“You talk about me like that, as if I were some kind of Pol Pot,” the heroine of Lyudmila Gurchenko said offendedly in one popular Russian comedy. 1970s. However, this name in those years thundered all over the world. A little less than 4 years of his reign, more than 3,370,000 people were exterminated in Cambodia.

Common noun

In just a few years, the leader of the Khmer Rouge movement has become on a par with the bloodiest dictators in human history, earning the title of "Asiatic Hitler".

Little is known about the childhood of the Cambodian dictator, primarily because Pol Pot himself tried not to make this information public. Even the date of his birth is different. According to one version, he was born on May 19, 1925 in the village of Preksbauw, into a peasant family. The eighth child of the peasant Pek Salot and his wife Sok Nem was born Salot Sar.

The Pol Pot family, although they were peasants, did not live in poverty. The cousin of the future dictator served at the royal court and was even the concubine of the crown prince. Pol Pot's older brother served at the royal court, and his sister danced in the royal ballet.

Salot Sarah himself was sent at the age of nine to relatives in Phnom Penh. After several months spent in a Buddhist monastery as an acolyte, the boy entered the Catholic primary school, after which he continued his studies at the College of Norodom Sihanouk, and then at the Technical School of Phnom Penh.

To Marxists by royal grant

In 1949, Salot Sar received a government scholarship for higher education in France and went to Paris, where he began to study radio electronics.

The post-war period was marked by the rapid growth in the popularity of left-wing parties and national liberation movements. In Paris, Cambodian students created a Marxist circle, of which Saloth Sar became a member.

In 1952, Saloth Sar, under the pseudonym Khmer Daom, published his first political article, "Monarchy or Democracy?", in a journal of Cambodian students in France. At the same time, the student joined the French Communist Party.

Passion for politics relegated his studies to the background, and in the same year Salot Sarah was expelled from the university, after which he returned to his homeland.

In Cambodia, he settled with his older brother, began to seek connections with representatives of the Communist Party of Indochina, and soon attracted the attention of one of its coordinators in Cambodia, Pham Van Ba. Salot Sarah was recruited for party work.

"The Politics of the Possible"

Pham Van Ba ​​quite clearly described the new comrade-in-arms: "a young man of average ability, but with ambition and a thirst for power." The ambitions and love of power of Salot Sara turned out to be much greater than his comrades in the fight had expected.

Saloth Sar took on a new pseudonym - Pol Pot, which is an abbreviation for the French "politique potentielle" - "the politics of the possible." Under this pseudonym, he was destined to go down in world history.

Cambodia gained independence from France in 1953. The ruler of the kingdom was Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who was very popular and oriented towards China. In the war that broke out in Vietnam, Cambodia formally adhered to neutrality, but the units of North Vietnam and South Vietnamese partisans quite actively used the territory of the kingdom to locate their bases and warehouses. The Cambodian authorities preferred to turn a blind eye to this.

During this period, the Cambodian communists acted quite freely in the country, and by 1963 Saloth Sar had gone from a novice to the party's general secretary.

In the communist movement in Asia, by that time, there was a serious split associated with sharp deterioration relations between the USSR and China. The Communist Party of Cambodia made a bet on Beijing, focusing on the policy of Comrade Mao Zedong.

Leader of the Khmer Rouge

Prince Norodom Sihanouk saw the growing influence of the Cambodian communists as a threat to his own power and began to change politics, shifting from China to the United States.

In 1967, a peasant uprising broke out in the Cambodian province of Battambang, which was brutally suppressed by government troops and mobilized citizens.

After that, the Cambodian communists launch a guerrilla war against the Sihanouk government. The detachments of the so-called "Khmer Rouge" were formed for the most part from illiterate and illiterate young peasants, whom Pol Pot made his main support.

Very quickly, the ideology of Pol Pot began to move away not only from Marxism-Leninism, but even from Maoism. Himself a native of a peasant family, the leader of the Khmer Rouge formulated a much simpler program for his illiterate supporters - the path to a happy life lies through the rejection of modern Western values, through the destruction of cities that are carriers of a pernicious infection, and the "re-education of their inhabitants."

Even Pol Pot's associates had no idea where such a program would lead their leader...

In 1970, the Americans contributed to the strengthening of the positions of the Khmer Rouge. Considering that Prince Sihanouk, who had reoriented himself to the United States, was an insufficiently reliable ally in the fight against the Vietnamese communists, Washington organized a coup, as a result of which Prime Minister Lon Nol came to power with firm pro-American views.

Lon Nol demanded that North Vietnam curtail all military activities on the territory of Cambodia, threatening otherwise to use force. The North Vietnamese in response hit first, so much so that they almost occupied Phnom Penh. To save his protege, US President Richard Nixon sent American units to Cambodia. The Lon Nol regime eventually held out, but an unprecedented wave of anti-Americanism arose in the country, and the ranks of the Khmer Rouge began to grow by leaps and bounds.

The victory of the guerrilla army

The civil war in Cambodia flared up with renewed vigor. The Lon Nol regime was not popular and was kept only on American bayonets, Prince Sihanouk was deprived of real power and was in exile, and Pol Pot continued to gain strength.

By 1973, when the United States, having decided to put an end to the Vietnam War, refused to continue to provide military support to the Lon Nol regime, the Khmer Rouge already controlled most of the country's territory. Pol Pot managed already without comrades-in-arms in the Communist Party, relegated to the background. It was much easier for him not with educated experts on Marxism, but with illiterate fighters who believed only in Pol Pot and the Kalashnikov assault rifle.

In January 1975, the Khmer Rouge launched a decisive offensive against Phnom Penh. The troops loyal to Lon Nol could not withstand the blow of the 70,000-strong partisan army. In early April, American marines began the evacuation from the country of US citizens, as well as high-ranking representatives of the pro-American regime. On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh.

"The city is the abode of vice"

Cambodia was renamed Kampuchea, but this was the most harmless of Pol Pot's reforms. “The city is the abode of vice; You can change people, but not cities. Working hard to uproot the jungle and grow rice, a person will finally understand the true meaning of life, ”such was the main thesis of the Khmer Rouge leader who came to power.

