The high point of our visit to Kampuchea came the day before we were scheduled to leave. Ieng Sary, the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of foreign affairs, had agreed to give us an interview. He would brief us on the answers to numerous questions we had raised about the history of Kampuchea’s revolution and its present state of development.

When we arrived at the house where the meeting was to take place, Sary was outside waiting for us. Dispensing with all formality, he came over to our car, embracing each of us as we got out.

Sary’s warm and jovial manner belied the many bitter experiences he had lived through. Now 48 years old, Sary was one of the founders of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and had been a guerrilla fighter in the countryside between 1963 and 1970. From 1970 until the victory of the revolution in 1975, he had travelled the world as special envoy of the united front government, fighting to win support for Kampuchea’s liberation war in the international arena.

With a map of Kampuchea sprawled out in front of him and a cup of tea beside him, Sary began telling us the story of the Kampuchean revolution step-by-step, point-by-point. It would be midnight before he brought the story to a close, having patiently answered all our questions.

SHARING EXPERIENCES

“In the days that you have been here,” Sary began, “we have learned a lot from you about the struggles of the American people and the revolutionary movement in your country. Today, we will share with you some of our experiences in our revolution. Your Party is young and your revolution is just unfolding. Although we are convinced that you will win victory, we also know that you face many of the same difficulties we did in the beginning of our struggle.

“Perhaps what I have to say will be of benefit to you. Of course, this is not a theory or a doctrine. These are just the experiences that we have had under the conditions of our country.”

After his introductory remarks, the Deputy Prime Minister plunged right into the history of the revolution, beginning with the mass upsurge that followed the defeat of the pro-Japanese puppet government in 1945.

With Japan defeated, the French colonialists who had ruled Kampuchea for generations made their comeback. The people bitterly hated the French colonialists, and struggle against them began to take place on many fronts.

Different forces wanted to fight the French, Sary said, and they all had different approaches. Within the nationalist movement (which was made up primarily of national capitalists, intellectuals, and petty-bourgeois elements), there was considerable sentiment for anti-colonial struggle. But it was not thorough-going. These forces would time and again make secret deals with the French.

The Indochina Communist Party also existed in Kampuchea at this time, but it was made up exclusively of Vietnamese cadres. It supported and led the armed struggle against the French.

There were also revolutionary organizations of Kampuchean people who began waging armed struggle as early as 1947. But no Marxist-Leninist leadership existed for this movement.

“The main task at this stage,” Sary said, “was to win our national independence from France.” But contradictions also developed between Kampuchean anti-imperialists and the Vietnamese in the Indochina Communist Party, even though the two movements were in solidarity.

As an example of these contradictions, Sary pointed out, “Vietnam trained its cadres at this time in the belief that the three countries of Indochina were really all one country and should have only one Party. We didn’t agree.”

Despite these contradictions, the anti-imperialist struggle continued to advance. Tens of thousands of Kampucheans died fighting the French imperialists in this period. Finally, the Geneva peace agreement was reached in 1954, supposedly guaranteeing independence for Kampuchea, Laos and Vietnam. In Kampuchea, Prince Sihanouk came to power after Geneva.

ARMED STRUGGLE

In the 1950s, many of the leading elements in the Kampuchean people’s liberation struggle began to study Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. They rejected the notion of “peaceful transition to socialism” put forward in Khrushchev’s 1956 speech. Their own experiences had shown them that without the armed struggle, the people could not be victorious.

Ieng Sary noted that there was sharp ideological struggle over this question. The Vietnamese leaders, he said, had opposed Khrushchev’s line about “peaceful transition” insofar as Vietnam was concerned and correctly insisted that armed struggle was necessary to liberate their country and establish socialism. But, said Sary, some leaders of the Vietnamese Workers Party simultaneously argued that armed struggle was not necessary in Kampuchea. They said that socialism could come about peacefully in Kampuchea because of the progressive, neutralist stand taken by Prince Sihanouk.

