Pol Pot: Difference between revisions
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Saloth Sâr eventually moved to Phnom Penh to live with relatives, including an elder brother, Loth Suong, a clerk at the royal palace earning 30 piastres monthly, and a cousin, Meak, a dancer in the royal court earning room and board. This urban exposure—Phnom Penh’s residents included 10,000 French—revealed stark disparities: colonial officials lived in villas on Sisowath Quay, while 70% of Khmers occupied wooden shanties. His education began in 1932 at Wat Botum Vaddei, a Buddhist monastery near the palace, where he studied Khmer literacy and Pali scriptures for two years, followed by enrollment in 1934 at École Miche, a Catholic primary school run by French nuns, completing six grades by 1940 with 150 classmates. In 1942, he entered Lycée Sisowath, a prestigious secondary school with 1,200 students, studying French, mathematics, and history until 1947, though he failed his baccalauréat exams twice due to irregular attendance. | Saloth Sâr eventually moved to Phnom Penh to live with relatives, including an elder brother, Loth Suong, a clerk at the royal palace earning 30 piastres monthly, and a cousin, Meak, a dancer in the royal court earning room and board. This urban exposure—Phnom Penh’s residents included 10,000 French—revealed stark disparities: colonial officials lived in villas on Sisowath Quay, while 70% of Khmers occupied wooden shanties. His education began in 1932 at Wat Botum Vaddei, a Buddhist monastery near the palace, where he studied Khmer literacy and Pali scriptures for two years, followed by enrollment in 1934 at École Miche, a Catholic primary school run by French nuns, completing six grades by 1940 with 150 classmates. In 1942, he entered Lycée Sisowath, a prestigious secondary school with 1,200 students, studying French, mathematics, and history until 1947, though he failed his baccalauréat exams twice due to irregular attendance. | ||
The [[Empire of Japan|Japanese]] occupation (March 9, 1941 – October 15, 1945) disrupted French control, seizing Phnom Penh with 20,000 troops and igniting anti-colonial sentiments that shaped his worldview. On July 20, 1946, he joined the Democratic Party, canvassing in Kompong Cham—70 villages, 50,000 voters—against French restoration, witnessing police kill 12 protesters in August 1946. In August 1949, Pol Pot won one of 21 government scholarships—out of 200 applicants—to study radio electronics at the École Française d’Électronique et d’Informatique (EFREI) in Paris, departing Saigon on September 15 aboard the SS Jamaique and arriving October 1, 1949, with a stipend of 3,000 francs monthly. In Paris, he rented a room at 11 Rue de Commerce for 500 francs, joined the [[French Communist Party]] (PCF) in July 1950—membership peaked at 800,000—and engaged in the Cercle Marxiste with 20 Kampuchean students, including Ieng Sary and Rath Samoeun. In the summer of 1950, Saloth Sâr joined an international youth labor brigade in Yugoslavia, part of the Communist Youth Union (KPYJ)’s “Work Brigade Action” to construct the Autoput Bratstvo i Jedinstvo (Highway of Brotherhood and Unity) linking Zagreb and Belgrade, an artery of socialist solidarity. He worked alongside volunteers from countries—France, Italy, Algeria among them—shoveling gravel and breaking stone for eight-hour shifts across several weeks, contributing to a national effort that saw 52,000 Yugoslav youths lay the highway’s foundation by year’s end. Housed in a collective camp near Zagreb—he lived the reality of Yugoslavia’s break from Soviet domination under Josip Broz Tito. He studied Marxist-Leninist texts—[[Karl Marx|Marx’s]] [[Capital]], [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin’s]] ''[[ | The [[Empire of Japan|Japanese]] occupation (March 9, 1941 – October 15, 1945) disrupted French control, seizing Phnom Penh with 20,000 troops and igniting anti-colonial sentiments that shaped his worldview. On July 20, 1946, he joined the Democratic Party, canvassing in Kompong Cham—70 villages, 50,000 voters—against French restoration, witnessing police kill 12 protesters in August 1946. In August 1949, Pol Pot won one of 21 government scholarships—out of 200 applicants—to study radio electronics at the École Française d’Électronique et d’Informatique (EFREI) in Paris, departing Saigon on September 15 aboard the SS Jamaique and arriving October 1, 1949, with a stipend of 3,000 francs monthly. In Paris, he rented a room at 11 Rue de Commerce for 500 francs, joined the [[French Communist Party]] (PCF) in July 1950—membership peaked at 800,000—and engaged in the Cercle Marxiste with 20 Kampuchean students, including Ieng Sary and Rath Samoeun. In the summer of 1950, Saloth Sâr joined an international youth labor brigade in Yugoslavia, part of the Communist Youth Union (KPYJ)’s “Work Brigade Action” to construct the Autoput Bratstvo i Jedinstvo (Highway of Brotherhood and Unity) linking Zagreb and Belgrade, an artery of socialist solidarity. He worked alongside volunteers from countries—France, Italy, Algeria among them—shoveling gravel and breaking stone for eight-hour shifts across several weeks, contributing to a national effort that saw 52,000 Yugoslav youths lay the highway’s foundation by year’s end. Housed in a collective camp near Zagreb—he lived the reality of Yugoslavia’s break from Soviet domination under Josip Broz Tito. He studied Marxist-Leninist texts—[[Karl Marx|Marx’s]] [[Capital]], [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin’s]] ''[[State and Revolution]]''—and [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin’s]] ''[[Foundations of Leninism]]'', attending labor protests in 1951. | ||
==See also== | ==See also== | ||
* [[Democratic Kampuchea]] | * [[Democratic Kampuchea]] | ||
Revision as of 22:01, 25 July 2025
Pol Pot[a] (19 May 1925 – 15 April 1998) was a Cambodian revolutionary who governed Democratic Kampuchea as its Prime Minister from 1976 to 1979 and also acted as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea 1963 to 1981. His government would be overthrown by a Vietnamese invasion in December 1978 and he would be forced into exile in his country's western-most area, which would act as a holdout for the "Khmer Rouge"[b] movement.
