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Tedium in Death: Kampuchea and Mao’s Funeral

This is just a bit of filler until new and hopefully better posts appear in this New Year. Being the nerd that I am, I own several old copies of publications which some might say border on the kitsch, although unintentionally. Below are snippets taken from the second of three September 1976 editions of the usually once a week Peking Review, all on the death of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. Clunky, hyphenated (Marxist-Leninist) clichés with capital letters also abound when right-clicking the link at the bottom of this page. I mourn the loss of people being able to express themselves as human beings. The file contains messages of condolence sent by the leaders of North Korea, Albania, Romania and Indochina, including the DK leadership, expressing their grief to the Chinese Communist Party and Government (then the Chinese people), followed by their paper ministerial positions. Pol Pot is just the prime minister, instead of Comrade Secretary General of a Communist Party undergoing a troubled period of ‘restructuring.’

This kind of thing is only interesting for demonstrating the two-sided attitude of the Democratic Kampuchean government when it came to revealing bits and pieces about themselves, or more specifically their political outlook — whether for an accurate reflection of their ideological adherence to certain kinds of ‘thought,’ passed down to them in an apostolic line from one thinker to another; or otherwise going through the motions of ritual and merely paying lip service. As a ‘non-aligned’ Communist-ruled state in the making, outward relations with friends in the Communist world bloc stressed the importance of this or that influence of orthodox Marxist-Leninist theory and/or political positions. It was indeed a 1976 radio broadcast in China, and not the speech made at the 1977 Khmer Party’s Congress, which mentioned for the first time the supposed Marxism-Leninism of the Khmer Communists (read that as being the Pol Pot group in power); although this kind of utterance was largely absent internally, inside DK, except for the consumption of cadres. But the ugly chauvinism and absurd confidence of the Khmer Communists was expressed plentifully, with the fanciful idea that given the uniqueness of the Kampuchean Revolution, a social upheaval without any known precedent, it was something which had made the whole world lift up their heads, and take notice of a ruined bombed-out country undergoing a doomed transformation with an ‘awesome’ and ‘clear-sighted’ Angkar at the helm. But for all their viewing of foreignness as an affront to Kampuchean pride, along with their domestic self-regard reeking of impudence, China and North Korea weren’t slagged off by the CPK.

For those of a sensitive disposition, please be aware there is an image of saddened children below. After wiping away their tears, the industrious little mites no doubt carried on the fight against Teng Tsiao Ping and right-wing deviationism, until they finally arrived at correct revolutionary verdicts. Or something. With barely-formed consciousnesses, under the influence of cynical high politics or courageously acting like some collective superstructural sweeping brush (take your pick). Unfortunately, when I pop my clogs, I won’t continue to live (forever, I might add) in the hearts of the world’s largest human population.

Perhaps of slightly more serious interest to some of you, Peking Review also published for English-language readers FUNK and GRUNK statements during the Cambodian Civil War (messages from Norodom Sihanouk, Khieu Samphan et al), some of which will be reproduced here on this blog at some point.

Good grief! Download messages of condolence, by right-clicking here.

Going Quite Well, So Far

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This, readers (and there are quite a few), will be the last post until we’re into the new year, and so far I think I’ve got enough encouragement to carry on with this small project, or historical hobby, in my spare time. I think it was a reviewer of Ben Kiernan’s comprehensive world study of genocide, Blood and Soil, who remarked that given his grim area of specialism, when attempting to strike up intelligent conversation with an interested member of the opposite sex, he would be deemed a sicko at parties. Alas, I’m not a party person, whether it be the Indochinese Communist Party, Vietnam Workers’ Party, or the Communist Party of Kampuchea. Nor do I possess Kiernan’s experitise or own a jacket with leather elbow patches that academics of a certain age seem to like wearing. I’m in a relationship with a member of the opposite sex, but feel unsure as to whether or not she’s been recently feigning interest … Err, in this blog of course. So, The Eyes of the Pineapple is sort of like a bad tribute band, playing covers in a less than lively pub. The previous incarnation of this site, which lasted for nearly a year, wasn’t so ’successful’ (dare I use that word even now?) for I misunderstood the more appropriate use of the blog format (bloody young ‘uns having to point this out to me elsewhere); hence my earlier indecision over whether to carry on as a blog, or create a small ‘conventional’ website instead. Let’s face it, the content found here is very niche indeed, but over the last three months, my thus far eleven posts are actually being read by people. Or they’re just watching the videos. But, that is not to mention the many comments that have been left here, meaning some rather good discussion has been had on the themes touched upon in the various postings. Which is also good for the reason that I’ve got a bee in my bonnet about Khmer Communist ambitions regarding modernity.

