Much has been sympathetically written about a capital city under siege. A situation created by an American military exit strategy from Indochina and a ‘bomb panacea’ which only helped to enlarge a rural insurgency from a few hundred ragtag rebels into an army sixty thousand strong, and which saw the Republican government become totally dependent on outside aid. But aside from the facile image of a happy and Gentle Land about to be ruined by raging primitivist barbarians, and the destruction of not only traditional society but an imported American popular culture absorbed and interpreted by urban Cambodian youth …
Who were these urban folk whose soft hands might have put their lives in jeopardy a generation before anyone had heard of Pol Pot?
Scholar Michael Vickery answers this question in the opening chapter of his book Cambodia 1975-1982
Although certain journalistic accounts vividly described the shelling of Phnom Penh, particularly during the last year of the war, those incidents, bad as they were for their victims, cannot compare with the artillery and air attacks on the countryside, some of which as early as 1971 were clearly visible just across the river from Phnom Penh where they served as an amusing fireworks display for city people on an afternoon promenade or sipping drinks on their balconies.
These were the people – spoiled, pretentious, contentious, status-conscious at worst, or at best simply soft, intriguing, addicted to city comforts and despising peasant life — who faced the communist exodus order on 17 April 1975. For them the mere fact of leaving an urban existence with its foreign orientation and unrealistic expectations to return to the land would have been a horror, and a horror compounded by their position on the receiving end of orders issued by illiterate peasants. On the whole they cared little or nothing for the problems of the other half of their countrymen, and would have been quite content to have all the rural rebels bombed away by American planes. Even having seen the damage done to the country during the war they seem to exclude it from their thoughts, almost never mention it unless asked, and then seem astonished that anyone would take interest in what happened in the rural areas before they arrived there in 1975.
There were two sides, but when it comes to analysis, it has been two sides of the same coin. The Communists, while stretching their history-pushing voluntarism to breaking point were ‘wrong’ in superimposing a vulgar Marxist schema upon Cambodian society, so as to make their own bloody but victorious peasant-based revolution the transitional stage towards ‘socialism.’ Their outside critics were ‘wrong’ for being so ignorant as to assume that Cambodian society had or could have had dominant traditions of liberal or social democracy, and the modern ‘freedoms’ afforded by it as seen in a western context, and along with a high culture absorbed by the better-educated elite or a short skirt and a pair of white go-go boots, were swept away when the Khmer Rouge won power. These things had never really been understood or experienced by most Khmer people in the first place. It would be worthwhile, however, to know just how urban Cambodia operated, who and what urban people actually were, and before the war too, to understand why the poor peasants indulged in a bit of schadenfreude from April 1975, for these urban people were in the main those who were seen to be on the wrong side of that war and were, rightly or wrongly, brought down a peg or two in the years after it.
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Good point. I’ve got an answer though, what is wrong is the Khmer mentality. I read Bunchan Mol “Khmer charachter” or “Khmer mentality” where he criticizes Khmers Issaraks and I would say, he implicates himself too. I’ve been away in civilized country for too long and what I see around here just killing me this time. Everything much worse than it was in Lon Nol’s times. I don’t see any future for Cambodia, I want to move my relatives to live in Vietnam instead. I spit the curses and damnations on their heads, on the heads of the rulers, on my heads. It’s beyond my abilities to deal with these people. And I’ve got an answer why. Why Khmers so ultimately wrong.
Now in Phnom Penh is about 8 bookstores but at any single time in any of them there are no more than 200 titles in Khmer language and 90 percent of those are novels, novels of 100-150 pages length long. And novels of very bad quality. Oh, there’s exist good novels, but majority is bad. And in any particular time there’s one or two Khmer persons looking at the books. I went to Hun Sen library where I found some good books and got clerk for me to copy, the whole section in foreign literature on Cambodia is less than section in my University. And the whole volume of books in the library is less than volume of books in my branch ! of public library. And I don’t even speak about the central location which probably holds more books than all existing books in Cambodia. So we have Hun Sen library, we have Senate library which is of the same size and we have the National Library which is in the same deplorable condition, but I will visit most of the in order to write more poisonous stuff. So Khmers do not read. This is their diagnosis and even if they wanted to change they can’t since “”in Sihanouk”s era there were written no major work on any social or economic problems in Khmer”. They have nothing to read, compare with neighboring Vietnam which has plenty and has plenty translations of Russians literature and they got Trump books translated for fuck sakes in Vietnamese but no in Khmer. Even if there’s book it’s so badly photocopied so it hardly can be read, I just want to throw out the damned shit, cause Khmer script has to be displayed larger in order to read it easier, if it’s too small it’s impossible to discern some letters and signs.
