When an article critical of the Cambodian monarchy appeared in the Cambodian student magazine in France, Khmer Niset, in 1952, there was little evidence to conclude that its author, Saloth Sar, would one day seek to radically transform Cambodian society.22In a similar manner, it is difficult to conclude that the embrace of Communism by a small group of Cambodian students in France would one day result in one of the world’s bloodiest revolutions under one of its most tyrannical re-gimes. Cambodian students in France were not immediately drawn to Marxism. The Cambodian student representative body in France, the Association des Etudiants Khmers (AEK), formed in Paris in 1946, orig-inally represented nationalist interests aligned to the Democrat Party at home. The association was radical in that it advocated Cambodian in-dependence from France, and it was more nationalist than overtly po-litical or ideological in nature. In 1950, with the arrival of Ieng Sary in France, dissension emerged within the Association and several factions were formed. Vann Molyvann, later the Sangkum’s longest serving min-ister of education, Hang Tun Hak, and Tan Kim Huon, later the rector of the University of Agronomy under the Khmer Republic, were among the moderate faction. On the right were Mau Say, Long Pet, Douc Rasy, Douc Phana, Sam Sary, and Prom Tos. Members of the leftist grouping, who formed a Marxist study cell, included Ieng Sary, Saloth Sar, Thiounn Mumm, Khieu Samphan, Keng Vannsak, Sin Khem Ko, Hou Yuon, and Phuong Ton. By 1951, the Marxist group had assumed con-trol of the AEK, with Hou Yuon appointed as its president.23
The motivation for the adoption of Marxism by these emergent rad-icals is difficult to determine. In her examination of the origins of the Vietnamese revolution, Hue-Tam Ho Tai provides an illuminating start-ing point. She poignantly argues that revolution came to seem the only possible solution to many young Vietnamese students, who saw “an ex-istential predicament that bound their personal concerns to those of the nation in a tight and seeming natural unity.” These students, argues Tai, saw a symmetry between the national struggle for independence from
colonial rule and their own efforts to “emancipate themselves from the oppressiveness of native social institutions and the dead-weight of tradi-tion.”24Like their Vietnamese associates, Cambodia’s elite students were caught between two worlds. One was the hierarchical social world of Cambodia, with the monarchy presiding at its apex. The other was the new world presented by their surroundings in a foreign country. Dis-tanced from the ties of monarch, sangha (the monkhood), and family, they were easily able to associate the emancipation of Cambodia from the French with their own emancipation from this traditional social world. Marxism, with its promise of equality, provided the avenue for emancipation.
Despite occasional differences in opinion between the left-wing fac-tion of the AEK and the Parti Communiste Française (PCF), the Stalin-ist orientation of the PCF no doubt affected the ideological alignment of the future CPK leaders.25Such Stalinist ideas as rapid collectivization and the elimination of class enemies were reflected in the policies later adopted by DK.26Karl Jackson, whose examination of the intellectual origins of the Khmer Rouge points clearly to a relationship between the experiences of the Pol Pot group in France and the ideological orienta-tion of DK, notes other influences, including Samir Amin, a major ref-erence for Khieu Samphan’s doctoral dissertation, which is often sim-plistically argued to have been a blueprint for DK’s economic policy platform.27
The intellectual environment of France did not, however, provide the future DK leaders with their only frame of ideological reference. In 1950, Saloth Sar spent a month in the former Yugoslavia constructing housing in a mobile youth group at the University of Zagreb—this at a time of intense hostility between Stalin and Tito.28 Sar, who later re-called the trip with great fondness, no doubt reported to his Cambodian colleagues how impressed he was with the Yugoslavian ideals of agri-cultural collectivization, self-reliance, and mass mobilization for public works, all of which would later be reflected in DK.29
In his first interview in over twenty years, in October 1997, Saloth Sar denied the influence of foreign ideas. Instead, he claimed, his political awakening came when he saw “the actual situation in Cambodia.”30 While there is little doubt that he was influenced by the situation in Cambodia, there is also no doubt that Pol Pot’s experiences in France and Yugoslavia, and later his affinity with Mao’s China, colored how he perceived the Cambodian situation. Along with other former overseas students of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Saloth Sar, on his return to
Cambodia, quickly aligned himself with the indigenous Communist movement. After assuming positions of influence within the party, the French returnees sought to influence the ideological direction of the lo-cal Communists. In particular, they attempted to shift away from a re-liance on and subservience to the Vietnamese party. Evidence of the shift is explicit. First, from as early as 1971, party veterans returning to Cambodia from Hanoi were treated with suspicion, and often open hos-tility, by their Khmer colleagues. A second source of evidence is the anti-Vietnamese demonstrations organized by the CPK in late 1972, after three of the four North Vietnamese Army (NVA) divisions fighting in Cambodia had withdrawn to Vietnam. A third source is the account of the former primary school inspector, Ith Sarin, who observed during his stay in “liberated” Cambodia that “there is also distrust of North Viet-namese unstated intentions.” Hou Yuon, Sarin recalled, was adamant that the CPK “has foreseen all in preparing for danger from the VC/NVA,” asserting that the Cambodians were “absolutely not under the guidance of the Vietnamese Communist Party.”31A final, retrospec-tive source of evidence in relation to the movement away from the Viet-namese is the Livre Noir, published by the government of DK in Sep-tember 1978 in order to justify its conflict with its former Vietnamese allies. The Black Paper continually attempted to characterize the Viet-namese Communists tactics throughout the 1970 –1975 period as ex-pansionist and recalled the party’s “heroic” struggle to maintain inde-pendence. Pol Pot, the paper noted, refused to become a “client” of the Vietnamese.32
While the Khmer Rouge leadership sought to distance itself from its Vietnamese neighbors, it grew ever closer to China, embracing the Maoist notion of complete self-reliance. Arriving at a Cambodian revo-lutionary base upon his return from France in 1953, for example, Saloth Sar is alleged to have said “that everything should be done on the basis of self-reliance, independence, and mastery. The Khmers should do everything on their own.”33The historical record clearly indicates that the Khmers did not do everything on their own: they secured the sup-port of the peasantry only through an alliance with Sihanouk and through U.S. bombardment of the Cambodian countryside, won the 1970 –1975 war against Lon Nol only with the considerable military sup-port of the Vietnamese Communists, and administered DK with sub-stantial Chinese aid and technical assistance.34Despite this overwhelm-ing evidence, the leaders of Angkar would later proudly boast that “the Khmer revolution was without precedent” and that Cambodia was
“building socialism without a model.”35 The notion of self-reliance, however half-hearted its application, would prove to be a fundamental harbinger of change for the education system and would lie at the core of an educational crisis, which, because of its devastating nature, sever-ity, and effects, was incomparable to that experienced under both Si-hanouk and Lon Nol.