The offer to contribute to this blog dedicated to the history of Khmer Communism and the culmination of some of its tendencies in the state of Democratic Kampuchea, came to me unexpectedly, but it is probably something that I almost readily agreed upon, due to feelings of competence to do so. Democratic Kampuchea has occupied my thoughts and fascinated me since the very time I read a short biographical note in a Soviet encyclopedia which stated that “Pol Pot – leader of a levacky (which is a variation of the Russian word for “left” but with a vulgar undertone) group called the Red Khmers, as well as with old news shots showing a pile of human skulls collected inside a building ruined by war.
Who were Khmer Rouge and what their contribution was (is) to us is an interesting topic to research. I think I’m well equipped as an author, or at least I’ll be trying his best. Hopefully there will be no disappointment. Besides, I have a blog dedicated to the building of a new man utilizing the Cambodian experience of communism, left matters, Buddhism, Traditionalism, healthy living. Here, however, I will contribute exclusively to Cambodian and Khmer Rouge topics as the name of the blog indicates – padewat.info. Information about padewat, and nothing else.
It is not just about all the killing in the name of abrogating multi-formed suffering, besides there were other influences and factors which fed into what happened, and if there had been none of the above, my fascination with Democratic Kampuchea would be the same. What Democratic Kampuchea was, and could have been, is worthy of interest not only because of its genocidal “practices.” On the contrary, to understand the killing, it requires that decent attention be given to the ideological choices made by the Khmer Communists in creating their new polity.
I want to single out here the words of the French traditionalist Rene Guenon who said that to be human is a “transitory and contingent modification of being” and Friedrich Engels once wrote that’ “life is the mode of existence of protein bodies.” Democratic Kampuchea was a state where oppression of the individual became the corner stone of its policy. An individual was a mere “contingent modification,” “a fertilizer.” “Death is either the dissolution of the organic body, leaving nothing behind but the chemical constituents that formed its substance… Living means dying.” It makes Democratic Kampuchea very close to some religious sects and its brand of communism akin to some sort of state religion. But a religion without the scriptures! This was so unusual for most of the other Communist-ruled states. An Orwellian reference can be made, for we all know that where there is a Big Brother, so too in the Cambodian context, is the Brother Number One, or bong ti muy. Also to quote Andrei Platonov from his dystopian novel Chevengur: “We might organize some grief. Communism must be caustic, a little bit of poison in the soup is good for the taste”.
Accidentally, the heroes of Chevengur were worried by the same problems as those faced by the Khmer Rouge – on how to build the purest brand of communism. And the former and the latter didn’t know the “classics.” There’s going to be a good comparison article of Platonov’s Chevengur and Democratic Kampuchea.
Even today Democratic Kampuchea stays aside. It’s a unique experience which deserves to be studied. What has attracted David Chandler, Ben Kiernan, Stephen Heder, Michael Vickery and others? Of course it’s much deeper than a remark made by Chandler that “those people were just stupid.” There’s going to be two different worlds between that of a Western professor and an uneducated farmer turned guerilla and revolutionary. You can never know 100 percent, even though you might guess, or you might construct, recreate times and places, all the variables which contribute to the motivations of people.
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Thank you Pineapple for editing my clumsy language. I really enjoyed reading it over and over. I reread now Le Livre Noir, as well as Foreign Policy of Kampuchea. I went into the ditch while driving to work and I’m really happy that we haven’t lost a new contributor, I’m active now in KI media, fighting blind nationalists right now, I’m happy when I see that people start to quote my article in Wikipedia about Sam Sary, truth should be known. It seems like nobody knew it before I collected all the facts and put it out, it’s not finished anyways. I have more books to scan for you or lb or whoever comes to this site and find it interesting. When I get back home.
That’s okay. With reading your own blog, I’ve noticed you’ve written about your wife’s family, when visited by hard times back in Cambodia, and their use of morning glory. A nourishing food, but which was apparently snubbed, at times, along with banana flowers, by ‘new’ people when driven to the cooperatives by the KR. A wise supplement to meagre rations, but when it comes to lingering hunger such matters of taste or social snobbery shouldn’t be confused with an incompetent government and its deliberate policy regarding food distribution and the eventual ban on foraging in the villages. Why should people greedily forage for themselves, when the cooperatives produce all they could possibly need and can eat such produce in the communal dining halls? What an insult. A distinct lack of the correct consciousness!