So there will be future posts; or to be charitable, reheated dishes of history written by other people.

In a pre-emptive action, to prevent the possibility of any more stuffed mailbags blocking the doors of Pineapple HQ, here’s a little explanation of this blog’s address: Padevat.

Some quotes from Serge Thion’s revised paper presented at a 1981 seminar held at Chiangmai, Thailand, where learned beards and leather elbow patches held sway on the possible reasons for why things went pear-shaped in Kampuchea. Called The Cambodian Idea of Revolution:

In pre-colonial Cambodia, as in most traditional polities, the concept of revolution as the replacement of a ruling social stratum by another, was non-existent. But if we take the word in its old European usage, i.e. the violent replacement of a ruler, or a dynasty, by another one, then revolutions did occur. Slight or slow social changes may have followed them, but the distribution of social power remained basically the same.

In Cambodia, there are two sources of the idea of revolution, namely the French school syllabus and the international Communist movement. The two are not unrelated.

Yes, I hear you mutter, but what’s that got to do with those people, you know, nutters dressed in black pyjamas? Well, not only were they armed with Russian or Chinese-made Kalashnikov assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, they had a peculiar take (fully understood or otherwise) on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s contribution of voluntarism to revolutionary thinking of the Marxist sort. On how to go about making a twentieth-century socialist revolution on social terrain far removed from what a transition to ’socialism’ could be deemed as being feasible by a bloke with a big beard and a drink problem who lived in the nineteenth-century. Something which, in part, suggests the origins of people like Salot Sar’s political thinking, is their superimposing what is quoted below onto the 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary model, or its later Asian ‘Maoist’ variant, but minus any critiques of it formed by other competing revolutionary currents coming from the working class movements of Europe — the left communists, ‘workerists,’ anarchists of the syndicalist variety etc. Methinks there has been too much use of the suffixes ism and ist there. The mark of a pseud. The Bolshevist (sorry) model, historically unreceptive in central and western parts of Europe being particularly attractive to colonial ‘national liberation’ leaders, in parts of the world where it has proved to be a path to some form of modern change, with also unpleasant results.

The French were very slow in establishing an original educational system in Cambodia. The first French school, in the 1880s “catered chiefly for Chinese and Vietnamese children.” In 1905 probably no more than 500 Khmer children were attending protectorate schools. A Lycee was not established in Phnom Penh until the 1930s, but a handful of young aristocrats, like Sihanouk, generally was sent to Saigon or Hanoi to attend a lycee. Under the centralized French educational system, all pupils, whether in Phnom Penh or any French town, were expected to master the same knowledge. History was taught with no adaptation to local conditions, so that future citizens and colonial subjects alike would identify with French history and with French political values. Since 1870, in the republican education system, the 1789 revolution has appeared as a central event, not only in French, but in world history. It is hailed as the destruction of an archevil ancien regime and the first victory of a universal bourgeosie, representative of the whole population. Every nation is supposed to go through such a redeeming experience. The most subversive ideas, figures and groups are carefully erased from the official picture, so as to make this troubled period more an object of reverence than a source of inspiration.

But never mind imported French colonial arrogance or Russian inspiration. Nor Mao’s blank sheet of paper upon which ‘the most beautiful pictures’ can be painted; what about the local meaning of the word ‘revolution’?

Even before World War II, the very word “revolution” existed in political language, although I am not able to say when it first crept into Cambodia usage. The Khmer word padiwat is derived, as is its Thai equivalent, from Pali pattivattam. The Dictionary of the Pali Language, by R.C. Childers (London, fourth printing, 1909) shows that pati means “towards, back in return, against” and vattam means “going on, continuance, succession,” also “a circle, region, realm,” as in samsaravattam, “revolution or realm of transmigrations.” The general meaning of “moving against,” implying also a circular motion, was then an apt translation, in several Southeast Asian languages, of the Latin “revolution.” It can safely be assumed that this Pali word was first introduced into modern political speech in countries other than Cambodia. Thailand, with the birth of an indigenous CP in the thirties, is a most likely place. The 1932 coup which established both military power and constitutional monarchy was also a padiwat, and many military coups since then have been named padiwat.

So, there you have it.

