khoy left on April 12th. No other senior officials of
Lon Nol's government accepted the American government's offer of asylum in the United States.
10 Reported in Far Eastern Economic Review 2 January, 1976. 11
I. THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CAMBODIAN REVOLUTION:
1960-1975
In light of the conventional and ubiquitous descriptions of
Cambodia in the 1950's and 1960's as a "gentle land" composed
"by and large [of] a docile passive people,"11 the radical and excessively violent revolution of 1975 was unpredicted and met with shock by many observers.12 Yet the inability of most Asia watchers to predict a revolution in Cambodia is not surprising; most eyes were on Vietnam throughout the war period. Cambodia was viewed as a "sideshow" of the Vietnam-United States war, a neutral state ruled authoritatively by the illustrious Prince-
Sihanouk. Given the preoccupation of many observers with the war in Vietnam, there is a more compelling explanation for the disinterest in Cambodia: the apparent lack of demographic and economic pressures which fuel mass discontent in rural
societies. Unlike China or Vietnam, Cambodia did not suffer
from population pressure on land; large landholdings were extremely rare. Most Cambodian peasants had adequate land and
resources to sustain a subsistence level existence.
At the governmental level, too, despite some bureaucratic
ineffectiveness and political mismanagement, in the mid-1960's,
Cambodia did not exhibit signs of dangerous instability prior to
the 1970 coup d'etat which ended Sihanouk's rule. Prince
Sihanouk, greatly revered as a traditional devaraja ("god-
king"), gained additional respect from the Cambodian peasantry
(as well as from foreign officials) for his vision of a modernized and democratic society. In short, Cambodia appeared 1 2
to be a bastion of stability, and even prosperity, in an otherwise war-ravaged region in Southeast Asia. How then did a relatively small and unknown group of Cambodian communists come to organize and successfully mount a peasant-based revolution in this "gentle land"?
This question is of major significance to Cambodians and non-Cambodians alike who seek an understanding of the events of the past decade. Further, the question of why and how Cambodia experienced revolution is of significance to the study of revolution in general. It provides yet another case study for useful comparisons with the historical evidence of past
revolutions. Finally, the Cambodian revolution is a significant reminder to political analysts that the appearance of stability can be misleading. States seeming to exhibit stability can experience revolution given the rise of certain necessary and sufficient conditions.
In this chapter I will examine the origins and development of the peasant-based communist revolution in Cambodia up to the point at which the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) seized power on April 17, 1975. The first section will investigate and analyse theories of revolution which may help to explain the occurrence of the Cambodian revolution. The conditions generally believed to be necessary and sufficient were present.
These were: a weak central government; ineffective armed forces; external interference, especially war, impinging on the state; peasant rebellions;and the emergence of an urban intelligentsia
opposed to the state. In the second section I will turn to a 13
discussion of the origins and revolutionary struggle of the CPK
in the context of these conditions which developed in Cambodia
from the mid-1960's until 1975. The conclusion will relate
theory to the historical circumstances and developments of this
period in order to determine the extent to which the Cambodian
revolution can be generally explained by the theoretical
literature. The main argument to be advanced is that the 1970
coup d'etat against Sihanouk and the following combined U.S.-
South Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia was the turning point in
the CPK revolutionary struggle leading to its success.
THEORIES OF REVOLUTION
As a distinct political process, revolution is by far the
most extreme manifestation of rapid and abrupt political change
and societal transformation. Lenin stated that only through
revolution "are the masses of the people in a position to come
forward so actively as creators of a new social order."13 Before
attending to a discussion of the theoretical literature on the
causes of revolution and the conditions under which the
peasantry participates in revolution, it is first necessary to
make clear my understanding of the terms "peasant" and
"revolution".
Both terms have been defined, refined and debated. Few, I
think, would argue with Theodor Shanin's definition of the
peasantry as "small agricultural producers who, with the help of
simple equipment and the labour of their families, produce
mainly for their own consumption and the fulfillment of 14
obligation to the holders of political and economic power".10
Revolution is somewhat more difficult to define since so few scholars can agree on what is and what is not revolution.15
One of the more narrow definitions of revolution which clearly avoids the pitfalls of overlapping with terms such as rebellion, coup d'etat, and internal war, but which articulates well the scope of the event, is that put forth by Samuel Huntington.
Revolution, as defined by Samuel Huntington, is : "a rapid, fundamental, and violent domestic change in the dominant values and myths of a society, in its political institutions, social structure, leadership, and government activities and policies".16 In addition to this definition, I would like to add one further characteristic which is not explicit in the former definition but which Cynthia Enloe makes clear: the element of popular support. According to Enloe:
One modern element is inherent in revolution: its mass character. Even revolutions with strong individual leaders and effective organizations are characterized by broad support among the general populace...Only with broad popular participation does a revolution touch lives and values throughout the whole society and thus generate radical change.17
For the purposes of this thesis, Huntington's definition of revolution will be used in conjunction with the characteristic of mass support supplied by Enloe. Huntington's definition
(cited above) emphasizes the extent of change in virtually all levels and structures of society that distinguishes revolution from mere elite replacement (coup d'etat) and organized resistance with the goal of limited reform (rebellion). Enloe stresses the mass component which is an important characteristic 15
of peasant-based revolutions.
Given this definition of revolution, what are its causes?
The answers to this question are necessarily complex. Theda
Skocpol's theory of revolution emphasizes three necessary and sufficient conditions:"(1) the collapse or incapacitation of central administrative and military machineries; (2) widespread peasant rebellions; and (3) marginal elite political movements".18 Skocpol proposes that the development of these three necessary and sufficient conditions occurred in a specific world historical period characterized by the modernization of agrarian societies and their concomitant inclusion into an
increasingly competitive international state system dominated by the Western industrialized states.19
Skocpol determines that the revolutions in France, Russia, and China occurred as a result of the failure of the governments
in each of the countries to successfully modernize and to
overcome military confrontations with foreign powers.20 The
latter feature, war, is especially important as a cause of administrative and military collapse, which in turn are preconditions for revolution to develop.
In addition, the physical hardships imposed by wartime conditions can have a radicalizing effect on rural and urban populations. For example, the inability of the Tsarist
government to manage Russia's involvement in World War I caused military demoralization, large-scale desertion, and mass urban
and rural anti-government protests.21 Prior to the Japanese
invasion of China in 1937, the pressures on the peasantry 16
brought about by increased exploitation, warlordisrn, and natural disasters, were not so intense or widespread as to cause a mass- based peasant revolution. Chalmers Johnson, in his well-known study of the Chinese Revolution writes:
Japan's invasion and occupation of China decisively altered the political interests of the peasantry. Prior to 1937, [the year in which Japan invaded] the peasants were a passive element in politics...the war presented the peasantry with a challenge to its security of such immediacy that the peasants could not ignore it.22
Vietnam provides another example of widespread social unrest brought about by excessively burdensome wartime conditions. Peasant uprisings in Tonkin between 1943 and 1945 were the direct result of the French colonial government's wartime taxation policies. The success of the Viet Minh's attempt to rally peasants against the colonial government during the August Revolution of 1945 is attributed to the miserable conditions in the rural areas caused by the war.23
The economic repercussions of war as well as the tangible destruction it imparts can have decisive implications for the widespread mobilization of the population by revolutionary parties and organizations. In short, war figures prominently as a condition which facilitates the development of revolution.
Thus Skocpol states quite categorically:"The Russian Revolution occurred in 1917 because Russia was too inextricably entangled with foreign powers, friend and foe, economically and militarily more powerful than she."2" Similarly, the Bourbon monarchy in
France, the Republican government in China, and the Vietnamese governments in North and South Vietnam were engaged in taxing wars at the time their revolutions occurred.25 17
If a weak central government and ineffective armed forces allow revolutionary conditions to develop during times of war, what are the conditions under which the peasantry will rise up against the state? James Scott has noted that most peasants are extremely reticent to risk all for the sake of rebellion.26However, under conditions of extreme duress brought about by such developments as natural disasters, excessively burdensome taxation, and/or war, peasants have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to rebel. Yet peasant impoverishment, as a factor on its own, is insufficient as an explanation for why peasants rebel. It does not, for example, explain why it is that some peasants rebel while others do not.
Barrington Moore considers that a sudden increase in the level of exploitation affecting many peasants simultaneously may well act as the spark that ignites peasant violence against the state.27 If sudden, widespread and unexpected increases in the intensity of peasant impoverishment are the determining factor of peasant participation in revolution, then_.it appears that this was provided by the wars in which each each state was involved while undergoing revolution.
It is, however, necessary to note that almost all peasant rebellions have been conservative in nature. Theda Skocpol's remarks on the role of the peasantry in revolution are particularly instructive:
[i]t is worth emphasizing that peasant actions in revolutions are not intrinsically different from peasant actions in 'mere' rebellions or riots...Peasants initially drew upon tradional cultural themes to justify rebellion (ie. defense of communal lands or customary rights). Far 18
from becoming revolutionaries through adoption of a radical vision of a desired new society, 'revolutionary' peasants have been typically 'backward looking' rebels incorporated by circumstances beyond their control ' into politically processes occurring independently of them at the societal center.2 8
How can this "backward looking" characteristic of peasant protest be explained? The issue of what Marxists call "false conciousness", that is, the inability of peasants (and other social classes) to recognize and represent their class interests, prompted Marx to call the French peasants a "sack of potatoes".29 Both Eric Wolf and Moore have embellished Marx's metaphor by pointing out that the links between peasant groups are weak and that therefore it is difficult for the peasantry to organize as a group.30 Further, the revolutionary potential of the peasantry is hindered by its social relations with other classes. For example, in situations where the political elites and landlords are in close proximity to the peasantry, the potential for rebellion is slight. However, if such groups are unable to directly oversee and control peasant activities, the potential for rebellion increases.31 Thus, it is only when the ties between political elites/landlords and peasants are snapped or broken that peasants acquire the "tactical freedom" to organize and rebel.32 The truncation of such ties comes about as a result of war, famine or other types of crisies during which elites flee rural areas, leaving the peasantry free to fend for itself.
Marxists have long argued that peasants need outside leadership to lend direction and meaning to peasant movements.
Peasants, Marx believed, have had no class conciousness, no 19
communication network that will provide them with the concept of national unity, and no way of organizing their political interests. For these reasons Marx stated that peasants "cannot represent themselves, they must be represented."33 In this context, .the role of the urban intelligentsia, called by Wolf
"external forces" and by Skocpol, "marginal elites", is necessary in the transformation of peasant participation in rebellion to national revolution. That role was filled by the
Jacobins in France, only partially by the Bolsheviks in Russia, by the communist Red Army in China, by the Viet Minh in Vietnam, and by the Khmer Rouge or CPK in Cambodia. In all of these cases, the revolutionary movements were led by groups of alienated, university educated, urban intellectuals, who shared the goal of coming to power in order to institute massive reform in the traditional social, economic and political structures of their respective societies. Further, in all of these cases, the urban intellectuals who organized revolutionary organizations with which to overthrow the traditional governments, relied upon the peasantry for mass support.
The relationship between revolutionary intellectuals and the peasantry is not an easy one to foster. As Wolf points out,
"not every callow agitator will find a welcome hearing in village circles traditionally suspicious of outsiders, especially when they come from the city."3" For this reason, urban-based intellectuals have to be extremely careful in their approach to the peasantry. Courteous behaviour and selective rural reforms such as land reallotment and mutual aid teams are 20
ways in which the intelligentsia can overcome peasant suspicions of outsiders, the first step of many required to obtain peasant support for a revolutionary movement. Coercion is another method by which peasant participation in revolution is obtained
if "coutesies and rewards"35 fail to generate voluntary support.
For example, the Chinese Red Army resorted to coercive tactics to force unwilling peasants to join its ranks. Peasants who had demonstrated their reticence to join or support the Red Army were labled traitors and castigated by villagers who supported the communists. Peer pressure was a coercive strategy the
Chinese Communist Party would later endorse to rupture the power base of the peasantry.
To sum up, the genesis and development of revolution, as it has been defined in this thesis, are dependent upon the conjuncture of five conditions. These are: a weak central government; ineffective armed forces; external threats, especially war; sudden, intense and widespread disruptions in peasant subsistence levels followed by peasant rebellions; and an urban intelligentsia actively opposed to the state. These conditions certainly do not exhaust the list of explanatory
variables. They are, however, the most important variables
present in all revolutions. None of these conditions
individually is sufficient for revolution to occur. First of
all, as long as the state is able to suppress insurgents or
ameliorate the conditions which prompt popular unrest, no anti-
government movement can pose a serious threat to the security of
the state. Second, even if a state's coercive capabilities are 21
weak, this would not matter so long as the state is unchallenged or its authority is accepted by its citizenry. Third, peasant rebellions cannot translate into revolutions unless they are accompanied and led by urban elites who envision the transformation of society. Similarly, alienated urban intellectuals cannot carry out revolution without popular support. In agrarian societies, the support base is the peasantry. However, in the event that a conjuncture of these conditions develops, such that a state .is attacked simultaneously by internal and external forces, the potential for revolution to develop is great.
THE ORIGINS OF THE CPK
The Communist Party of Kampuchea was founded in September
1960 by surviving members of the Indochinese Communist Party
(ICP) and by young radicalized students who had returned from
France. In order to understand its subsequent development and anti-Vietnamese orientation it is necessary to point out the salient features of Khmer communist history, which extend back to the 1950's.
Pierre Rousset has written that there were two important developments in Khmer communist history during the 1950's: "a political break with Indochina and the development of a
'generation'."36 In 1951, the ICP splintered into three separate communist-inspired nationalist movements. However, while nationalism was the force motivating the ICP breakup, the Khmer component which succeeded the ICP in Cambodia, the Khmer
People's Party (KPP), continued to be directed by the Vietnamese 22
component, the Vietnam Worker's Party. In the VWP's words, it had "the right to supervise the activities of its brother parties in Kampuchea and Laos."37 In light of the fact that the
Vietnamese continued to direct and encadre Khmer communists, with their complicity, it seems doubtful that the formation of the KPP in 1951 signalled a political break other than in words.
Arguably, the formation of three separate communist parties was more symbolic of political change within the Vietnamese
Communist Movement than it was of a political break with its counterparts in Cambodia and Laos.38 Rather than the dissolution of the ICP in 1951 marking a turning point in the history of
Khmer communism it now appears that the 1954 Geneva Conference was the more important event in view of its consequences for the path chosen by the Cambodian left.
Despite the Viet Minh's efforts to have the KPP representatives included in the Geneva talks, the Soviet Union and China refused to allow their inclusion.39 As a result of the
KPP's inability to gain either international recognition or legitimacy at the Geneva Conference, approximately two-thirds of the party (2,000 members), including the KPP's most effective leaders, decided, with Hanoi's approval, to take refuge in
Northern Vietnam.40 KPP cadres who remained in Cambodia to pursue political change through the parliamentary system were almost completely wiped out by Sihanouk's forces. Stephen Heder describes the situation as follows:
Effectively blocked from parliamentary activity by Sihanouk's electoral machinery, and subject to arbitrary arrest, closure of publication and even assassination, the in-country elements of the KPP leadership were decimated. 23
In the countryside Sihanouk's police...were similarly able to destroy the KPP infrastructure. By the end of the 1950's 90 per cent of that infrastructure had been neutralized in one way or another.41
It was under these circumstances that a group of young radical Khmer students, who had recently returned from France where they had gone to study after World War II, were able to occupy the top positions in the Communist Party of Kampuchea in
1960. Among this group of students was Pol Pot, who returned to
Cambodian in 1953 and came to dominate the CPK through the post of party secrectary, Ieng Sary, who returned in 1957 and became a member of the CPK politburo, and Khieu Samphan, who returned in 1959 and became a member of the CPK central committee.
The rise of the "generation" as Pierre Rousset has called them, or the "Paris Group" as they have come to be known, marked an extremely important turning point in the history of the CPK.
This is because these young virulent nationalists were in complete disagreement with the Khmer communist veterans who had maintained close links to the Viet Minh. The Paris Group advocated an independent political line, motivated by its fears of VWP domination, and concentrated on accelerating the
Cambodian revolution; the veterans meanwhile hung tenaciously to the Viet Minh's ideological and tactical bootstraps.
The Viet Minh did not want the Khmer communists to threaten
Sihanouks political supremacy as long as he remained supportive of North Vietnam in his foreign policy."2 China also supported
Sihanouk because he claimed his government was anti-American and anti-imperialist. The CPK was instructed by Hanoi to form a united front with Sihanouk in order to keep him out of the 24
American camp.43 Complying with this request must have been difficult for the Khmer communists whose members Sihanouk's police had been ruthlessly arresting and executing."*
In contradistinction to the Viet Minh's viewpoint, the CPK
leadership took the position that its party, not Sihanouk, was
the bastion of anti-imperialism in Cambodia, and that Sihanouk's
policy of destroying the party would inevitably result in the
American take over of the country."5 By 1963, the CPK, led by
Pol Pot, had made the decision to send most of the central
committee members to the countryside to organize armed struggle
against the state. From that point until its 1975 victory, the
Pol Pot faction of the CPK successfully repelled Vietnamese
attempts to co-opt and dominate the party. According to Heder,
because the CPK did not have ideological support from either
China or Vietnam and only sporadic material support throughout
the 1970-75 period, the CPK "decided that it had little choice
but to learn how to make a virtue of the necessity of isolation
from and independence from all other Communist parties,
especially the VWP, and that such a policy could work.""6 Thus,
the roots of the CPK's strict independence and ideological self-
sufficiency are found in the early period of the revolutionary
struggle.
THE CPK'S RURAL STRATEGY
Since Cambodia is a rural society and 85 per cent of its
population are peasants, it is not at all surprising that the
peasantry occupied a central place in the CPK's analysis of
Khmer society. William Willmott has cogently argued that the 25
CPK's sociological analysis of Cambodian rural society, based primarily on Khieu Samphan's doctoral dissertation, led it to conclude,inaccurately,that the "fundamental contradiction" in
Cambodian society was the conflict between landlords and peasants.47 This conclusion was based upon Samphan's findings that 10 per cent of the total landowners were rich peasants and landlords who owned up to forty per cent of the paddy fields.48
By making a careful comparison of Jean Delvert's meticulous study of Cambodian rural society and the one conducted by Khieu
Samphan, William Willmott found three major errors in Khieu
Samphan's research methods which made his conclusions questionable. First of all, the three provinces which Khieu
Samphan chose to study were atypical in that they exhibited a high incidence of large land holdings, a condition not found elsewhere in the country. Second, Samphan did not consider the
implications that bilateral inheritance had for the size of the
landholdings. Since families often worked on two separate plots
of land,the size of family farms would most likely have been
larger than Samphan's findings suggested. Third, Samphan's
landholding figures did not take into account family owned land
registered outside the township listings. This ommission may
also have resulted in a higher land-family ratio than was
otherwise the case.49
According to Willmott, Delvert states explicitly that
Battambang, Prey Veng, and Svay Rieng, the three provinces
Samphan used for his research, were exceptional in that
landlord- tenant conflict did exist there.50 Significantly, 26
Battambang was theprovince in which the CPK aroused peasant anger towards the government during the Samlaut rebellion in
1967. Ben Kiernan notes that the feature of this rebellion was its duality:"an alliance between a persecuted urban Left and a disaffected rural community."51
It is plausible to suggest that this alliance led the CPK to believe it could attract the same degree of support elsewhere in the country. But more importantly, it "reinforced their views... that Khieu Samphan's analysis was a valid guide to formulating rural policy for the entire country".52
Unlike Samphan, Delvert conducted his study in the most heavily populated regions of Cambodia where 90 per cent of the peasantry lived: around the Tonle Sap lake and in the southeastern provinces in the Mekong River basin. Delvert concludes that 92 per cent of the landholdings in these areas were less than five hectares and 80 per cent were less than two hectares.53 A Cambodian family of four requires at least one hectare of rice land to meet subsistence needs.5* Since the average family size was five people in the mid-1960's, it is reasonable to conclude that while most Cambodian peasants owned the land on which they worked, the amount of land was barely sufficient for them to live comfortably. Nevertheless, contrary to Samphan's depiction of Cambodia as a rural society which suffered from widespread peasant-landlord conflict, Delvert concludes that:
Cambodian peasant society is a democracy of small owner- tillers, under the commercial domination of the Chinese and at a mediocre standard of living...Cambodia-and it is her good fortune-knows no agrarian problem.55 27
While Delvert's study may have painted an overly optimistic picture of Cambodian rural society, Willmott concludes that
"there was little social basis for rural discontent (except in pockets) when the KCP[CPK] began to organize the peasantry in the Kampuchean revolution."56 Kiernan would probably not agree with Willmott. With updated information, Kiernan has pointed out that the percentage of landless peasants increased from 4 per cent in the 1950's to 20 per cent by 1970.57 Apparently, this trend increased after 1954 as wealthy urbanites began to buy up lands owned by peasants who were indebted to moneylenders. Kiernan concludes that although the poor peasants did not form anywhere near a majority of the peasant population,
"by the late 1960's their position was desperate enough for them to have nothing at all to lose in any kind of social revolution."5 8
While the plight of the peasantry may have worsened since both Delvert and Samphan conducted their studies, there is little reason to believe that its overall revolutionary potential was great. Cambodian peasants simply did not suffer from population pressure on land or from landlordism as did those in Vietnam and China, and consequently the majority of
Cambodian peasants did not live on the brink of complete destitution as did those in China or Vietnam. Moreover, the
"radical secular ideologies" of socialism and communism would not likely find appeal among the Buddhist Khmers.59 The Khmer communists, unlike the Burmese nationalists, made no attempt to synthesize Marxism and Buddhism in order to make socialism 28
meaningful to the peasantry. A further hindrance to the revolutionary potential of the Cambodian peasantry was its loyalty to the traditional source of political authority, the devaraja. As Prince Sihanouk was the focus of the peasants' cosmic world, it is unlikely that they would voluntarily participate in a political movement to end the monarchy.