An interesting point. Some of the popular or mass-media history of DK casts this ban on foraging as stamping out “private enterprise”, which strikes me as a purely capitalist historiography that is, ultimately, slightly wide of the mark. I think you’re correct in emphasising that such actions would be viewed primarily as an insult to the Angkar, which after all was supposed to be able to provide for everyone. Gathering your own food, in this context, became a subversive act that drew attention to the fraying edges of the collective policy.
Yes, although I’m in two minds about this. There was the use of an adapted Marxist-Leninist theory, albeit patchily understood by the CPK’s educated leadership, despite their privilege in receiving the former. The neutralisation of the ‘capitalist’ enemy by emptying the towns so as to stop what they viewed as the corrosive effects of urban decadence on pure peasant cadres, had they remained, and of course the beginnings of a planned socialist economy. But then there was the literalness of the application of government policy by those young peasants who did not really understand the above, apart from what they had learned by rote in study sessions held by the representatives of Angkar, who up to late in the regime, had kept their Communism vague. Changes were occurring, but it would perhaps be safe to say many people who while on the side of the revolution, didn’t understand in which context the CPK leadership were creating this new polity. They enjoyed better status than they had previously, by the fiat of the regime, but when in a situation of upheaval, they lacked the skills and experience to act without arbitrainess and with leniency in dealing with pressure while in postions of power. Those aside from the teenage peasant cadres trained in the political-military schools connected to the central government, and who were even more inflexible in dealing with perceived deviations from the Pol Pot line. The decision to make eating within the cooperatives communal was detested by the favoured base peasants, and alienated them from the regime, especially when family privacy was insulted, and the ban on foraging and the failure of the rice production plan saw their daily meals getting more thin and watery.
You’re correct. Any action which lead to disagreement with policies Angkar or which could interfere with the application of those policies resulted punishment. Also it seems, that many young peasant cadres took insubordination as an attack on the personal level. I think, and I told my wife so, that many killings could be escaped if the persons just obeyed the “sayings of Angkar”. I think in many instances “new people” made fun at those cadres, and the cadres could not cope with insubordination or
pesonal insults in any other way than killing. You probably know some of the Russian gopniki who kill and rob without giving a second thought. It’s a social class and they were never taught to think. I heard some stories from the Phnom Penh slums, and they are pretty gruesome, but I guess people are good. Did you watch that Russian movie Bumer where the main hero says “people are normal, it’s the life that’s shitty” ?
On morning glory, it’s freaking 5 bucks for a bundle here in Canada, in Cambodia it’s of course cheap, it’s still up to now the food of the poorest. And they differ in quality too, the cheapest morning glory is the shittiest too, tastes like grass, almost inedible, while
good one is of course good and goes for kitchens of those who can afford it. It’s not that expensive too, I think 0.5 dollar for a kilo.
I believe letting foraging meant also loosening the grip over the control of population. It could be also difficult to organize if everyone wanders in the fields catching crabs or picking edibles in the forest. I can see why it could not be allowed, but I can’t see the reasons for hunger? Still mesmerizes me. Do you know, Pineapple, some people tell weird stories about Soviet Union and how high it was sabotaged in 80s and 90s- that’s why it collapsed. I can also see reasons for sabotage- anger, despair, envy for higher positions, stupidity. Was there sabotage in DK?
I was surprised when while working on Petro Canada refinary I sam the poster “Saboage, report it”. “And this people told that there were no sabotage in Soviet Union” I thought. Why then decades after they reveal that there sabotage in Canada? So you told me that sabotage is a real thing and not an invention.
I guess it also depends on personality, I was raised in Soviet Union and first time I heard about homosexuals I thought it was a joke. My wife could not believe that homosexualism and bestiality were real things too. I could not believe, like I was taught in school that somebody could sabotage economy in Stalin’s times. It didn’t sound true, just because I was fenced off all those people and circumstances. The same I could not understand why there exist capitalism in the world. Why people don’t see the obvious things. When I found myself on the other side of the ocean I found the answers. I hopy my insights will be helpful.
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