Lastly, on my list of gifts I want from Father Christmas this year, is the personal account of life under the DK regime, written by an ethnic Chinese Cambodian ‘old-society’ engineer named Ping Ling. It’s called Cambodia: 1,360 Days! Apparently never published, it’s limited to a few copies in manuscript form. If one can’t arrive by reindeer, or FC’s little helpers can’t steal a copy from someone’s bookshelf or storage box, then I’d be willing to part with a considerable amount of cash for it. Thanks in advance. It would be a big improvement on last year. As well as smellies, I received twenty Lambert & Butler.

Above scanned picture taken from the Kampuchean Communist Party journal Tung Padevat (Revolutionary Flags).

17th Congress of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, September 1977

One of the distinctive features of Khmer Communism from the 1960s (rural insurgency and the preparation for all-out war) is that it was largely unexpressed to most people its proponents had control and influence over, except for those rank and file poor peasant cadres deemed reliable enough to enter some form of political education. Changes under them occurred very noticably, but people not versed in foreign ideologies didn’t really know why. A sensitive and shy bunch those Pol Potists. During the Democratic Kampuchea period, the tattered maquisards turned wielders of state power still insisted on this hush-hush approach to dealing with those outside the Organisation. Their Chinese friends eventually managed to persuade them to open up a little and reveal themselves at least partially to an outside world (I’ve said that somewhere before). A Chinese delegation was present at that famous 1977 Communist Party Congress in which Pol made that long speech, broadcast by Radio Phnom Penh, in which he largely talked a load of bollocks, and showed the influence of the French Communist Party by using embarrassingly stilted language. He also produced a simplified analysis of Cambodia’s history, usefully superimposing upon the Cambodian situation a schema containing various stages of class conflict as if he was trying to nail diarrhoea to a wall. Here is Serge Thion from his article on the DK Black Paper, called The Ingratitude of the Crocodiles:

How should we understand Cambodian society? Is it composed of classes? Which ones? This is a vast subject on which to reflect. What we know of the Cambodian communists’ class analysis, most of which comes from Pol Pot’s major speech of September 30, 1977, which made public the existence of the CPK, is appallingly weak. It uses the Soviet schema of the 1930s, which was mechanically adopted by other Asian communists before and after World War II, but which is even more simplified and rigidified in its Cambodian version. Eighty-five percent of the country is made up of poor and medium-poor peasants. The exploiting classes constitute the rest, but they include a lot of patriots who joined the revolution. This is the 1975-78 version; we do not know what the 1960 version was like. But, when one knows how this kind of sociological analysis can be used to justify the party line, especially when it is in power, we can imagine that the discussion must have been charming — and a long way from Marx.

Cutting the feet to fit the shoes, trying to apply a poor outdated class analysis to a Cambodian reality, of which they weren’t really sure of themselves.

You see, all was not well in Democratic Kampuchea, among those in the know, and correspondingly felt by those who weren’t. Shit rolls downhill as the old saying goes. Pressurised DK regional administrations covered up their failures to the central government, which was expecting rapid achievement of the impossible. An angry and impatient central government was training and then sending out much more purer peasant cadres to the underperforming zones, obedient teenage boys and girls, to supervise the smooth operation of the Party meat grinder. I guess the choice to provide a surplus of rice for development needs or starvation was a bit of a toughie, when your mates would be summoned to long indefinite meetings with a displeased Angkar. Imposing strict uniformity in order to (in theory) equalise distribution doesn’t mean much when you have little to distribute. I suppose in relation to the title of this post is controversy over the ‘real’ or correct year of the Party’s founding, hinted at in the above Thion quote. If you were a studious cadre aware of your movement’s history, then which one? If not the clandestine Phnom Penh ‘meeting at the railway station’ in 1960, then perhaps you’d have thought the anniversary would really be the 26th, from the founding, in 1951, of the proto-Bolshevist Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party with Vietnamese guidance (ugh, you can hear those hammers and sickles clanging in the background). But instead of putting up the birthday balloons and sprinkling confetti around the cooperative, you probably would’ve kept your trap shut about it. Until put to the rack, and then you’d have said anything, even if you didn’t believe it, and they didn’t really believe it either. Still, interesting footage though.

Brother Number One and Brother Number Two. Without sound.

I have a copy of an unofficial translation of the said speech, delivered at the Congress, published by a small radical American press (Liberator Press) in the 1970s, and translated by the ‘Group of Kampuchean Residents in America.’ It’s rubbish, the translation, but overall it’s an interesting piece nevertheless. A curio. The same Chicago-based and I think now defunct press also produced a booklet documenting a solidarity visit made by American David Kline, who came back impressed by what he saw of DK, similar to the now-repentant Swede and drippy middle class fool Gunnar Bergstrom. I’ll post up both to this blog, when time allows.