While recognizing many areas of potential unity with Sihanouk, the Kampuchean revolutionaries believed that to liberate the country from foreign domination once and for all, to do away with feudalism and capitalism and to establish a socialist system, an armed struggle would definitely be required. They believed that to fail to prepare for the armed struggle was to set the stage for slaughter.

Even while the issue of armed struggle was being debated, the Kampuchean people’s forces were facing heavy repression. Over 80% of the 4,000 cadres in the revolutionary movement that had fought the French were wiped out in the 1950s. Sary added that in 1958, the leader of this movement, who had been trained in Vietnam, actually went over to the side of the government. He betrayed the revolutionary forces and set up executions and assassinations of revolutionary leaders.

“After this betrayal,” said Sary, “we knew that we had to become more self-reliant, deepen our understanding of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and found a communist party of our own to organize and lead the struggle.”

Preparations were undertaken by the growing circle of Kampuchean communists to develop a political program make a class analysis of Kampuchean society, and set the Party up organizationally.

“The repression was very intense at that time,” Sary recalled. “We had very little experience. We had no money. We went secretly to the Soviet embassy in Phnom Penh to ask for a loan of 10,000 riels (about $160) to start publishing a newspaper.

“But the Soviet ambassador attacked us. He told us we were ultra-’leftists’ and that only Sihanouk could lead the revolution. He told us to never come back.”

For the Kampucheans, this experience only confirmed the need for self-reliance and especially exposed the fact that the USSR was a counter-revolutionary force that could not be counted on for support.

“We expected to hold the founding congress in 1959,” Sary continued. “The repression was so severe, however, that this proved impossible. We left our houses every day in the morning not knowing if we would return home alive in the evening.

“Finally, in 1960, we were able to gather all the representatives together to found the Party. We met for three days from Sept. 28-30 in an abandoned railway building here in Phnom Penh. Our security had to be very tight; no one, could come in or go out during the meeting.”

The congress succeeded in founding the Party, adopting a constitution and electing a Central Committee.

“We had adopted the correct stand on the absolute necessity of the armed struggle,” Ieng Sary said. “But we still had much ideological work to do on this question. We had to educate the party members that the reform struggles–for land, democratic rights, better living standards, etc.–were very important but that they could not give us power. Only the armed struggle, led by the Party, could put political power in our hands.”

By 1963, the CPK leaders realized that they could no longer stay in Phnom Penh owing to the political repression and the growing power of Lon Nol’s right-wing section of the ruling class.

“We left Phnom Penh and went to the northeast countryside in the province of Ratanakiri.”

In February of 1963, Ieng Sary told us, the police assassinated the Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK).

An emergency Second Congress of the CPK was held in the wake of the party leader’s assassination. Pol Pot, today’s Prime Minister, was elected Party secretary, a post he continued to hold through the revolution.

“After the Second Congress, we began to build up our forces in the countryside slowly and patiently,” said Sary, who himself went in 1963 to the first base area established in Ratanakiri Province. “We did a great deal of education among the cadres about the importance of serving the people, being self-sacrificing and maintaining discipline at all times. This communist education helped carry the Party members through very difficult times later on.”

Sary described some of his own experiences in those days, saying, “We were living in the forest and had no real food supply. We relied on the local tribesmen, who were minority nationalities and very tough fighters, to bring us food from the villages. Sometimes they would be captured by the enemy, though, and then we would have no food at all.

“We would have to live on bamboo that grew in the forest for a week or more at a time. But we always remained confident. We knew these tribesmen would never betray us. Even under torture they would tell the reactionaries nothing about our bases.”

“We also had a large united front movement,” said Sary. “But it took no organizational form. We just spread the ideas of uniting the people to fight for an independent, neutral and non-aligned Kampuchea. With these slogans we could unite with various forces among the petty-bourgeoisie, the intellectuals, the administration officials and the national capitalists.”