The city of Phnom Penh with a population of two and a half million people was decided to be evicted within three days. All its inhabitants, young and old, were sent to be peasants. No complaints about health, lack of skills, and the like were accepted. Following Phnom Penh, the same fate befell other cities of Kampuchea.

Only about 20 thousand people remained in the capital - the military, the administrative apparatus, as well as representatives of the punitive authorities, who undertook to identify and eliminate the dissatisfied.

It was supposed to re-educate not only the inhabitants of the cities, but also those peasants who had been under the rule of Lon Nol for too long. It was decided to simply get rid of those who served the former regime in the army and other state structures.

Pol Pot launched a policy of isolating the country, and Moscow, Washington, and even Beijing, which was Pol Pot's closest ally, had a very vague idea of ​​what was really happening in it. They simply refused to believe in the leaking information about hundreds of thousands of people shot, who died during the resettlement from cities and from excessive forced labor.

At the pinnacle of power

During this period, an extremely confused political situation developed in Southeast Asia. The United States, having ended the Vietnam War, set out to improve relations with China, taking advantage of the extremely strained relations between Beijing and Moscow. China, which supported the communists of North and South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, became extremely hostile towards them, because they were guided by Moscow. Pol Pot, who was guided by China, took up arms against Vietnam, despite the fact that until recently the Khmer Rouge considered the Vietnamese as allies in a common struggle.

Pol Pot, abandoning internationalism, relied on nationalism, which was widespread among the Cambodian peasantry. The brutal persecution of ethnic minorities, primarily the Vietnamese, resulted in an armed conflict with a neighboring country.

In 1977, the Khmer Rouge began to penetrate into the adjacent regions of Vietnam, carrying out massacres against the local population. In April 1978, the Khmer Rouge occupied the Vietnamese village of Batyuk, destroying all its inhabitants, young and old. 3,000 people became victims of the massacre.

Pol Pot sold out in earnest. Feeling the support of Beijing behind his back, he not only threatened to defeat Vietnam, but also threatened the entire Warsaw Pact, that is, the Warsaw Treaty Organization headed by the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, his policy forced former comrades-in-arms and previously loyal military units to rebel, considering what was happening in no way justified by bloody madness. The rebellions were crushed ruthlessly, the rebels were executed in the most cruel ways, but their number continued to grow.

Three million victims in less than four years

In December 1978, Vietnam decided that it had had enough. Parts of the Vietnamese army invaded Kampuchea with the aim of overthrowing the Pol Pot regime. The offensive developed rapidly, and already on January 7, 1979, Phnom Penh fell. Power was transferred to the United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea, created in December 1978.

China tried to save its ally by invading Vietnam in February 1979. A fierce but short-lived war ended in March with a tactical victory for Vietnam - the Chinese failed to return Pol Pot to power.

The Khmer Rouge, who suffered a serious defeat, retreated to the west of the country, to the Cambodian-Thai border. They were saved from complete defeat by the support of China, Thailand and the United States. Each of these countries pursued its own interests - the Americans, for example, tried to prevent the strengthening of positions in the region of pro-Soviet Vietnam, for the sake of which they preferred to turn a blind eye to the results of the activities of the Pol Pot regime.

And the results were truly impressive. For 3 years 8 months and 20 days, the Khmer Rouge plunged the country into a medieval state. The protocol of the Commission for the Investigation of the Crimes of the Pol Pot Regime of July 25, 1983 stated that between 1975 and 1978, 2,746,105 people died, of which 1,927,061 peasants, 305,417 workers, employees and representatives of other professions, 48,359 representatives national minorities, 25,168 monks, about 100 writers and journalists, and a few foreigners. Another 568,663 people are missing and either died in the jungle or buried in mass graves. Total number casualties are estimated at 3,374,768.

In July 1979, the People's Revolutionary Tribunal was organized in Phnom Penh, which tried Khmer Rouge leaders in absentia. On August 19, 1979, the tribunal found Pol Pot and his closest associate Ieng Sari guilty of genocide and sentenced them in absentia to death with confiscation of all property.

The Leader's Last Secrets

For Pol Pot himself, however, this sentence meant nothing. He continued his guerrilla war against the new Kampuchean government by hiding in the jungle. Little was known about the leader of the Khmer Rouge, and many believed that the man whose name had become a household name had long since died.

When processes of national reconciliation began in Kampuchea-Cambodia aimed at ending years of civil war, a new generation of Khmer Rouge leaders tried to push their odious "guru" into the background. There was a split in the movement, and Pol Pot, trying to maintain leadership, again decided to use terror to suppress disloyal elements.

In July 1997, on the orders of Pol Pot, his longtime colleague was killed, former minister Defense of Kampuchea Son Sen. Together with him, 13 members of his family were killed, including young children.

However, this time Pol Pot overestimated his influence. Companions declared him a traitor and held his own trial, sentencing him to life in prison.

The trial of the Khmer Rouge over their own leader caused the last surge of interest in Pol Pot. In 1998, prominent leaders of the movement agreed to lay down their arms and surrender to the new Cambodian authorities.

But Pol Pot was not among them. He died on April 15, 1998. Representatives of the Khmer Rouge stated that former leader let down the heart. There is, however, a version that he was poisoned.

The Cambodian authorities sought the release of the body from the Khmer Rouge in order to make sure that Pol Pot was really dead and to establish all the circumstances of his death, but the corpse was hastily cremated.

The leader of the Khmer Rouge took his last secrets with him ...

French Indochina ordered a long life in 1954: observing international agreements, France left the Indochinese peninsula. Thus, new independent states appeared on the world map: Laos, Cambodia and two Vietnams. After that, interesting times began on the peninsula, in the era of which, as you know, you don’t wish anyone to live.

