In 1968, the Kampuchean Communist Party (CCP), which was in opposition to power, created a militarized movement that became one of the parties to the civil war in Cambodia. These were the Khmer Rouge. It was they who made Cambodia another stronghold of socialism in Southeast Asia.
The origins of the current
The deplorably famous Khmer Rouge appeared a year after the start of a peasant uprising in Battambang province. Militias opposed the government and King Norodom Sihanouk. The discontent of the peasants was picked up and used by the leadership of the CCP. At first, the forces of the rebels were insignificant, but in a matter of a few months Cambodia plunged into the chaos of the civil war, which is rightly regarded as yet another episode of the Cold War and the struggle between two political systems - communism and capitalism.
A few years later the Khmer Rouge overthrew the regime established in the country after gaining independence from France. Then, in 1953, Cambodia was declared a kingdom, whose ruler became Norod Sihanouk. At first, he even enjoyed popularity among the local population. However, the situation in Cambodia was destabilized by the war in neighboring Vietnam, where, starting in the late 1950s, the confrontation between the Communists, supported by China and the USSR, and the democratic pro-American government smoldered. The "Red Threat" lurked in the bowels of Cambodia itself. The local Communist Party was formed in 1951. By the time the Civil War began, Pol Pot became its leader.
Personality Pol Pot
The monstrous events in Cambodia in the 1970s in the mass consciousness (including in our country) are most associated with two images. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge have become symbols of inhumanity and genocide. But the leader of the revolution began extremely modestly. According to the official biography, he was born on May 19, 1925 in a small unremarkable Khmer village hidden somewhere in the tropical jungle of Southeast Asia. There was no Pol Pot at birth. The real name of the Khmer Rouge leader is Salot Sar. Pol Pot is a party pseudonym that the young revolutionary took in the years of his political career.
The social elevator of the boy from a modest family was education. In 1949, the young Pol Pot received a government scholarship, which allowed him to move to France and enter the Sorbonne. In Europe, a student met with the Communists and became interested in revolutionary ideas. In Paris, he joined the Marxist circle. Education, however, Pol Pot never received. In 1952, he was expelled from the university for poor performance and returned to his homeland.
In Cambodia, Pol Pot joined the People's Revolutionary Party of Cambodia, which was later transformed into a Communist Party. The beginner began his career in the organization in the mass propaganda department. The revolutionary began to be published in the press and soon became extremely famous. Pol Pot was always distinguished by remarkable ambitions. Gradually, he climbed the party ladder, and in 1963 became its secretary general. The Khmer Rouge genocide was still far away, but history was doing its job - Cambodia was approaching a civil war.
Khmer Rouge Ideology
Communists became more influential year after year. The new leader laid new ideological foundations, which he adopted from the Chinese comrades. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were supporters of Maosism - a set of ideas accepted as the official doctrine in the Middle Kingdom. In fact, the Communists of Cambodia preached radical leftist views. Because of this, the Khmer Rouge with a dual feeling belonged to the Soviet Union.
On the one hand, Pol Pot recognized the USSR as the forge of the first communist October Revolution. But the Cambodian revolutionaries also had many complaints against Moscow. Partly on the same ground, an ideological split arose between the USSR and China.
The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia criticized the Soviet Union for its policy of revisionism. In particular, they were against saving money - one of the most important signs of capitalist relations in society. Also, Pol Pot believed that in the USSR, due to forced industrialization, agriculture was poorly developed. In Cambodia, the agrarian factor played a huge role. Peasants made up the vast majority of the population in this country. As a result, when the Khmer Rouge regime came to power in Phnom Penh, Pol Pot did not ask the Soviet Union for help, but rather focused on China.
Power struggle
In the civil war that began in 1967, the Khmer Rouge was supported by the communist authorities of North Vietnam. Their opponents also gained allies. The Cambodian government focused on the United States and South Vietnam. At first, central authority was in the hands of King Norodom Sihanouk. However, after a bloodless coup in 1970, he was overthrown, and the government was in the hands of Prime Minister Lon Nol. It was with him for another five years that the Khmer Rouge fought.
The history of the civil war in Cambodia is an example of an internal conflict in which outsiders actively intervened. At the same time, the confrontation continued in Vietnam. The Americans began to provide significant economic and military assistance to the government of Lon Nol. In the USA, they did not want Cambodia to become a country where enemy Vietnamese troops could easily go to rest and restore strength.