RULING CLASS FORCES

The Deputy Prime Minister went on to describe the different forces within the Kampuchean ruling class of that time, indicating three broad groupings. On the far right, there were those like Lon Nol who were completely reactionary and nothing but lackeys of foreign imperialism. In the center stood Sihanouk, the head of state, and some others like him who, while opposing communism, also supported a policy of genuine political independence for the country. On the left were progressive people like Khieu Samphan, today’s president of the State Presidium, who at that time was a well-known intellectual and politician. His stand against foreign imperialism was so firm that he was forced to flee Phnom Penh under intense pressure by the right wing.

“We mobilized both the middle and left sections of the ruling class,” said Sary, “and built a united front with them against foreign domination. We isolated the real traitors like Lon Nol.”

At the same time, Sary stressed, the CPK believed that the fundamental force in the united front had to be the workers and peasants.

“Although our Party was secret,” Sary commented, “the people knew that there was a “Khmer Rouge movement.’” [Sihanouk gave the CPK forces the name “Khmer Rouge,” meaning literally “red Kampucheans” in French–ed.]

“The people knew our Party was fighting for land, democratic rights and a better standard of living,” said Sary. “We educated the masses step-by-step about the role of the armed struggle, even though we had not yet established an army.”

During this period, the Party established what were known as “clandestine guards.” These units were made up of peasants secretly infiltrated into the government’s militia, which it had created to maintain law and order in the countryside.

DISOBEY ORDERS

With a wry smile, Sary noted, “When the landlords ordered these militia forces to attack the people, our men would refuse. The clandestine guards played an important role in defending our cadres and leaders and allowing our base areas to develop.”

Throughout the countryside in Kampuchea, the peasants were waging spontaneous struggles, especially as Lon Nol’s wing of the ruling class seized more and more power from Sihanouk, tightening the economic squeeze on the peasants.

Worried by the developing rebellion among the peasants, Lon Nol decided to build his own phony “peasant movement.” He did this with the intention of misdirecting the peasant struggle as well as of building a peasant 5ase to undermine Sihanouk’s control of the government. He would give orders to his agents in the peasant movement to incite incidents and then tell Sihanouk that this was the work of the “communists” in an effort to keep a united front between the CPK and Sihanouk from developing.

In 1967, a peasant rebellion broke out in the northwest town of Samlaut. Hundreds of armed peasants went up into the mountains, seizing land and rice. Although the CPK knew that the conditions were not yet right for unfolding armed struggle nationwide, the party nonetheless supported the just demands of the Samlaut peasants.

When officials came to negotiate with the peasants, the CPK urged that the government remove Lon Nol as Prime Minister as a political condition before ending their rebellion. Sihanouk agreed to the demand, replacing Lon Nol with the patriotic prince. Penn Nouth.

But Lon Nol’s agents were right inside the peasant movement. Coming down from the mountains, these agents gave information about the activities of all the participants in the rebellion to In Tarn, then governor of Battambang Province. In a plot designed to abort the growing revolutionary movement, In Tarn connived with Lon Nol to make some concessions to some peasants who participated in the rebellion, while massacring all the communists and progressive forces.

PREPARING FOR COUP

“From June of 1967 on,” Ieng Sary recalled, “the Party began to lay plans to organize an army. We knew that Lon Nol would eventually try to stage a coup d’etat. We had to get prepared for that situation.”

In January of 1968, the Revolutionary Army was beginning to take shape. On January 17, a successful uprising led by the Party was staged at Bai Baram, near Battambane. In this battle the guerrillas captured their first weapons.

“On February 25,” said Sary, “the Central Committee issued a circular calling for insurrections all over the country. Even though it was a very difficult situation for us with hardly any weapons, no doctors and no medicine, we knew that our line was correct. And so we were able to inspire the people to fight.”

The CPK also knew that as the contradictions inside the country heightened as a result of the revolutionary war they were waging, the unity of the ruling class would break up as well. Recognizing that Sihanouk was a potential ally, the CPK and the Revolutionary Army made it clear in all their actions that they were fighting primarily the right-wing militarists and not Sihanouk, even though Sihanouk went along with many of the militarists’ repressive sweeps.