Vietnam and Laos also distinguished themselves in every possible way, but still, Cambodia, aka Kampuchea, deserves the palm for the Khmer Rouge and for Monsieur Pol Pot personally. No other mode in all human history, apparently, did not destroy so much of its population in such a short time: in the four years of his reign, Pol Pot exterminated every seventh Cambodian. And no other regime of the world has been so illogical and so obviously abnormal.

brother number one

In fact, his name was not Pol Pot (Cambodians generally rarely call their children Paul, they much prefer names like Khtau or Tjomrayn). The future shaker of the country was named Saloth Sar, and, like many dictators, his origins are dark and confusing. According to one version, he is generally the nephew of a courtier and almost royal blood. He himself liked to describe the hardships of his impoverished peasant childhood under the yoke of the accursed imperialists. But, most likely, the main biographers of Pol Pot are right - the Australian researcher Ben Kiernan and the American historian David Chandler, who, having shaken up the proven facts of the genealogy of our hero, considered that in fact he belonged to a prosperous semi-rural, semi-bureaucratic family, and his sisters - native and cousin - were court dancers and royal concubines (of whom, however, there were many in the palace).

We must give the biographers their due: they were truly detective work, because Pol Pot avoided any publicity so much that during the first year of his reign, virtually no one in Kampuchea, not to mention the outside world, knew who was hiding under the name Brother number one - he managed take over the country incognito. The nickname Pol Pot, taken ten years earlier, according to the testimony of some surviving former associates, was an abbreviation of the French "politique potentielle" ("powerful politician") and was a form of the term "leader". It wasn’t until the second year of Pol Pot’s reign that a fuzzy photograph that got into the Western press made it possible to establish that the executioner of Cambodia was the virtuous and modest school teacher Salot Sar, who was identified by his former associates in the Communist Party of Indochina.

Based on the premise that any human atrocity is the result of childhood upheaval, historians desperately wanted to find evidence that Pol Pot was an innocent victim of circumstances, a plaything in the hands of fate, who turned a kind boy into a terrible scarecrow. But all the surviving acquaintances and relatives of Pol Pot assured in unison that he was a sweet and quiet child, whom his relatives loved, who received a very decent education on a state scholarship, and who looked least of all like an unfortunate ragged child of the third world. Yes, in a French college he was forced to speak French and play the violin, but no traces of other imperialist tortures could be found in Pol Pot's life.

In 1947 he left to study in Paris, where he became a staunch anti-Westernist, joined Communist Party France and even published a couple of articles about the oppression of the workers, but he still remained an even, friendly and pleasant young man with no special ambitions and no special talents. And when he returned home, he began to actively cooperate with local communists, while working at the same time as a teacher in a lyceum, until a full-scale war broke out in the country.

Civil War in Cambodia

Now it will be very interesting. Anyone who manages to follow the logic of what is happening to the end will receive a bonus. In 1954, after liberation from the French protectorate, Cambodia received the status of a neutral country with a more or less constitutional monarchy. The rightful heir, Prince Sihanouk, came to power, chosen by the state council from among the possible contenders, of whom, with such an abundance of concubines, you yourself understand, there were always enough in the palaces. The prince was not a communist, but he had, it must be admitted, very similar convictions to the communists. He wanted to be friends with China in every possible way, to help the Northern, pro-Soviet, Vietnam fight against the Southern, imperialist. At the same time, Cambodia broke off diplomatic relations with the main imperialists of the world - the United States, after the Americans wandered a little beyond their borders, sorting out relations with the Viet Cong *.

*

Note Phacochoerus "a Funtika: « The Viet Cong was the name given to the fighting units of the South Vietnamese communists, who, while cooperating with the troops of North Vietnam, nevertheless maintained a certain autonomy. If an article sometimes contains only “Viet Cong” or one “Northern Vietnamese”, then consider that the author is simply too lazy to always mention them together».

14 years - the average age of the Khmer Rouge army fighters

3,000,000 of Cambodia's 8,000,000 inhabitants were immediately disenfranchised

1,500,000 Kampucheans died during the four years of Khmer Rouge rule

2,500,000 people had to leave all cities in 24 hours

20,000 photographs of Tuol Sleng prisoners become the basis of the Genocide Museum

04/16/1998 biology and history together finished with Pol Pot

The Americans apologized and categorically forbade their soldiers from even approaching the Cambodian borders. In exchange, Prince Sihanouk, with a grand gesture, allowed the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops to pass through the Cambodian territories and set up bases there. What Prince Sihanouk was thinking at that moment, only the Buddhas know, since even a not very intelligent fifth grader could predict further development events. For a while, the Vietnamese communists played the "I'm in the house" game.

They attacked the South Vietnamese troops, after which they ticked into Cambodia, on the border of which their pursuers were forced to stop and look plaintively at the cheerful haze over the hearths of the Viet Cong bases. I must say that the local population was not enthusiastic about the Vietnamese soldiers running around their country. In addition, they really did not like the fact that Sihanouk considered it possible to send his soldiers to take away grain from the peasants (more precisely, to forcibly redeem it for a penny). Not surprisingly, Cambodia's own communist underground began to enjoy enormous support from the famine-stricken peasants. The largest of these organizations was called the Khmer Rouge, and it was run by a sweet schoolteacher named Pol Pot. Yes, he never became a bright leader and a genius that serious mature revolutionaries would follow, but he knew how to work well with children. Under his wing, he, as befits a teacher, took youth: peasant teenagers aged 11-12 were recruited into the Khmer Rouge, and Pol Pot himself repeatedly said that for the good of Kampuchea it would be necessary to kill everyone over fourteen, since only a new generation able to create a new ideal country.

Popular uprisings and terrorist attacks by the Khmer Rouge forced Prince Sihanouk to wake up a bit and assess the state of affairs in the lands entrusted to him. And in the country there was - let's call a spade a spade - a civil war. The Khmer Rouge took control of settlements and raided government organizations. The Viet Cong felt at home here and took what they wanted, including driving peasants to fight in their ranks. The peasants fled from all this beauty to the cities, a qualitative famine began ... And then Prince Sihanouk rushed to the United States for help. Relations were restored, the States bombed areas where the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese bases were located. But officially asking the Americans for help in civil war Sihanouk still did not dare: political convictions interfered. Then the prince was quickly overthrown by his ministers, led by Prime Minister Lon Nol, who demanded that the North Vietnamese withdraw their troops from Cambodian territory in 72 hours.

