In 1968, the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPC), which was in opposition to the government, created a paramilitary movement that became one of the sides of the civil war in Cambodia. They were the Khmer Rouge. It was they who made Cambodia another stronghold of socialism in Southeast Asia.
Sources of the current
The infamous Khmer Rouge emerged a year after the start of a peasant uprising in Battambang province. The militias opposed the government and King Norodom Sihanouk. The dissatisfaction of the peasants was picked up and used by the leadership of the CPC. At first, the forces of the rebels were insignificant, but in a matter of a month Cambodia plunged into the chaos of a civil war, which is rightly considered as 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 was Norodom Sihanouk. At first, he was even popular among the local population. However, the situation in Cambodia was destabilized by the war in neighboring Vietnam, where, starting from the late 1950s,confrontation between the communists, supported by China and the USSR, and the democratic pro-American government. The "Red Threat" was also hiding 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.
Pol Pot's personality
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 became symbols of inhumanity and genocide. But the leader of the revolution began very 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. At birth, there was no Pol Pot. The real name of the leader of the Khmer Rouge is Saloth Sar. Pol Pot is a party pseudonym that the young revolutionary took during the years of his political career.
The social lift of a boy from a modest family turned out to be education. In 1949, the young Pol Pot received a government scholarship that allowed him to move to France and enroll at the Sorbonne. In Europe, the student met the communists and became interested in revolutionary ideas. In Paris, he joined a Marxist circle. Education, however, Pol Pot never received. In 1952, he was expelled from the university for poor progress and returned to his homeland.
In Cambodia, Pol Pot joined the People's Revolutionary Party of Cambodia, which was later transformed into a communist one. Your career in the organizationThe rookie started in the mass propaganda department. The revolutionary began to publish in the press and soon became extremely famous. Pol Pot has always had remarkable ambitions. Gradually, he climbed the party ladder, and in 1963 he became its general secretary. The Khmer Rouge genocide was still far away, but history was doing its job - Cambodia was approaching civil war.
Khmer Rouge ideology
Communists have become more and more powerful 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 Maoism - a set of ideas adopted as an official doctrine in the Celestial Empire. In fact, the communists of Cambodia preached radical leftist views. Because of this, the Khmer Rouge were ambivalent about 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 claims against Moscow. Partly on the same basis, 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 the preservation of money - one of the most important signs of capitalist relations in society. Pol Pot also believed that agriculture was poorly developed in the USSR due to forced industrialization. In Cambodia, the agrarian factor played a huge role. Peasants made up the absolute majority of the population in this country. Ultimately, whenthe Khmer Rouge regime came to power in Phnom Penh, Pol Pot did not ask for help from the Soviet Union, but was much more oriented towards China.
Struggle for power
In the civil war that began in 1967, the Khmer Rouge was supported by the communist authorities of North Vietnam. Their opponents also acquired allies. The Cambodian government focused on the United States and South Vietnam. At first, the central power 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 that the Khmer Rouge fought for another five years.
The history of the civil war in Cambodia is an example of an internal conflict in which outside forces actively intervened. At the same time, the confrontation in Vietnam continued. The Americans began to provide significant economic and military assistance to the government of Lon Nol. The United States did not want Cambodia to become a country where enemy Vietnamese troops could easily go to rest and recuperate.
In 1973, American aircraft began bombing Khmer Rouge positions. By this time, the US had withdrawn troops from Vietnam and could now focus on helping Phnom Penh. However, at the decisive moment, Congress had its say. Against the background of massive anti-militarist 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, Cambodian government troops began to retreat. oneJanuary 1975 began the final offensive of the Khmer Rouge on the capital Phnom Penh. Day after day, the city lost more and more supply lines, and the ring around it continued to narrow. On April 17, the Khmer Rouge took full control of the capital. Two weeks earlier, Lon Nol announced his resignation and moved to the United States. It seemed that after the end of the civil war, a period of stability and peace would come. However, in reality, Cambodia was on the brink of an even worse disaster.
Democratic Kampuchea
When they came to power, the communists renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea. Pol Pot, who became the head of state, announced the three strategic goals of his government. First, he was going 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 tough dictatorship. Repression began in the country, initiated by the Khmer Rouge. In Cambodia, according to various estimates, between 1 and 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 fenced itself off from the world with the Iron Curtain. News of her inner life barely leaked out.
Terror and repressions
After the victory in the civil war, the Khmer Rouge began a complete restructuring of the society of Kampuchea. According totheir radical ideology, they abandoned money and eliminated this instrument of capitalism. Urban residents began to move to the countryside en masse. Many familiar social and state institutions were destroyed. The government liquidated the system of medicine, education, culture and science. Foreign books and languages were banned. Even wearing glasses has led to the arrest of many residents of the country.
The Khmer Rouge, whose leader was extremely serious, in just a few months left no trace of the previous order. All religions were subjected to repression. The hardest blow was de alt to the Buddhists, who were a significant majority in Cambodia.
The Khmer Rouge, photos of the results of the repression which soon spread around the world, divided the population into three categories. The first included the majority of peasants. The second included residents of areas that had resisted the advance of the communists for a long time during the civil war. Interestingly, at that time American troops were even based in some cities. All these settlements have undergone "re-education", or, in other words, mass purges.