In one such attack, the government army sent 10,000 troops against the guerrillas in Ratanakiri. The assault was personally led by Lon Nol, who had once again entered the government as Chief of Defense.

“It was not just 10,000 troops they sent against us,” Ieng Sary remembered, ”but also armoured cars, planes and artillery. Even with all this firepower, they couldn’t knock us out. Winning this battle gave us great confidence.”

By the end of 1969, it was becoming obvious that Sihanouk’s neutralist stance could not be tolerated much longer by the U.S. imperialists, who were seeking to use Cambodia as a base for attack against Vietnam. Lon Nol. on the other hand, was perfectly willing to let the U.S. use Cambodia as a staging area against Vietnam. That Lon Nol would come to power in a coup d’etat was for the CPK a foregone conclusion.
 

Our interview with Ieng Sary had already lasted well into the evening when he began to talk of the events following the U.S.-instigated coup d’etat that put Lon Nol in power on March 18, 1970.

“March 18, 1970, to April 17, 1975, was the period of our open war against U.S. aggression and the Lon Nol traitor clique,” Sary said. “We relied on our own forces to fight this war, capturing 80% of the arms that our guerrilla fighters used. China also gave us great support.”

In lively detail, the Kampuchean deputy prime minister described battle after battle and how the young Revolutionary Army tested itself and grew strong. He told of how the CPK established revolutionary political power of the workers and the peasants in the liberated zones, and how the people rallied to the side of the Party throughout the country.

“We had predicted that the coup d’etat would come,” said Sary, “and this influenced the thinking of many people.” Sihanouk, the deposed leader, was one such person. He was soon ready to form the united front with the CPK, establishing the Royal Government of National Union, with its external headquarters in Peking.

“The people bitterly hated Lon Nol,” Sary went on. “The broad masses were ready to fight. They rallied to our Party, our Army and the united front because they saw that we were in the forefront of the struggle against Lon Nol.”

From the earliest days of the war, the Revolutionary Army began to liberate territory. Much of the country was liberated as early as 1972.

U.S. BOMBING

With the onset of the Paris peace talks, the U.S. temporarily intensified its pressure on Kampuchea. “From Jan. 27 to Aug. 15, 1973,” said Sary, “the imperialists mobilized all their forces against us. There was a ceasefire in Vietnam and Laos, so the American bombers were turned against us.”

More than a half a million tons of bombs were dropped on Kampuchea in those eight months, until the persistent military victories of the Revolutionary Army, coupled with world public opinion, finally forced Nixon to halt the saturation bombardment in August of 1973.

Even in the midst of this unprecedented bombing (which the Kampuchean peasants called “plough bombing” because it dug up the earth throughout the countryside like a plough), the CPK set to work establishing cooperatives.

“The building of the cooperative system in 1973,” Sary told us, “was a vital strategic question for our revolution. Without the cooperatives, the young men would not have been able to go fight at the front, assured that their families would be well cared for. Without the cooperatives, the price of rice would have suffered a terrible inflation and our troops would have had little to eat.

“But thanks to the cooperative system, we were better able to mobilize the whole people to fight guerrilla war, to resist the bombings, to resist Lon Nol’s reactionary offensives, and liberate more and more territory.”

The Kampuchea leader also discussed some of the problems that came up with the Vietnamese in this period. Arms and supplies that China was providing to Kampuchea via rail transport that passed through Vietnam were often sidetracked by the Vietnamese on the grounds that the struggle in Vietnam took precedence over the struggle in Kampuchea.

“We went hungry ourselves so that our Vietnamese brothers could have our rice,” said Sary, “and yet they did not deliver the arms and equipment that were intended for us.”

SOLIDARITY WITH VIETNAM

Despite these contradictions, the CPK continued to wage a united resistance to U.S. imperialism with the Vietnamese liberation fighters. “Our line,” said Sary, “was to uphold solidarity with Vietnam, while raising political struggle and differences privately.”