Son Ngoc Minh, 1952

The below photograph might be of interest to a few in light of the previous post. A portrait of guerilla leader Son Ngoc Minh, carried in a procession of party (KPRP) militants in 1952. I offer my apologies to those who use small monitors, with that annoying scrolling you have to do, left and right.

Whether Left or Right: An Influence on Cambodian Nationalism

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Though sensitive and proud Pol Potists would perhaps be loath to admit it to themselves, when it comes to a modernising influence on Cambodian politics, lets look at this, the beginning of the chapter The Nature of the Cambodian Revolution, taken from Michael Vickery’s important 1984 book Cambodia 1975-1982, dismissed by lazy people as “denial” literature. Serving as a brief outline, and maybe a point for discussion, the below doesn’t show what is developed further by Vickery in that chapter, but suggests for the Khmer Rouge a by no means cast-iron synthesis of quasi-Marxist economic theory, Leninist ideology and the general influence that one man’s earlier political activity had on Cambodian nationalism among intellectuals:

Once upon a time, before the revolution in Cambodia, a European journalist visited the Phnom Penh office of an opposition newspaper which was believed to be the legal organ of an illegal guerilla organization, in order to enquire about the organization, its leaders, and its aims.

His first question, about the leaders behind the newspaper and its organization, met with an evasive answer, and it seemed much easier to draw out his informants on the aims of the group, of which some of the salient points were: to lead the Khmer people to wake up, be aware, know their own and their country’s value, to dare to face their own and their country’s problems, to dare to work for the good of the country and the people.

They claimed to have created an army to fight to serve the people and the nation without accepting any foreign advisers or organizers.

They were developing the people — old and young, men and women — to serve the nation without thinking of their personal interest or rank.

They boasted of using the national language for all purposes, and of having developed new vocabularies for fields, such as diplomacy and military affairs, in which French had formerly dominated.

Other elements of their program were the suppression of physical, moral, or vocal oppression of one person by another; the suppression of all superstitious beliefs; the suppression of unemployment; the elimination of unused land and equipment; and the suppression of such moral evils as gambling, drinking, drugs, fighting, banditry, and rape.

They also gave much importance to the defense of the national interest through teaching people true Khmer history and inculcating mutual trust among Khmer, so that they would dare to fight, relying only on themselves.

The name of their organization was Angka

This interview did not take place in the late 1960s or early 1970s between a “new left” journalist and a front man for the Pol Pot Communists. This journalist was Dr. Peter Schmid of Weltwoche and Der Spiegel, the Cambodian newspaper was Khmer Thmei (“New Khmer”), and the interview was published in November 1954. This paper was able to start publication as a result of the democratic measures imposed on Sihanouk’s Cambodia by the Geneva acords against the objections of the king and his conservative coterie; and it was the political and intellectual heir of another newspaper, Khmer Kraok (“Khmer Arise”), which published from January to March 1952 and was then closed down following the mysterious disappearance of the man whose mouthpiece it was believed to be.

That man, about whom Dr. Schmid was having some difficulty in getting information, was Son Ngoc Thanh, and the full title of his Angka (“Organization”) was Angkar tasu prochang ananikomniyum (“Organization to combat colonialism”), formerly Angkar prachea cholna (Organization of the people’s movement”).

To the extent that Son Ngoc Thanh is known at all to the non-specialist, it is probably as a World War II collaborator of the Japanese and from about 1958 to 1970 as a putative collaborator of the CIA, and then during the Cambodian war of 1970-75 as a collaborator — and short-term prime minister — of the Lon Nol government. Even less well known is that he was the first important modern Khmer nationalist, an intellectual leader in the development of modern Khmer-language journalism (1936-42), organizer of the first modern anti-French political movement (1942), and a leader in the effort to modernize and democratize Cambodian society. During his years of nationalist and anti-colonialist activity, his enemies considered him on the left of the political spectrum. He was qualified by the French as Vietminh, and at one time by Sihanouk and Lon Nol as “certainly Communist …. allied with the Viet Minh,” and “working with Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse Tung.”