The North Vietnamese spoke approximately in the same spirit that you, my dear, would not go to drown in the Mekong. Then Lon Nol appealed to the Americans. In 1970, early-gray President Richard Nixon, already torn to pieces at home by pacifists, took another highly unpopular step and ordered a ground operation in Cambodia. For two months, the Americans and the South Vietnamese kicked out the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong from Cambodia - I must say, very, very successfully. But the States, which themselves were already on the verge of riots in connection with the colossal anti-war movement in the country, were forced to withdraw their troops. Cute girls in knitted scarves with pacifists achieved their goal: the States helped the Cambodian authorities with money and equipment, but they avoided hostilities. The dove of peace laid a rotten egg on the heads of the Cambodians: after the departure of the American troops, a full-fledged civil war broke out here with the participation of government troops, the Khmer Rouge army (which had already subjugated some areas), other anti-government groups, South Vietnamese and North Vietnamese. Cambodia still tops the sad list of "The most mined countries in the world": the jungle and rice fields here they are still crammed with terrible traps that the parties poured into each other.

True, there were no very large-scale battles - rather, there was a guerrilla war of everyone against everyone. And in 1975, the Khmer Rouge won this war. Having killed several tens of thousands of soldiers and officials, on April 17 they captured the capital Phnom Penh, announced the creation of a new state, Democratic Kampuchea, and began to live and live.

They hated the Vietnamese so passionately that in the end they entered the war with the Vietnam that had united by that time, lost it and were driven back into the jungle. Thus, the Khmer Rouge held on to power for four years, but managed to make a serious claim in the fight for the title of the bloodiest regime of all time. We will discuss these four years in more detail in the next chapter.

And here's what's interesting. Nobody liked the Khmer Rouge because they were a completely crazy bunch of bastards. The refugees who were lucky enough to crawl away from Democratic Kampuchea, in unison, told monstrous things about the order that had reigned in the country: about mass executions, about infant corpses along the roads, about terrible famine and fanaticism of the authorities ... But even less the UN and NATO countries liked the fact that the pro-Soviet Vietnam after the fall of the Khmers, it actually gained another province, as a result, the position of the USSR in the South Asian region was dangerously strengthened, tipping the scales of geopolitical harmony. Therefore, the UN was very careful with the recognition of the deeds of the Pol Pot communists as genocide - in contrast to Soviet Union, where any Octobrist at school listened to the nasty uncle Palpot, and in the yard - the popular ditty “For ... boo-tormenting like Pol Pot Kampouchiu!”

And here is the promised bonus. Today, communists and nationalists, nostalgic for the USSR, love to justify the Khmer Rouge, while scolding the Americans, who at one time also worked hard to justify these Khmer Rouge at least a little. Why this is happening is for psychoanalysts from geopolitics.

Feast of obedience

On April 17, having occupied Phnom Penh and other large cities, having launched thousands of juvenile savages with machine guns into their streets, the Khmer Rouge informed the townspeople that all of them, without exception, from now on become "bourgeois" and "test subjects", are affected in their rights and must leave the cities at 24 hours with children and the elderly. From that day on, they are called "people of April", because while all the good guys were making a revolution, these traitors and imperialist hirelings sat out in the cities and drank the blood of the working people. In fact, in the cities by that time, most of the inhabitants were peasants who fled there from the war, but in the eyes of the Khmer Rouge they were not class close at all - on the contrary, they were miserable cowards and traitors.

Fall of Phnom Penh (1975)

The "People of April", under pain of immediate execution, were ordered to line up in columns, and, accompanied by heavily armed teenagers, two and a half million people - a third of all the inhabitants of the country - crawled in their own way. way of the cross. We must pay tribute to Pol Pot's equanimity: along with other "people of April", members of his family set off on the road, including the family of his older brother, in whose house he actually grew up. This brother died on the road, his wife was beaten to death, but the dictator's sister survived, who later was able to tell the world this interesting fact. However, none of the family could have imagined then that the faceless leader who sent them to their death was their dear brother Saloth Sar.

To understand the vigor with which the new Kampuchea was built, you need to know that, in general, this is a small and not too crowded country. In 1975, its population was between 8 and 8.5 million. In four years, Pol Pot and his associates destroyed at least a seventh of the Cambodians (this, according to the most careful calculations, is usually called a figure twice as large).

The program for the development of Democratic Kampuchea, created by the Khmer Rouge government, was preserved, because it was printed in the only remaining newspaper in the country, the Revolution, which was published every ten days and was intended for top party members who had the misfortune of being literate - it was read to the rest of the population by radio. This document is extremely fascinating, containing a lot of amazing information.

For example, here is an excerpt from the chapter on cultural development:

“Having rejected the bourgeois, alien culture, the victorious people spend their leisure time listening to revolutionary poems and songs, as well as easily studying politics and culture.”

And these were the plans for the growth of the welfare of the Cambodian people:

“In 1977, everyone will be given two sweet meals a week.

In 1978, one sweet meal every other day.

In 1979, sweet meals will be given to everyone daily.

The chapter on imports begins with the words:

“We will import bolts, nuts and more sophisticated equipment…”

TOOL SLENG

The Khmer Rouge did not keep any documentation on executed people who died of starvation and disease. good reason: Most of them could neither read nor write.

The bodies of the dead were simply stuffed into pits or dumped in the forest, so that in addition to mines, the land of Cambodia is also littered with skeletons. The only place where they tried to register prisoners in any way was the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, located on Tuol Sleng hill, whose name eloquently translates as Poison Hill.

Since the cities were empty and there were only revolutionaries and members of their families, it is not surprising that in Tuol Sleng they exterminated mainly "traitors" from their own ranks. Many photographs of prisoners and their "confession letters" were found in the prison archive.

Most of those held here are Khmer teenagers. It is known that at least half of the approximately 20,000 prisoners who came here in four years were killed after severe torture. It now houses the Genocide Museum.

However, both the language in which the program was written and the mention of sweet dishes in it are far from accidental. As already mentioned, almost all Khmer Rouge were children. Average age fighters was 14 years old, and these peasant children, who grew up during the war, had no idea at all about the structure of life on Earth. It was convenient to work with such material: they were not afraid of death, did not ask difficult questions, did not suffer from excessive civility, and firmly believed everything that their leaders said. They knew how to handle machine guns perfectly, they were much worse with hoes, and they didn’t know how to read, write and think at all, but that was just a plus. Because it was precisely such brave soldiers that Pol Pot needed, or, as they began to call him, Brother number one (the rest of the government members were brothers under different numbers, up to brother number eight).