Victory after victory was won on the battlefield. The U.S. position throughout Indochina was rapidly deteriorating. Thousands of Lon Nol troops began deserting, going over to the side of the Revolutionary Army. Despite some setbacks in 1974, over 90% of the country was liberated by the end of that year, and guerrilla rocket fire was striking deep inside Phnom Penh and the big cities that represented the other 10%.

In January of 1975, the great Mekong River Offensive was launched which finally culminated in the liberation of Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975.

Sary looked up from his notes and paused. After a short silence, he said, “With the liberation of the whole country in April 1975 the national democratic revolution was achieved. Our victory was due to a correct analysis of the situation in our own country and confidence in the masses of people, who proved to be the main fighting force.”

A new phase of the Kampuchean revolution was begun. The Third Congress of the CPK was convened establishing a new strategic and tactical line for building socialism in Kampuchea.

“We did not rest for one minute,” Sary recalled. “0We immediately set to work to defend the country, and to build, and develop the socialist system. We established a dictatorship of the proletariat and collectivized the national wealth. We began to cultivate the collectivist spirit.”

There were many difficulties and many complex problems to solve. “In 1975,” said Sary, “we were immediately faced with grave threats to the security of the revolution both in terms of attacks on our borders as well as from within our own ranks. The CIA, the KGB, the Vietnamese and others were all intent on mobilizing their forces for a coup d’etat against us.

“Besides the security problem, we also faced very difficult problems in providing food, housing and clothing for the people.

“By the end of 1975, the food problem was largely solved in terms of giving everyone a subsistence diet. However, the security problem still existed. In April 1976 and then again in September 1976 we arrested Vietnamese and KGB agents along the border as well as inside Phnom Penh. They were plotting to organize a coup d’etat against us.

PROGRESS IN AGRICULTURE

“In 1977, more progress had been made in agriculture, and two-crop rice farming was introduced on a wide scale. We could even export some rice for the first time in that year. But the security problem persisted as our enemies continued to conspire against us.

“Kampuchean nationals in the pay of the CIA wanted to stage a coup in January of 1977. At the end of January, these elements held a rendezvous with American CIA personnel at a point on the Thailand border. The American CIA man asked the Kampucheans, ’How can you foment a coup when the Vietnamese have already failed? He told them to go back and gather more forces and wait for April. In March, however, we arrested these CIA agents.

“Again, in September of 1977, we captured a small group of people who were planning to attack our government. Some of them had been working for the CIA as far back as 1958, disguised as revolutionaries all the time.”

COUP FAILURES

After the failure of all these coup d’etats, both the U.S. as well as the USSR and Vietnam began to see that they could not succeed in overthrowing the worker-peasant state power in this fashion. The new government had grown too strong and too consolidated. Its base of support among the people was wider than ever.

“The enemies all began to think at this point that only attack from the outside of the country could succeed,” explained Sary. “That’s when Vietnam began its open aggression against us, towards the end of 1977. They did so in the hopes that aggression from the outside could draw our army to a certain place, and allow their forces inside the country an opportunity to strike elsewhere. But all this proved futile on their part, and we drove out their invasion.”

Reflecting on all he had told us, Sary began to sum up and discuss the present state of things in Kampuchea.

“The situation in each year since 1975 had become progressively better,” he said, “although many complex problems remain. Our work of socialist construction is moving forward, especially in the area of water conservancy and agriculture. Many cooperatives are thriving; almost all are succeeding. All this has been accomplished under the leadership of the Party, in the closest connection with the masses of people. Under the leadership of the Party, I am sure we will be able to solve all the many difficulties we still face.

“The war with Vietnam may last a long time. As long as Vietnam tries to impose an ’Indochina Federation’ on us, we will have to fight and wait for the political situation to change. But I am sure that truth and justice will win out in the end.”

August 28, 1978