Implicated in an anti-French demonstration in 1942 he fled to Japan, returning in 1945 to become minister of foreign affairs, then prime minister, of a Japanese-sponsored independent Cambodian government. When the French returned later in that year, he was arrested and taken to France, but was eventually released and returned to Cambodia in 1951 to resume political activity. His principal effort was directed toward the achievement of full independence, and he went about it in a way which cast aspersions on Sihanouk and the Cambodian political elite as being too opportunistic and uninterested in resisting the French. In March 1952 Son Ngoc Thanh and a collaborator, Ea Sichau, disappeared in Siemreap province and were reported by Khmer Kraok as having been captured by a band of Issaraks who were not known to be operating in that area.

That was of course to cover those of his collaborators in Phnom Penh against a charge of abetting illegal activity, for in fact Thanh and Sichau went on to the Dangrek foothills to establish a “liberated zone” and work for true independence and revolution. Over the next two years Thanh was joined by numerous patriotic middle-class youth attracted by his high ideals and anti-colonial patriotism. There in the forest they established self-sufficient communities where they farmed, engaged in military training, and occasionally sallied forth to attack the Cambodian armed forces of Lon Nol. They also tried to bring modern ideas to the peasants among whom they lived and to unify and reorganize the various Issarak groups scattered around the country.

In retrospect they had little lasting success, but they were undoubtedly a catalyst which pushed both Sihanouk and the French toward independence. They also attracted international attention and in November 1954 Nehru stopped at Siemreap to meet Son Ngoc Than, who in Asia was of interest as a combative nationalist both non-Communist and honest. The interview with Dr. Schmid was a direct result of the publicity attendant on Nehru’s visit.

Son Ngoc Thanh’s movement eventually fell apart. Full independence in 1953 and the new democracy imposed by Geneva in 1954 took much of the meaning away from his activity. Most of his young men returned to Phnom Penh, went on to higher education, and became teachers, bankers, or businessmen, while Thanh himself returned to southern Vietnam where eventually, working for the interests of the local Khmer, he became deeply involved in the American side of the Indochina War.

It is obvious that the aims and principles enunciated by the Khmer Thmei representative in 1954 bear many resemblances to principles held by the Democratic Kampuchea forces, particularly as they were interpreted by the Pol Pot faction. Sihanouk, to be sure, has already said that the DK leaders used to be Thanhists, which for him is ipso facto a negative assessment since Thanh was anti-Sihanouk. Sihanouk’s allegation, even if entirely untrue, is not very significant, since in a way nearly all currents of Cambodian nationalism, left or right, go back to or touch on the activities of Son Ngoc Thanh, and as “Thanhists” at various times one could lump together such disparate figures as Thiounn Mum, Penn Nouth, and Nhiek Tioulong (although not Lon Nol, so far as I know). The putative former “Thanhism” of the leaders is only interesting to the extent that some of their significant principles, aims, and policies can be seen to derive from or closely resemble the non-Marxist or marginal Marxist principles, aims, and policies of Thanh’s political movements; and it is particularly interesting to examine such features now when the DK group has failed in its larger goals, has turned to anti-Vietnamese chauvinism as a raison d’etre, and seem willing, even eager, to enter into whatever wild schemes the CIA may be cooking up. Pol Pot, since 1978, has nearly duplicated the shifts of Son Ngoc Thanh — from genuine revolutionary of the left to ultra-nationalist to intriguer in exile eager for support from whatever quarter it might come.

Sihanouk and the GRUNK, 1973

Taken from the brochure which, being economical with the truth, publicised the face of that dead letter “united front” against the Khmer Republic, and which the highly secretive Angkar (Communist Party of Kampuchea) hid behind. With mildly amusing acronyms used from the French language, the FUNK (Front Uni National du Kampuchea), and its accompanying GRUNK (Gouvernement Royal d’Union Nationale du Kampuchea) government, which to prove was not a government in exile, achieved a propaganda coup when Prince Norodom Sihanouk, his wife Monique, an entourage which of course a prince needed, and a Chinese film crew in tow, made the bumpy journey down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, in order to tour the liberated areas of Cambodia in February and March 1973. Areas of the country from which seemingly fearless Khmer Rouge rebels battled with the army of B-52 sustained rightists based in Phnom Penh. The liberated areas, or zones, were places in which the shrinking Republic’s effective administrative control had been withdrawn, and increasingly coercive and radical changes were occurring under the Khmer Communists, who enjoyed most influence within the front, the Sihanoukists pretty much elbowed out of the way. But the man, or an image of the man himself, was very important for these mutant Leninists in motivating the peasants to fight. Click to enlarge.