So the problem is quiet good described I think. There can never be more than ignorant and uneducated elite and the oppressed who always swallow, pardon my french. You know what our friend said to my notion that myself would be satisfied with a modest house were I a prime minister? He said that people would not respect me! I said it when I heard that villa of Hun Monet costed more than 40 million dollars. Just go to hell with your villas, hun monets and other shit. I fed up.
I wasn’t insulting Khmers, but rather people not understanding how Khmer society operated, and viewing the April 1975 watershed as the destruction of something which was never there in the first place. You can see this with the broad definition of urbanites as being somehow ‘middle class.’ It’s a pretty meaningless term when using it to describe a western social phenomenon in a Cambodian context. Most Khmer people were/are peasants. The elite had an education the likes of which was the best given to the elites of western Europe, of course, but as Vickery noted with regard to the laudable expansion of formal education at all levels in Cambodia during Sihanouk’s rule, many who passed through it saw this education as being only useful when attaching a status value to it, and a channel in which to escape peasant life, even if just obtaining a primary school diploma. There’s the other, rural and peasant Cambodia which is missed out, when talking about the troubling times of the 1960s and 70s. It’s just the city folk.
The towns didn’t create wealth, but consumed it. The towns acted as an unwanted, indeed resented drain on the countryside, and then made worse with the tentative introduction of capitalist change, which did not affect the rural population in a decent way, but exacerbated already strained relations between town and country. How much did they suffer? This majority. The illiterate and bombed out. Those who joined the Khmer Rouge liberation army. Their reasons. Urban-rural antagonisms, their violent potential etc were existing in Cambodia prior to Khmer Rouge influence, indeed independent of it. There are other aspects of what could be termed Pol Potism, which were already present there in Cambodian society in embryo, long before DK. All that stuff wasn’t a Khmer Rouge innovation.
Can you post uncle Hun Sen’s pic in KR uniform during the civil war era,
I’m unable to find one.
I was unable to get any documents from DCC, they just refused to my request, miserable clerk, who, animating the words of some writer(Vickery?), give to Khmer some power over his fellow countryman and he’ll abuse it, anyways, refused to my request, first he said that they can copy up to 50 pages for free and if it’s more come tomorrow and tomorrow he refused to do anything for me, instead he gave me an email of some other fuck who I had to write with a topic of my research and blah-blah-blah, some other stupid shit. I almost hit the guy, he sat on his computer sipped from his soft drink and started to listen to his iPod, while I still was at the neighboring desk. Like wtf?! I almost spat into his face that I’m not surprised that Pol Pot killed so many people, definitely he should have started with Khmer intelligentsia ’cause they’re just plain worthless. Before I go to spit the second part of my rage, I will inform you that I’m finally back and nevertheless I was able to get some rare
books copied for me in the libraries. I could not find everything that I wanted but I haven’t checked all the libraries, just two of them, there’s a few more but I their collections differ insignificantly, by volume, I mean. My scanner is not working so I need to get a new one, and about copies of KR magazines, somebody else got to do it, ’cause I spat at the exit and if I ever back to Cambodia I don’t want to come back and deal with this dumb nit. I have
Ros Chantrabot, La republique Khmer,
L’origine de la civilisation et dela religiositeKhmeres, Michel Tranet
Battambang during the time of the lord of the Lord Governer, Tauch Chhuong
A brief and Truthful relation of events in the Kingdom of Cambodia, Gabriel Quiroga de San Antonio
Watching Cambodia, Serge Thion
Making Revolution, The insurgency of the Communist Party of Thailand in Structural Perspective, Tom Marks
Khmer Heritage in the Old Siamese Provinces of Cambodia, Etienne Aymonier
Modern Khmer Cities, Vann Molyvann,
La Cambodge entre le Siam et le Vietnam, Khin Sok
Red brotherhood at war, Grant Evans
Les “nouveaux” Khmers Rouges, Christophe Peschoux,
Angkor, George Coedes
Le Cambodge a deux voix, Francoise Correze, Alain Forest
I saw some books like Khmer Rouges! or Colonisation sans heurts, Paysan Khmer but I could not copy all, I was kind of limited in time, and space, I brought also many books in Khmer so it’s lots of weight. Everything didn’t cost more than a hundred bucks, I mean all the copies. The most expensive book was Phnom Penh then and now, Michel Iglout, which is original, 15 USD, it’s mostly photos and pictures of PP and buildings, I forgot to mention this in my list.