Cambodian peasants were,however, prepared to rebel against the authorities when they felt unjustly treated. Ten thousand peasants in Battambang province rose up in rebellion in 1967 against the armed forces which arrived to prevent the sale of rice on the black market. Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon, two leading left wing members of the Phnom Penh national assembly,were accused by the government of complicity in the rebellion. They quietly left Phnom Penh for the maquis (jungle) amidst rumours that they had been executed by Sihanouk's police.60
Shortly after the Samlaut rebellion in Battambang, the the
CPK made the decision to form a revolutionary army with which to start an all-out war against the state. This decision was likely reached as a result of,first, the Readiness of the peasants to rebel, as demonstrated by the peasantry in Samlaut; and second, Sihanouk's apparent willingness to take repressive action against the urban left.61
Sihanouk's response to CPK activity was swift and
repressive. He boasted that he was capable of treating the CPK
in a fashion similar to the Indonesian government's slaughter of
PKI members in 1965: "We do not lack our Suhartos and Nasutions 29
in Cambodia".62 The number of CPK-directed guerrilla attacks against the armed forces and provincial elites increased throughout 1969. At that time the number of armed guerrillas was estimated to be between 5,000 and 10,000.63
Up to 1970, given its relatively small size, the CPK
revolutionary movement was a source of concern to Sihanouk, but not a major military threat. As long as Sihanouk's army and police forcefully suppressed CPK activity in the countryside and harassed left wing elements in the national assembly, the potential for revolution to occur was slight. Further, stable
rural conditions (with notable exceptions) and the peasantry's
loyalty to Sihanouk hindered the CPK's plan to bring about
revolution through armed struggle.
THE 1970 COUP D'ETAT AND ITS AFTERMATH
While the CPK was organizing base camps throughout the
country in 1970, another kind of drama was unfolding in Phnom
Penh: the overthrow of Prince Sihanouk. On March 18,1970,
General Lon Nol and Prince Sirik Matak staged a successful coup
d'etat against Sihanouk.
The coup marked a watershed in Cambodian history:the end of
the monarchy and the spread of the war to Cambodia. The coup
leaders reversed Sihanouk's policy of maintaining Cambodia's
neutral position vis-a-vis the war in neighbouring Vietnam.
Within a month of the coup, the Vietnam war had spread to
Cambodia. On April 29, 1970, a combined force of U.S.-South
Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia on the pretext of routing out
communist Vietnamese forces from their hidden sanctuaries along 30
the Cambodian-Vietnamese border.
From March 1969 until August 15,1973 (when the U.S.
Congress imposed a bombing halt), American B-52 planes dropped a total of 539,129 tons of bombs over fertile and populated areas of Cambodia.64 William Shawcross notes that "within a few months
[in 1973] an enormous new aerial campaign had destroyed the old
Cambodia forever."65
Sihanouk's repudiation of American military aid and personnel in 1963, the swift deterioration of the economy, and
the presence of communist Vietnamese base camps in Cambodian
territory,were the three internal developments which prompted
the army to take over the government. According to Shawcross:
During the period of American bounty many rough and smooth palms had been crossed; after 1963, with the money supply shrunken, it was only the rich who benefitted, and even they found the return on capital invested in villas and import licenses vastly reduced. Minor civil servants, for whom bribes had been an essential supplement to meager salaries, joined the unemployed graduates and the officer corps in bitter resentment of the expulsion of the Americans and the socialization of the economy.66
Thus, the steady decline of the economy and the frustrated hopes
which attended it, combined with the steady increase of north
Vietnamese soldiers in Cambodian territory (up to 50,000 by
1969), were the key ingredients of urban hostility towards
Sihanouk. His downfall was celebrated by civilians and militarists in the streets of Phnom Penh.67
From his base in Peking, Sihanouk responded to the coup by
announcing the formation of the National United Front of
Kampuchea (FUNK) to fight the Lon Nol government. In what must
have been an intensely uncomfortable meeting, the CPK and 31
Sihanouk agreed to work together to overthrow the Lon Nol regime.68 Yet Kiernan cautions that, in spite of the about-face for both the CPK and Sihanouk, the CPK leadership "did not abandon its long term enmity towards Sihanouk, his followers, or the Vietnamese who had long argued for such a policy revision."69 The CPK did, however, benefit greatly from the alliance since the peasantry responded to Sihanouk's appeal to join the FUNK resistance. On March 26,1970, twenty-five thousand villagers demonstrated outside the local district headquarters in Kompong Cham city and demanded the return of
Prince Sihanouk. In Takeo province, groups of peasant demonstrators occupied local government offices and hung pictures of Sihanouk outside people's homes. Similar demonstrations occurred in Prey Veng province.70 The persona of
Sihanouk was exploited by the CPK "to win precisely that mass support which the rhetoric of revolution had failed to engender.
In Sihanouk the Khmer Rouge [CPK] at last had a national and international identity and appeal".71
The FUNK political program was free of overt Marxist or communist expressions and ideas. FUNK's goal was to defeat
"American imperialists" and overthrow the Lon Nol
"dictatorship". In place of the Khmer Republic, FUNK would create a "Neutral, Democratic and Prosperous Cambodia". Justus
M. van der Kroef summarizes the features of this proposed new
Cambodia as follows:
[it] would give political freedoms to Cambodians (freedom of the press, speech, opinion, association, residence, and elections, and the safeguarding of the 'inviolability' of persons and property), as well as guarantee the rights of 32
landownership to peasants, encourage trade unions, help the 'national bourgeoisie', and meet the interests of school and university students. As to foreign policy, the FUNK promised to 'make concerted efforts', together with Laos and Vietnam, to make 'Indochina' into a genuine zone of 'independence, peace and progress.72
Such a platform was likely designed to appeal to urban
Cambodians who feared communism but who no longer supported the increasingly factionalized, inefficient, and corrupt Lon Nol government and to the peasantry who,no doubt, was affected most adversely by the war. It is doubtful that the CPK ever intended to implement the policies outlined in the FUNK political platform. As we shall see in the following section, the CPK leadership proceded to dominate FUNK and implement its own revolutionary blueprint in the rural areas.
THE CPK STRUGGLE 197Q-1975
The revolutionary movement of the CPK advanced in three distinct stages between 1970 and 1975. In the first stage, from
1970 to mid-1971, the Khmer communists were closely supervised by the Viet Minh and allied with Sihanouk's supporters in FUNK.
Throughout this period, the CPK's strategy was to build up their units of armed guerrillas and "liberate" territory from the Lon
Nol regime.
In the second stage, from 1971 to 1973, the CPK made moves to disassociate its forces from the pro-Sihanouk faction of
FUNK, and significantly, from the Vietnamese communists. By some time in mid-1973, the CPK had taken over all the key FUNK administrative and military positions at the village, district, provincial and regional levels. Ith Sarin, a CPK defector, explained the development: 33
[As of 1972] there were still chairmen or committee members at the Front at some Phum [village] and Khum [township] who remained in the framework of the Front; that is, they still believed that [they] were making the revolution simply to hand authority back to Sihanouk. As for the members of this sort of Committee, the Khmer Rouge Organization always monitored them and often gradually gave political education to attract them into skipping toward the socialist revolution in stages.73
While the CPK was slowly overpowering the pro-Sihanouk supporters within the ranks of FUNK, it was simultaneously telling the peasantry in the liberated zones to forget about the prince, who, it reported, "thinks only of going to live the good
life in France".7" A 1971 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency
report concluded that peasant support for the Khmer communists was widespread due to their polite conduct and honesty towards villagers. It stated that "[tjhey help them with the harvest, offer to pay a reasonable sum for the supplies they need, treat
the women with respect and refrain from abusive language or behaviour."7 5
In order to try to control and direct the social chaos that
was developing rapidly throughout the countryside in the early
1970's, the CPK had to check the influence and power of the Viet
Minh. Since its inception, the CPK had been led by men who
distrusted the intentions of the VCP towards the CPK. It is
important to note that the ill-feeling and distrust between the
CPK and the VWP did not stem soley from disagreements over
strategy. Evidently, the CPK interpreted the VWP's need to
direct CPK policy as ethnic chauvinism- a response that was
derived from centuries-old ethnic antagonism between Cambodia
and Vietnam. By 1970, the CPK central committee committee had 34
"for the most part agreed that Vietnam was not a reliable ally of the Kampuchean revolution and at a Party Congress held at the end of 1971 they had resolved that Vietnam was the long-term
'acute enemy' (satrouy srouch) of Kampuchea".76 This appears to be the first hint of the xenophobic orientation of the CPK leadership.
Between 1971 and 1973, many of the Khmer communist veterans who had regrouped in Vietnam in 1954 and returned to Cambodia after the 1970 coup to help accelerate the revolution, were purged by the CPK leadership. Thus, at a time when both the
Vietnamese and Khmer communists were under continuous attacks by the Cambodian, South Vietnamese, and American government forces, they were also engaged in an internecine battle. This battle split the CPK into two factions: the Pol Pot group, which dominated the party leadership and which was clearly anti-VWP and anti-Sihanouk and the "Hanoi-Khmer" group, led by Keo Moni,
Chou Chet, and Heng Samrin (now President of the People's
Republic of Kampuchea). The latter group was composed of ICP veterans and others whose age precluded their membership in the
ICP or KPP but who likewise supported the Vietnamese communists.
The differences within the CPK were later reflected in the regional variation of policy during the 1970-75 and the 1975-79 periods. With superior numbers (200,000 by 1973 compared to
5,000 Vietnamese troops)77 and the development of the 1973 Paris
Peace Agreement, the CPK, or at least the Pol Pot faction of the party, won its battle with the Viet Minh for the time being.
(The hostilities between the two parties resurfaced with a 35
vengence in the post-1975 period) By 1973, the scene was set for the third and final stage of the armed struggle.
Between 1973 and 1975, the CPK forces, largely independent of the Viet Minh, consolidated their strengths and managed to take over large areas of the countryside. It was also in this period that the CPK embarked on a very radical transformation of rural society in some parts of the country. For example, in the
Southwest zone, where the Pol Pot-led faction of the CPK was strong, refugees reported such changes as: the destruction of schools and government offices, the establishment of cooperative
stores, restrictions on 'certain extravagances such as colourful dress', widespread collectivization of land, communal housing and dining halls, and nightly political education meetings.78
Cambodian peasants who escaped from CPK controlled areas in 1973 and became war refugees in Phnom Penh reported that those who disobeyed or disagreed with the changes were killed. 79
THE CPK VICTORY
Three important internal developments aided the CPK victory
in 1975: Sihanouk's role in FUNK; the massive aerial bombing of
the countryside; and the inability of the Lon Nol military
forces to be effective.
The first development, Sihanouk's political role as titular head of FUNK and his appeals to the peasantry to side with the
resistance forces, has already been noted in some detail.
The second development, the destruction of the countryside
brought about by the B-52 bombers, had the important (but
unintended) consequence of increasing the CPK's ability to 36
politicize the peasantry and to add millions of rural people to its ranks. The following story, recounted to Kiernan by a peasant from Svay Rieng province, parallels dozens of similar stories told to him about the bombing (and probably thousands of untold stories):
...in 1972 B-52s bombed three times per day, fifteen minutes apart, three planes at a time. They hit houses in Samrong and thirty people were killed.There were no troops in these villages. At the time there were some Vietnamese troops on the border (nearby) but they didn't bomb the border:they bombed inside it, people's houses. The town of Chantrea was destroyed by US bombs...The people were angry with the US and that is why so many of them joined the Khmer communists.80
Hundreds of thousands of Cambodian peasants grew to hate the Americans for destroying their villages and killing their families and also the Lon Nol government for its complicity in the bombing. It is, therefore, not surprising that a great majority of Cambodians made the decision to support the revolution. By the end of 1973, three quarters of the country was under FUNK control (see map on the following page). Having said that, however, it is not plausible to argue that the
Cambodian peasantry supported the CPK on either ideological grounds or because they believed the communists would deliver them from a cruel and oppressive socio-economic system. Their
fight was one of survival, not revolution. Moreover, the CPK revealed neither its identity nor its intentions to the peasantry until after 1975. As Serge Thion pointed out, the
CPK's identity and ideology were "completely hidden truths,
revealed only to the enlightened few who could achieve senior positions in the [party] apparatus".81 37
Figure 1 - Map of government and resistance held areas
SOUTH CHIHA CAMBODIA SEA I 972
F 1 lon Nol GovernmentQntwlled Areas This map ms issued by Hue Sihanouk's government in Mai) 1972. The Lon Nol Government's territory shrank and fragmented into enclaves from then until defeat in April 1975.
vT
THAI LAN D
Pliiku i ] Stunt) ITrtng Sim Reap A Kompong/ i&attambariCi Jhoml i i
ompong Cham
PkmnPenh \Te\uNinh
^'Bien Hot
'Saigon SihanmikvilU TV^a. 3 'HaTten
0
SOUTH CHIHA
SEA
Gutr OF THAILAND
O MILES IOO O KM IOO
Reproduced from William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon
and the Destruction of Cambodia, New York:Simon and Schuster, 1979 p. 254. 38
In the few areas where the CPK revealed its dislike of Sihanouk and its true intentions for radical change, peasant support declined considerably. Under these circumstances the CPK used coercive tactics to maintain its base of popular support.
The hardship, the suffering, the misery, and the fierce hatreds that were provoked by the relentless sweep of carpet bombing, also hardened the ranks of FUNK. Shawcross' poignant remarks on this point are worth repeating here. Referring to the 1973 rainy season, he states:
That summer's war provides a lasting image of peasant boys and girls, clad in black, moving slowly through the mud, half-crazed with terror, as fighter-bombers tore them down by day, and night after night whole seas of 750-pound bombs smashed all around. Week after week they edged forward, forever digging in, forever clambering slippery road banks to assault government outposts, forever losing comrades and going on in thinner ranks, through a landscape that would have seemed lunar had it not been under water.82
While the success of the CPK can be attributed, in part, to its strategic alliance with Sihanouk and the B-52 bombing campaign, both of which yielded a massive popular support base, there is yet a third and perhaps more important factor which helps to account for the CPK victory in 1975: the failure of the
Lon Nol army to function effectively. Despite the fact that Lon
Nol's forces had the United States as a powerful and wealthy patron that provided superior military weaponry, air support, and strategic planning, Lon Nol's forces were not able to maintain their positions in the field long enough to gain a military advantage over FUNK. In fact, the dismal military record of the Lon Nol forces in the first month of the war seemed to repeat itself in every major battle up to 1975. 39
According to Wilfred Burchet't .""•-•more than half of Lon Nol's battalions were either beaten by FUNK, joined FUNK, or simply dispersed during the first month of active combat in 1970.83
The Lon Nol forces suffered from a lack of discipline and training that spelled disaster on the battlefield. Part of the problem stemmed from Lon Nol's insistence on making all of the important military decisions, a position which alienated his general staff. The frustration and low morale in the top echelons of the military filtered down through the ranks. The numbers of deserters and defectors increased as paltry wages and undisciplined and openly corrupt commanders destroyed the
"esprit de corps". One third of the army, totalling 100,000 men, were "phantom soldiers" whose monthly salaries, provided by the American government, were pocketed by military commanders.84
The rank-and-file and junior officers were often unaccompanied by their battalion or brigade commanders, who remained in their luxurious villas in Phnom Penh.
Leading civil servants and military commanders exploited their positions and their access to U.S. aid to acquire massive personal fortunes. Sek Sam let, the governor of Battambang province, sold rice to the Thais and ammunition to FUNK.85 Lon
Nol's brother apparently amassed a personal fortune of $U.S.90 million by dealing arms on the black market.86 One CIA information report on Cambodia noted that officers talked openly of Lon Nol's incompetence.87
The poor fighting capability of the military was further exacerbated by the virtual collapse of the administration. The 40
state's financial administration simply did not function by
1975. Ninety-five per cent of the government's revenues came from the United States.88 Vitriolic attacks on the Lon Nol government came to be openly expressed by by the urban population. Industrial workers in Phnom Penh went on strike in
1973, followed by teachers and students, all demanding an end to corruption and inflation. Near the end of the war, inflation was as high as 250 per cent per annum. Exports had almost completely stopped. The agricultural and industrial base of the country was in ruins. Rice production stood at a mere 655,000 metric tons in contrast to the prewar figure of 3.8 million tons.89 Very little of this rice arrived in Phnom Penh. The state economy was moribund and the government was completely dependent upon external support. During the last months of the war, two million war refugees in Phnom Penh could not afford to buy enough rice to eat; they were slowly starving to death.
The role of Sihanouk, the bombing, and Lon Nol's ineffective armed forces are all important factors which contributed to the success of the CPK revolutionary movement in
1975. However, it is important to note that the CPK's victory derived, ultimately, from its ability to take full advantage of the conditions which were conducive to revolution in Cambodia.
In other words, it would be erroneous (if not unfair to the CPK) to assert that key historical develoments account for the CPK victory. In spite of U.S. military strength, inner-party factionalism, the lack of consistent ideological and material support from either Vietnam or China, the CPK revolutionary 41
movement achieved victory in 1975. The CPK leadership skillfully manipulated the role of Sihanouk in FUNK to build its support network. It rallied hundreds of thousands of peasants who had fled from bombed areas. It trained party cadres to behave in exemplary fashion in the villages, behaviour that contrasted sharply with that of the Khmer Republican, the South
Vietnamese, and the American armed forces. Without these attributes, it is unlikely that the Khmer communists would have been able to take control of the country. This point has either not been made or has not been emphasized in the English language literature. The reason for this probably stems from the scarce research material on the CPK's policies and actions. As such, more analytical weight is given to other factors.
As the CPK-dominated FUNK was staging its final assault on
Phnom Penh, Henry Kissinger brazenly proposed that CPK representative Khieu Samphan and Premier Lon Nol negotiate a peaceful solution to the war. The CPK flatly rejected the proposal and proceded to close in on the city. On the morning of April 17, 1975, Lon Nol's Khmer Republic officially surrendered. No one was prepared for the nightmare that was to follow.
CONCLUSION
The Cambodian revolution exhibited all of the conditions generally thought to be necessary and sufficient for revolution to occur. The 1970 coup d'etat was a clear indication of how weak Sihanouk's government had become. The Lon Nol army suffered from internal weaknesses that were not overcome in time 42
to protect the state from internal attacks. Cambodia also suffered from external threats that culminated in the combined
U.S.-South Vietnamese invasion of the country in April 1970.
The intensive aerial bombing brought about widespread disruptions in peasant subsistence levels followed by peasant unrest. Last but not least, the CPK was dominated by an urban intelligentsia which was highly capable of making revolution.
Of greatest significance is the conjuncture of these conditions. At the risk of simplifying a very complex period of
Cambodian history, I have attempted to show that the 1970 coup d'etat which ushered Cambodia into the second Indochina war was a very significant internal development, one that changed the course of the CPK armed struggle. First of all, contrary to the
CPK's social analysis, I have argued that Cambodian rural society was not beset by widespread problems which the CPK could have exploited to encourage the peasantry to revolt. Secondly, the Cambodian peasantry was fiercely loyal to its god-king. The peasantry's anti-Lon Nol demonstrations in 1970 illustrated the considerable sway that Sihanouk still had over the rural population. Thirdly, the coercive capabilities of the state were, at that time, strong enough to violently suppress CPK dissident activity. Sihanouk decimated what was left of the KPP in the early 1960's. When the CPK emerged in 1960 under the leadership of Pol Pot, it was isolated from the Chinese and
Vietnamese communist parties, both of which opposed the CPK's anti-Sihanouk position. Thus, two potential sources of financial and military aid which the CPK could have used to 43
present a serious threat to the Sihanouk regime were out of reach. Throughout the 1960's, the small and relatively weak CPK organization was kept that way by Sihanouk's armed forces. For all these reasons, it would be erroneous to argue that the CPK movement had the potential to succeed prior to 1970. Rural conditions were simply not ripe for revolution and the CPK organization was not strong enough to create them.
There were, however, serious problems in the Cambodian political system that would have had to be overcome in order to control the long-term threat the CPK posed to the government.
It is doubtful that Lon Nol could have reformed the political system sufficiently to offset the CPK threat even if the country had not been embroiled in a war.
To return to Theda Skocpol's theory of the causes of revolution, it is plausible to view the historical events of the
1970's as the outcome of the collapse of the central administrative and military machineries. Sihanouk attempted
(and succeeded for many years) to preserve Cambodia's neutrality in the Vietnam war. He was, however, unable to convince the military of the need to adhere to this policy. The military was far too attracted to American offers of financial aid to put up with Sihanouk's anti-U.S. foreign policy. Yet, in spite of the massive amounts of aid the Lon Nol government received from the
U.S., it collapsed after five years of war. The devastation of the economy that resulted from war-time inflation frustrated the efforts of the regime to run the country. Endemic corruption, lack of discipline and coordination in the arrny ranks led to low 44
morale and a high rate of desertion.
The combined air and land attacks that were waged in the
rural areas destroyed the social basis of village life. Thus
the peasantry had what Eric Wolf called the 'tactical freedom'
to join the resistance forces. Perhaps more than any other development, it was the massive aerial bombing of the countryside that provided the sudden and unexpected increases in
the level of peasant impoverishment that Barrington Moore said was necessary to provoke peasants to participate in revolution.
The CPK provided the peasantry with the representatives Karl
Marx determined that it required to cohere as a class.