In 1973, U.S. aircraft began bombing the Khmer Rouge. By this time, the US had withdrawn troops from Vietnam and could now concentrate on helping Phnom Penh. However, at a decisive moment, Congress made its mark. Amid massive anti-militaristic sentiments in American society, politicians demanded that President Nixon stop the bombing of Cambodia.
Circumstances played into the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Under these conditions, the government forces of Cambodia began to retreat. On January 1, 1975, the final Khmer Rouge offensive against the capital Phnom Penh began. Day after day, the city lost all new supply lines, and the ring around it continued to narrow. On April 17, the Khmer Rouge gained full control of the capital. Two weeks before, Lon Nol announced his resignation and moved to the United States. It seemed that after the end of the civil war there would come a period of stability and peace. However, in fact, Cambodia was on the verge of an even more terrible disaster.
Democratic Kampuchea
Having come to power, the Communists renamed the country into Democratic Kampuchea. Pol Pot, who became head of state, announced the three strategic goals of his government. First, he intended to stop the ruin of the peasantry and leave usury and corruption in the past. The second goal was to eliminate Kampuchea's dependence on other countries. And finally, the third: it was necessary to restore order in the country.
All these slogans seemed adequate, but in reality everything turned into the creation of a rigid dictatorship. The country began repression, initiated by the Khmer Rouge. In Cambodia, according to various estimates, from 1 to 3 million people were killed. The facts about the crimes became known only after the fall of the Pol Pot regime. During his reign, Cambodia was fenced off from the world by the Iron Curtain. News of her inner life hardly seeped out.
Terror and repression
After winning the civil war, the Khmer Rouge embarked on a complete restructuring of Kampuchea society. According to their radical ideology, they abandoned money and eliminated this instrument of capitalism. Urban residents began to be massively evicted to the village. Many habitual social and state institutions have been destroyed. The government liquidated the system of medicine, education, culture and science. Foreign books and languages were banned. Even wearing glasses caused the arrest of many residents of the country.
The Khmer Rouge, whose leader was extremely serious, literally in a few months left no trace of the previous order. All religions were repressed. The most severe blow was inflicted on the Buddhists, who in Cambodia constituted a noticeable majority.
The Khmer Rouge, whose photo of the results of the repressions soon spread all over the world, divided the population into three categories. The first included the majority of peasants. The second turned out to be residents of areas that had long resisted the offensive of the Communists during the civil war. It is interesting that at that time American troops were even based in some cities. All these settlements underwent "re-education", or, in other words, mass purges.
The third group included representatives of the intelligentsia, clergy, and officials who were in the public service under the previous regime. They were also joined by Lon Nol army officers. Soon, the savage torture of the Khmer Rouge was tested on many of these people. Repressions were carried out under the banner of the struggle against the enemies of the people, traitors and revisionists.
Cambodian socialism
The population forcibly driven into the village began to live in communes, distinguished by strict rules. Mostly Cambodians were engaged in planting rice and wasting time on other low-skilled labor. Khmer Rouge atrocities consisted of harsh punishments for any crimes. Without trial or investigation, thieves and other petty violators of public order were shot. The rule extended even to stalling fruit on plantations owned by the state. Of course, all the land and enterprises of the country were nationalized.
Later, the international community described the Khmer Rouge crimes as genocide. Massacres were carried out on social and ethnic grounds. Authorities executed foreigners, including even Vietnamese and Chinese. Another reason for reprisal was higher education. Going into a conscious confrontation with foreigners, the government completely isolated Kampuchea from the outside world. Diplomatic contacts remained only with Albania, China and North Korea.
The reasons for the massacres
Why did the Khmer Rouge commit genocide in their native country, causing incredible harm to its present and future? According to official ideology, the state needed a million able-bodied and faithful citizens to build a socialist paradise, and all the remaining several million inhabitants had to be destroyed. In other words, the genocide was not an “excess on the ground” or the result of a reaction against imaginary traitors. The killings have become part of the political course.
Estimates of the death toll in Cambodia in the 70s. extremely controversial. The gap from 1 to 3 million is caused by the civil war, the abundance of refugees, the bias of researchers, etc. Of course, the regime did not leave evidence of its crimes. People were killed without trial, which did not allow restoring the chronicle of events even with the help of official documents.
