The Eyes of the Pineapple

Here’s some more film footage below, taken from a French documentary on Democratic Kampuchea. I’m unsure as to its content though, regarding the footage used. Identifying what is exactly official government footage and that which was filmed during the visit made by Yugoslav journalists, including Nikola Vitorovic, in 1978. You see, I haven’t been lucky enough to see this film Kampucija 1978. Only little bits of footage here and there used in other films. The tractors seen in the film below are, I think, those shipped to DK by the Yugoslav government in 1977. I like the scene of improvisation, with a rice paddy complete with cattle, against the backdrop of whitewashed modernist buildings about forty-seven seconds into it. A not necessarily backward transformation of the urban. It represents a little the problems, in practice, that were caused by the ideological choices made by the DK government, and what they were wanting to achieve by way of them: the creation of another variant of a relatively modern ‘Socialist’ state. If the regime had survived, it is interesting to speculate on whether the towns would have been repopulated at some point. That isn’t to say they were completely devoid of human activity, as poor peasants who had proved themselves to the tasks of revolution during the war, were brought in to work the various repaired and reopened factories. Such places of course were not only to produce goods, but workers. And as you can see below, the improvisation of modern technology is evident, for American army jeeps have been modified so their engines can act as water pumps.

‘Proletarianisation,’ would be part and parcel of reforging the less-than-favourable section of the population, creating infrastructure for expanded food production in the countryside. Similarly, regarding commodity exchange, or in plain English, stuff like money. Perhaps it would have been recirculated after the bulk of the population’s rural rebirth had coincided with the completion of this new infrastructure, with which to begin the process of industrialisation. After all it wasn’t until 1976 that it was decided to do away with it. And if Democratic Kampuchea had indeed ‘moved forward’ by a substantial distance, then although claiming to be non-aligned, with heavy Chinese influence, this small Communist-ruled state would have been incorporated somewhere into the old Communist world bloc, with its networks of trade, surely? As early as 1972, there was discussion among the Communist Party leadership on the matter of introducing a new currency into the liberated areas, where the money of the Khmer Republic had been withdrawn. Sample notes were printed in China, which were inspected by the Khmer Communists, who after some agreement decided to postpone its introduction until they had defeated the Lon Nol government and won control of the whole country. The notes of this revolutionary currency were indeed circulated in one or two trial areas for a short period after April 1975, before their withdrawal, never to be used again by the Communists, and which these days serve as curious items for collectors.

In practice, the Khmer Communists didn’t copy the Soviet or the Chinese models in a linear fashion, despite borrowing from both, but the government, when not being coy about its very existence and intentions described itself and its policies in Leninist terms, and the development and expansion of their cooperative system, and through which total collectivisation would be attempted, had (in their eyes) accelerated the creation of conditions ripe for the building of socialism, and beyond. I don’t believe their logic, present in the ideological framework they used, would have allowed them to get to that beyond bit, though. That is, full-blown communism. It would have eventually bumped into the brick wall all other ‘transitional’ Socialist states had, at some point, arrived at. And paradise on earth is subject to Party postponement. Look at the spin Brezhnev gave to the reality of stagnation in the USSR. Real existing socialism had ‘matured,’ so much so, that it had begun to stink like a piece of blue cheese. Had the regime survived, then it might have begun to resemble in some ways Enver Hoxha’s Albania, or Kim Il-Sung’s North Korea. Albania had been, in some respects, more peasant than Russia, and like Cambodia, reliant on outside help for its development (despite Khmer claims to the contrary). And Korea was a place where at one point during a period of war, planes were grounded because there were no longer any targets to drop bombs on. An ugly state beyond socialism – or even stagnation for that matter – it might still be, but it was built from ruins. My guesses are uneducated, and what ifs, although interesting for the imagination, still fall squarely on the reality that although supreme confidence meant only success after success, victory after victory could be expected, the Khmer Communist version of a Great Leap landed somewhere quite different, and horrific, for that matter.

Some official DK footage showing the use of modern agricultural equipment. You get to see those Yugoslav tractors again. Thrilling, I know.