PP reality and my own reality made me reluctant to do more. My drive to the library was very long, dust, noise, chaotic traffic hardly inspired me. I mean I knew all this and experienced it before but last 2 years my lifestyle and thoughts changed so much that present situation in PP invoked in me only disagreement.
Of course present situation can be influenced by French colonisation, Sangkum Reastr era, Khmer Rouge, worthless and pathetic PRK, and failed and tragicomic Kingdom of Cambodia. I do agree like you said, but it was hard for me to explain every failure, inability stupidity and ignorance by “objective conditions”. Now that I’m relaxed and I’m back I can reflect like that but Phnom Penh irritated me constantly. And I’m wondering at the tourists too- there’s nothing to visit in PP, nothing. Maybe Tuol Sleng and the Palace, and anyways Tuol Sleng is more unique. To be honest even night life sucks in PP, compare to its neighbors, now they catch working girls off the streets, “educate them” and release them. It’s like a bad joke, but it’s true. I think shacks and brothels long ago disappeared but I’m not sure, it’s more civil business now, I think it moved to the more established premises like bars and hotels. But to talk about intelligentsia they’re the countries problem. They are uneducated. Or undereducated. But they think very big about themselves. Very big. And there’s a layer of westerners, not you obviously, who defends them. “Oh, they fuck underage Vietnamese, but it’s like their national tradition” or like guy told me on my notion that had I been the prime minister I lived in a simple shophouse, contending with simple food- “the people would not respect you”. I was stunned and I realized it was true. The people (because of obvious “objective reasons”) would not respect me. And they need such an intelligentsia, who doesn’t know anything about outside world but very nationalist (I liked that saying in Chandler How Pol Pot came to power that Son Ngoc Tanh and co were “shophouse nationalists”). These shophouse nationilists represent narrow framed view of Sino-Khmers and based on false romantic, false national pride. They also copy USA so bad, and try to be such clownish US patriots that it makes me puke.
Much of it can be explained as you said, and I’m able to see this. But I’m not able to put on and be like that certain layer of westerners Khmer lovers. I have to get clear on some points and they are Khmer intelligentsia are dumb fuck shophouse liberal-nationalists and sadly they represent the whole nation. The nation didn’t know other intelligentsia except those who planned and built Angkor, who clearly were not Khmers, but Sanskrit speaking Brahmins. To shophouse nationalist disappointment there’s nothing to be proud about, it’s like to be proud of the Royal Palace built by French. But.. it’s not clear to the real Khmer brains.
My venomous passages are not without any “constructive criticism” and my solution is clear, Lenin’s “study, study and one more time study”. So more needs to be translated to Khmer and definitely foreign language has to be seriously introduced in Cambodia. I’d say, Vietnamese and English. But intelligentsia in all its nakedness need to be revealed too. I don’t think it’s a big deal to bring down something that definitely needs to be brought down, I’m having many bloods mixed with me would not object to any good criticism. “All Russians are prostitutes and drunks” accepted as well, I’m not a drunk and I’m not a prostitute but many people are, for objective reasons, and I patiently explain that yes, some of them are exactly like you said, and I don’t think it’s a good thing, but because of USSR collapse and blah-blah-blah. And if I say all Khmer intelligentsia are shophouse nationalist I yet to see somebody who would reply, “I’m an atheist, internationalist without any prejudice and yes 99.9 % of us like you just said, and I don’t agree with this state of things”. They don’t exist such people. I’m yet to see even a single ateist and a communist dissident.