At this point, the dearth of research in the area of CPK- peasant relations precludes substantive comparisons to either
the CCP or Viet Minh approaches to peasant organization. Ben
Kiernan's pioneering work points out that the Pol Pot faction of
the CPK was much less flexible than either the CCP or Viet Minh
in its attempts to ease peasant suspicions and to introduce
reforms gradually. The extent to which peasant support for the
CPK was voluntary or coerced is a subject which deserves careful
study. However, it seems fair to conclude that whatever the mix
of ingredients in the CPK's rural strategy, whether it consisted
of persuasion through good behaviour and rural reform, or by
coercive measures, it turned out to be the right recipe for
seizing power in 1975. Of great interest is whether the CPK
chose the right recipe for success once they obtained control
over the country.(This issue forms the subject of chapter
three). The CPK came to power as an internationally isolated 45
and deeply divided party. The zealous anti-Vietnamese position of the Pol Pot faction combined with the unpopularity of its draconian domestic policies implemented in some regions of the country prior to 1975, were features which did not augur well for the new revolutionary regime. Although the CPK followed the classic Marxist-Leninist pattern of how best to foment revolution, the main ideological inspiration that powered the revolution after 1975 was not communism but nationalism. The question as to whether the Democratic Kampuchean regime can be called communist or nationalist is discussed thoroughly in
Chapter Four.
As in Russia, China and Vietnam, the chaos and destruction brought about by war in Cambodia was instrumental in the political mobilization of the peasantry. This factor, combined with the collapse of the Lon Nol government, were vital developments that help explain why the CPK armed struggle succeeded. Of most significance is the fact that the CPK emerged as a party led by people who knew how to overcome obstacles and how to take advantage of conditions in their favour to promote and make revolution. 46
Notes
11 The adjective gentle,used to describe either the Khmer people or their country, can be found in a number of books and articles, the most recent being John Barron and Anthony Paul
Murder of a Gentle Land: The Untold Story of Communist Genocide
in Cambodia , (Crowell: Readers Digest Press,1977). The second phrase quoted comes from a 1959 Pentagon study of Cambodia cited
in William Shawcross Sideshow: Nixon, Kissinger and the
Destruction of Cambodia (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), p.
55.
12 One notable exception must be made for the following astute and prophetic statement by J.L.S. Girling in an article he wrote in 1972 about the spread of the Vietnam war to
Cambodia: "the longer the war goes on, the more experienced and dedicated cadres of the Khmer-Vietminh...will have laid the
groundwork for a radical transformation of society that will owe
little, except perhaps in name, to the half-hearted and abortive attempts of Sihanouk himself during his 15 years of power". See
J.L.S. Girling, "The Resistance in Cambodia" Asian Survey (Vol.
12, No. 7 1972), p. 563.
13 Stephan T. Possany, ed. The Lenin Reader (Chicago:
Henry Regnery Company, 1966), p. 349.
14 See his article "Peasantry as a Political Factor" in
Peasants and Peasant Societies ed. by Theodor Shanin (London:
Hazell Watson and Viney Ltd., 1971), p. 248.
15 A very good review of the various definitions and 47
classifications of revolution has been written by Lawrence
Stone, "Theories of Revolution", World Politics (vol. 18, no.2
1966), pp.159- 176.
16 Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing
Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 264.
17 Cynthia Enloe Ethnic Conflict and Political Development
(Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1973), p. 218.
18 Theda Skocpol, "France, Russia, China: A Structural
Analysis of Social Revolutions", Comparative Studies in Society and History (vol. 18, no. 2, April 1976), p. 178.
19 Ibid ., p. 181.
20 Ibid ., p. 183.
21 Graeme Gill, "The Mainstreams of Peasant Action in
1917", Soviet Studies vol.xxx, no.1 (January 1978), p. 64.
22 Chalmers Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Communist
Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China 1937-1945 (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1962), p. 69.
23 Alexander Woodside, Community and Revolution in Vietnam
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), p. 120.
24 Skocpol, op. cit., p. 183.
25 France fought in every major European war in the eighteenth century. China was invaded by Japan in 1937.
26 James Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1976), p. 195. This is not to say that peasants do not take steps to ameliorate conditions of exploitation and misery.
Migration, change of patrons or landlords, and social banditry 48
are all well known strategies adopted by peasants in times of crisis.
27 Barrington Moore, The Social Origins of Dictatorship and
Democracy (Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd., 1966), p. 474.
28 Skocpol, op. cit ., p. 193.
29 Karl Marx, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte"
in Theodor Shanin ed., Peasants and Peasant Society p. 230.
30 Eric Wolf, "On Peasant Rebellions", Peasants and Peasant
Society , p. 268-269; Barrington Moore, op. cit. , p. 469.
31 Wolf, orj^ cit. , p. 269.
32 Ibid.
33 Karl Marx, cited in Peasants and Peasant Society , p.
230.
3" Eric Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New
York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1969), p. 89.
35 Walker Connor, The National Question in Marxist-Leninist
Theory and Strategy (New Jersey: Princeton, 1984), p. 71.
36 Pierre Rousset, "Cambodia: Background to the
Revolution", Journal of Contemporary Asia (vol. 7, no. 4,
1977), p. 521.
37 Stephen Heder, "Kampuchea's Armed Struggle; The Origins
of an Independent Revolution", Bulletin of Concerned Asian
Scholars (vol 11, no. 1, January-March 1979), p. 2.
38 Ibid. p. 2.
39 The Soviet Union and China went to the Geneva Conference
prepared to make concessions to the West and they did not want
to rock the diplomatic boat by actively supporting the KPP. See 49
Ben Kiernan, "Origins of Khmer Communism", Southeast Asian
Affairs (1981), p. 174.
ao Ibid. , p. 175.
41 Heder, op. cit. , p. 2.
42 During the 1950's and 1960's the Vietnamese communists were particularly eager to cultivate and maintain friendly and cooperative foreign relations with Sihanouk because he was not
adverse to letting the Viet Minh establish sanctuaries in
Cambodian territory.
43 Heder, op. cit. , p. 3.
44 According to Stephen Heder, many of these arrests and
executions occurred between 1961 and 1962. During this time, a
number of communists, including Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, and Son Sen,
left Phnom Penh to escape Sihanouk's police, op. cit., p. 3.
45 Ibid. , p. 3.
46 Ibid. , p. 20.
47 William Willmott, "Analytical Errors of the Kampuchean
Communist Movement", Pacific Affairs (Summer 1981), p. 209.
4 8 Ibid. , P- 215.
4 9 Ibid. , P. 218-219.
5 0 Ibid. , p. 221 .
5 1 Ben Kiernan and Chantou 3oua, eds., Peasants and
Politics in Kampuchea 1942-1981 (London: Zed Press, 1982), p.
173.
52 Willmott, op. cit. , p. 221.
53 Ibid. , p. 218.
54 Kiernan, Peasants and Politics , p. 4. 50
55 Cited in Willmott, op. cit. , p. 219.
56 Ibid. , p. 224.
57 Kiernan, Peasants and Politics , p. 6.
58 Ibid. , p. 7.
59 Charles Keyes, The Golden Peninsula (New York: MacMillan
Publishing Co., 1977), p. 106.
60 Heder, op. cit. , p. 8.
61 Ibid. , p. 9.
62 Cited in Kiernan, Ibid. , p. 252.
63 Kiernan, Peasants and Politics , p. 196.
6 160,000 tons that were dropped on Japan during WW11. 65 Shawcross, op. cit. , p. 264. 66 Ibid. , p. 66-67. It is necessary to note here that a Cambodian middle class emerged in the 1960's as a result of Sihanouk's policy of expanding education. Within fifteen years of independence, Sihanouk had built nine universities. The combined enrollment was 11,000 students in 1968. Sihanouk, however, overlooked the fact that his government administration could not accomodate the number of graduates in need of employment. Similarly, industry did not grow commeasurate to consumer demand for goods, services, and employment. Thus,when the American dollars were no longer injected in into the economy, the rate of unemployment increased. Sihanouk's popularity plummeted in the urban areas. 67 Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power, London: The Thetford Press, 1985, p. 303. 51 68 It was also decided at the Summit Conference of the People's of Indochina in April 1970 that the communist forces in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia would coordinate their struggles to fight the United States and its puppet governments in each of the three countries. The CPK benefitted greatly from Vietnamese military and financial assistance throughout the 1970-1975 period although they never acknowledged this support. See Kiernan, Peasants and Politics , p. iv, v. 69 Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power , p. 250. 70 Kiernan, Peasants and Politics, pp. 206, 214, 216. Kiernan believes the pro-Sihanouk demonstrations were organized by the CPK and took place in areas where the CPK organization was strong. Lon Nol army forces put down the demonstrations. 71 Shawcross, op. cit. , p. 246. 72 Justus M. van der Kroef, Communism in South-east Asia (London: The MacMillan Press, Ltd., 1981), pp. 55-56. 73 Cited in Timothy Carney, Communist Party Power in Kampuchea (Cambodia); Documents and Discussion , (Data Paper 106, Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, January 1977), p. 54. 74 Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power , p. 253. 75 Kiernan, Peasants and Politics , p. 263. 76 Stephen Heder, "Kampuchea: From Pol Pot to Pen Sovan to the Villages" in Khien Theeravit and MacAlister Brown, eds., Indochina and the Problems of Security and Stability in Southeast Asia (Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press, 1981), p. 19. 52 77 Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power , p. 358. Vietnamese troops withdrew at the urging of the CPK after the Paris Peace agreement. The Pol Pot faction was particularly embittered by the North Vietnamese agreement to the cease-fire. In the post-1975 period, Pol Pot stated: "If we had agreed to have a cease-fire in 1973 in accordance with the maneuvers of the U.S. and Vietnamese enemies, we should have suffered a heavy loss. First of all, we should have lost to U.S. imperialism and its lackeys; and secondly, we should have become slaves of the Vietnamese, and the Cambodian race would have entirely lost its identity". Cited in Shawcross, op. cit. , p. 296. 78 Shawcross, op. cit. , p. 321 and Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power , p. 335. 79 Carney, Communist Party Power , p. 21. 80 Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power , p. 351. 81 Serge Thion, " The Cambodian Idea of Revolution" in David P. Chandler and Ben Kiernan, eds., Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea: Eight Essays (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Monograph Series, no. 25, 1983), p. 23. 82 Shawcross, op. cit. , p. 298-299. 83 Wilfred Burchett, Second Indochina War, Cambodia and Laos Today , (London: Lorimar Publishing, 1970), p. 56. 8* Donald Kirk, "Cambodia 1973: The Year of the Bomb Halt" Asian Survey (Vol.14, No. 2 1974), p. 90. 85 Shawcross, op. cit. , p. 326. 86 Ibid. , p. 317. 53 87 Ibid. , p. 314. 88 Ibid, . 89 Donald Kirk, " Cambodia's Economic Crisis" , Asian Survey (Vol.11, No. 3 1971), p. 239. 54 II. INTERNAL CONSOLIDATION AND THE RISE OF THE POL POT GROUP Internal consolidation and control over the state apparatus are tasks of paramount importance facing all revolutionary movements. In the aftermath of the five-year civil war, the Cambodian Communist Party was confronted with these challenges as well as that of institutionalizing its revolutionary objectives. An attendant and acute crisis facing the CPK was securing the party and the party's leadership from internal and external threats to its position as the ruling group. Although the CPK seized power in April, 1975, as the dominant partner in the National United Front for Kampuchea (FUNK), it was neither ideologically nor militarily united. Communication and organization among CPK leaders of the various geographic zones were limited during the war; this situation encouraged the development of separate bases of power and leadership. The CPK's immediate security problem came from within its own party. The external threat to the security of the CPK came later from the Vietnamese communists whose interests in making the CPK play a subordinate role in the region were fundamentally incompatible with the CPK's national objectives. Tensions between the CPK and the VWP had had violent machinations during the revolutionary struggle in Cambodia; this history did not set a positive tone for peaceful interstate relations between the two communist governments. This chapter examines the process of internal consolidation of the Cambodian revolution from two perspectives: first, the 55 development of the formal government structure; and second, the process by which an ultra-radical group of men and women within the CPK led by Pol Pot seized control of the party, purged most of its opponents, and bypassed the party and state apparatus to implement domestic and foreign policies leading ultimately to the demise of Democratic Kampuchea. According to Marxist-Leninist theory, Cambodia progressed from its national democratic revolutionary stage, that is, a multi-class and broadly based political struggle of patriots, to a socialist revolutionary stage in 1975. By January 1976, the Royal Government of the National Union of Kampuchea (GRUNK), set up by Sihanouk in 1970, was dissolved as the ruling government to make way for the establishment of Democratic Kampuchea under the state leadership of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. Prince Norodom Sihanouk, former president of GRUNK, was placed under house arrest and confined to a house next to the royal palace. The constitution of Democratic Kampuchea named only one executive body, the Cambodian People's Representative Assembly, (CPRA), which, on paper at least, was the highest policy-making body.90 After the first and only national election was held in March 1976, a 250-member CPRA was formed. It comprised 150 peasants, 50 workers, and 50 soldiers from the Revolutionary Army.91 The CPRA then appointed a three-member state presidium to form a collective leadership, which, in Khieu Samphan's words, "is less prone to make mistakes".92 But while the constitution made the people the "owners of state power, the 56 revolution and the country"93 the CPK was in firm control of all the high-ranking ministerial positions.94 Democratic Kampuchea was organized into eight new administrative zones: North, Northeast, Northwest, East, West, Southwest, Centre, and Kratie Special Region.95 Each geographical zone was divided into regions and assigned identity numbers. Below the regions were the familiar administrative units: the district, subdistrict, and village. Village populations did not usually number more than 500 people. In pre-revolutionary Cambodia, the village was the most important administrative unit for the peasantry. In Democratic Kampuchea, however, as Michael Vickery points out, "the important unit, and the one around which [the peasants'] daily lives revolved, was the cooperative (salakar), generally equivalent to a khum [sub- district] and incorporating several phum [villages]."96 Sub-district and village units were administered by local people, usually of poor-peasant background. Some refugees report that the village cadres had been criminals and robbers during the Lon Nol and Sihanouk regimes.97 The top administrative posts were filled with long-time CPK members.98 Vickery's extensive interviews with Cambodian refugees in Thailand reveals regional variation in policy, suggesting that a measure of autonomy existed among the geographic zones of administration. Vickery states: the amount of food, its distribution, work discipline and general hardships, numbers of executions and execution policy, even the content and extent of political education differed among zones and regions; while execution policy and food distribution sometimes differed even among contiguous villages.99 57 Figure 2 - Map of administrative zones in Democratic Kampuchea 58 Figure 3 - Map of zone leaders N Koy Thuon Ke Pauk iKRATIE NW SPECIAL REGION Nhim Ros Keu PhnojjjX So Phim Chou Chet Penf SW Phouk Chhay Ta Mok 59 This regional tendency presented a grave problem to the party leadership, composed of Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, and Khieu Samphan, who probably did not have a strong military base of their own. Koy Thuon of the North, Nhim Ros of the Northwest, So Phim of the East, Vorn Vet of Kratie Special Region, and Ta Mok of the Southwest, all had their own troop organizations. According to Kiernan, the Revolutionary Army was not reorganized until August, 1975.100 Until April 14, 1976, almost one year to the day the revolutionary forces overtook Phnom Penh, no official mention of Pol Pot was ever made. On that day, radio Phnom Penh announced that the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea was Pol Pot.101 This broadcast surprised observers outside Cambodia, none of whom had ever heard the name before. Apparently it was at this time that a man called Saloth Sar changed his name to Pol Pot. According to Kiernan, "Saloth Sar had become Prime Minister under a name totally unknown to the population of Kampuchea and not linked to any name (Saloth Sar for instance) that they might have known. This secrecy, unprecedented in socialist history, even caught out some high-ranking Kampuchean officials."102 Even at this time, the CPK's ties to the government were kept obscure. Yugoslav journalists who visited Cambodia in March 1978 reported that three years after victory, the membership of the CPK remained a secret and that the rural population was generally unaware of its existence.103 A partial explanation for the secrecy of the CPK derives from the party's need to maintain the support of the pro-monarchy peasantry. This, at least, was 60 the strategy during the revolutionary struggle, when some of the Sihanoukists within FUNK believed they were fighting to restore Sihanouk's leadership of the country. But this still does little to explain the continued secrecy of the party after it achieved power. Kiernan offers an alternative, and more likely, explanation: The "anonymity" of leadership was not the product of a collective but of its opposite, disunity, and until 1977- 78, serious internal political challenges to Pol Pot's group. Once Pol Pot was firmly in control production began of portraits, busts and statues.10" There were at least three rival factions within the Communist Party of Kampuchea. The first was the Pol Pot Group, whose major concern was to create a militarily powerful state, impenetrable to attack and capable of forcing territorial concessions from Vietnam and Thailand. The basis of power of this group, according to Kiernan, derived from a "militant, mobilized peasantry".105 The Pol Pot Group was ideologically committed to radical societal change on lines loosely resembling agrarian sociaiism; however, its main ideological fidelity was to the nation. The leadership of this faction was as follows: Pol Pot, Prime Minister and Secretary General of the CPK; Nuon Chea, Deputy Party Secretary; Khieu Samphan, President of the State Presidium and CPK Politburo member; Ieng Sary, Deputy Premier in charge of Foreign Affairs and CPK Politburo member; Son Sen, Deputy Premier in charge of National Defense and CPK Politburo member; and Vorn Vet, Deputy Premier in charge of the Economy and member of the CPK Politburo. All of these men were virulent patriots, and they strongly opposed Vietnamese efforts 61 to dominate the CPK. Pol Pot's wife, Khieu Ponnary, was party secretary of her husband's home province of Kompong Thorn. She was also president of DK's Women's Association. Khieu Thirith, Khieu Ponnary's sister, and Ieng Sary's wife, joined her husband in the southern Mekong delta area to establish joint political authority prior to 1975. Son Sen's wife, Yun Yat, replaced the DK Minister of Information, Hu Nim, in 1977 after Pol Pot had him arrested and executed.106 It appears that nepotism in the distribution of power positions was used to ensure loyalty to Pol Pot, a practice that had a long tradition in Cambodia and no doubt in many political regimes around the world.107 During the 1960's and early 1970's, the Pol Pot Group was based in the mountainous northeastern provinces of Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri, and the provinces of Kompong Thorn and Siem Reap. After 1975, the group also established a strong base in the Southwest region. The second identifiable faction of the CPK, led by intellectuals Hu Nim and Hou Yuon, as well as Phouk Chhay and Tiv 01, were supportive of some aspects of Maoism, especially as it was exhibited during the "mass democracy" campaigns of the Cultural Revolution. Tiv 01, Phouk Chhay and Hu Nim had been active members of the Cambodia-China Friendship Association at the height of the Cultural Revolution, 1965 to 1967. All three men were arrested by Pol Pot's forces in 1977 and executed. The pro-Peking faction was based mainly in the Southwest zone during the civil war. 62 The third group, led by the current President of the People's Republic of Kampuchea, Heng Samrin, was largely composed of veterans of the Indochinese Communist Party and its successor party, the Khmer People's Revolutionary Party, many of whom had received training in Hanoi after the 1954 Geneva Conference. Other members of this group were Khmer communists who were attracted to the Vietnamese model of socialism. Approximately 1,000 Hanoi-trained veterans returned to Cambodia in 1970 from Vietnam to join the revolutionary forces fighting the Lon Nol government. Hundreds of these communist veterans were purged by Pol Pot who claimed they had been sent by the VWP to take over his party and his leadership.108 The post-victory survivors of this group included Keo Moni, So Phim, Non Suon, and Chou Chet, all of whom were active in the Eastern zone up to 1975. By 1977, all four men had been arrested, tortured and finally executed by the Pol Pot forces. Important ideological differences among the three groups accounted for the persistence of factionalism during the short life-span of Democratic Kampuchea. The differences were strong enough apparently to keep the factions from sinking their differences and uniting behind a common cause. Kiernan has learned that members of the Pol Pot group made the decision to evacuate Phnom Penh, to expel Vietnamese citizens of Cambodia, to impose radical land collectivization, and to eliminate the money system, in what appears to have been a secret meeting that took place after the close of the 1971 CPK Congress. During the Congress there was considerable opposition 63 to these policies from prominent central committee members such as Hou Yuon, Hu Nim, Koy Thuon, Ney Sarann, Tiv 01 and Phouk Chhay.109 The fact that the major disagreements over policy among CPK members at this important Congress were not resolved by discussion, consensus, or vote, is indicative of the level of strife that eventually destroyed the party. After the meeting, Pol Pot's supporters met secretly to pass policy resolutions, apparently, as a way to impart a veneer of legitimacy upon them at the time, and after 1975.110 In the following year, the relations between the Northern zone Pol Pot supporters and the Eastern zone pro-Vietnam communists began to deteriorate. One Khmer communist working for the VWP in Kompong Thorn province made the following observation: On this side of the Mekong [the north] the Khmer Reds would not let people wear colourful clothing; on the other side [the East] they would. On this side they wanted to know why the others did not obey the rules of the Organization [Angkar], and they would shoot people coming from there. They hated each other on different sides of the river.111 At least two of these policies were directly attributable to the political ambitions of Pol Pot rather than to any ideologcial or revolutionary objectives. First, the evacuation of Phnom Penh in 1975 was, according to Kiernan: motivated not by economic or humanitarian concerns but by political ambitions, an important move in the Pol Pot group's bid for total control of the revolution...Although orders to carry it out came from the very top, conflicting reports of the manner of its implementation (e.g. violence against the population in some areas but not in others) indicate continuing political differences in the revolutionary ranks.112 In retrospect, the evacuation of all the urban centres in 64 1975 appears to have been intended to fragment and ultimately destroy the potential political opposition not only within the party but amongst the population as well. For one thing, the CPK was aware that its armed forces, badly decimated by the spate of bombing in 1973, was not numerically strong enough to crush large-scale urban uprisings against communist rule. Apparently, CIA-sponsored spy rings in Phnom Penh were planning to "exploit discontent, sabotage Communist policies, provoke insurrections and incite food riots."113 For this reason, Pol Pot decided to evacuate the cities three months prior to victory because the CPK's "strength was not enough to defend the revolutionary regime."11" Further, scattering the urban population throughout the countryside was a strategic move that was made not only to atomize the formed opposition but to prevent new opposition from forming. Speaking of the known and potential opponents of the CPK, Pol Pot stated: "Their forces were scattered in various cooperatives that are in our grip. Thus we have the initiative in our hands."115 The second policy that was instrumental in blocking the political path of the opposition was the move to expel Vietnamese communists from Cambodia. This policy was a continuation of one that had been started by the CPK as early as 1972. For instance, one woman from a small town in Siem Reap recalls that in 1972: Large demonstrations were organized against the Vietnamese [communist] troops. The demonstrators were not locals; they came