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Wearing black peasant garb, checked krama and with their Chinese military caps resting on the table, from the left closest to the map we have Ieng Sary and then Hou Yuon. On the other side of the table, from the top we have Pol Pot (keeping in the distance), Hu Nim and Khieu Samphan. Lastly, at the end of the table sits Sihanouk.

A short clip taken from the Chinese-made propaganda film, displaying the fake friendliness expressed between the prince and the Khmer Rouge. It must have been excruciating. Without sound.

Unification Rally?

Old Archive film footage shows a parade of Khmer Rouge armour on the streets of Phnom Penh, with a rally held at the city’s Olympic Stadium in the presence of Pol Pot. He’s the one holding the fan. Other notable personalities include So Phim, Ieng Sary, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan. A bespectacled Son Sen and Ney Sarann greet assembled girls. The Communist Party Centre’s move to formally centralise authority of the RAK, although significant control of the armed forces still remained with the regional Zone military heads or secretaries.

Without sound.

Currently Re-reading: Part Two

Nice, a reheated dish of forever-gone “Communism.”

Back in the month of June, soon after I had arrived back from my last trip to Moscow, I received a copy of the first issue of 20th Century Communism, a new history journal, the title of which explains quite clearly the content. I like it. The opening of the editorial foreword: “Communism was one of the defining political movements of the twentieth century. Viewed from different perspectives, it was at once a utopia, an ideology, a system of government, an apparatus of terror and an international political movement stretching to almost every corner of the globe. ‘All roads’ led there, it’s advocates proclaimed; ‘history’ was on its side. While enduring traces remain, and these include significant states and parties, as an international movement of unparalleled scope and cohesiveness, it is communism itself which has now passed into history.”

The theme for this particular issue is the phenomenon of the leader cult, to avoid the language of 1956. Across nations, Communist Parties whether in power or not, and with local differences, practising a kind of behaviour originating in the Soviet experience before Stalin’s ascension was complete.

A man who sometimes referred to himself as “Little Pinya,” and who had expended an enormous amount of energy in slagging off Boris Pasternak for the crime of writing Doctor Zhivago (despite having never read it), made a long-winded speech in which through a partial appraisal of the Soviet experience, he and his colleagues were officially let off the hook. The terms glasnost and perestroika were not new to Communist’s vocabularies in the 1980s, the former term used during the Khrushchevskaya ottepel. What came about in the 1980s perhaps wouldn’t have happened in quite the same way if Pinya, the ambiguous little fat man, hadn’t got the ball rolling. Maybe some greatly needed restructuring, but with little openness. The remains of a huge and repressive command and control apparatus, its connected bureaucracy having some pretensions to socialism, or with a capital S if you want to keep things within context. Although, aside from some very good and sort-of honest motion pictures created during this period (mid-1950s – 60s), outward expressions of openness could never supplant the Party’s ingrained practices; of offering some nice new flavours of socialist chocolate, but carrying a public health warning of not to get ideas above one’s station.

Yevgeny Urbansky and Nina Drobysheva in Grigory Chukhrai’s anti-Stalin love story “Clear Skies,” 1961.

Well, back on topic for the purposes of this blog (what they are, I haven’t quite figured out yet) … The Communist Party (or pseudo-party) of Kampuchea , which neither sought nor received recognition from the Russians after 1975, of course was among the last of the Communist Parties to have gotten into power in the 20th century. The lines were never clearly marked, with their incongruent, toxic, mutant mishmash of the Maoist-inspired store placed in the reform of the individual; along with a Stalinist quality of viewing suspicious people as non-redeemable and thus lost to the building of “socialism,” after which, when conditions ripen (subject to Party postponement of course) a new type of person will emerge. If you chop wood the chips will fly … To make an omelette you’ve got to break some eggs … With the Khmer Communist’s habit for secrecy, their late revealing of themselves, at least partially to an outside world after the prompting of the Chinese government, and the short time the regime was actually around for, meant a leader cult didn’t develop thoroughly along a familiar pattern in Kampuchea. It was still in embryonic form, and despite portraits and busts drawn, painted and sculpted for this sort of purpose, it might be fair to say that Pol would have felt uneasy about the whole thing, given his preference for self-effacement. Mind you, at some point during the four-year comprehensive development plan, his mild face was looking down upon peasants and quasi-peasants in the communal dining halls of the country’s cooperatives; places where, in the spirit of Babeauf, everyone was exactly five feet six inches tall while eating their rice gruel. A situation which revealed for the first time to one of his brothers, living and working in the countryside, that the quiet, affable and softly-spoken mediocrity many had previously known was heading the new government.