The cities stood as deserted and terrible monuments to themselves. The “People of April” were sent to rural and forest areas, where, under the supervision of the Khmers, they set up camps, cleared the forest, cleared the fields with their bodies and began to implement the main plan of the party, which was called “We will give three tons of rice per hectare!”. Rice was badly needed by Pol Pot. His power was quickly recognized as legitimate by China, which promised to provide Kampuchea with the necessary equipment, primarily military equipment, provided, of course, that Khmer comrades had currency. And the easiest way to exchange currency is for rice, which itself is actually a currency. Pol Pot never practiced agriculture. His closest associates were also not big specialists in rice growing.

From what ceiling they took this figure - three tons per hectare - is difficult to answer. Now, with modern technology and fertilizers, hybrid varieties can bring more than ten tons, but in the 70s, when the green revolution was just beginning, one and a half tons per hectare was an excellent result. As the Revolution pointed out, "three tons of rice per hectare will be a brilliant testament to the collective revolutionary will of the people." They became. Since a dispute with top officials was considered a rebellion and was punishable by immediate execution, the overseers of the labor settlements did not write truthful reports - they sent peppy reports to the center, knowing for sure that they would not be able to collect any three tons per hectare. Fleeing from the regular execution, they quickly sold the harvested rice to the Chinese and fled the country, leaving the "April people" to die of hunger. Least of all, however, Pol Pot was worried about the "people of April": they were still subject to destruction.

Hoe on points

Khmer Rouge wedding

As soon as he came to power, Pol Pot abolished money, religion, private property, women's long hair (as too unhygienic and bourgeois), education, books, love, family dinners, diversity in dress and medicine. All this was considered alien to the true Kampuchean spirit. And the "April people", and progressive peasants and workers, and Khmer soldiers, and members of the government had to wear the same black cotton suits - trousers and a shirt.

There was no difference between men's and women's clothing. Everyone fed together at long tables, since Pol Pot personally insisted that the traditions of family dinners are a bourgeois ceremony, a hotbed of musty philistine ideas. They entered into marriage on the orders of the authorities, who made up suitable couples to their liking. Teenagers from among the military were appointed doctors. Since there were no medicines anyway, and they were not able to produce them in Cambodia, the order was given to focus on “old traditions traditional medicine". Of course, at first there were doctors, teachers and even unfinished engineers in the country, but Pol Pot hated the intelligentsia with a completely bestial passion, they were not even ranked among the “people of April”.

These were official enemies who were forbidden to marry and have children, they were used in the most difficult jobs, and those who were too weak or sick were slaughtered especially zealously. Those of the doctors who still managed to survive were strictly forbidden to engage in treatment. Books in many settlements were completely banned. Wearing glasses was also terribly persecuted - putting glasses on your eyes was tantamount to admitting that you were a secret bookworm practicing seditious thoughts. It was possible to kill a person suspected of hiding his education even without the consent of his superiors. The only thing that was strictly forbidden was to waste valuable cartridges on such rubbish, so young Khmers had to learn how to break their heads with hoes and clubs. Children aged 5-6 years were taken away from their parents and sent to separate children's settlements, where they learned rural labor, fighting in the jungle and revolutionary chants. At the age of 11 they were drafted into the army.

Are the Khmer Rouge still with us?

Oddly enough, but there were many Cambodians who were quite satisfied with this state of affairs. It's nice to know that the neighbor's pants are no better than yours; it's easy to live when you don't have to think about anything; the heavy burden of freedom of choice has been lifted from your shoulders, and you know, clear the reeds and sing about the sacred hatred of the workers ... So, when the Vietnamese expelled Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge from most of Cambodia, locking them in remote mountainous regions, at least a hundred thousand peasants left next. For almost twenty years, the Khmer did not give up. Cambodia, which has become Cambodia again, has long been living in love and friendship with most of its enemies, the United States is integrating it into the world economy, a descendant of Sihanouk who is fond of ballet sits on the throne, political parties succeed each other at the helm - and the Khmer Rouge all march around the fires with chants and make military sorties into the territory of the slaves of imperialism...

The confrontation lasted until 1998, when the sick and old Pol Pot finally let go of the reins of power. The Khmer Rouge themselves arrested their former leader and tried - however, they only sentenced him to house arrest. But it no longer mattered, since on April 16, 1998, Pol Pot died. A few months before his death, he managed to give an interview for the Hong Kong magazine Far Eastern Economic Review, where he said that “everything he did, he did out of love and pity for the people,” and categorically refused to admit guilt in the genocide of his people, emphasizing that all this is an invention of the enemies. After his death, the Khmer organization crumbled completely. Former Khmer Rouge, except for very odious characters, are not particularly persecuted, some of them today even occupy quite high government posts.

According to an unspoken social contract, it was decided, perhaps, for all the inhabitants of Kampuchea not to arrange noisy trials over such a still recent and painful past.

The sixty-eighth year of the twentieth century entered our history not only with loud protests in the countries of the West and the socialist camp, which undoubtedly shook the world in their own way, but also with one, at first glance, a very insignificant event, but very interesting and later very hyped from different sides.

In 1968, an informal movement took shape in Cambodia. "Khmer Rouge", which initially consisted mainly of Khmers (Cambodians), who studied in France and adopted elements of various leftist ideologies there. Then their ranks began to be replenished mainly by teenagers of 12-15 years old from peasant families who had lost their parents and hated the townspeople as "accomplices of the Americans."

Their ideology, on the one hand, included abstract ideas social justice and universal equality, on the other hand, a powerful rejection of scientific progress and everything modern. They seriously believed that the salvation of the country would be getting rid of the evil of a foreign civilization and a kind of "return to the roots."
In a relatively stable environment, such a dubious group would have little chance of coming to power, but in Cambodia of those years, a lot of factors accumulated to facilitate the rise of the Khmer Rouge to power. We will only mention the main ones.

The Khmer people for a long time had aversion, on the one hand, to their neighbors - Vietnam and Thailand, because of the constant wars with them, and on the other hand, to Western countries that turned Cambodia into a squirrel, spinning for the sake of various Western magnates. The Khmer Rouge actively used this rejection to promote their ideas.