from the upland areas ten or twenty kilometres away, and had been educated in Red Khmer ideas-they hated the Vietnamese. The townspeople, on the other hand, just treated the Vietnamese normally; we traded with them, and 65 they did not steal from us. The Vietnamese withdrew in the face of the demonstrations, and the Red Khmer were in charge from that point on.116 Perhaps the greatest impetus behind Pol Pot's anti- Vietnamese behaviour stems from the fact that the Vietnamese posed the greatest threat to his leadership. Many of the remaining Hanoi-trained veterans were arrested: Ney Sarann on September 20th, Keo Meas on September 25th; Non Suon and Mey Pho were also arrested that month. The execution of these veteran communists served to sever the CPK's link to the VWP.117 Between April and July 1975, Pol Pot began to place loyal military commanders in top regional positions of authority.118 The strongest military force was located in the Southwest zone under the leadership of Ta Mok and a secret police agent known as Duch. Ta Mok had more troops under his command than any other military leader in Cambodia; his reputation as a brutal and utterly ruthless character, reminiscent of a warlord rather than a socialist revolutionary, most likely accounts for his success in gathering peasant soldiers to obey his command. Stephen Heder has pointed out that the Southwest was the "poorhouse of Kampuchea",119 a region in which the high number of landless peasants might support collectivization policies and tolerate subsistence levels. In other words, the situation in the Southwest was compatible with the policies of the Pol Pot group. Pol Pot thus found a powerful ally in Ta Mok, and such a military alliance was essential for Pol Pot to dominate and centralize the CPK. Ta Mok and Duch were vested with the responsibilities to enprison, torture and execute all of the 66 traitors to the Pol Pot group. As could be predicted under these circumstances, disaffection from Pol Pot led to at least nine coup attempts against him between 1975 and 1979 by members of both the pro- Peking and pro-Hanoi factions of the CPK. These coup attempts took place because there was no effective mechanism within the party or state structure to remove Pol Pot from power. The first internal rebellion against the Pol Pot faction took place in September 1975. The Black Book, one of the few official DK documents available, stated that three or four fighters from the Eastern Zone "plotted to assassinate the leaders of the CPK" but they failed because "they did not know the leaders and consequently did not know whom to fire at".120 The secrecy of the party leadership, which cloaked the identities of the top leaders, may have been the reason this attempt failed. But, in fact, what may have ensued was a brief but violent struggle for power, since Phnom Penh radio stopped broadcasting suddenly for two days in mid-September.121 Another significant power struggle between the three factions appears to have taken place one year later, and was possibly connected to internal political upheaval in the People's Republic of China. On September 27, 1976, Pol Pot left his post as prime minister for "health reasons"122; he was replaced by a veteran pro-Vietnamese communist, Nuon Chea. Shortly thereafter, Democratic Kampuchea's xenophobic veil began to lift. Trade delegations were sent to Albania, Yugoslavia and North Korea; contacts were made with UNICEF to arrange for 67 medical aid; and border tensions with Vietnam lessened considerably. It is of some interest to note that Phnom Penh radio began attacking Deng Xiaoping, whose own fall from power in China had aroused no comment from Phnom Penh when Pol Pot was still at the helm. These policies suggest that the pro- Vietnamese and Cultural Revolution supporters within the CPK may have been in charge of some of the important portfolios at this time, such as foreign affairs. If this was the case, their power was short-lived. Shortly after the most radical Cultural Revolution figures were arrested in China, followed by the return of Deng Xiaoping, Pol Pot resumed his post as prime minister.12 3 The return of Pol Pot was accompanied by another shift in domestic and foreign policy. From the beginning of 1977, troops and cadres from the Southwest zone, Pol Pot's stronghold, were stationed throughout the country and replaced officials at almost all administrative levels. Communal dining halls were established; food rations were cut; families were separated; and tougher working conditions were imposed on the population. Like the typical tyrant or despot, Pot Pot maintained his rule in Cambodia largely by plotting the arrest and torture of prominent CPK officials and others suspected of opposing his rule. The most macabre expose of political killings ordered by Pol Pot was found by the invading Vietnamese army in 1979 in their discovery of Tuol Sleng prison on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Of the 14,449 prisoners, six survived, two adults and four children. An examination of the prison's records revealed that various 68 methods of torture were used to extract "confessions" from doctors, students, professors, engineers, foreigners, peasants, workers, and long-standing communist party members. A mass grave was found at the back of the centre where victims were piled after being executed. In an interview with Elizabeth Becker in 1981, Ieng Sary admitted that it had been official policy to execute opponents of the regime, but he excused himself from any blame, stating, "Personally I wasn't aware of the deaths."12* This account is highly unlikely as Ieng Sary was, and continues to be, very closely allied to Pol Pot. In fact, at the height of the massive purges that were carried out in 1977, DK officials admitted for the first time to its use of killings to solve domestic problems. On January 28, 1977, Khmer communist soldiers attacked the Thai villages of Bam Nong Do, Ban Klong and Ban Noi Pa Rai, located near the border town of Aranyaprathet. Houses were burned and twenty-nine Thai villagers were killed. Babies were found mutilated and pregnant women were found naked with their throats slashed.125 The Thai government's protests against these attacks were spurned by DK officials, who claimed that the villages had been colonized by the Thai government in 1972. DK officials maintained that the villages were Cambodian, not Thai, and that "the Government of Democratic Kampuchea was arranging its internal affairs in these three villages."126 A further indication of the methods by which the Pol Pot Group was "arranging its internal affairs" comes from Tom 69 Sakara, a refugee who lived in the Eastern Zone from 1975-1979: So Phim [the CPK leader of the Eastern Zone] led a revolt in 1977. The cause of the revolt in the east in 1977 was dissatisfaction with Pol Pot's policies that resulted in starvation and killing. Also the East was pro-Vietnamese. After the srok [district] chief was killed [by Pol Pot soldiers] the East had a reform. There was a meeting and the Khmer Rouge explained why our area and all the other areas in the country had new leaders. The Khmer Rouge said the Vietnamese were planning to attack Cambodia. But the leaders said they "gave a lesson to the Vietnamese." Pol Pot made a tape about the attack and we all listened to it. He said "to kill a Vietnamese you must break the spine, not just the arm or leg". He said Cambodia would take all of Vietnam because one part would not be enough-Cambodia had to take the root. Pol Pot said So Phim stocked clothes, pharmaceuticals and other products and didn't distribute them to the people. He was making contacts with the Vietnamese—stocking things to give to other provinces to help make the revolt.127 Sakara's information about the revolt by So Phim, a veteran pro-Vietnamese communist zone leader, has been corroborated by several other refugee accounts. Apparently, So Phim committed suicide shortly after the revolt was crushed by the Southwest zone forces, at the behest of Pol Pot. From the beginning of 1977 and throughout the following year, a series of consecutive purges took place in Cambodia. Top officials were arrested, interrogated at Tuol Sleng, and then executed. A purge of district and village level cadres then followed the regional purges. According to Kiernan, "In this way local administration was gradually brought under closer and closer central control with increasingly restricted manoeuverability for local cadres well aware of the fate of their predecessors".128 Ironically, at the height of the purges, Phnom Penh radio saluted the war-dead who had sacrificed their lives for the revolution: 70 Their sacrifice has brought the identity and honour of our Cambodian revolution, nation and people to heights never before attained in the history of Cambodia. [Their] blood, red and fresh, flows swiftly like streams and rivers wetting the hallowed soil of our beloved Cambodian motherland.12 9 This message, if heard by the thousands of Cambodians who were being starved and slaughtered by the Southwest zone cadres must have seemed like a cryptic reference to their own fate. Refugees report that the Southwest zone cadres carried out very harsh punishments for the most minor mistakes. Anyone who was even slightly suspected of being discontented with the regime was promptly arrested, taken out of the village and never seen again. Also, it was at this time that children began to be used as spies. Phu Tong, a twenty-year old refugee, now resettled in Australia, offered the following information: Some children killed their mothers, fathers or sisters and brothers. They were told to be spies and tell Khmer Rouge cadres who disobeyed Angkar's laws or spoke against Angkar. Old people do not easily give up their former ways but it's easy to indoctrinate children. Khmer Rouge didn't want children to live with parents because children would be corrupted by learning former ways. This is why families were separated.130 The communist members who were purged in 1977 and 1978 were accused of being spies of the Vietnamese; they had "Khmer bodies with Vietnamese minds".131 The elimination of the key leaders of the pro-Vietnamese and pro-Cultural Revolution factions advanced the position of the Pol Pot group -- but only temporarily. The draconian domestic policies that were practiced to secure the gains of the revolution left the population starving. The CPK was torn apart by the purges -- a costly strategy to secure Pol 71 Pot's supremacy. Against this backdrop, the DK regime began its expansionist foreign policy, offending both the Thai and Vietnamese governments. This was the most costly mistake of all, made at a time when internal consolidation was not yet complete and when domestic discontent was at its peak. (An explanation of why this mistake was made is discussed in the following chapter). The Vietnamese government openly supported the pro-Vietnamese faction of the CPK in the eastern zone by at least 1978. It was to do so with the full backing of its army at the end of that year. Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea was easily toppled. Very few Cambodians were willing to assist the Pol Pot soldiers in their resistance to the Vietnamese invasion; in fact, the Vietnamese soldiers were welcomed as saviours by most Cambodians. The food storehouses were opened, the hated communal dining was suspended and the population was permitted to regroup into family units. Along with the joy that came with family reunions was the emotional agony felt by those who discovered their family members had died of starvation, had been killed or had simply disappeared without a trace. Lim Pheng's poignant story of this period is one of many with a sad ending: On the 5th of January, 1979, the Vietnamese communist troops took over the village and the place where I worked. After two days, the Vietnamese occupied Phnom Penh, and it was full of Vietnamese troops. When they came over the country, I spent many a time searching for my parents and family, but nothing happened. So I went to my house in Phnom Penh, where I lived in Sihanouk's and Lon Nol's time. When I saw Phnom Penh at first, especially my house, my heart sank down, because everything had been destroyed, and Phnom Penh was no longer the beautiful city of Kampuchea. I couldn't see my house -- only ashes. I happened to meet a lot of my friends that I used to learn with, and they asked me where my parents and family were. I said that I did not know if they were alive or not, and tears were 72 rolling down my cheeks.132 In conclusion, the consolidation efforts of the CPK were marked by the Pol Pot faction's constant struggle to secure its supremacy over the party. It was accompanied by excessive violence and bloodshed. That the DK regime chose blood as one of its national symbols was an ominous sign of what was to come; internal consolidation through bloodletting, terror, starvation, and an overwhelming rejection of traditional Khmer values, might have worked for the Pol Pot faction if it had not been obsessed with its territorial ambitions. But such was not the case. The following chapter examines some of the reasons for why the revolution took the turn it did, why it went awry and, why there was so much bloodletting. 73 Notes 90 David Chandler, "The Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia): The Semantics of Revolutionary Change", Pacific Affairs, Fall, 1976, p. 510. 91 U.S. Department of Commerce, Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Report, 5 January 1976. (Hereinafter cited as FBIS) 92 Chandler, op. cit. , p. 510. 93 FBIS 2 January 1976. 9 * The complete list of appointments announced in April 1976 is as follows: Chaiman of State Presidium: Khieu Samphan First deputy chariman: So Phim Second deputy chairman: Nhim Ros Standing Committee of the Cambodian People's Representative Assembly Chairman: Nuon Chea First deputy chairman: Nguon Kany Second depty chairman: Peou Sou Members: ros Nim, sor Sean, Mey Chhan, Kheng sok, Mat Ly, Thang Si, Ros Preap Government of Democratic Kampuchea Prime Minister: Pol Pot Deputy Premier, Foreign Affairs: Ieng Sary Deputy Premier, National Defense: Son Sen Deputy Premier, Economy: Vorn Vet Minister of Information and Propaganda: Hu Nim 74 Minister of Public Health: Thiounn Thioeunn Minister of Social Affairs: Ieng Thirith Minister of Public Works: Toch Phoeun Minister of Culture, Education and Learning: Yun Yat 95 See Map I, reproduced from Michael Vickery, Cambodia: 1975-1982, Boston: South End Press, 1984, p. vi. 96 Vickery, op. cit., p. 68. 97 This information was obtained through interviews the author conducted with refugees in Phanat Nikom Refugee Camp, Chonburi Province, Thailand, between January and July, 1985. 98 See Map 2. 99 Vickory, op. cit. , pp. 68-69. 100 Ben Kiernan, "Conflict in the Kampuchean Communist Movement", Journal of Contemporary Asia, vol. 10, no. 1/2, 1980, p. 51. 101 FBIS, 14 April 1976. 102 Kiernan, op. cit • , p. 54. Apparently, Thiounn Prasith of the Foreign Ministry in Paris was misinformed of Pol Pot's background and confused him with an older revolutionary. 103 Slavko Stanic, "Kampuchea-Path Without A Model", Socialist thought and Practice, vol. 18, no. 10, October 1978, p. 76. 10 105 Ibid., p. 8. 106 Ibid., p. 13. 107 The family clan that make up Pol Pot's elite circle of supporters still exists today on the Thai-Cambodian border. Pol 75 Pot, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, along with their wives, and Khieu Samphan form the leadership of the Khmer Rouge faction of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, established in 1982, and recognized as the de jure Cambodian government by the United Nations. The other two factions of the CGDK are the National Army of Sihanouk and the Khmer People's National Liberation Front. The CGDK is committed to the overthrow of the Vietnamese-backed Heng Samrin government in Cambodia. 108 See the Black Book: Facts and Evidence of Vietnamese Acts of Aggression and Annexation Against Kampuchea, Phnom Penh: Department of Press and Information of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Democratic Kampuchea, September 1978, p. 71. Several scholars, such as Ben Kiernan, David Chandler and Serge Thion, believe the author of the Black Book is Pol Pot. 109 Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power,, London: Verso Press, 1985, p. 328. 110 Ibid., p. 328. 111 Ibid., p. 331. 112 Ben Kiernan and Chantou Boua, Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea, London: Zed Press, 1982, p. 286. 113 William Shawcross, Sideshow: Nixon, Kissinger and the Destruction of Cambodia, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979, p. 372. 11ft Ibid., p. 374. 115 Ibid. 116 Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power, op. cit., p. 335. 117 Ibid., p. 418. 76 118 Ibid., p. 418. 119 Stephen Heder, "Origins of the Conflict", Southeast Asia Chronicle, Issue no. 64, September-October, 1978, p. 11. 120 Black Book, p. 96. 121 Kiernan, "Conflict in the Kampuchean Communist Movement", op. cit., p. 51. 122 FBIS, 27 September 1976. 123 Kiernan, "Conflict in the Kampuchean Communist Movement", Op. cit. , p. 51. 124 Elizabeth Becker, "An Innocent Abroad", Far Eastern Economic Review, 7 August 1981, p. 43. 125 FBIS, 14 February 1977. 126 Ibid. 127 Tom Sakara was interviewed by the author on July 7, 1985 in Phanant Nikom Refugee Camp, Thailand. 128 Kiernan, "Conflict in the Kampuchean Communist Movement", op. cit. ,, p. 22. 129 FBIS 15, April 1977. 130 Interview with Phu Tong on July 18, 1985 in Phanat Nikom Refugee Camp, Thailand. 131 See the Black Book, p. 132 Interview with Lim Pheng on June 2, 1985, in Phanat Nikom. After a two year search that took him all over Cambodia, Pheng never did find his parents. In 1982 he arrived at the Thai-Cambodian border; he now lives in Toronto. 77 III. THE DEMOCRATIC KAMPUCHEAN REGIME: AN ANALYSIS OF CPK'S IDEAS, POLICIES AND ACTIONS Democratic Kampuchea has the unenviable distinction of being compared to Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia for the magnitude of human suffering, for the sheer number of people intentionally killed, purged, tortured and starved to death.133 The nature of the Cambodian tragedy derives from the Pol Pot regime's attempt to mold the country by force to fit its radical conception of the "new society". The features of this new society are well-known to many, but are not easy to fit together so as to form a coherent whole. During the Communist Party of Kampuchea's (CPK) tenure of power , April 1975 to January 1979, there were three main "radical" aspects which, taken singly, arouse interest, often horror, but which could, wrongly, be attributed to caprice or irrationality. The first is the CPK's strategy of political and economic self-reliance, pushed to extremes, manifested in its policy decisions, and linked to an ultranationalist ideology. The second aspect is the chauvinistic character of the regime which underpinned its purification of Khmer society as well as its desire to recapture islands and provinces under Vietnamese administration that had once belonged to Cambodia. The third is the mass murders of the regime: how could any government use such an excessive amount of violence against its own people? There is one theme apparent when stated, which binds the three aspects together. It is that the CPK leadership, while proclaiming socialist beliefs, and 78 later proclaiming its Marxist-Leninist identity, was in --fact acting from motives similar to those which have driven other Cambodian leaders throughout history, a desire for national salvation, national rejuvenation and national glory. The leaders of Democratic Kampuchea envisioned themselves as the saviours of the Cambodian nation-state, capable of reviving the Khmer national identity in a pure form, that is, shorn of all foreign influence, capable of creating a militant and mobilized peasantry to guard against foreign encroachments and to recapture territory under foreign domination, and finally, capable of surpassing the heights of national grandeur achieved during the Angkorean period of Cambodian history. From the ninth to the fifteenth century, marking the period of the Angkorean civilization, Cambodia was the most powerful kingdom in all of Southeast Asia. The kings of Angkor extended their suzerainty over most of South Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos, and parts of Burma and Malaysia. The expansion of the Siamese kingdom, to the west of Cambodia, hastened the decline of the Angkorean civilization in the fifteenth century. In 1431, the Siamese sacked Angkor and the Khmers abandoned it as their capital. After four centuries Angkor surrendered to the jungle. In the 1850's, a French naturalist "discovered" the renowned temple of Angkor Wat, built in the twelfth century and encompassing an area close to one square mile. The Khmer people themselves were not aware that their ancestors had built Angkor; they had to be .told by Westerners. By the mid-nineteenth century parts of Cambodia were absorbed by first Vietnam and 79 then Thailand. During this period Cambodia was called a "two- headed bird", looking both east and west for patronage and protection. The French intervened and prevented the final eclipse of Cambodia by establishing a protectorate over the kingdom which lasted until 1953, at which time Cambodia obtained independence. The history of Cambodia after the fifteenth century shaped the mentality of Cambodians as that of a repeatedly conquered people. Neither Norodom Sihanouk nor Lon Nol, the two leaders of Cambodia up to 1970, stopped reminding Cambodians of this history and of the continued precarious geographical position of their state, wedged between two powerful neighbours -- Thailand to the west and Vietnam to the east.13* It is also important to note that neither leader refrained from recalling past glories achieved during the Angkorean period. The leaders of Democratic Kampuchea inherited the legacy of this most ambiguous past. They were, however, determined to reverse the cycle of decline by turning Cambodians into positive historical actors, capable of determining their own destiny rather than passively allowing outsiders to determine it for them as had been the case in the past. The inspiration for Khmer national renaissance came from two sources: first, the national legacy of pre-fifteenth century Cambodia during which time Angkorean kings reigned supreme over much of mainland Southeast Asia; second, Marxist ideology, at least parts of it, as the ideological foundation for the new and revolutionary nation-state. The intensity of Pol Pot's nationalist fervour appears to 80 have overshadowed any commitments he may have once had to Marxist-Leninist theory and practice, as shall be discussed. Pol Pot claimed the victory over Lon Nol was "a great success unknown before in the world...the world's first ever great victory."135 The CPK's victory, therefore, was portrayed as unprecedented, unique and separate from other communist revolutions. Such self-absorbtion was evident in many policies undertaken by the CPK. The first section of this chapter traces the ideological roots of the CPK's self-reliance, autarky and national chauvinism and the particular historical conditions which nourished these tendencies. The second section examines the ways in which these ideas underpinned the conflict between Democratic Kampuchea and the Socialist Republic Of Vietnam. The third section explores political and cultural reasons for the brutality inflicted by the regime upon its own people. IDEAS AND PERCEPTIONS OF THE CPK Perhaps one of the most difficult questions arising from the confusion and catastrophy of the DK regime concerns the ideological roots of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, or at least, those of the Pol Pot faction, which was responsible for the forced implementation of the radical policies of the period. Part of the problem in determining the ideological makeup of the CPK derives from the party's own reticence to associate itself publicly with any political model or philosophy. This ideological anonymity served to underpin the CPK's claim of its complete independence. All three of the CPK's top leaders have 81 repeatedly emphasized the "unique" and "independent" character of their party and their revolution. For example, Pol Pot, Secretary General of the CPK, and prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea, spoke of the Khmer communists' unique approach to revolution in the following speech: We dared to wage a struggle on a stand completely different from that of the world revolution. The world revolution carries out the struggle with all kinds of massive support material, economic, financial -- from the world's people. As for us, we have waged our revolutionary struggle basically on the principles of independence, sovereignty,and self-reliance.13 6 Ieng Sary, the second most powerful member of the CPK leadership, and deputy premier of Democratic Kampuchea, proclaimed that "what we are trying to bring about has never occurred before. We are not following any model, either Chinese or Vietnamese... the Cambodian situation does not fit any existing model and thus requires original policy".137 Khieu Samphan, President of the State Presidium of Democratic Kampuchea, allegedly told Prince Sihanouk: "We will be the first nation to create a completely communist society without wasting time on intermediate steps."138 These statements reveal a novel and consistent feature of Cambodian communism as it was practiced in the post-victory period: its assertion of complete self-reliance. Although the DK regime called itself communist (after 1977), it viewed itself as having no historical precedents. Marx and Lenin were not referred to, nor was there discussion of other communist movements in any of the party magazines or other official publications. In the words of David Chandler, the CPK's 82 independence "plays down an important element of Marxian ideology, namely the propriety of similar revolutions throughout the world".139 Perhaps even more unsettling, especially to veteran Khmer communists who had established the communist movement in Cambodia in the 1950's, the CPK under Pol Pot's leadership chose to ignore Cambodian communist history prior to 1960. The birthday of the CPK was changed in 1977 from 1951, the founding date of the Khmer People's Revolutionary Party, to 1960, the founding date of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, at which time Pol Pot along with the other members of the Paris Group, achieved