The third group included representatives of the intelligentsia, the clergy, officials who were in the public service under the previous regime. They also added officers from the Lon Nol army. Soon, the savage tortures of the Khmer Rouge were tested on many of these people. The repressions were carried out under the slogan of fighting the enemies of the people, traitors and revisionists.
Socialism in-Cambodian
Forcibly driven into the countryside, the population began to live in communes with strict rules. Basically, the Cambodians were engaged in planting rice and wasting time on other low-skilled labor. The atrocities of the Khmer Rouge consisted of harsh punishments for any crime. Thieves and other petty violators of public order were shot without trial or investigation. The rule even extended to fruit picking on plantations owned by the state. Of course, all the land and enterprises of the country were nationalized.
Later, the world community described the crimes of the Khmer Rouge as genocide. Mass killings were carried out along social and ethnic lines. The authorities executed foreigners, including even Vietnamese and Chinese. Another reason for the reprisal was higher education. Going to a conscious confrontation with foreigners, the government completely isolated Kampuchea from the outside world. Diplomatic contacts remain only with Albania, China and North Korea.
Reasons for massacres
Why did the Khmer Rouge stage a genocide in their native country, causing incredible harm to its present and future? According to the official ideology, in order to build a socialist paradise, the state needed a million able-bodied and loyal citizens, and all the remaining several million inhabitants were 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 agenda.
Estimates of the death toll inCambodia in the 70s extremely contradictory. The gap from 1 to 3 million is caused by the civil war, the abundance of refugees, the partisanship of researchers, etc. Of course, the regime did not leave evidence of its crimes. People were killed without trial and investigation, which did not allow to restore 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 has befallen the unfortunate country. But even the few pieces of evidence that have become public thanks to the international trials held after the fall of the Pol Pot government are horrifying. Tuol Sleng prison became the main symbol of repression in Kampuchea. Today there is a museum there. The last time tens of thousands of people were sent to this prison. All of them were 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 trial of the Cambodian case.
A blow to religion
Repressions against religious organizations were legislated in the constitution adopted by Kampuchea. The Khmer Rouge saw any denomination as a potential danger to their power. In 1975, there were 82,000 monks of Buddhist monasteries (bonzes) in Cambodia. Only a few of them managed to escape and flee abroad. The extermination of the monks took on a total character. No exceptions were made for anyone.
Destroyed Buddha statues, Buddhist libraries, temples and pagodas (before the civil warthere were about 3 thousand of them, but in the end there was not a single one). Like the Bolsheviks or the Communists in China, the Khmer Rouge used religious buildings as warehouses.
With particular cruelty, the supporters of Pol Pot cracked down on Christians, as they were carriers of foreign trends. Both laity and priests were repressed. Many churches were ravaged and destroyed. About 60,000 Christians and another 20,000 Muslims died during the terror.
Vietnam War
In a matter of years, Pol Pot's regime led Cambodia to economic collapse. Many sectors of the country's economy were completely destroyed. Huge victims 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 activities of traitors and external enemies. Rather, this point of view was defended by the party. There was no Pol Pot in the public space. He was known as "brother No. 1" in the top eight party figures. Now it seems surprising, but in addition to this, Cambodia introduced its own Newspeak in the manner of the dystopian novel 1984. Many literary words were removed from the language (they were replaced with 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 growing conflict with Vietnam. In 1976, the country was united under communist rule. However, socialist proximity did not help the regimesfind common ground.
On the contrary, bloody skirmishes constantly took place on the border. The biggest was the tragedy in the town of Batyuk. The Khmer Rouge invaded Vietnam and slaughtered an entire village inhabited by about 3,000 peaceful peasants. The period of clashes on the border ended in December 1978, when Hanoi decided to end the Khmer Rouge regime. For Vietnam, the task was made easier by the fact that Cambodia was experiencing an economic collapse. Immediately after the invasion of foreigners, uprisings of the local population began. On January 7, 1979, the Vietnamese took Phnom Penh. The newly created United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea, headed by Heng Samrin, gained power in it.
Partisans again
Although the Khmer Rouge lost their capital, the western part of the country remained under their control. For the next 20 years, these rebels continued to harass the central authorities. In addition, the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot survived and continued to lead large paramilitary units that had taken refuge 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 they returned to their original positions. The autumn season of tropical rains made it impossible to effectively fight the guerrillas in the jungle. The irony was thatyears 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 it itself was completely dissolved. 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. The legitimized communists renounced Pol Pot. They acknowledged the mistakes of the previous regime (including the adventurism of refusing money) and asked for forgiveness for the repression.
Radicals led by Pol Pot continued to hide in the forests and destabilize the situation in the country. Nevertheless, the political compromise in Phnom Penh led to the fact that the central authority was strengthened. In 1989, Vietnamese troops left Cambodia. The confrontation between the government and the Khmer Rouge continued for about a decade. Pol Pot's failures forced the rebels' collective leadership to remove him from power. The once seemingly invincible dictator has been placed under house arrest. He passed away on April 15, 1998. According to one version, the cause of death was heart failure, according to another, Pol Pot was poisoned by his own supporters. Soon the Khmer Rouge suffered a final defeat.