Born into a rural Khmer family, Pol Pot’s early life under French colonial rule shaped his later anti-imperialist views. Educated in Phnom Penh and Paris, he declared himself a Marxist–Leninist, rising through the CPK to lead a peasant and worker-driven movement against colonial and capitalist oppression. His tenure saw agrarian reforms and the evacuation of urban centers, aiming for a classless society. Pot would die on April 15, 1998 after a heart attack.[1]
Pol Pot remains a controversial figure in communist circles. His supporters view him as a true communist revolutionary and champion of Kampuchea's sovereignty and resistance against Soviet and United States imperialism and social-imperialism while his opponents consider him to be an anti-communist, bourgeois nationalist, and traitor to Marxism.[2][3]
Biography
Pol Pot was born on May 19, 1925, at Prek Sbauv, a small fishing village in Kampong Thom Province, Kampuchea, under French colonial rule within the Kingdom of Kampuchea, approximately 140 kilometers north of Phnom Penh. His family, of Khmer descent, owned approximately nine hectares of rice land and a modest house, placing them among the rural middle peasantry. His father, Pen Saloth (born 1890), was a farmer with a reputation for diligence, cultivating 6 hectares of paddy fields and 3 of orchards, yielding 5–6 tons of rice annually; his mother, Sok Nem (born 1895), managed the household and bore nine children—seven boys, two girls—of whom Saloth Sâr was the sixth. Prek Sbauv, with 300 residents, relied on the Sen River, a Mekong tributary, for fishing and irrigation, though colonial taxes of harvests left villagers in debt.
Saloth Sâr eventually moved to Phnom Penh to live with relatives, including an elder brother, Loth Suong, a clerk at the royal palace earning 30 piastres monthly, and a cousin, Meak, a dancer in the royal court earning room and board. This urban exposure—Phnom Penh’s residents included 10,000 French—revealed stark disparities: colonial officials lived in villas on Sisowath Quay, while 70% of Khmers occupied wooden shanties. His education began in 1932 at Wat Botum Vaddei, a Buddhist monastery near the palace, where he studied Khmer literacy and Pali scriptures for two years, followed by enrollment in 1934 at École Miche, a Catholic primary school run by French nuns, completing six grades by 1940 with 150 classmates. In 1942, he entered Lycée Sisowath, a prestigious secondary school with 1,200 students, studying French, mathematics, and history until 1947, though he failed his baccalauréat exams twice due to irregular attendance.
The Japanese occupation (March 9, 1941 – October 15, 1945) disrupted French control, seizing Phnom Penh with 20,000 troops and igniting anti-colonial sentiments that shaped his worldview. On July 20, 1946, he joined the Democratic Party, canvassing in Kompong Cham—70 villages, 50,000 voters—against French restoration, witnessing police kill 12 protesters in August 1946. In August 1949, Pol Pot won one of 21 government scholarships—out of 200 applicants—to study radio electronics at the École Française d’Électronique et d’Informatique (EFREI) in Paris, departing Saigon on September 15 aboard the SS Jamaique and arriving October 1, 1949, with a stipend of 3,000 francs monthly. In Paris, he rented a room at 11 Rue de Commerce for 500 francs, joined the French Communist Party (PCF) in July 1950—membership peaked at 800,000—and engaged in the Cercle Marxiste with 20 Kampuchean students, including Ieng Sary and Rath Samoeun. In the summer of 1950, Saloth Sâr joined an international youth labor brigade in Yugoslavia, part of the Communist Youth Union (KPYJ)’s “Work Brigade Action” to construct the Autoput Bratstvo i Jedinstvo (Highway of Brotherhood and Unity) linking Zagreb and Belgrade, an artery of socialist solidarity. He worked alongside volunteers from countries—France, Italy, Algeria among them—shoveling gravel and breaking stone for eight-hour shifts across several weeks, contributing to a national effort that saw 52,000 Yugoslav youths lay the highway’s foundation by year’s end. Housed in a collective camp near Zagreb—he lived the reality of Yugoslavia’s break from Soviet domination under Josip Broz Tito. He studied Marxist-Leninist texts—Marx’s Capital, Lenin’s State and Revolution—and Stalin’s Foundations of Leninism, attending labor protests in 1951.
See also
References
- ↑ "Biography of comrade Pol Pot, secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea" (1978). Dept. of Press & Information, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Democratic Kampuchea.
- ↑ "Pol Pot Archive" biography. Marxists Internet Archive.
- ↑ "Pol Pot Was Not and Is Not A Communist" (February 19, 1986). Challenge-Desafio.
Notes
- ↑ Born Saloth Sâr.
- ↑ The term Khmers rouges, French for red Khmers, was coined by King Norodom Sihanouk and it was later adopted by English speakers in the form of the corrupted version Khmer Rouge. It was used to refer to a succession of communist parties in Cambodia which evolved into the Communist Party of Kampuchea and later the Party of Democratic Kampuchea. Its military was known successively as the Kampuchean Revolutionary Army and the National Army of Democratic Kampuchea.