prominent positions for the first time.140 Chandler remarks: "By changing the party's birthday...Pol Pot and his colleagues were cutting themselves off from nine years of Cambodian history (1951-1960) to which their own contributions had been ambiguous, subordinate, or non• existent."141 In so doing, Pol Pot could claim that it was his party that had "achieved the first great victory in Cambodia's history".142 In my view, it is impossible to separate the CPK's claims of its ideological uniqueness and its policy of autarky, from first, its view of Cambodia as a state continually threatened with extinction; and secondly, its bitter relations with the so- called fraternal communist parties in China and Vietnam. First of all, there is little doubt that the Paris Group of young Cambodian communists were acutely aware of Cambodia's historic struggle for survival as a distinct and sovereign state. Ben Kiernan's thoughts on this subject are instructive: 83 For many Kampucheans and in particular intellectuals, their country is a nation forever diminishing in size and threatened with extinction by history. Just as hundreds of years ago the kingdom of Champa was wiped off the map by Vietnamese southward expansion, leaving the Cham people stateless, only French domination stopped Kampuchea from being overrun by- both Thai armies (from the west) and Vietnamese ones (from the east) in the nineteenth century. On a less dramatic scale the process of diminuation on the map continued in the twentieth century. Foreign patronage — Thai, Vietnamese, French and American — has been an unsatisfactory means of resolving this national problem, and in fact part of its cause; the reaction among many Kampuchean nationalists has been fear and distrust of all foreign powers.143 This perspective would certainly hold true for the Pol Pot faction of the CPK. The principal slogan of the CPK in the post-1975 period was to "build and defend the motherland". Arguably, the CPK's plan of a "new society" that owed nothing to its past or to fraternal communist parties such as those in Vietnam or China, was a strategy to end the struggle for state survival once and for all. The first signs of the ideological orientation of self- reliance, although in a moderated form, can be found in the doctoral dissertations of Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon, both of whom were members of the CPK's central committee. Both men were active in Khmer student organizations in Paris. Hou Yuon was a member of the 'Marxist Circle', a Khmer affiliate of the French Communist Party. Like many students from European colonies who were allowed to study abroad, Samphan and Yuon became aware of the exploitative relationship between coloninal and colonized countries and sought ways in which to ameliorate the imbalances from a leftist perspective. The early writings of both men were important for their influence on post-1975 economic policies and 84 the rationale underpinning the adoption of such policies; as such, they deserve some examination. Khieu Samphan's doctoral dissertation, written at the Sorbonne in 1959, and entitled "Cambodia's Economy and Problems of Industrialization"1"", pinpointed Cambodia's dependence on foreign capital as the key structural component responsible for the country's backwardness and retarded economic development. Samphan adopted a form of the dependency theory to argue that Cambodia's underdevelopment stemmed from its integration into the world capitalist economy during the French colonial period. The French structured the Cambodian economy to benefit France. As such, earnings from the cash crop capitalist sector were sent back to France instead of being used to develop the subsistence- based agricultural and handicraft sectors of the economy. Moreover, Cambodia's industrial base was left weak and underdeveloped. Samphan noted a dangerous imbalance in Cambodia's import structure in which a reported 49 per cent of total imports were luxury goods consumed by less than 10 per cent of the population, while products consumed by 90 per cent of the population accounted for only 4 per cent of total imports.1"5 Samphan concludes his assessment of the Cambodian economy by stating: Under the circumstances, electing to continue development within the framework of international integration means submitting to the mechanism whereby handicrafts withered away, precapitalist structure was strengthened and economic life was geared in a one-sided fashion to export production and hyperactive intermediate trade. Put another way, agreeing to international integration means accepting the mechanism by which structural disequalibrium deepens, creating instability that could lead to violent upheaval if it should become intolerable for an increasing proportion 85 of the population...146 To remedy this problem: Self-coneious, autonomous development is therefore objectively necessary... the cycle of [underdevelopment] can be broken only by withdrawing from the world economy and restructuring the economy on a self-centered basis.147 However, as Denzil Pieris noted, "While self-sufficiency was the immediate tactic, there was no ultimate intention to be a closed-in economy...Khieu Samphan warned that Cambodia 'should not fool itself; it would need to import capital goods'".148 Furthermore, Samphan called for the development of domestic capitalism as a base on which to build industry.149 He did not, at that time, advocate the abolition of money, private property, or capitalist relations of production. Khieu Samphan was unable to reform the Cambodian economy while he served in Sihanouk's cabinet as Secretary of Commerce in 1962. As Laura Summers explains, "In the Sihanouk government, he confronted directly the western-oriented elite which owed its existence to Cambodia's position in the world trade system. At the same time, the conditions he had analysed in his thesis grew steadily worse, making the need for change more acute."150 The rise in the political power of the rightists in the mid-1960's confirmed the impression held by those on the left in Sihanouk's cabinet that non-revolutionary reform of Cambodian society was not possible. By 1967, Khieu Samphan, Hou Yuon and Hu Nim made the decision to join the Khmer Rouge revolutionaries in the maquis.151 Hou Yuon's 1955 dissertation concerned the underdevelopment 86 of the agricultural sector of the Cambodian economy and specifically, the impoverishment of the peasantry as a result of unstable and unfair market prices for produce, debt bondage arising from usury, and the paucity of rural credit facilities.152 In 1964, Hou Yuon proposed a socialist solution to peasant poverty and agricultural underdevelopment in his book The Cooperative Question.153 Hou Youn shared with Khieu Samphan, at that time, the belief that political and economic reforms could be obtained by working within the system and not by fomenting revolution to overthrow it. As Yuon himself points out,"We must understand that class conflict should be resolved by a method that will not damage the unity of the nation against the American imperialists and their lackeys."15" Class conflict, rather, could be resolved by reforms in the economy which "contribute to the construction of the national economy along the nationalist path".155 Sihanouk's rejection of American aid in 1963 coupled with the nationalization of banks and the import-export firms were reformist policies which Hou Yuon recognized and applauded.156 However, Yuon argued that the best solution to rural problems of underdevelopment and peasant impoverishment was by gradually organizing the peasantry into various labour and productive cooperatives: Co-operative methods can solve both these aspects of the rural problem in the interests of the peasants by the full use of scientific and technological methods, and also by increasing the standard of living of the workers... If the co-operative concept is correct, the rural problems can be solved while supporting the peasants and raising them to their deserved status.157 Hou Yuon warns, however, that such changes should be 87 introduced slowly and with caution. For example, he points out that, "common property co-operatives...need a high degree of awareness among the peasants...This process is slow, it takes a long time, and cannot be achieved immediately."158 This cautious and gradualist approach to collectivization contrasts sharply with the forced and rapid method of its implementation in Democratic Kampuchea. Further, Hou Yuon's advocacy of the democratic rights of co-op members to choose their leaders, the division of produce on the basis of the number of days worked, the allowance of personal property, and the use of modern technology are all points which diverge significantly from the DK experience.159 The cooperative system under Pol Pot allowed no political participation aside from the compulsory self-criticism sessions held nightly in village compounds. Produce was not held in common but kept in tightly guarded storage depots and rationed by DK cadres on the basis of class background. The 'old people', (those liberated prior to 1975) received greater rations of rice than did the 'new people', (those liberated in 1975) in some areas of the country regardless of the amount of work done by either group. No one was permitted to use agricultural machinery left over from the Lon Nol regime. All the work was done by hand or by primitive technology; as Khieu Samphan remarked: "We have no machines. We work completely self-reliantly...Though bare handed [our peasants] can do everything."160 Finally, no private property was allowed. Clothes, books, cooking pots, pens, photographs, bicycles, hairclips, radios, and all such personal belongings 88 were confiscated by the cadres and either used for public benefit or left to waste. While the earlier prescriptions for reform advocated by Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon were radical within the context of the political system under both Sihanouk and Lon Nol, they were apparently not radical enough under the leadership of Pol Pot. The regime's decision to dismantle the schools, shops, banks and money system grew out of a visionary and self-assertive ultra- nationalist ideology that linked these kinds of institutions and the people who worked in them to the foreigners who invaded Cambodia and corrupted its national integrity. Only by rejecting all foreign ideas, (including communism apparently), institutions, and their practitioners, could Cambodia hope to regain and even surpass the glorious position it had known during the Angkorean period. Accompanying the abolition of economic structures that the CPK felt were responsible for Cambodia's decline, the CPK decided to eliminate cultural traits and traditions which it perceived as the by-products of an oppressive system. In the CPK's words: Our traditional mentality, mores, traditions, literature and arts and culture and tradition were totally destroyed by U.S. imperialism and its stooges. Social entertaining, the tempo and rhythm of music and so forth were all based on U.S. imperialistic patterns. Our people's traditionally clean, sound characteristics and essence were completely absent and abandoned, replaced by imperialistic pornographic, shameless, perverted and fanatic traits.161 In response to the alleged contamination of Khmer culture, which most likely did not extend beyond the major urban centres, 89 the leadership announced: "A new national culture will be established; it will be national, popular, prosperous, and clean replacing the corrupt, reactionary culture of various oppressive classes and that of colonialism and imperialism."162 The consequences of the Pol pot regime's purification of Khmer culture were extreme. For one thing, Buddhism, which had been largely untouched by French or American influence, was displaced from its central role in Khmer society. Buddhist monks were forbidden to wear their saffron-coloured robes or to receive offerings of food. The CPK believed the monks were like leeches, feeding off the population; they gave back nothing in return aside from intangible spiritual guidance which was of no value in the revolutionary society. Francois Ponchaud, one of the few foreigners to have stayed in Phnom Penh after the Khmer Rouge took control of the country, was apparantly told by one cadre that: "The bonzes [monks] aren't any wiser than you; the only wise man is the man who knows how to grow rice".163 Yun Yat, Minister of Information and Culture, was more dogmatic in her denunciation of Buddhism, stating: "Buddhism is incompatible with the revolution because it is an instrument of exploitation. Buddhism is dead and the ground has been cleared for the foundations of a new revolutionary culture."16* Another aspect of Khmer culture that was not polluted by foreign influence, but which was significantly altered nevertheless, was linguistic references to social hierarchy. Appellatives referring to filial or social rank were dismissed from the language, presumably because social hierarchies 90 contradicted the goal of social equality. Thus people addressed each other as "mit" or friend. Refugees recall (with horror) being forced to use some words to describe their actions which, in former times, had only been used in conjunction with animals. Children no longer paid respect to the elderly, and were encouraged to spy on their parents and inform against them, unthinkable behaviour in pre-revolutionary Cambodia. The use of foreign words or language was strictly forbidden in Democratic Kampuchea. This policy further demonstrated the xenophobic tendency of the regime. Finally, traditional customs relating to marriage or funeral practices and to traditional festivals were considered to be decadent and were either abolished or replaced with more austere and militant ceremonies. The foregoing discussion suggests the extent to which the regime's "purification" of Cambodian society penetrated every level and every dimension of life. Such a policy allowed the regime almost total control over the population, to a degree comparable with that exercised by the Angkorean kings, but which was unprecedented in modern Cambodian history. This degree of control served two purposes. First it enabled the regime to break down family and village loyalties and the "individualist" way of life to the extent that Phnom Penh radio could comment that "none will ever re-emerge in our society."165 Complete social control was a requisite for the swift molding of of attitudes and beliefs that were compatible with the new society being created in Cambodia, similar to the Soviet version of the 91 revolutionary "New Man".166 Totalitarian methods of control also served the purpose of spreading fear among the population so that popular opposition or spontaneous rebellions would be pychologically and physically impossible. As a result of the CPK's hurry to implant an extremely pure form of social egalitarianism, its leadership ordered the execution of thousands of civilians whose class backgrounds were incompatible with poor peasantism and whose personal histories were traced to an association with the Lon Nol regime. Among those the regime decided did not belong to the "new society" of hard-working, unquestioning rural labourers were professionals, merchants, soldiers, bankers, intellectuals and students. Such people had worked for the "traitorous" regime of Lon Nol and therefore were potential enemies who might demonstrate a bad influence on the "old people". Although there is no firm evidence to establish that the CPK's policy was to totally liquidate these classes of people, there is ample evidence from Cambodians of different class backgrounds that the DK officials officially viewed the "new people" as class enemies and subjected them to harsher punishments than those who had known no life other than subsistence farming. There were several domestic reasons why the CPK leadership was in such a hurry to achieve revolutionary ends with so little regard to the means employed. Their revolutionary experience was short, their numbers were relatively few(some 200,000 in 1975),167 and their complete distrust of and antipathy to the urban middle and upper classes led to a policy of ridding 92 society of possible recalcitrants. The leadership obviously thought that re-education was a waste of time; the sole duty of the peasant masses was to 'build and defend' the country. Yet these factors only partially account for the accelerated strategy designed to meet revolutionary objectives. While the noted domestic factors contributed to the regime's rationale for implementing radical change so swiftly, the perceived external threat of imminent Vietnamese domination was an equally if not more pressing consideration. The CPK leadership was convinced that Vietnam, Cambodia's historic adversary, planned to incorporate Democratic Kampuchea into an Indochinese Federation. Hence, by accelerating the pace of the revolution in order to surpass the revolutionary stage achieved by the Vietnamese communists, the entire Cambodian population could devote all of its energy to building a strong and completely independent state impenetrable to outside attack. An internal party magazine, dated June 1976, elaborated this theme: "We want to build socialism quickly, we want to transform our country quickly, we want our people to be glorious quickly. But especially this is to prevent the enemy from harming us."168 To some extent, the CPK's policies of economic and political self-reliance can be viewed as the historical outcome of the party's bitter relations with the Chinese and Vietnamese communist parties. Both the CCP and VWP demanded Cambodian communist subservience to the requirements of their foreign policy objectives dating back to the 1954 Geneva Conference. The big brother chauvinism of the VWP towards the CPK nourished 93 the Pol Pot faction's distrust of and alienation from the international socialist movement. In light of the Khmer communists' isolation from both China and Vietnam it should not be surprising that the CPK consciously chose a self-defined revolutionary path. What is surprising is that once in power, the CPK, under Pol Pot's leadership, practiced radicalism par excellence. On the domestic front was the policy of agrarian socialism, taken to its furthest limits -- autarky. The profoundly chauvinistic orientation of the CPK was revealed most clearly in anti-Vietnamese behaviour. It is not yet known to what extent Pol Pot was personally responsible for the ultranationalist character of the Democratic Kampuchean state. It does, however, seem possible that Pol Pot's intense patriotism was formed at an early age. Pol Pot grew up in an area of Cambodia noted for its rebellious character: Kompong Thorn province. A French colonial officer noted that the population of this province was "the most deeply Cambodian and the least susceptible to our influence."169 As a native of this area, Pol Pot might have been influenced by its traditional resistance to foreigners. By the time Pol Pot was writing for a radical Khmer student paper in Paris, he was signing his articles as the "original Khmer".170 The sparse biographical data that are available about Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan suggests they may have harboured anti-Vietnamese sentiments, which in turn could have fueled the ultranationalist ideas they later embraced. Both Ieng Sary and Son Sen were born in South Vietnam and it is likely that they 94 were concious of the pejorative views many Vietnamese have traditionally held towards the Khmers. Moreover, South Vietnam, including Saigon, is still known to Cambodians as the "lost territories" of Kampuchea Krom or "lower Cambodia". Cambodian nationalists have never forgotten the loss of this territory to the Vietnamese because as Chandler states: "it produced a legacy of resentment and anti-Vietnamese feeling that has been encouraged, for various reasons, by all the Cambodian regimes since independence, except, understandably, the People's Republic of Kampuchea."171 Khieu Samphan grew up in Kompong Cham, the province in which the French hired Vietnamese to supervise Khmers working on the French-owned rubber plantations. This situation may have encouraged Samphan's awareness of the double exploitation imposed on Cambodians by the French colonialists and the Vietnamese. The Pol Pot regime exhibited its obsession with creating a state "greater than Angkor" by mobilizing the Cambodian population for war against Vietnam. The details of the Cambodia-Vietnam conflict are examined in the following section. THE CAMBODIA-VIETNAM CONFLICT: PRELUDE TO POL POT'S SELF- FULFILLING PROPHESY The chauvinism of the DK regime is readily discerned from the legacy of its military attacks against Vietnam which commenced only a few weeks after the liberation of Phnom Penh. On May 4th, 8th and 10th, attacks were launched to recapture the "sacred" islands of Pho Quoc, Hon Troc, Tho Chu, as well as the 95 Mekong Delta provinces, Soctrang and Travinh. These two provinces, known to Cambodians as Kampuchea Krom, were inhabited by ethnic Khmers but had been governed by Vietnam for well over a century. Interestingly, a disagreement over the fate of these two provinces had divided Khmer and Vietnamese resistance forces thirty years prior to this. In 1945, the Viet Minh attempted to coordinate a joint anti-French resistance movement with the rightest Khmer Serei (Free Khmer). The Khmer Serei representatives insisted the Vietnamese return Soctrang and Travinh provinces to Cambodia as a precondition for their cooperation in a united front with the Viet Minh.172 Kiernan learned that the CPK's attacks against Vietnam after 1975 were described by some of its members as "an attempt to retake the same provinces of South Vietnam that Son Ngoc Thanh's representatives had tried to recover thirty years before".173 The Vietnamese army responded to these surprise attacks by driving the Cambodian forces out of Tho Chu and Hon Troc islands. In May of 1976, talks between Vietnamese and Cambodian representatives took place to settle the border disputes. There was little agreement over the sea demarcations and talks were postponed indefinitely by the Cambodian representatives. The DK regime blamed the land and sea border hostilities on Vietnam, stating that the Vietnamese army attacked Vai (Hon Troc) island and encroached on Cambodian territory up to 10 kilometres.17" According to the Black Book, the official DK line on the history of Vietnamese aggression against Cambodia: Concerning the Wai Islands [Hon Troc], if Kampuchea would not have fought, not only would it not have retaken them, 96 but even worse, Vietnam would have taken other islands because they knew that immediately after liberation, Kampuchea had many weak points in terms of maritime defense.17 5 In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that the CPK had planned to invade and recapture Kampuchea Krom from the Thieu government in South Vietnam before the Vietnamese communists launched their final assault on Saigon. A member of the CPK's 120th Regiment reported that his group was sent to the border only one day after the capture of Phnom Penh. The regiment's commander, Soeun, told the soldiers that the Cambodian army would "liberate Vietnamese territory because it is all our territory".176 The same soldier recollected hearing CPK officials at the border stating that "we have to fight Vietnam because there are eighteen of our provinces there, including Prey Nokor [Saigon]."177 In light of this information, it appears that while the CPK publicly claimed its offensive military posture was set up to protect the country from Vietnamese imperialism, its unpublicized goal was to reclaim territory which had been "swallowed up" by the Vietnamese centuries ago. On this point, it is important to recall that one of the eight policy directives issued by Pol Pot in a secret cabinet meeting held in Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, was to "dispatch troops to the borders, particularly the Vietnamese border". 178 A very different message concerning Vietnam was expressed by Phnom Penh radio: The Vietnamese wanted to swallow us in 1970, but they could not. They entered into negotiations in 1973 [with 97 Kissinger] in an attempt to swallow us, but they could not succeed. They tried again in 1975...in order to impose their control over us. This time again, they were a step behind Cambodia. Cambodia won victory before them.179 Neither Cambodia nor Vietnam mentioned any fighting in 1976 after the May talks held in that year. A June 1976 issue of an internal CPK magazine reported: Within the general framework of the country, the enemy carried out several activities along the land and sea border from the months of November and December (1975) to January and February (1976). From March onwards, the situation has softened considerably. Along with this we have destroyed the enemies within our country and scattered many of them. They have no strong forces.180 In fact, purges were being carried out in Cambodia by Pol Pot's forces, and there is good reason to believe they were linked to the aggression against Vietnam. Pol Pot believed all the opponents of his regime, especially those within the CPK, were Vietnamese spies and traitors of Cambodia. An increase in the domestic level of oppression and hardship occurred at the same time as there was an increase in the number and intensity of attacks against Vietnam. Tensions between Cambodia and Vietnam increased to unprecedented levels in 1977. Both sides accused each other of initiating the attacks. The Black Book states that Vietnam sent three to four divisions to attack the Southwest zone and eight to nine divisions to attack the Eastern zone in December 1977. The Revolutionary Army of Cambodia counter-attacked and "after a few days smashed them [the Vietnamese] to pieces and inflicted very heavy losses in men and material" . 181 For their part, the Vietnamese government reported 98 continuous attacks on ^the border provinces of Long An, Kien Giang, Tay Ninh, Dac Lac and Kong Thap throughout most of 1 977 . 