You’ve been busy it seems. I hope you weren’t being serious with the “no wonder Pol Pot …” part. Just venting frustration? I’d be interested in having a look at those books you got while on your travels, particularly the Thion book about the ‘transition,’ and Molyvann’s. And I’m very interested in reading the study on the Communist Party of Thailand’s insurgency.
By the way, Laura J Summers has made a few visits and commented on your post about the CPK Chinit River Congress. I contacted her and, for the time being, she’s allowed me to keep the scanned copy you did of Khieu Samphan’s doctoral thesis available for download on the site. But I say, for the time being. She’ll have to think about resolving a slightly troublesome copyright issue, and then get back to me on whether the thesis can stay at this site permanently.
I don’t believe in violence, but I could go into rage. I believe in efficiency and no matter what colour or race inefficiency faces me it strikes me. Violence leads to the new violence like in the case with Nechaev he needed blood for a start up, his organization wasn’t serious without first blood. So nothing would really change had I thrashed everything in DCC and escaped with my brother in law, who waited for me outside, the problem is not in certain people it’s in the people’s heads. I paraphrase professor Preobrazhensky “disruption is in the people’s heads not in the lavatories”, from the famous “Heart of a Dog”.
By the way these words sounded in my brains when without announcement my wife and me entered the relatives’ shophouse. And I would certainly kill everybody of them but… looking at it now, what would I expect from people with no education?
They (khmers) like to work with papers, oh my God, they adore bureaucratic system of theirs. There’s no room for efficiency, you know I crossed the road to the bakery and I found 13 members of staff who were trying to help me to buy a vegetarian bun and nobody was helpful at all. Or in the Hun Sen library- it took the clerk forever to check the books out, I almost choke standing by, you know it’s slow, by Canadian standards it’s so slow.
What if violence had been involved? Like in DK? Undoubtedly some people deserved right punishment, but in the most cases it was somebody like me who raised the opinion which contradicted the Party’s policy.They would starve half the country but not admit their mistakes,
I’d probably finish my days in Tuol Sleng had I been one of KR. I wonder what Hou Youn did? Maybe he screamed just in the face of Pol
Pot? There are indications that he publicly contradicted DK policies.
But it’s all essentially offtopic, I’ll probably write it somewhere else.
I also forgot to mention Khieu Samphan’s first book in English that I brought too. I will see when I’d be able to purchase the new scanner and I will scan it. I haven’t seen the Laura Summer’s visit, thanks for pointing me out. It seems that this resource will attract more people and I hope that I won’t be claimed as apologetic or KR defender just to safeguard myself. I don’t agree on some policies, but they offer an interesting insight as the way to which humanity might develop or should not develop. They reveal some failures of Marxism applications. Unfortunately Marxists chose to stay away from an uneasy topic- this is not a Marxist method, Marxist method is to discuss and to find wrongs in order not to allow future mistakes.
Well, unfortunately given the subject matter of this site, there will be cases (it has already happened) where visitors will make angry, and I’m sorry to sound arrogant in saying this, but also uninformed comments, casting silly aspersions that this is a pro-Khmer Rouge site. It’s similar to the genocide tag, or Holocaust analogies. These, in my opinion, cloud understandings of the nature of the Cambodian Revolution. I’m fascinated by Khmer Rouge voluntarism, and trying to piece together all the local and international influences, objective and subjective, which culminated in the Democratic Kampuchea regime. I personally don’t believe that genocide occurred in Cambodia, but try saying that to people with no background knowledge, and you get accused of being something akin to a Holocaust denier. It’ll take many years before DK can be studied more objectively, when the political and ideological dust has settled. I don’t think you’ll get much more responses from others, apart from “the Khmer Rouge were, like, really bad, how dare you!” to be honest. If DK can be seen as another chapter in a series of tragic events then it helps, but then the Khmer Communists and the Communist Party of Kampuchea remain responsible for bringing unnecessary death and suffering to a whole people. No matter how noble their aims, their sincere attempt at transforming Cambodia into a modern country rapidly degenerated into something horrific, and they alone are guilty of that.
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