At the same time, the King of Cambodia Norodom Sihanouk, set out to create friendly relations with the Soviet Union and receive financial assistance from it. Cambodia of those years represented a state dominated by capitalist relations with a large public sector and partially nationalized entrepreneurship. He gave out this type of economic structure as a purely socialist one, which could not but appeal to the then leadership of the Soviet Union. Also, so that the USSR would not have doubts about the friendly intentions of the king, Sihanouk allowed the Vietnamese troops to move freely in Cambodia.

This, of course, caused a US response and very soon, American B-52s literally bombed every kilometer of the country, which gave rise to powerful popular indignation. For comparison, the number of bombs during Operation Menu was comparable to the number of bombs dropped on Germany during the entire Second World War.

In 1970, power was seized by an armed pro-American group led by General Lon Nol. Their actions, focused on supporting the United States and creating the appearance of democratization, unwittingly contributed to an increase in popular support for their opponents - the Khmer Rouge movement, which successfully took the frontier abroad. In those years, the Khmer Rouge was distinguished by a special primitive aggressive closed structure and was one of the most opaque organizations in the world. Even the appearance of the first persons of the movement was for a long time a strict secret, for the violation of which inevitable death awaited. This, in turn, had a negative impact later on.

The result of this war was "great day april 17th"- the entry of Khmer troops into Phnom Penh in 1975, met with the jubilation of the masses. But it did not last long. The smiles of compatriots were replaced by indignation when the sound of sirens sounded and a tough demand was put forward to move to the so-called. "agricultural communities".

The next life was hard. Many did not endure the long and hungry road to the jungle, those who were lucky enough to get there had to settle down there. In organized "communes", a military organizational structure was introduced, people were sent to clear the jungle, cultivate rice, build dams, dig canals. Due to the lack of equipment, all work was done manually. Many people, not adapted to life in the jungle, simply died from hard work. Former doctors, chemists, journalists, engineers were forced to work outside their specialty, with difficulty getting used to new conditions.

Some researchers Democratic Kampuchea they say that a few years after the creation of a relatively stable agrarian basis, steps were taken towards industrialization, banknotes were again introduced into circulation. However, these measures were unlikely to be any significant, since there is no particular reflection in any data (with the exception of the DC propaganda materials).

During these years, anti-Vietnamese sentiment was especially strong, both within the party and among the Khmer people. Therefore, precedents for the cleansing of ethnic minorities in the territory of Kampuchea (mainly Cambodian Chams and Viets) began to become more frequent. It even came to armed clashes in Vietnam, which provoked a large-scale military conflict that ended in the defeat of the Khmer Rouge and the proclamation of the pro-Vietnamese People's Republic of Kampuchea.

The pro-Vietnamese communists who came to power began a course towards industrialization and building a socialist state, however, the process of final decomposition that is in full swing Soviet system, provoked a sharp restriction of financial assistance to Vietnam and the People's Republic of China from the USSR. Therefore, the process of building a socialist state ended as soon as it began. One of the most serious steps towards curtailing it was the legalization of the private sector of the economy in the NRC in 1986. The final weakening of Vietnam could no longer keep the NRC under control, and in this regard, the Vietnamese troops were completely withdrawn from the NRC in 1989.

The pro-American forces began to actively take over the liberated country, and already in 1993 “democratic” elections were held, with quite expected results. As a result, the monarchy was returned and the same Norodom Sihanouk was crowned, who had previously promised that he would never again take the royal throne. The building of peripheral capitalism began in the country, which we can observe today.

Speaking about the defeat of the Khmer Rouge, I would like to say first of all about the lack of clear views in the party. It gave rise to a hodgepodge of anarcho-communist-nationalist prejudices, which did not allow for an adequate government of the country. The top of the PKK after April 17 simply didn’t know what to do, and, in this regard, they preferred to act “on the thumb track”, turning the country into one big partisan cooperative, although there was no one to fight with. A few years later, seeing the deplorable situation, they may have tried to get out of the crisis by starting an attempt to industrialize and get involved in military conflicts, but the defeat in the military conflict put an end to this.

Why is the history of Kampuchea still relevant today?

Using the radical measures of the Khmer Rouge, as well as the official declaration of communist views, it is very convenient to transfer the shortcomings and excesses of the Khmer to left-wing views in general, in addition to inflating the concept of the “killing fields”, finally demonizing the entire red movement. On the other hand, occasionally there are lovers of the "tough and radical" who, on the contrary, defend the infallibility of Pol Pot and his supporters and offer us to step on the same rake today.

We must approach the Khmer Rouge objectively, although this is far from always possible. Almost all historical research about them was compiled by interested parties: either these are materials from Thailand, the USA, Vietnam and the USSR, or these are propaganda materials from Democratic Kampuchea itself. It is obvious that the truth lies somewhere in the middle, only the question remains, is this middle closer to what - to the "killing fields" or to the "new Angkor"? We may never find the answer to this question.

1. Native O. Pol Pot. Cambodia - an empire on the bones? - M.: Algorithm, 2013. - 320 p.
2. See Batuk massacre, Phu Quoc and Tho Chu attacks

"Khmer Rouge"- the informal name of the far left trend in the communist agrarian movement in Cambodia, created in 1968. Their ideology was based on Maoism (in the most rigid interpretation), the rejection of everything Western and modern. The number is about 30 thousand people. Basically, the movement was replenished by teenagers aged 12-16, who had lost their parents and hated the townspeople as "accomplices of the Americans."

On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, established a dictatorship and announced the start of a "revolutionary experiment" to build a "100% communist society" in Cambodia. The state of Cambodia was renamed Democratic Kampuchea.

At the first stage, all city residents were evicted to the countryside, foreign languages ​​and books were banned, commodity-money relations were liquidated, Buddhist monks were persecuted and religions were completely banned, schools and universities were banned, and officials and military personnel of the former regime at all levels were physically destroyed.

On April 17, 1975, over two million people were evicted from Phnom Penh, and they were not allowed to take anything with them. “In accordance with the order, all residents were obliged to leave the city. It was forbidden to take food and things. Those who refused to obey the order or hesitated were killed and shot. Neither the elderly, nor the disabled, nor pregnant women, nor the sick who were in hospitals escaped this fate. People had to walk, despite the rain or the scorching sun ... During the journey they were not given any food or medicine ... Only on the banks of the Mekong, when the Phnom Penh people were transported to remote areas of the country, about five hundred thousand people died.