18 2 According to one DRV report: All the houses were surrounded by Cambodian soldiers, who immediately opened fire and used machetes, axes, sabers and sharpened sticks to slay the villagers...A fleeing child was caught by a soldier who cut off his leg and threw him into the flames. All seven members of Mrs. Trong Thi Rot's family were beheaded. Tot was disemboweled and had a seven-month fetus placed on her chest. All eight members of Nguyen Van Tarn's family were beheaded and the heads were put on a table for amusement. All eight persons in Nguyen Thi Nganh's house were disemboweled, the intestines piled in one shocking heap. Mr. Quang's wife was also disemboweled. The killers took out her five-month fetus, then cut off her breast and chopped her body in three parts. Her two-year old boy was torn in two and dumped in a well.183 The barbarous nature of such attacks were confirmed by eyewitness Khmer and Vietnamese refugees interviewed by Ben Kiernan.18* Vietnamese civilians killed or wounded in the attacks between late September and November numbered over one thousand.18 5 The raids on Vietnamese territory were accompanied by racist rhetoric which may well have incited the savage behaviour or the Khmer soldiers. Pol Pot described the Vietnamese people as Cambodia's "hereditary enemy" which had to be fought if the "race of Kampuchea" was to survive.186 Further, the regime embellished its victories and boasted of its superior and invincible nature. Apparently, Sihanouk was shocked by the completely unrealistic images the regime had of itself vis-a-vis Vietnam. In his book, War and Hope, he stated that Khieu Samphan and Son Sen told him that in the past "our leaders sold out Kampuchea Krom, sold out South Vietnam to the Vietnamese. 99 Our armies can't accept this status quo. We must make war against Vietnam to get back Kampuchea Krom".187 Sihanouk noted further: According to Son Sen, deputy Prime Minister in charge of National Defense, his "glorious revolutionary army of Kampuchea" considered itself capable of dealing very easily with Giap's (Vietnamese) army and with the much more puny one of Kukrit Pramoj and Kriangshak Chamanond (Thailand)!188 Finally, Democratic Kampuchea suspended diplomatic relations with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on December 31, 1977, after it publicly accused Vietnam of harbouring expansionist plans to force Cambodia into an Indochinese Federation. On February 5, 1978, the Vietnamese government issued a three-point proposal to end the hostilities between the two socialist countries: first, to station their respective military forces five kilometres on either side of the border; second, to conclude a border treaty; and third, to submit to international supervision to prevent further hostilities.189 Although it rejected the offer, no mention of this proposal was ever made public by the CPK. On December 25, 1978, the Vietnamese launched a full-scale invasion of Cambodia, driving the leaders of Democratic Kampuchea to the Thai border, where they continue to be based to this day. There are a number of ways to interpret the Cambodia- Vietnam conflict. One way is to view it as the inevitable outcome of an age-old hatred between Khmers and Vietnamese. The roots of Khmer/Vietnamese ethnic antagonism do extend back centuries, to the time the Viet people moved south from China, wiped out the Kingdom of Champa and diminished the Khmer Empire. 100 Vietnamese emperor Ming Mang carried out a wide-ranging program of Vietnamization of Cambodia between 1835 and 1840, including the imposition of Vietnamese language, dress, and even table manners on the so-called "barbarian" Khmers. Ming Mang also tried to colonize Cambodia with Vietnamese convicts and prisoners so they could, in his words, "Live among the people there, who would benefit from their teaching". 190 Cambodians have never forgotten the ill-treatment they received from the Vietnamese. And Pol Pot was not the first ruler to exploit ethnic antagonism for political purposes.191 During the colonial period (1863-1953), when the French presence prevented further Vietnamese and Siamese absorption of Cambodian territory, the Vietnamese took administrative posts and thereby continued to dominate Cambodians inadvertantly. Zasloff points out: "These historical and cultural tensions provided a fertile seed bed for the disputes that were to break out between the Vietnamese and Khmer communist parties."192 Pol Pot's regime was no less callous in its treatment of the Vietnamese minority in Cambodia. In 1975, approximately 200,000 ethnic Vietnamese were expelled from the country.193 As for the Vietnamese in Vietnam, Phnom Penh radio boasted a macabre message:"So far, we have attained our target: 30 Vietnamese killed for every fallen Kampuchean...So we could sacrifice two million Kampuchans in order to exterminate the 50 million Vietnamese-and we shall still be 6 million".19ft Ethnic animosity was invoked to unprecedented levels in the post-1975 Cambodia-Vietnam conflict. But it would be erroneous 101 to conclude it alone was the cause of the conflict. Another explanation for the border disputes and the eventual war between Cambodia and Vietnam centres around the alleged long term Vietnamese goal of creating an Indochina Federation, composed of Laos Cambodia, and Vietnam, and dominated by the latter. Phnom Penh domestic radio broadcasts throughout 1978 were tirelessly warning Cambodians that if Vietnam succeeded in its goal of dominating Cambodia via the Indochina Federation the Khmer race would not survive. If this was indeed the intention of the Vietnamese, it is not surprising that negotiations between the two states broke down in 1976 and were not resumed. Vietnamese officials admit that prior to 1951, when the Indochinese Communist Party dissolved, there was talk of an Indochinese Federation. The officials are quick to point out, however, that "it was always stressed that such a development was contingent on the desires of the peoples concerned. Every nation has the right to self-determination."195 After the dissolution of the ICP and the founding of the three separate and independent communist parties in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the concept of the Federation was publicly abandoned by the Vietnamese communists. The Khmer communists, on the other hand, refused to forget the issue; not only were the Vietnamese distrusted, they were considered the main enemy of the Democratic Kampuchean state. Such a view is indicative of deep political conflict, exacerbated but not caused by ethnic prejudice. The roots of this conflict, examined thoroughly Chapter One, arose from the very different and conflicting needs of the two communist 102 movements. In the post-1975 period, the inherent tension between the Khmer and Vietnamese communists could only have been relaxed if both leaderships had been committed to mutual understanding and sensitivity. This brings up a third explanation of the conflict: not only were the viewpoints of both parties sufficiently opposed and rigid as to render a compromise on the land and sea border virtually impossible, but Pol Pot seemed committed to war with Vietnam regardless of the Vietnamese position. As his domestic position became more and more untenable, the attacks against Vietnam increased, providing a convenient distraction from the domestic crisis. The war against Vietnam also served as a justification for the arrest and execution of those Cambodians opposed to the regime who were accused of being spies for Vietnam. in Cambodia. As van der Kroef notes of the war: "The result, apparently, was to intensify the regime's predilection for the bloody elimination of real or imaginary opponents and indeed, of all those who complained or even mildly criticized."19 6 In spite of the seemingly irrational action of waging war against Vietnam, it appears that the Pol Pot Group was convinced that the removal of the Vietnamese threat was essential for the survival of Democratic Kampuchea. During talks with Sihanouk in 1977 and 1978, the CPK leaders explained that the Vietnamese "cancer...eating away at Kampuchea" would require a "three-part surgical operation."197 First, no Vietnamese citizens would be allowed to live in Cambodia. Second, the Khmer people would be 103 made to work "ten times as hard as the Vietnamese people...to make Kampuchea muxh stronger than Vietnam from every point of view (military, economic, ideological)."198 Third, Cambodia would have to engage in a military war against Vietnam in order to stop Vietnamese expansionist designs.199 In the final analysis, there is likely some truth to both the Cambodian and Vietnamese accusations about the conflict. The traditional Vietnamese communist domination and direction of the the Khmer communist movement was serving the needs of revolution in Vietnam and belittling those in Cambodia. It is not,therefore, unreasonable to assume that the VWP was unnerved by Pol Pot's purges of the Hanoi-trained cadres and anyone remotely suspected of sympathizing with the Vietnamese socialist model. If Cambodia was not influenced by Vietnam, it meant the door was open for China to exert its influence. The deterioration of relations between Peking and Hanoi in the mid- 1970' s made such a prospect especially and alarmingly unwelcome. But that this scenario could have been so compelling to the Vietnamese government that it would plan an invasion of Cambodia without being directly provoked seems rather doubtful. Vietnam faced an acute post-victory crisis; the war-torn country had many wounds that only peace could have healed. However, from the point of view of Vietnamese economic planners, the border skirmishes initiated by Cambodia against Vietnam could not have come at a worse time. Woodside notes that: "...powerful state planners argued that the only chance Vietnam would ever have of solving its fearsome food shortages would be by unifying the 104 economic management of the entire country as quickly as possible, and by "redistributing" as many as ten million Vietnamese -- one fifth of the entire population — from the overcrowded north to the less crowded south."200 Hopes for the success of the New Economic Zones in the south were "utterly frustrated" by the resistance of the Chinese commercial class which had dominated the pre-1975 South Vietnamese economy, and also by Cambodian military forays across the border. The prospect of prolonged and accelerated Cambodian military attacks against the economically fragile southern provinces in Vietnam, according to Woodside, "would have been intolerable for Vietnam at a moment when revolution in the south was disintegrating".201 With crucial economic plans at stake, and with the threatening prospect of becoming "encircled" by China and its ally, Cambodia, it is not surprising that the Vietnamese government felt compelled to strike back with force in 1978. The SRV's interpretation of Cambodia's 1977 attacks on its territory may not be far wrong, in spite of its self-serving impetus. Vietnamese officials argued in 1977 that Cambodia's foreign policy "is aimed at serving their intensified repression of the people in their country and purging of revolutionaries and patriots opposed to their erroneous line; it is also aimed at consolidating their power and diverting public opinion at home, which has become indignant at their criminal domestic policies."202 The next and final section of this chapter turns to the macabre subject of the Khmer Rouge killings of their own people. 105 RATIONALE FOR THE CHARNEL-HOUSE There are at least three possible explanations for the brutal violence that was the hallmark of Democratic Kampuchea at different times and in different places throughout its short history. According to the first explanation, the initial wave of violence that erupted during the first few weeks of the CPK victory was expected. The known enemies of the CPK were promptly executed in revenge for the ill-treatment the CPK had received by the Sihanouk and Lon Nol regimes. Nayan Chanda, a long-time reporter of the wars in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, believes that the civil war in Cambodia was the most savage of the three. He recalls one of the "earliest horrors... the photograph of a grinning Lon Nol soldier holding the severed heads of two Khmer Rouge troops".203 As noted earlier, Sihanouk's police were also ruthless in their treatment of Khmer communists. There were, therefore, many old scores to settle in the first weeks as the Khmer Rouge cadres unleashed their venom against hated adversaries. An additional factor that should be considered in view of the first wave of post-victory violence was the intense anger the CPK leaders, and to a lesser extent, their cadres, felt toward the nation's elite for bowing to the American imperialists and jeopardizing Cambodia's independence. On this point Zasloff remarks: "Their anger became rage during their days in the maquis as they saw their country decimated, as they struggled under great danger with short rations."20" Hence, the Khmer communists' revenge, fostered by bitterness over the 1 06 amount of suffering and hardships they were forced to endure is a likely reason why they engaged in purposive killings of their known enemies. There is some debate on the second explanation for the regime's savage nature, which is that many communist cadres were very young (some a mere twelve to fourteen years of age), mostly illiterate, and without any political education. The debate centres around the issue as to whether or not these young cadres acted on their own, that is, whether they executed people of their own free will, or whether they were given explicit orders to do so from the central authorities in Phnom Penh. It seems that perhaps both local and central decisions concerning civilian executions took place at different times. At least prior to 1977, before Pol Pot's power was relatively entrenched, there was regional variation in the implementation of policies such as urban evacuations, land collectivization, food rationing, and social/class divisions, but there was very little, if any, variation in the general policies themselves. Some areas of Cambodia were easier to live in than others. The differentiation stems not so much from the geographical conditions that prevailed in each area, but rather from the ideological differences within the CPK ranks. It is now generally agreed that areas controlled by cadres who supported either the Cultural Revolution group or the pro-Vietnamese, were much easier to live in than those areas under the Pol Pot Group's control. After the 1977 purges that wiped out the power of the two factions opposed to the Pol Pot group, there was 107 markedly less variation in living conditions throughout the country. This suggests that the regional, provincial, and village cadres received fairly strict guidelines as to how they should exercize their authority. At this point, it is unlikely that the degree of centrally-directed policies will ever be precisely known because the process of centralization was never completed in Democratic Kampuchea.205 The third explanation for the CPK's bloodthirstyness draws on the precarious history of Cambodia as well as the cultural acceptance of violent means to deal with "enemies'. In his book Behind the Khmer Smile (1971), Charles Meyer, a French advisor to Prince Sihanouk, argued prophetically that the Khmers suffered from claustrophobia because their country had been pinched between Thailand and Vietnam, two powerful states that had been eating away at Cambodia for centuries. Meyer argued that as a result of this history, the Khmers were capable of explosions of violence similar to the Malays' "running amok".206 Zasloff adopts a similar viewpoint stating that,"[T]he events raise the question of whether Cambodian culture has a streak of aggressiveness that might be unleashed by wartime stress."207 Indeed, the Pol Pot horrors indicate that our prior images of Khmer society as peaceful and gentle need to be re-examined. Both Wilfred Burchett and Milton Osborne have pointed out that Cambodian folk lore from as far back as the Angkorean times is full of unsavoury depictions of enemy mutilations.208 Citing one example of the harsh punishment of enemies in Cambodian literature, Osborne explains: "The heroine of the tale of 'The 108 Girl With the Flowering Tresses' who personally disembowelled her enemy after having him beheaded is only one of the countless figures who act in the same or similar fashion."209 Such actions were emulated by rulers and ruled alike in Cambodian history. The horrible cruelties of the Lon Nol regime, its encouragement of a race war in 1970 that left thousands of bloated Vietnamese bodies floating in Cambodian rivers, and its equally macabre dealings with Khmer communists, demonstrate that excessive violence was not strictly confined to the Pol Pot regime. The Pol Pot regime stands out, however, for its widespread use of violence. The extent of human suffering it produced is unprecedented in modern Cambodian history, if not all of Cambodian history. Michael Vickery's discussion of the traditions of violence among the peasantry in the inaccessible rural areas of Cambodia reveals an insight into the "other Cambodia" that has been virtually absent in the scholarly literature on Cambodia, but which acted as the breeding ground for the features of "Pol Potism".210 Vickery argues that: Cambodia, long before the enforced split into 'old' and 'new' people in 1975, was deeply divided. An important division was between town and country. But a more profound division lay between town plus town-related rice and garden peasantry and those rural groups who, through distance, poverty, ingrained hostility, or a conscious preference for autarky, remained on the outside of the Cambodian society which everyone knew and which Phnom Penh considered the only Cambodian society of any importance.211 As for the characteristics of the "other Cambodia", Vickery asserts that "arbitrary justice, sudden violent death, political oppression, exploitative use of religion and anti-religious 109 reaction, both violent and quiescent, were common facts of life long before the war and revolution of the 1970's".212 However, it is one thing to say that brutality exists within the Khmer culture and tradition and quite another to posit this as the explanation for the widespread violence that erupted after 1975. As Kevin Rowley observes, the Khmer Rouge forces "were controlled, manipulated, and directed by the Khmer Rouge leadership through a tightly disciplined revolutionary party and military organization."213 The peasants did not make the revolution in Cambodia: the top leadership of the CPK was responsible for its making and its policies. It is also, in the end, responsible for the violence. In conclusion, it appears that Democratic Kampuchea exhibited three main radical aspects which were connected to the regime's nationalist goals. The first was the restructuring of the society and the economy on a self-reliant basis. High-level cooperatives were established quickly to increase rice production. The vast work site may have closely resembled that of the Angkorean variety in which slave populations were put to work 'building and defending' the state. The second was the purification of Khmer society, an extreme manifestation of xenophobism, in which the unreformable bourgeois and political/military classes of previous regimes, were largely killed. Peasants were perceived as the only legitimate class in the "new society", from which everything should be learned. Khieu Samphan explained the rationale for upholding the poor peasantry as the model class: 'they really know and understand 110 about [farming]. Only this should be called natural science because this type of knowledge is closely connected with the reality of the nation, with the ideas of nationalism, production, national construction, and national defense."21" The theme related to xenophobism was expansionism, a catastrophic policy based on an unrealistic assessment of the power of Cambodia's revolutionary army. The third radical aspect was the extent of social engineering that took place in Cambodia. Political liquidation campaigns take place in most totalitarian states and Cambodia was no exception. But rarely has the impetus been a concern for the survival of the national identity as it was in Cambodia. Under conditions of stress, when Pol Pot's CPK was forced to make stark choices of priorities, regime survival and Cambodian identity were placed above those which might have promoted socialist goals. It has been within this general framework that the CPK's features of self-reliance, chauvinism, and social destruction have been examined. 111 Notes ... 133 See for example, Joseph G. Harrison's book review of Miron Dolot's Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust (New York: W&W Norton & Co., 1985), in which he writes: "this book [about Stalin's Russia], like those detailing Hitler's Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge's purposeful extermination of a considerable part of the Cambodian population... is a tale of unrelieved horror". Cited in The Christian Science Monitor 25 November 1985, p. 34. Also see William Shawcross' discussion of the media's presentation of Democratic Kampuchea as one of the bloodiest revolutions in history in The Quality of Mercy (Bangkok: DD Books, 1985), pp. 45-69. 13 * A good example of the traditional national perspective is stated by Norodom Sihanouk: "The aims of Bangkok and Saigon were always clear. My country has had to cope with Siam for over a thousand years. We have suffered too much for too long from our eastern and western neighbours to have any illusions when we see them governed by aggressive and expansionist regimes such as those under U.S. sponsorship." Cited in Norodom Sihanouk, My War With the CIA, (London:Pantheon Books,1973), p. 1 29. 135 Cited in Ben Kiernan, "Conflict in the Kampuchean Communist Movement", Journal of Contemporary Asia, vol. 10, no. 1/2, (1980), p. 11. 136 Ibid., p. 80. 137 Far Eastern Economic Review, 30 September 1977, p. 26. 138 Norodom Sihanouk, War and Hope, (New York: Pantheon 1 12 Books, 1980), p. 86. 139 David P. Chandler, "Seeing Red: Perceptions of Cambodian History in Democratic Kampuchea", in David Chandler and Ben Kiernan (eds.) Revolution and its Aftermath in Kampuchea: Eight Essays, New Haven: Yale University Press, Southeast Asian Studies Monograph Series,(No. 25, 1983), p. 45. 140 David P. Chandler, "Revising the Past in Democratic Kampuchea: When Was the Birthday of the Party?", Pacific Affairs,, vol. 56, no. 2, Summer 1983, p. 289. 141 Ibid., p. 290. 142 U.S. Department of Commerce, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report for Asia and the Pacific, (hereinafter cited as FBIS) 28 August 1975. 143 Kiernan, "Conflict in the Kampuchean Communist Movement" op. cit., p. 80. 144 Laura Summers translated Khieu Samphan's thesis, a major part of which appeared in the Indochina Chronicle, September- November(1976), pp. 2-25. Quotations from the thesis come from this translation unless noted otherwise. 145 Ibid., p. 9. 146 Ibid., p. 25. 147 Cited in Denzil Pieris, "The Student Principles", Far Eastern Economic Review, 2 June 1978, p. 41. 148 Ibid., p. 41. 149 Summers, op. cit. , p. 23. 150 Ibid., p. 2. 113 151 As explained in the first chapter, this decision was taken amid rumours in Phnom Penh that the three men were to be arrested and possibly executed by Sihanouk's police for their alleged involvement in the Samlaut peasant rebellion in Battambang province. 152 The translation of Hou Yuon's thesis, entitled, "The Peasantry of Kampuchea: Colonialism and Modernization" is found in Ben Kiernan and Chantou Boua, Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea: 1942-1981 (London: Zed Press, 1982), pp. 34-63. 153 A translation of this work is also found in Kiernan and Boua, op. cit., pp. 136-150. 1 5 « Ibid. .f P- 1 37. 1 5 5 Ibid. i P- 1 37. 1 5 6 Ibid. .r P- 1 36. 1 5 7 Ibid. i P- 1 39. 1 5 8 Ibid. r P. 1 46. 1 S 9 Ibid. t PP 144, 145. 1 6 0 FBIS, 18 April 1977. 161 Joseph J Zasloff and MacAlister Brown, Communi st Indochina and U.S. Foreign Policy: Postwar Realities, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1978), p. 141. 162 FBIS 15 May 1975. 163 Francois Ponchaud, Cambodia Year Zero, (London: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 150. 16 * Cited in Justus M. van der Kroef, "Political Ideology in Democratic Kampuchea, Orbis, (Winter, 1979), p. 1019. It is difficult to estimate the number of monks deliberately killed by 1 14 the DK regime. Jeannie Newman, a foreign aid worker in Phnom Penh in July 1985, was told by one government official of the PRK that 25,168 monks were killed and that 1,968 Buddhist temples were destroyed between 1975 and 1979. (Personal communicat ion). 165 FBIS, 13 March 1978. In fact, the quick re- establishment of individually-owned plots of land, stores, cafes, and the like in the People's Republic of Kampuchea proves wrong such a prediction. 166 van der Kroef, op. cit • , p. 1021. 167 William Shawcross, Sideshow: Nixon, Kissinger and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1979), p.321. 168 Cited in Ben Kiernan, "New Light on the Origins of the Vietnam-Kampuchea Conflict," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 12, no. 4 (October-December, 1980), p.62. 169 Kiernan, "Conflict in the Kampuchean Communist Movement", op. cit., p. 11. 170 Ibid., p. 11. 171 David P. Chandler, A History of Cambodia (Boulder: Westview Press, 1983), p. 95. 172 Ben Kiernan, "Origins of Khmer Communism", Southeast Asian Affairs, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (1981), p. 164. 173 Ibid., p. 179. Son Ngoc Thanh was the leader of the Khmer Serei movement in Cambodia. 17" FBIS 31 December 1977. 1 15 17 5 Black Book: Facts and Evidence of Acts of Aggression and Annexation of Vietnam Against Kampuchea, Phnom Penh: Department of Press and Information of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, (September 1978), p. 96. Scholars such as David Chandler, Ben Kiernan, and Serge Thion believe Pol Pot is the author of the Black Book. 176 Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power (London: Verso Press, 1985), p. 415. 177 Ibid. 178 Ibid. 179 Cited in Shawcross, Sideshow, op. cit., p. 372. 180 Cited in Kiernan, "New Light on the Origins of the Vietnam-Kampuchea Conflict", op.cit., p. 61. 181 Black Book, op. cit., p. 96. 182 Kampuchea Dossier 1 (Hanoi: Hanoi Courier, 1979), p. 71 . 183 Cited in Shawcross, Sideshow, op. cit., pp. 384-385. 184 Kiernan, "New Light", op. cit. , pp. 64-65. 185 Kampuchea Dossier 1, op. cit., p. 71. 186 Kiernan, "Conflict in the Kampuchean Communist Movement", op. cit. , p. 14. 187 Sihanouk, War and Hope op. cit., p. 114. 188 Ibid., p. 114. 189 Kampuchea Dossier 1 op. cit., p. 75. 190 Cited in Chandler, A History of Cambodia, op. cit., p. 1 26. 