Pointing to the bête noire of the Khmer Communists, the Vietnamese, in reading about Ho Chi Minh elsewhere, at one time in a state of apparent awe, he personally asked Stalin to autograph a copy of Soviet Union magazine. Having done so and with characteristic paranoia, the Vozhd later succeeded in having the signed publication on the Land of Socialism confiscated. Having picked my copy of the journal up again, and although not directly in relation to Cambodian Communism, there is a small mention of it in Sophie Quinn Judge’s article on Ho Chi Minh and Vietnamese Communism: and in relation to that, China. I’ve probably got my facts and geography wrong, but nevertheless I’ve been interested in the acts of popular violence carried out by a confident peasantry in the first quarter of the twentieth century, surrounding a ‘Nanyang’ committee in southern China (of which there was a Cochinchina-Cambodia branch). There were some other violent episodes against landlords in this region orchestrated by a secretive group of Communists, only known among peasants as the zuzhi, or the “organisation” or something. Has a faint echo in the later Khmer Rouge (or Khmer Krahom for you smart arses) and their hiding behind their own revolutionary organisation, or angkar padevat. To explain a little more on the former, an apparent influence on Vietnamese Communism were traditions of peasant rebellion, both anarchist and Communist in southern China spreading outwards, and of which had Vietnamese involvement in the late 1920s and early 30s. There was this Nanyang committee attached to the Chinese Communist Party, which accepted the Comintern class against class strategy of militancy and gave an organisational face to the rebelliousness. Such militancy flourished once again in the region during the 1960s whirlwind of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, although under different circumstances and for different ends.

The short-lived Hai-Lu-Feng soviet movement is in reference to the latter. It followed the Autumn Harvest Uprising led by a certain Mao Tse-tung in September 1927. Apparently a period of violent militancy, with Communists acting behind popular peasant associations such as the zuzhi, already mentioned. Advised the peasants to kill as many landlords as they could get their hands on. Says the soviets were broken up by February 1928 but with regard to this, it doesn’t say much about specific places in Southeast Asia radicals fled to when their movement was destroyed, they themselves pursued by the Kuomintang. People who had been involved in them fled to places beyond China, including Vietnamese students who had attended a school named the Huangpu Military Academy. Chinese cadres also fled southward too, taking their politics with them. There is a clever cloggist named Fernando Galbiati who has written a study on the Hai-Lu-Feng soviet movement. I’ll seek his work out.

Vietnamese Blitzkrieg

The below clip is taken from a 1986 Australian two-part documentary on Cambodia in the 1960s and 70s; the first part called The Prince and the Prophecy, the second is called simply Cambodia/Kampuchea. It is from this second instalment that Nayan Chanda and Alan Dawson briefly talk about the run up to and execution of the December 1978 Vietnamese invasion, which saw the DK leadership scarpering back into the maquis. They would, after becoming one significant ingredient in a highly volatile political and military melange, with their former enemies (united in their chauvinism), later stalk the Vietnamese from their Chinese-equipped, American-funded jungle eyries.

With feeling a bit unsure about using the title of this post, given my admitted ignorance of military matters, what Alan Dawson refers to is the foolish decision to place over 30,000 of the best troops DK had to offer, in a stationery defensive line along Kampuchea’s eastern border. When Vietnamese heavy artillery and aerial bombing softened up this line, tanks and other armoured vehicles had no trouble in smashing through and heading onward into the interior. The invasion began firstly with armoured columns deceptively entering from the northeast of Kampuchea in acting out a feint, near southern Laos, but the roads Dawson talks about were, I think, really two: Highways 1 and 7, giving speedy access to Phnom Penh.

Of course, we have Sihanouk near the end, talking bollocks. The Vietnamese also talked about fascism with regard to the DK regime, but given the context, the label is meaningless. After claiming that “The Worst is Over” they turned that political prison (a present day ghoulish tourist attraction) into a museum for the purpose of public relations, to help legitimise the PRK, with its defected lower-echelon DK cadres and older generation “Khmer Hanoi” Communists holding government portfolios. Those who legged it back to Vietnam, when after returning to Cambodia in order join and perhaps influence the direction of the late 1960s Khmer Rouge insurgency, were placed under a cloud of suspicion. For a fair few, that meant being subject to a quiet campaign of murder. But as for conflicting national interests after 1975, some among the Vietnamese wouldn’t have cared a fig for what went on in that place, as long as the Khmer Communists didn’t disrupt their attempts at post-war reconstruction. While the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea was pounding the New Economic Zones with Chinese artillery guns, or launching barbaric raids from the Parrot’s Beak, Sihanouk in contrast to his fellow countrymen and women was sat in his gilded cage, complaining about not having enough brandy for his truffles. The twat.