Even films about the Khmer Rouge cannot accurately convey the scale of the disaster that hit the unfortunate country. But even the few testimonies that have come to the public thanks to the international courts held since the fall of the Pol Pot government are horrifying. The main symbol of repression in Kampuchea was Tuol Sleng Prison. Today there is a museum. The last time tens of thousands of people were sent to this prison. All of them were supposed to be executed. Only 12 people survived. They were lucky - they did not have time to shoot them before the change of power. One of those prisoners became a key witness in the Cambodian trial.
Blow to religion
Repression against religious organizations was enshrined in law in a constitution that Kampuchea adopted. The Khmer Rouge saw in any denomination a potential danger to their power. In 1975, in Cambodia, there were 82 thousand monks of Buddhist monasteries (bonzes). Only a few of them managed to escape and flee abroad. The extermination of monks took on a total character. No exceptions were made for anyone.
Buddha statues, Buddhist libraries, temples and pagodas were destroyed (there were about 3 thousand of them before the civil war, and as a result, not a single one remained). Like the Bolsheviks or Communists in China at one time, the Khmer Rouge used religious buildings as warehouses.
Particularly cruel supporters of Pol Pot cracked down on Christians, as they were carriers of foreign influences. Both laymen and priests were repressed. Many churches were ruined and destroyed. During the terror killed about 60 thousand Christians and another 20 thousand Muslims.
War with vietnam
In a matter of years, the Pol Pot regime brought Cambodia to economic collapse. Many areas of the country's economy were completely destroyed. Huge casualties among the repressed led to the desolation of vast spaces.
Pol Pot, like every dictator, explained the reasons for the collapse of Kampuchea by the wrecking activity of traitors and external enemies. Rather, the party defended this point of view. No Pol Pot existed in public space. He was known as “brother No. 1” in the eight largest party leaders. Now this seems surprising, but in Cambodia, besides this, they introduced their own newspeak in the manner of the dystopian novel 1984. Many literary words were removed from the language (they were replaced by new ones approved by the party).
Despite all the ideological efforts of the party, the country was in a deplorable state. The Khmer Rouge and the tragedy of Kampuchea led to this. Pol Pot, meanwhile, was busy with the escalating conflict with Vietnam. In 1976, the country united under the rule of the Communists. However, socialist closeness did not help the regimes find a common language.
On the contrary, bloody clashes constantly occurred on the border. The largest was the tragedy in the town of Batyuk. Khmer Rouge invaded the territory of Vietnam and cut out a whole village, in which about 3 thousand peaceful peasants lived. The period of clashes on the border ended in December 1978, when they decided to end the Khmer Rouge regime in Hanoi. For Vietnam, the task was made easier because Cambodia was experiencing an economic collapse. Immediately after the invasion of aliens, uprisings of the local population began. On January 7, 1979, the Vietnamese took Phnom Penh. The power in it was received by the newly created United Front of National Salvation of Kampuchea, which was headed by Heng Samrin.
Partisans again
Although the Khmer Rouge lost the capital, the western part of the country remained under their control. For the next 20 years, these rebels continued to harass central authorities. In addition, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot survived and continued to lead the large paramilitary units hiding in the jungle. The struggle against the perpetrators of the genocide was led by the same Vietnamese (Cambodia itself lay in ruins and could hardly eradicate this serious threat).
The same campaign was repeated every year. In the spring, a Vietnamese contingent of several tens of thousands of people invaded the western provinces, carrying out purges there, and in the fall returned to its original position. The fall season of tropical showers made it impossible to effectively fight the partisans in the jungle. The irony was that during the years of their own civil war, the Vietnamese communists used the same tactics that the Khmer Rouge now used against them.
Final defeat
In 1981, the party partially removed Pol Pot from power, and soon she was completely dismissed herself. Some communists decided to change their political course. In 1982, the Democratic Kampuchea Party was formed. This and several other organizations united in a coalition government, which was soon recognized by the UN. Legitimized Communists disowned Pol Pot. They acknowledged the mistakes of the previous regime (including the adventurism of refusing money) and apologized for the repression.
The radicals, led by Paul Then continued to take refuge in the forests and destabilize the situation in the country. Nonetheless, the political compromise in Phnom Penh led to a strengthening of central authority. In 1989, Vietnamese troops left Cambodia. The confrontation between the government and the Khmer Rouge lasted about another ten years. The failures of Pol Pot forced the collective leadership of the rebels to remove him from power. The once-invincible dictator was placed under house arrest. He died on April 15, 1998. According to one version, heart failure was the cause of death, according to another - his supporters poisoned Pol Pot. Soon the Khmer Rouge suffered a final defeat.