Higher forms of cooperatives were created throughout the country, in which people driven from the cities were engaged in low-skilled physical labor under the most difficult conditions. With primitive tools or by hand, people worked 12-16 hours a day, and sometimes longer. According to the few who managed to survive, in many areas their daily food was only one bowl of rice for 10 people. The leaders of the Pol Pot regime created a network of spies and encouraged mutual denunciations in order to paralyze the will of the people to resist.

For criminal offenses (for example, for a banana plucked from a commune tree), the death penalty threatened.

Repressions were practiced according to national and social parameters (ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese, individual Cham peoples, former representatives of the ruling classes and even those with higher education; most students, teachers, Buddhist monks).

Teachers, doctors, priests, the intelligentsia were destroyed (at the same time, anyone who wore glasses, read books, knew foreign language, wore decent clothes, in particular European cut), as well as those suspected of having links with the previous government or foreign governments. It was forbidden to write and read.

The massacres perpetrated by the “Khmer Rouge” defy description: “The population of the village of Sreseam was almost completely destroyed ... soldiers drove children, tied them in a chain, pushed them into funnels filled with water and buried them alive ... People were driven to the edge of the trench, struck with a shovel or hoe back of the head, and pushed down. When there were too many people to be liquidated, they were gathered in groups of several dozen people, entangled with steel wire, passed current from a generator mounted on a bulldozer, and then pushed the unconscious people into a pit and covered them with earth. Even his own wounded soldiers, Pol Pot ordered to be killed so as not to spend money on medicines.

Vietnamese, Chams were exterminated on ethnic grounds, Christians, Muslims and Buddhist monks were killed on religious grounds.

Monks were destroyed (out of 60,000 monks, about 3,000 remained alive), statues of Buddhas and Buddhist books, pagodas and temples were turned into warehouses, not a single active pagoda out of 2,800 that existed in the former Cambodia remained.

From 1975 to January 1979, all 60,000 Christians, both priests and laity, were killed. Churches were looted, most blown up.

Of the 20,000 Muslims living in Kampongsiem district (Kampongcham province), not a single person survived. Of the 20,000 Muslims in Kampong Meas County in the same province, only four survived. All 108 mosques were destroyed and devastated, some of them were turned into pigsties, blown up or bulldozed.

The Pol Pot regime left behind 141,848 disabled people, more than 200,000 orphans, numerous widows who could not find their families. The survivors were debilitated, unable to reproduce, and in a state of poverty and complete physical exhaustion.

634,522 buildings were destroyed, of which 5,857 schools, as well as 796 hospitals, paramedical stations and laboratories, 1968 churches were destroyed or turned into storage facilities or prisons. The Pol Potites destroyed a myriad of agricultural tools, as well as 1,507,416 heads of cattle.”

Democratic Kampuchea

Democratic Kampuchea is a state that existed from 1975 to 1979 on the territory of Cambodia. The name was given by the Khmer Rouge during their reign.

Democratic Kampuchea was a recognized state - it was recognized by the UN, Albania and North Korea. The USSR also de facto recognized the Khmer Rouge government as it invited Pol Pot to Moscow.

The Khmer Rouge maintained external communications only with China, North Korea, Albania, Romania and France.

The names and portraits of the leaders of the country (Pol Pot - Brother No. 1, Nuon Chea - Brother No. 2, Ieng Sari - Brother No. 3, Ta Mok - Brother No. 4, Khieu Samphan - Brother No. 5) were kept secret from the population.

Fall of the Khmer Rouge

In April 1975, the Vietnam War ended: North Vietnamese troops took Saigon, South Vietnam fell and the country was united. In the same month, the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh, thereby winning the civil war in Cambodia. Almost immediately after that, relations between the two countries began to deteriorate rapidly.

Historically, Cambodia and Vietnam have been at enmity with each other, but more important were the tensions that arose between the leadership of Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge in the early 1970s. At first, the North Vietnamese army took an active part in the Cambodian civil war on the side of the Khmer Rouge, but deep disagreements between the allies revealed that in 1972-1973 North Vietnam withdrew its troops from the front line.

Already in May 1975, the first armed incidents occurred on the Cambodian-Vietnamese border. They (like all subsequent ones) were provoked by the Cambodian side.

In 1977, after some lull, there was a sharp surge in hostilities. The Khmer Rouge crossed the border and killed Vietnamese civilians. The biggest tragedy occurred in April 1978 in the village of Bachuk, An Giang province, whose entire population - 3,000 people - was exterminated. Such actions could not go unpunished, and the Vietnamese army made several raids on the territory of Cambodia.

In December 1978, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Cambodia to overthrow the Khmer Rouge regime. The country fell into such decline that, due to the lack of telephone communications, the Khmer Rouge had to deliver combat reports on bicycles.

Phnom Penh was taken on January 7, 1979. Power was transferred to the United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea, led by Heng Samrin.

The fall happened so rapidly that Pol Pot had to flee Phnom Penh two hours before the triumphant appearance in the capital of the army of Hanoi. However, Pol Pot was not going to give up. He fortified himself in a secret base with a handful of his loyal followers and formed the National Liberation Front of the Khmer People. The Khmer Rouge retreated in an organized manner into the jungle on the border with Thailand. This area became their home base for the next two decades.

Meanwhile, China - the only country with close ties to the Pol Pot regime - was watching with annoyance. By this time, Vietnam foreign policy finally reoriented to the USSR, with which China continued to maintain extremely tense relations. The Chinese leadership publicly announced its intention to "teach Vietnam a lesson" in connection with the occupation of Cambodia, and on February 17, 1979, the Chinese army invaded Vietnam. The war was fierce and fleeting - by mid-March, hostilities were over. Formally, Vietnam won.

After repelling Chinese aggression, the Vietnamese army launched a new offensive against the Khmer Rouge. By the middle of the year, she controlled all the main cities of Cambodia.

Since the Heng Samrin government army was still too weak, Vietnam continued to keep a military contingent in Cambodia with a constant strength of 170-180 thousand people.