191 In April 1970, Lon Nol's propaganda machinery 1 16 effectively whipped up anti-Vietnamese hysteria by claiming that 400,000 Vietnamese civilians in Cambodia were members of the Viet Cong. Vietnamese deaths numbered in the thousands. See Shawcross, Sideshow,, op. cit., p. 132. 192 Joseph J. Zasloff, "Kampuchea: A Question of Survival", American Field Staff University Reports no. 46, (1980), p. 1. 193 Kiernan and Boua, op. cit., p. 232. 194 Ibid., p. 232. 195 Kampuchea Dossier 1, op. cit., p. 11. 196 van der Kroef, op. cit., p. 1021. 197 Sihanouk, War and Hope, p. 45. 198 Ibid., p. 46. 199 Ibid. 200 Alexander Woodside, "Nationalism and Poverty in the Breakdown of Sino-Vietnamese Relations", Pacific Affairs (vol. 52, no. 3, Fall 1979), p.392. 201 Ibid., p. 393. 202 Kampuchea Dossier 1. op. cit., p. 117. 203 Nayan Chanda, "When the Killing Had to Stop", Far Eastern Economic Review, 29 October 1976, p. 20. 204 Zasloff and Brown, op. cit., p. 151. 205 For a discussion of the central versus local decision• making in Democratic Kampuchea, see Anthony Barnett. 206 Personal communication, Alexander Woodside, March 1983. 207 Zasloff and Brown, op. cit., p. 150. 208 For an account of the rather gruesome tortures 1 1 7 described in the law codes of the Khmer kings, see Wilfred Burchett, Mekong Upstream (Berlin: Seven Seas Publishers, 1959), pp. 63-83. 209 Milton Osborne, "Reflections of the Cambodian Tragedy", Pacific Community, vol. 8, no. 1, (October 1976), p. 5. 210 Michael Vickery, Cambodia 1975-1982, (Boston: South End Press, 1984), p. 17 2 1 1 Ibid., p. 5. 212 Ibid., p. 17. 213 Kevin Rowley, "Roots of Disorder: Kampuchea's Tragedy", The Age Monthly Review, Melbourne, March 1985. 21a FBIS 18 April 1977. 118 IV. THE NATURE OF THE RADICAL EXPERIMENT: COMMUNIST, NATIONALIST, POPULIST, ANARCHIST...? Making revolution means defending the country and preserving the Kampuchean race forever, without becoming anyone's slaves. Radio Phnom Penh, 14 June 1978. The Democratic Kampuchean regime has been labeled Marxist- Leninist, Maoist, populist and even fascist215 by various observers of Cambodia. The variety of political labels suggests not only a semantical debate, but also the confusion that exists about the political nature of Democratic Kampuchea. Even the name "Democratic Kampuchea" is not an accurate depiction of the political reality of Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, as there was nothing even closely resembling a "democratic" approach to policy-making and implementation in the Pol Pot regime.216 The enigmatic character of Democratic Kampuchea (DK) resists typological analysis. Yet, it is precisely its character -- so shocking and explosive — which invites inquiry into the political orientation of the radical experiment carried out in Cambodia. Since no easy political label emerges, in this final chapter, the political nature of Democratic Kampuchea will be discussed with regard to its possible theoretical origins. THE NATIONALIST QUESTION Perhaps one of the more critical issues concerning the political nature of Democratic Kampuchea, which is relevant not only to Marxist scholars and others, but also to the current socialist leadership in Phnom Penh, is whether or not the DK regime should be labeled as communist or nationalist. The Heng 119 Samrin government in Phnom Penh has a good deal to gain by distancing itself politically from the Pol Pot regime. Thus, even though the current leaders in Phnom Penh were active participants in the radical experiment (at least up to 1978, at which time many of them defected to Vietnam) this history of participation has been rewritten to minimize their involvement in such a brutal and publicly despised regime. For example, the Heng Samrin regime has gone so far as to say that the CPK never functioned as an authentic communist party in Cambodia while Pol Pot was in power.217 In December 1981, the CPK was dissolved by its leaders, including Pol Pot. In fact, these remnants of Democratic Kampuchea, now fighting on the Thai-Cambodian border, have, superficially at least, substantially changed their political beliefs, calling themselves not socialists or communists, but democrats who believe in reinstating capitalism in Cambodia. After the CPK was dissolved, Ieng Sary commented that "we have given up socialism, at least for a generation, perhaps more".218 This volte-face appears to lend credence to the charge levelled by the Heng Samrin regime and its supporters that DK's commitment to communism was spurious. Although the CPK ruled Cambodia, it never proclaimed that its ultimate goal was a communist state, unlike other ruling communist parties. Khieu Samphan did state to Sihanouk that Cambodia would be the very first state to achieve a type of instant communism in which the necessary historical stages were, in some miraculous way, leaped over in the Cambodia context. 120 This statement, as far as I know, is the only reference to the CPK's ideological commitment to communism. Yet its message is more revealing of the regime's self-aggrandizement than anything else, suggesting a departure from rather than a point of convergence with communist states elsewhere. Indeed, one of the most striking impressions to be gained from a survey of official Democratic Kampuchea documents and statements is the complete absence of references to Marxism-Leninism, communism, or the rhetorical language typically used by regimes committed to communism. This does not, however, necessarily mean that the Communist Party of Kampuchea did not have communist goals. And clearly, as stated earlier in Chapter One, the party had historical communist roots. Also, as previously discussed, the CPK was secretive about many aspects of its organization, to the extent of concealing the identity of the party and the party's leadership until 1977, two years after it had seized power. Consequently it is from the perspective that "actions speak louder than words" that the nature of the DK experiment can better be analysed. The CPK's actions, such as the evacuation of the cities, the abolition of the money system, the closure of all previous private and public institutions, the abolition of the peasants' and workers' ownership rights over their forces of production, the purification of Khmer culture, and the austere and militant "back to the earth" peasant society that was established, were clear departures from existing communist society models found in the Soviet Union, China or Vietnam. Communism, if it was a 121 goal, was, I believe, subsumed by a more compelling and competing ideology, at least after 1975 — that of nationalism. Nationalism refers to an identity with and loyality to / the nation, which in turn is "a human grouping whose members share an intuitive sense of kindredness or sameness, predicated upon a myth of common descent."219 The concept of the Cambodian state coincides closely with the concept of the Cambodian nation, since 90 per cent of the population is ethnic Khmer. And as Walker Connor points out, "In those cases in which the nation and the state essentially coincide, the two loyalties [to the nation and to the state] mesh rather than compete."220 Thus Cambodian nationalism is a loyalty in which the nation and state "are indistinguishably linked in popular perception."221 In fact, May Ebihara's research in rural Cambodia led her to state that villagers "frequently use the phrase "we Khmer" ( khmay yoeunq ), or srok khmay (Cambodia) to speak of Cambodia as a territorial nation and Cambodians as an ethnic group."222 There is little doubt that DK leaders perceived the Khmer state and the Khmer nation as being one entity. As Stuart-Fox points out: In the warped view of the world which developed and festered in the minds of the handful of men and women around Pol Pot at the summit of power in the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the relation between history and race was crucial in their assessment both of the dangers they believed faced the Kampuchean state, and of the historic task which they believed they were called upon to accomplish. Both their own revolutionary experience, and the opposition which developed to their policies, only served to confirm them in their convictions, especially as the quickening pace of events seemed increasingly to create conditions leading to the fulfillment of their worst fears- invasion by Vietnam, destruction of the Kampuchean state, and the threat of the eventual elimination of the Khmer race.223 122 It is also worth recalling at this time that according to the Pol Pot Group, the Cambodian revolution was a political process crucial for the preservation of the Khmer race.224 Cambodian nationalism, pushed to extremes by the Pol Pot Group, has theoretical and historical importance for the nexus between communism and nationalism. Thus, a theoretical discussion of the contradictions between the two competing ideologies may be of value in understanding the nationalist nature of Democratic Kampuchea. Connor points out that nationalism and Marxism are philosophically incompatible because in the first, ethno- national groups are the most fundamental division in human society, and in the second, class distinctions are the most fundamental division. In other words, Marxism claims to transcend nationalism as class cuts across ethno-national boundaries. According to Marx, a national consciousness is an "illusory communal interest".225 The national question in Marxist-Leninist theory, that is "the entire network of problems arising from the existence of nations and nationalities"226, is a subject which has become highly significant since the Soviet Union emerged as the first communist state in 1917. Since that time, with the establishment of other communist states, the Marxist concepts of world communism and fraternity among communist states have been tested. The nationalist question in Marxist-Leninist theory is too complex to cover adequately here. However, since the Pol Pot regime exibited more nationalist characteristics that communist ones, it is important to 1 23 acknowlege the main theoretical parameters of this issue.227 First of all, it is not difficult to find examples of communist governments which have given priority to national and/or state concerns which are in conflict with the promotion and development of world communism and proletarian internationalism. For example, Eastern European communist parties have experienced internal factionalism due to the disparate ethnic loyalites of their members.228 Moreover, state- to-state relationships between communist parties have not been exempt from parochial nationalist concerns. In fact, this history would not likely reassure Marx and Lenin that their analyses of the overriding power of class consciousness were correct. The conflicts and rivalries between communist states point up the erroneous thinking of the theory of international communi sm. The so-called fraternity among communist states has been threatened repeatedly by border disputes, big brother chauvinism, cultural differences and age-old historical animosities. The most recent breach of socialist solidarity was Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in 1979, followed by the retaliatory invasion of northern Vietnam by China, an ally of the Pol Pot regime. Commenting on these two latest examples of communist collisions, Alexander Woodside argues convincingly that it is difficult not to interpret the antagonism between Vietnam and Cambodia as yet another act of an ongoing historical drama that has conflicting views of national and regional politics as its major theme. First of all, Woodside writes, it 124 is not possible "to defend Hanoi from the. damaging accusation that it is, indeed, reenacting old Vietnamese colonizing postures with regard to Cambodia and Laos. (In much the same way, China's punitive invasion of Vietnam in 1979 has chilling echoes in it of the Qing emperor Qian-long's punitive assault upon Tonkin -- which the Vietnamese routed in 1788-89.)"229 Just as Imperial China dominated Vietnam, so did Vietnam dominate Cambodia. From this historical perspective, Woodside continues: ...we are witnessing a renewal of tradition,specifically the precolonial tradition by which the landlocked Lao princes, far more willingly than the Cambodian ones, often accepted Vietnamese suzerainty, partly in order to gain access to the commercial goods of a world trading system which had no direct interest in them. Certainly, the faint, discordant music of much past history can be heard in the din arising from contemporary Indochina tensions. One can find examples of it in the Vietnamese newpaper laments that the leaders of the People's Republic of China are the "most faithful successors" of the feudal first emperor of China...230 The recent political quagmire of invasion and occupation in Indochina cannot be disconnected from the region's past history simply because of its present-day socialist political status. What then are the implications of nationalist perceptions and national behaviour for Marxism-Leninism? There are two general results of what one scholar has called the "national virus". The first is that the "adoption of Marxism-Leninism as official ideology has not erased the impact of national cultures and traditions."231 Hence, there are as many different 'models'of communism as there are communist states. The second result is that nationalist sentiments and desires have sometimes overtaken those of Marxism-Leninism and world communism. Although few 125 would argue with the first implication, the second is a much more critical assertion requiring further elaboration. Connor's thoughts on this issue are worth repeating at length: Evidence that Marxist-Leninist leaders have not been totally immune to nationally inspired emotions is not hard to find. But it is dangerous to jump from this general finding to the conclusion that these leaders have allowed their national inclinations to take precedence over the interests of the world movement. If, in making decisions, the leaders have been guided by proletarian internationalism rather than by concern for the fortunes of a particular national group, then their nationalism, while of passing interest, does not constitute a violation of the Communist creed. Marx and Engels did not ordain that Communists erase all memory of their personal national heritage but that their sole yardstick in all endeavors be the welfare of the international movement.232 From this perspective, it is possible to view the splits and rivalries which developed between the Soviet Union and China, and between China and Vietnam, to give only two examples, as the result of the view each state held of the other as creating "reactionary" or "revisionary" distortions of Marxism-Leninism. Thus, like scorned religious groups who are castigated for their wrong interpretation of the Bible, the Koran, or whatever, the communist states also have their doctrinaire leaders and those others with iconoclastic tendencies. However, Connor also warns that: A program strictly limited to the particular ethnonational community would be nationalist, whether its sources of inspiration were Marxist-Leninist, Adam Smith or whatever. The important point, however, is that while Communist leaders may fall victim to the national virus, the fact that they have disguised themselves as nationalists in order to manipulate national aspirations is not in itself an adequate symptom that they themselves have succumbed to the disease...The test must be whether their action, regardless of its national form, is evidently at odds with the goals of scientific socialism, or goes well beyond what could be justified in terms of promoting these goals. Only 126 if one of these two conditions prevails can we speak with some certainty of nationalist motivation.233 There seems to be little doubt that the major policies of the Pol Pot Group were motivated by its commitment to nationalism and that these clearly conflicted with the goals of scientific socialism. The first is the regime's constant reminder to Cambodians that their sole duty in the new revolutionary society was to 'build and defend' the motherland. Social levelling was attempted in a crude way—either by physically exterminating the unpatriotic class enemies of the regime or by forcing them to live and work as poor peasants. In either case, the attempted elimination of all classes except for the poor peasant class seems to have been motivated by the belief that only the peasantry was capable of the onerous task of producing enough agricultural produce to permit self-sufficiency and complete independence. Thus, the elite's use of the peasantry was linked to the benefit to the state as opposed to the benefit to the peasants as a class. Further, it appears that no attempt was made to educate Cambodians about the necessity of class struggle in a socialist society. As van der Kroef notes, "the official categorization of most everyone as 'workers, farmers or other Cambodian labourers' seems to suggest, the petty and national bourgeoisie seem to have become officially non-existent classes".234 Second, the purification of Khmer society carried out by the CPK leadership seems to owe little to the Marxist concept of raising the political consciousness of all classes through a 1 27 socialist education. In Democratic Kampuchea, socialist education, like class struggle, was ignored completely. If Cambodians were taught anything it was to obey the faceless authority of Ankar. Only Ankar (parochial name for the CPK) had the "correct and clear-sighted" vision of the needs of the nation and of the state. Those who disobeyed were removed from their homes or places of work, taken away by DK cadres, and never seen again. A third feature of Democratic Kampuchea which Marxists undoubtedly find reprehensible was the racist and chauvinist policies. "Impure" Cambodians, those whose ethnic origin was not Khmer, or whose lifestyle reflected foreign influence, were identified and later executed. Pol Pot's social engineering called for the weeding out of the non-indigenous features of Khmer society — this apparently included the despised Vietnamese ethnic minority, the Chinese and the Muslim Cham populations. Perhaps the most unmistakable nationally-inspired policy was the decision to retake the lost territories administered by Vietnam in order to reassert Cambodian grandeur. Rather than accommodate Cambodia's near and distant neighbours and make friends out of foes, as Sihanouk had attempted to do, the Pol Pot Group made the decision to take revenge against Cambodia's traditional enemies. It was this political aim that provided the justification for the horrific labour camps in which the Khmer population was forcibly organized, so that it could "build and defend" Cambodia. Territorial ambitions were not hidden 128 behind the Brezhnev Doctrine claim of protecting socialism, however.235 Pol Pot most certainly disagreed with the Vietnamese socialist model but this was never stated as the reason for war that erupted between Cambodia and Vietnam. It is tempting to view Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea as a late-blooming nationalism that made up for lost time with its intensity. This is because Cambodia, unlike many colonized nations in the post-World War II period, did not have a widespread national independence movement. It was not until after Sihanouk had obtained Cambodia's independence from France in 1953 that the peasants were taught about the concept of statehood.236 Independence was achieved by Sihanouk without a call to arms and without bloody recriminations. The traditional devaraja was therefore able to maintain his position as the legitimate ruler at the expense of emerging republican and socialist contenders for power. Thus, as in the past, the peasants observed rather than participated in national politics.237 The civil war of 1970 to 1975 was the first time that so many ordinary Cambodians were called upon to take sides and defend this with their lives. In the post-1975 period, Cambodians were expected to sacrifice their lives for the revolution that would "preserve the Kampuchean race forever". In my view, the CPK leaders' commitment to nationalism superseded its commitment to communism after 1975. This is because the Pol Pot Group's perceptions of the immediate needs of the Cambodian nation-state, especially in relation to the perceived threat posed by Vietnam, led it to place national/ 129 statist considerations ahead of important Marxist tenets, such as class struggle, socialist education, proletarian internationalism and fraternal cooperation with their socialist neighbour, Vietnam. Chandler's observation on the character of Cambodian nationalism is one key to understanding its chauvinistic character in Democratic Kampuchea: The weight of the past, the embarrassment of prolonged dependence, and Cambodia's precarious location have meant, among other things, that nationalist statements in Cambodia often take the form of diatribes against the Vietnamese -- one of the few historical traditions which the Pol Pot regime allowed to flourish. Cambodia's ethnic singularity, in a sense, amounted to a tendency for Cambodians to visualize themselves as being not Vietnamese, rather than as members of what Benedict Anderson has called an "imagined community"--made up of Therevada Buddhists, Communists, or "Southeast Asians".238 Ebihara found in the late 1950's that Cambodian villagers felt a profound hatred of the Vietnamese: "...the Vietnamese (yuen) are categorically, unconditionally, and actively detested. They are considered to be mean, depraved, violent, and altogether disreputable."2 3 9 Linked to the peculiarly chauvinistic national sentiments were the perceptions of what had caused Cambodia's weakness. Again as Chandler points out, just as Cambodian intellectuals have measured their sense of nation and history against that of the Vietnamese, they have also done so with their explanations for their own national weakness and national failings: "Until the revolution, Cambodians blamed their hardships on foreigners or failures of merit, and successes on the enduring power of the builders of Angkor. With so much grandeur and so little, sociologically, to show for it, Cambodians like Sihanouk, Lon 130 Nol, and Pol Pot have been unable to join the so-called first or second worlds and unwilling to sink back into the third."200 Pol Pot's understanding of Cambodian history, of its grandeur, and of its tragedy, was unlike Sihanouk's or Lon Nol's, however, in the sense that he identified endogenous features of Cambodian society and culture — as opposed to purely exogenous influences -- as key variables in the societal/historical cause of Cambodia's failure to maintain its independence for any significant length of time. Pol Pot's explanation for the decline of the Cambodian state and its shrinking territory, was its succession of weak governments combined with the fact that "the people were not united and did not join hands to defend the country".2"1 The Pol Pot Group believed, evidently, that if the hierarchical social system were destroyed and replaced by one class, the poor peasantry, and reorganized into collectives, then Cambodia could re-emerge and survive as a strong, unified and independent nation-state. Although there is not enough strong evidence to prove that Pol Pot used communism to serve the needs of the nation, the following speech by the leader does seem to suggest that he believed that socialism could be used effectively to achieve the goal of state survival. Without a socialist collective system, we would never be able to defend our country, we would lose our country and our Kampuchean race would disappear. In fact, our socialist revolution, has set up a strong base for our collective system in our nation, thus turning the whole country into a bulwark which can totally and independently guarantee our national defense task.2"2 The primary societal value targeted by Pol Pot was the 131 social hierarchy that permitted the rulers to exploit the people. Exploitation led to powerlessness and powerlessness seemed to invite foreign invasion and occupation. Thus the concept of struggle between khmang (enemies) was introduced by the CPK as a method by which to overcome hierarchical and exploitative relationships between the rulers and the ruled, the capitalists and the workers/peasants, the monks and the lay people, grandfathers and grandsons, husbands and wives, the elderly and the young, and so forth. The concept of "struggle" between enemies went further than that of Marxist "class struggle" between distinct economic groups in that the abundance of hierarchical dyadic relationships in Cambodian society, reflected in the sheer number of pronouns in the Khmer language, was based on variables other than economics for the most part. For this reason, language and behaviour based on one's age, sex, religious position, and relation to royalty were prohibited. As Chandler remarks: The loyalties which, however mistakenly, were reassuring to many ordinary people (reverence for teachers and grandparents, for example), stood in the way of liberation. Only liberated people, after all, could be brought to enjoy the uneasy solidarity of unranked groups. And it was in these "solidarity groups" as they were called, that post- liberation citizens were asked to submerge themselves, no longer for the pleasure of a larger person, but for the greater good. It might be argued, in fact, that almost every aspect of traditional Cambodian behaviour stood in the way of liberation. Like the city of Ben Tre in the Vietnam war, Cambodian society had to be destroyed in order to save it.243 This anarchic tendency will be further explored later. In the meantime, however, it is necessary to note that, while the Pol Pot Group targeted internal societal problems as a main cause of 1 32 Cambodia's decline, it did not abandon the traditional view that imminent foreign threats were also to blame. The perception of the Vietnamese as the foremost enemy was a crucial component of the DK "mind-set" which had been inherited from its own revolutionary experience vis-a-vis the VWP as well as from the Sihanouk and Lon Nol regimes. In fact, Sihanouk, Lon Nol and Pol Pot shared a traditionalist view of the Cambodian state in relation to Vietnam. According to Chandler, "...in launching the attacks against "enemies of the state" in order to recapture Cambodia's national greatness, Pol Pot and his colleagues appear to have been swept along by considerations which predated the arrival of socialism in Cambodia and which, they assumed, ran more deeply among ordinary people than many of their more recently acquired socialist ideas. In