On the ‘Monatio,’ or That Silly Bunch of Twats

With regard to the end of the Cambodian Civil War, or ragtag struggle for “national liberation” for any Marxist-Leninist-Whateverists who may be reading, for years many have still mistakenly associated certain people captured on film during the fall of Phnom Penh, displaying a symbol of distinctive design, with the Khmer Rouge. After a dry-season offensive which began on January 1 1975, finally on a Glorious April 17, their silent armies sullenly marched in Indian File, or rolled, into Cambodia’s capital city, on captured American-made military vehicles. On that morning of defeat for the Khmer Republic, to weary but cheering crowds black-clad soldiers (looking too clean-cut to have been out on the battlefield) confidently made their way through the city’s streets, riding atop trucks and jeeps, waving a flag. A red and blue flag, the colours split equally and diagonally from top right to bottom left. Superimposed upon this background there was what looked to be a white cross. It was not, however, representative of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, itself hiding behind a dead letter united front. It was the banner of another small and not well-known organisation, hatched from a desperate plan cooked up by some inside the Khmer Republic’s top civil service. The Monatio or National Movement (Mouvement National) was a pathetic attempt by members of the country’s soon-to-be defunct elite, to present themselves as friends to a tattered but heavily-armed foe, who were every bit determined that it would be they, and they alone who would dictate the peace.

The reader may be aware of a particular image reproduced here, the shot of an angry-looking young man in black garb, brandishing a pistol and threatening someone out of sight. A Khmer Rouge solider in a bit of a bad mood? Or perhaps he is Hem Keth Dara, the son of Khmer Republic official Hem Keth Sana, although elsewhere he has been identified as a FANK general. Dara, whatever he looked like and whatever daddy really was, led this group of poseurs and manipulated saps, in turn directed from on high by former classmates of some in the GRUNK leadership, and who had found themselves in a bit of a pickle, being on the losing side of a bitter armed conflict. Those among them, included Lon Nol’s younger brother, Lon Non. Lon Nol himself had scarpered by that time, first to Indonesia then onto Hawaii. Not forgetting, of course, after helping himself to a draft for one million US dollars from the country’s National Bank. The bank building would soon be detonated by explosives, a Khmer Rouge cliché and act of iconoclasm. On that fateful day, by early afternoon in the midst of confusion, the stooge Dara and his chums managed to make use of the city’s radio station, seized by them during their antics in the morning. In a pre-recorded message broadcast to its inhabitants, his taped voice announced that the “National Movement” welcomed the incoming troops, proposing that a nice chat should be had on the details of surrender. Then the real Khmer Rouge broke in, unimpressed, announcing: “We are not here to negotiate! We are entering the city by force of arms.”

Ragged and thin KR zonal troops had entered the city from different directions, with school teacher turned military commander Koy Thuon’s forces among them, setting up base at the Hotel Monorom, seen to the right, in the Claude Juvenal photo at the top. There, they organised a committee for the ‘wiping out’ of enemies, to sort out the identification and execution of high-level personnel of the Lon Nol civil and military administrations. On the subject of terror, Thuon would be among the earliest to go during the Communist Party’s centralisation drive (with accompanying internal purges) in the Democratic Kampuchea period. His 1976 departure was from a region of the country which throughout the regime could not provide a surplus of rice for the central government’s development needs. Increased pressure made a difficult task much worse with the second forced migration of labouring people, driven by the KR from the South West (the Pot-Mok powerbase) northwards. He drew the short straw when it came to the Party’s regional secretaryship, the North being one of the least hospitable and undeveloped zones. Back on topic though, Lon Non was not spared; along with the likes of Sirik Matak and Long Boret dying in undecided circumstances, at least some bits of him were probably spattered across a lawn of the smart, exclusive country club, the Circle Sportif. The Monatio students on the streets were broken up and disarmed, these fakers neither seen as friends or much of a threat in acting out this piece of tragicomic relief during the final collapse of the Republic. This small example of folly showing just how out of touch with reality some had become, even beyond the earlier “Third Force” position of finding a not-so bloody settlement to the fighting. The Khmer Rouge after 1973 in particular weren’t going to give up on a sure thing.

The Monatio’s twattish performance, April 17. Without sound.