the eyes of the Pol Pot faction, the Cambodian "race", locked in combat with Vietnam, as it had been against the Chams under Jayarvarman VII, was acting out the essential drama of its history."2"4 Indeed, there seems to be little reason to doubt the sincerity of Pol Pot's fear that the Vietnamese would submerge Cambodia in an Indochina Federation. That the Pol Pot Group made the seemingly irrational decision to pit its relatively small army against that of the powerful Vietnamese army suggests that it badly overestimated its own capabilities and probably underestimated those of its enemy as well. But, like Sihanouk and Lon Nol, Pol Pot could not accept the idea that Cambodia was a small nation whose destiny was inextricably linked with its geopolitical position. Arguably, the shrill state-nationalist fervour of the 133 Pol Pot Group was capable of such self-deception that the regime was led to believe in its infallibility, when it was, in fact,on the verge of being demolished by the Vietnamese army. Thus, while the Pol Pot Group's nationalist orientation may have been motivated by its desire to strengthen and revitalize the Khmer nation-state, overzealous and xenophobic tendencies inspired its fatally unrealistic perceptions concerning Vietnam. . _____ So far I have argued that the actual implementation of such policies as deurbanization, rural collectivization, the abolition of private property and possessions, and social levelling, were pushed to such unprecedented extremes in Democratic Kampuchea that the Cambodian experiment may still be another socialist 'model', noted for its departure from the path of its predecessors. Yet, while the policies themselves may present a sharp contrast with agrarian-based socialist countries, such as China, the intellectual motivations for the "back to the earth" society were not exclusive to Cambodian communists. In fact, the rural orientation and social egalitarianism of CPK ideology is very similar to the concepts underpinning Maoism and Utopian Socialism, although the similarities are, for the most part, unacknowledged. AGRARIAN UTOPIANISM As a point of introduction to the similarities between Maoism and what could be called Pol Potism, it may be useful to acknowledge that both ideologies were influenced by the predominantly pre-capitalist socio-economic environments in which they developed. This point is important, because, 134 according to Marx and Lenin, the full development of capitalism was the requisite for the creation of the social and historical conditions for proletarian socialist revolution. Maurice Meisner states: It is one of the great ironies of modern history that Marxism, a theory addressed to the urban working class of advanced industrial nations, should have become the dominant ideology of anti-capitalist revolutionary movements in "backward" peasant countries. And it is one of the ironies of the history of Marxism that many contemporary versions of the theory incorporate socialist ideas and conceptions Marx and Lenin condemned as "Utopian" and "reactionary".245 Lenin castigated the programNadvocated by the "Utopian Socialists" as "the carriers of a reactionary petty-bourgeois ideology that represented the interests of the doomed small producer" and which promoted "stagnation and Asiatic backwardness".246 Yet the revolutionary capacity of non- capitalist societies was proven by the Chinese revolution almost four decades ago. Utopian Socialist theorists viewed the urban centres as sources of inequality and injustice. They argued that in order for agriculture to be restored to "its ancient primacy and glory", the cities should be evacuated "by scattering their inhabitants over the country to live in healthy smiling villages".247 Moreover, these villages were to be organized on the basis of self-sufficiency and communal social relations. Meisner, referring to Russian Utopian thinkers, explains further: In this ideal society, there would be no need for formal institutions of education, for the young would educate themselves spontaneously in a natural social setting based on the unity of living and working; and there would be no 135 place for university educated intellectuals, whose specialized training necessarily created a sharp separation between mental and manual labour incongruous with the new order.2"8 The major ideas of Utopian Socialism, the egalitarianism brought about by immediate social levelling, the morally spartan and simple lifestyle on rural communes, and a rejection of intellectualism and urbanization correspond with policies practiced in Democratic Kampuchea. Like the Utopian Socialists and like Mao Tse-tung, Pol Pot looked to the peasants, not the urban workers to find the sources of socialist and revolutionary development. The anti-urban bias of the Pol Pot Group stems from its perceptions of the cities as foreign-dominated, centres of imperialist penetration, where moral corruption was rampant and where bourgeois individualism flourished. This perception of the cities was in contrast to that of the countryside. For the Pol Pot Group, as for Mao, /^he city came to be identified with alien influences, and the countryside with the nation."2"9^ Thus this anti-urban and ultimately anti-industrial ideology is the complete opposite of Marx's view that "the rise of capitalism was not only inseparable from the dominance of town over countryside, it also foreshadowed the dominance of urbanized industrial nations over rural peasant countries".250 The emphasis on agrarian socialism in the so-called third world community of communist states is perhaps the most clear- cut example of the very limited applicability of classical Marxism. Thus, it should not be too surprising that socialist leaders in agrarian societies should find Utopian Socialist thought more revelant to their particular economic environment. 136 Pol Pot was no exception. Further, Cambodia had not developed industrially and it would not, therefore, have been possible for the CPK to embark on an industrialization and modernization drive without the benefit of substantial amounts of foreign capital. But dependence on outsiders was unacceptable because it had been the cause of Cambodia's loss of independence in the past; the emphasis on agricultural development was, therefore, the only economic alternative perceived by the Pol Pot Group.-/^AAj Vickery has oulined the ways in which Democratic Kampuchea strongly resembled Thomas More's Utopia ' :"the rigidly egalitarian communism, identical clothes and houses, the latter of which are changed regularly; identical fixed working hours, mass lectures, communal farms and communal dining halls; shifting of children out of families; strict rules on sexual morality; no money and contempt for gold".251 Utopias, however, aside from those built by individuals in frontier lands, are not achieved without a good deal of destruction. And the destructive character of Democratic Kampuchea seems to owe a great deal to anarchist tactics, based on the idea that the total destruction of the existing society is necessary before a Utopian society can be established. The massive destruction of Cambodia's institutions, values, cultural practices, and social organization, closely resembles Bakunin's strategy of anarchist revolution in which "...of the present order of things...not a stone will be left standing."252 Pol Pot's words carry the same message: "...we want to put an end once and for all to all remnants of the past."253 1 37 The anarchist vision of post-revolutionary society, unfettered by the authority of the state and exploiting classes, is not unlike that of the Utopian Socialists. The following statement by Joll on anarchist ideology could also be applied to that of the Pol Pot Group: ...anarchists are all agreed that in the new society man will live in extreme simplicity and frugality and will be quite happy to do without the technical achievements of the industrial age. For this reason, much anarchist thinking seemed to be based on a romantic, backward-looking vision of an idealized past society of artisans and peasants, and on a total rejection of the realities of twentieth century social and economic organization.25" Vickery believes that the Pol Pot Group was "overcome by peasant romanticism", calling the regime peasant-Populist.255 If Populism is, as Vickery states, "an anti-intellectual ideology... a conservative utopianism, a belief in the sacredness of the soil and those who till it, in the quality of the status of all cultivators... the supremacy of the will of the 'people' over every other standard"256, it seems hard to believe that Pol Pot was pro-peasant. The peasants, after all, suffered extreme hardships along with everyone else -- food deprivation, the lack of religious freedom, the communual dining halls, no freedom to travel outside the village compound, the atomization of the family — all were policies that were perceived by the peasants as not being in their own interests. Vickery does not adequately acknowledge the intense unpopularity of these policies among the peasantry. Moreover, rather than being swept away by peasant demands, as Vickery argues, the Pol Pot Group was in firm control of the entire Cambodian population. It 138 regulated every aspect of life, such as waking and sleeping times, working hours and working tasks, the amount of food to be eaten, clothes to be worn, permissable conduct and so forth. The "back to the earth" policy was motivated by the political aims of self-sufficiency and independence and by the belief that the poor-peasant class was the most pure, the least touched by foreign influence, and therefore the most capable of achieving revolutionary goals. The Cambodian peasantry was used to build the state in Democratic Kampuchea much the same way it was used by the Angkorean kings to produce rice and build temples for the kingdom. These features point out that the Pol Pot Group could not be considered populist, both in its form (authoritarian) and in the content of its policies. There are grounds for comparing the agricultural policies of Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia. It may be significant that the Pol Pot Group called its agricultural policy the 'Super Great Leap Forward', a clear linguistic borrowing from Mao's Great Leap Forward campaign of 1958 to 1960. Realizing that the modernization of the countryside was not keeping pace with that of the cities, Mao hoped to "leap" toward communism by developing rural communes and peasant consciousness. Meisner notes: "In the new rural communes Maoists would find what appeared to be the ideal agency to reconcile the means and the ends of socialism, agencies that would serve the needs of modern economic development at the same time they served as the basic social units for China's "leap" to a communist Utopia."257 An important goal of Mao's Great Leap Forward was to 139 eliminate the differences between the urban and rural areas. It was the "pioneering peasants" who could serve to regenerate China's economy on sound socialist principles. Pol Pot's reliance on the peasantry could well have been inspired by Maoist developments in the late 1950's. As Vickery notes: "The "vast irrigation and water-conservation campaigns" begun already in 1957, in which peasant labour was brought together in brigades and work teams that "functioned with militaristic discipline to perform specialized labour tasks" seem clearly to prefigure what was carried out in Cambodia two decades later. "258 The radical Maoists in China also called for the abolition of private property belonging to individuals. Meisner notes that in areas "where communalization was most radically pursued, everything from homes to cooking utensils, furniture and watches were collectivized and turned over to the commune -- at least in theory."259 Pol Pot's communalization was pursued radically in every part of the country. While it is important to determine the possible influences of Maoism on Pol Potism, it is also necessary to delineate the point at which Pol Pot's Great Leap took on its own character. Perhaps the most significant point accounting for the differences between Maoist and Pol Potist collectivization is that of intent. For one thing, the Chinese communes were intended to make an important contribution to the decentralization of state power, to the extent that "the withering away of the state" was a repeated claim in China 140 during the Great Leap Forward.260 In Cambodia, the state controlled all aspects of the labour and produce on the communes; hunger was deliberately used as a weapon to create dependence on Angkar. Second, there was not the anti-industry, anti-urban ideology underpinning the Chinese program as there was in the Cambodian one. Finally, the Chinese Communists did not ignore the serious problems of mismanagement, the consequence of which would lead to food shortages and famine conditions. Private ownership of land was partially restored, free markets were permitted to operate and family households re- emerged. Moreover, the urban centres prevented the complete collapse of China's rural economy: "From the cities came emergency aid in the form of insecticides, chemical fertilizers, and small farm tools" and "hundreds of thousands of trained specialists".261 In Cambodia, there were no cities to provide assistance to the Cambodian countryside. The result was chaos earthen dams broke, irrigation canals dried up before water reached the rice fields, and efforts to use unarable land failed. People starved to death. In strict organizational terms, the enforced collectivization drive in Cambodia was very similar to that in Stalinist Russia. In the Soviet Union, the peasantry toiled to pay for industrialization; in Democratic Kampuchea surplus rice, badly needed by a starving population, was used to buy military equipment with which to wage war against Vietnam.262 As Leszek Kalikowski concludes, "the peasantry was tied to the soil as in the worst days of feudalism".263 141 Conclusion The Cambodian revolution exhibited all of the preconditions which are generally considered to be necessary and sufficient for revolution to occur. And of great importance is the fact that the Communist Party of Kampuchea was able to take advantage of existing preconditions and organize a large percentage of the population to overthrow the government and seize power. Once in power, the CPK was unable to maintain itself for very long. For this reason, it is necessary to conclude that the CPK revolutionary regime, characterized by its xenophobic and chauvinistic nationalism, ultimately failed. The primary cause of this failure was the Pol Pot Group's attempt to launch military attacks against Vietnam, an enemy that was and continues to be much more powerful than Cambodia. The domestic policies of the Pol Pot Group were excessively radical. It appears that the Cambodian communists were not interested in heeding the lessons that the Russian, Chinese or Vietnamese communists had learned from the excesses of their own revolutionary zeal in the first post-victory years. The ruling Pol Pot Group was too self-absorbed by its success at seizing power and not committed enough to Marxism-Leninism to accept advice from outsiders, even communist outsiders. Given the brief period of DK's existence, it is impossible to know if its radical and violent character would have subsided in time, with the evolution of a more moderate leadership. I suspect that if the Pol Pot faction had lost the power struggle to one of the two factions within the CPK, then the ultranationalist fervour 142 would have abated and been replaced by a more authentic socialist ideology. One of the tragic lessons of the Cambodian revolution is that it appears that no regime can maintain its power for very long if it both kills its own people and threatens other states. Stalin killed up to sixteen million of his own people but the USSR did not attack its neighbours at the same time. A further lesson of the revolution is that Cambodians, not foreigners, were largely responsible for the massive destruction that took place between 1975 and 1979. As previously discussed, Cambodian leaders such as Sihanouk, Lon Nol and, to some extent, Pol Pot, held the traditional view that foreigners, not Cambodians, were to blame for the decline of the Cambodian state. If the Vietnamese had attempted to carry out the revolutionary policies in Cambodia that were practiced by the Pol Pot Group, they would have met the traditonal Khmer expectations of the hated foreign enemy. But, it was inconceivable to them that Khmers could attack so vociferously the very foundations of Khmer culture, and that Khmers could kill Khmers. Perhaps the greatest tragic irony of this period in Cambodian history is that the Pol Pot regime was responsible for not only the near complete destruction of the society it had set out to destroy (the urban and traditional elite), but also the society it had set out to "save" (the Khmer peasantry). At least one million Cambodians out of a total population of 6.5 million died in Democratic Kampuchea by starvation, disease, or 143 execution. The educated and professional class was all but wiped out, a factor which partially accounts for Cambodia's present snail-like pace of reconstruction. For the survivors in Cambodia the last decade of war and revolution has left painful and perhaps as yet unforseen scars for life. On a more positive note, the Cambodian nation has once again withstood a challenge to its survival. Traditional Khmer culture is being revived by the current government. Buddhism is once again openly practiced. Life for most Cambodians is returning to a state of normalcy. The present fragility of Cambodia's recovery from the Pol Pot years will likely continue for decades, especially if the Vietnamese military presence remains much longer. Whether the Cambodian state has survived is another question open to debate, and which can only be answered with the passage of time. At the present time, the large number of Vietnamese soldiers in Cambodia (150,000), coupled with the significant influence the Vietnamese government seems to have over the decision-making process in Phnom Penh, are indications that the Cambodia has reverted to the position of vassal. On the other hand, Cambodia has re-emerged from foreign domination several times in the past. And it is this historical experience that permits an optimistic view that the Cambodian state may well be restored in the near future. While the historical past is never completely erased, even after brutal revolution, it is impossible to predict which features of the past will remain, which will be abandoned and which will become transformed in the post-Pol Pot Cambodian society. 144 Notes 215 The Vietnamese government believes Democratic Kampuchea was a fascist state. See Kampuchea Dossier II (Hanoi: Hanoi Courier, 1979), p. 12. There are difficulties in using the term fascist to describe Democratic Kampuchea. Aside from the problem of determining a working definition of the term, fascism has usually been applied to regimes which have been noted for their very strong central control. Also, fascist regimes have arisen in urbanized states with large working class populations. The vast majority of Cambodians were neither urbanites nor working class. For a thorough discussion of the definitional problems of fascism and of the particular socio-economic conditions in which it arises, see James A. Gregor, Interpretations of Fascism Morristown, N.J.: General Learning Press, 1974, and Stanley G. Payne, Fascism, Comparison and Definition. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980. 216 This, of course, could be said of many states which inaccurately append "Democratic" to their state-names, or proclaim such in their constitutions. 217 See David Chandler, "Revising the Past in Democratic Kampuchea: When Was the Birthday of the Party?", Pac i f ic Affairs, vol. 56, no. 2 (Summer 1983), p. 300. The ruling communist party in Phnom Penh is now called the People's Revolutionary Party of Kampuchea. 218 Far Eastern Economic Review, 5 December 1981, p. 14. 219 Walker Connor, The National Question in Marxist- Leninist Theory and Strategy, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton 1 45 University Press, 1984), p. xiv. 220 Walker Connor, "Nation-Building and Nation-Destroying," World Politics no. 3, (April 1972), p. 385. 221 Ibid. 222 Mav Ebihara, Svay, A Village in Cambodia, Columbia University, Ph.D. Dissertation (1968), Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, p. 154. 223 Martin Stuart-Fox, The Murderous Revolution: Life and Death in Pol Pot's Kampuchea, Chippendale, Australia: (Alternative Publishing Cooperative Ltd., 1985), p. 154. 224 See quote at the beginning of this chapter. United States Department of Commerce, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Asia and the Pacific, 14 June 1978. (hereafter cited as FBIS). 225 Robert C. Tucker, (ed.) The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972), p. 123. 226 Connor, The National Question, op. cit., p. xv. 227 It is necessary to distinguish the theoretical concepts such as the socialist nation-state, world communism and proletarian internationalism, which are often cited in discussions about the nationalist question. The soc ialist nation-state is one in which the official ideology is Marxism- Leninism, practiced by the ruling communist party of workers and peasants. The goal of the socialist state is communism whereby all citizens participate in the democratic political process, to the extent that the state will "wither away" and in its place will be self-government. In the transitional stage of the 1 46 socialist nation-state, three goals are set: "the complete suppression of the bourgeoisie, the abolition of the exploitation of man by man, and the establishment of socialism, under which neither class divisions nor state coercion arising therefrom will any longer exist." (Quotation from the 1918 Constitution of the Soviet Union, cited in Robert A. Scalapino, "Legitimacy and Institutionalization in Asian Socialist Societies"). World communism is a term for the process by which communist revolution is to spread from the Soviet Union to the rest of the world. It was based initially on the premise that communism could not be achieved in one country in the absence of its development elsewhere around the world. After the prospect for revolution in Europe receded, Russian communists came to believe that they should proceed with building socialism in the Soviet Union and that this process would be the blueprint for use by socialists in other states. Proletarian internationalism is a very important tenet of Marxism-Leninism, one that governs the relations between communist parties and socialist states. It demands "their solidarity and united action in the fight for freedom and equality for all peoples, for their friendship and co-operation, against racism, chauvinism and bourgeois nationalism". (Cited in the Dictionary of Scientific Socialism, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1984, p. 192). In other words, nationalism and chauvinism are incompatible with proletarian internationalism because communism is a world movement. Deviation from proletarian internationalism is "a betrayal of the working class and a hindrance to the ultimate success of the 147 goal of world communism." (Ibid.) Deviation has typically been manifest in disputes between socialist states. 228 Connor, The Nationalist Question, op. cit., p. 558- 559. 229 Alexander Woodside, "Nationalism and Poverty in the Breakdown of Sino-Vietnamese Relations", Pacific Affairs vol. 52, no. 3, (Fall 1979), p. 385. 230 Ibid., p. 387. 231 Connor, The Nationalist Question, op. cit., p. 388. 232 Connor, Ibid., p. 546. 233 Ibid., pp. 545,551. 23(1 Justus M. van der Kroef, "Political Ideology in Democratic Kampuchea", Orbis, (Winter, 1979), p. 1011. 235 The Brezhnev Doctrine was issued as a justification for the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. It claims that any socialist state has the right to invade another socialist state if the future of socialist society is threatened by revisionary or reactionary leaders. 2 3 6 Ebihara, op. cit. , p. 549. 237 rp^g two Ways in which Cambodian peasants could, theoretically at least, participate in politics was by voting in national elections and by attending the biannual National Congress held by Sihanouk in Phnom Penh. At the Congress, peasants were permitted to express their grievances to the king. In practice, however, peasant participation in politics was constrained by elites who chose electoral candidates and who pre-arranged the National Congress agenda. See Ebihara, op. 148 cit., pp. 537-540. 238 David Chandler, "The Tragedy of Cambodian History", Pacific Affairs vol. 52, no. 3 (Fall 1979), p. 413. 2 3 9 Ebihara, op. cit. , pp. 580-581 . 240 Chandler, "The Tragedy of Cambodian History", op. cit., p. 413-414. 241 FBIS , 29 September 1978. 242 Ibid. 243 Chandler, "The Tragedy of Cambodian History," op. cit., p. 416. 244 David Chandler, "Seeing Red: Perceptions of Cambodian History in Democratic Kampuchea", in David Chandler and Ben Kiernan (eds.) Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea: Eight Essays, New Haven: Yale University, Southeast Asian Studies, Monograph Series no. 25, (1983), p. 51. 245 Maurice Meisner, Marxism, Maoism and Utopianism (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), p. 52. 2 4 6 Cited in Meisner, op. cit. , pp. 49-50. 247 J.L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (New York: Praeger, 1965), p. 244. 248 Meisner, op. cit., p. 46. 249 Ibid., p. 61. 250 Ibid., p. 32. 251 Michael Vickery, Cambodia 1975-1982, (Boston: Southend Press, 1984), p. 281. 252 Cited in Marx, Engels, Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho- syndicalism (New York: International Publishers, 1972), p. 114. 149 2S3.FBIS, 26 April 1978. 254 James Joll, The Anarchists, (London: Methuen, 1979), p. 259. 2 5 5 Vickery, op^ cit. , p. 287. 256 Ibid., p. 285. 257 Maurice Meisner, Mao's China: A History of the People's Republic (New York: Free Press, 1977), p. 205. 258 Vickery, op. cit., p. 273. 259 Meisner, Mao's China, op. cit., p. 236. 260 Ibid., p. 234. 261 Ibid., pp. 275-276. 2S2 Wilfred Burchett, The China, Cambodia, Vietnam Triangle (London: Zed Press, 1981), p. 165. 263 Leszek Rolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism: Part 3 The Breakdown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 39. 150 BIBLIOGRAPHY Albin, David and Marlowe Hood. 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