The strengthening of the Cambodian government army and international changes led to the fact that by the end of the 1980s, Vietnam began to curtail its participation in the war. In September 1989, the complete withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia was announced, but there were still Vietnamese military advisers there. The war between the Cambodian government and the Khmer Rouge continued for about a decade.

According to available estimates, during more than ten years of being in Cambodia, the Vietnamese army lost about 25 thousand soldiers killed.

killing fields

The killing fields are places in Cambodia where, under the Khmer Rouge government (in 1975-1979), a large number of people were killed and buried - according to various estimates, from one and a half to three million people, with a total population of 7 million.

The legal process associated with political crimes began with the fact that a person received a warning from Angkar - the de facto government of Cambodia. Those who received more than two warnings were sent to "retraining", which meant almost certain death. Usually, the "retrained" were forced to confess to "pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes" (which usually included either business activities or connections with foreigners), declaring that Angkar would forgive them and "start from scratch." Blank sheet consisted in the fact that the confessed was sent to Tuol Sleng for torture and subsequent execution.

A variety of tortures were used on the victims, including pulling out nails, forcing them to swallow excrement and urine, hanging, and many others. In order to conserve ammunition, people were often killed with hammers, axes, shovels, or pointed bamboo sticks. The executions were carried out mainly by young soldiers from the countryside.

The most famous killing field is Choeng Ek. Today there is a Buddhist memorial in memory of the victims of terror.

The exact number of deaths at the hands of the Khmer Rouge is a matter of dispute - the government installed by the Vietnamese who overthrew Pol Pot's regime claimed 3.3 million victims, while according to the CIA, the Khmer executed from 50 to 100 thousand people, and up to 1.2 million died in total. mostly from hunger. More recent estimates give approximately 1.7 million victims.

The current state of the Khmer Rouge

In 1998, after the death of leader Pol Pot, the movement continued to exist. In 2005, the Khmer Rouge detachments were active in the region of the provinces of Ratanakiri and Styngtraeng.

On July 21, 2006, the last commander of the Khmer Rouge, Ta Mok, died. Nothing is known about the new leadership of the movement.

On September 19, 2007, 80-year-old Nuon Chea, nicknamed "Brother Number Two", was arrested and charged with crimes against humanity. In the 50s and 60s, Nuon Chea helped the dictator Pol Pot come to power and then became the main ideologist of the movement. A few weeks later, other key Khmer Rouge figures who had previously surrendered to the Cambodian government (including Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan) were arrested. All of them are currently awaiting trial.

Now the remnants of the Khmer Rouge units continue to hide in the jungle, trading in robbery and smuggling.

A whole nation with its traditions of ancient culture and reverence for faith was brutally mutilated by a Marxist fanatic. Pol Pot, with the silent connivance of the whole world, turned a flourishing country into a huge cemetery...
Imagine that a government comes to power and announces a ban on money. And not only for money: commerce, industry, banks - everything that brings wealth is prohibited. The new government announces by decree that society is once again becoming agrarian, as it was in the Middle Ages. Residents of cities and towns are forcibly resettled in the countryside, where they will be engaged exclusively in peasant labor. But family members should not live together: children should not fall under the influence of the "bourgeois ideas" of their parents. Therefore, children are taken away and brought up in the spirit of devotion to the new regime. No books until adulthood. Books are no longer needed, so they are burned, and children from the age of seven work for the Khmer Rouge state.
An eighteen-hour working day is established for the new agrarian class, hard labor is combined with "re-education" in the spirit of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism under the leadership of the new masters. Dissidents who show sympathy for the old order have no right to life. The intelligentsia, teachers, university professors, generally literate people are subject to extermination, since they can read materials hostile to the ideas of Marxism-Leninism and spread seditious ideology among workers reeducated in the peasant field. The clergy, politicians of all stripes, except for those who share the views of the ruling party, people who made a fortune under the previous authorities are no longer needed - they are also being destroyed. Trade and telephone communications are curtailed, temples are destroyed, bicycles, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, holidays, love and kindness are cancelled. In the best case - labor for the purpose of "re-education", otherwise - torture, torment, degradation, in the worst case - death.
This nightmarish scenario is not the convoluted figment of the fevered imagination of a science fiction writer. It is the epitome of the horrifying reality of life in Cambodia, where the murderous dictator Pol Pot turned back time by destroying civilization in an attempt to fulfill his twisted vision of a classless society. His "killing fields" were strewn with the corpses of those who did not fit into the framework of the new world formed by him and his bloodthirsty minions. During the reign of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, about three million people died - the same number of unfortunate victims perished in the gas chambers of the Nazi death factory Auschwitz during World War II. Life under Pol Pot was unbearable, and as a result of the tragedy that broke out on the land of this ancient country in Southeast Asia, its long-suffering population came up with a new eerie name for Cambodia - the Land of the Walking Dead.
The tragedy of Cambodia is a consequence Vietnam War, which first broke out on the wreckage of French colonialism, and then grew into a conflict with the Americans. Fifty-three thousand Cambodians died on the battlefields. Between 1969 and 1973, American B-52 bombers carpet-bombed this tiny country with as many tons of explosives as had been dropped on Germany in the last two years of World War II. Vietnamese fighters - the Viet Cong - used the impenetrable jungle of a neighboring country to set up military camps and bases during operations against the Americans. These strongholds were bombed by American planes.
Prince Norodom Sihanouk, ruler of Cambodia and heir to its religious and cultural traditions, renounced his royal title ten years before the start of the Vietnam War, but remained head of state. He tried to lead the country along the path of neutrality, balancing between warring countries and conflicting ideologies. Sihanouk became king of Cambodia, a French protectorate, back in 1941, but abdicated in 1955. However, then, after free elections, he returned to the leadership of the country as head of state.
During the escalation of the Vietnam War from 1966 to 1969, Sihanouk fell out of favor with Washington's political leadership for not taking decisive action against arms smuggling and the establishment of Vietnamese guerrilla camps in the jungles of Cambodia. However, he was also quite soft in his criticism of the US-led punitive air raids.
On March 18, 1970, while Sihanouk was in Moscow, his Prime Minister, General Lon Nol, with the support of the White House, staged a coup d'état, returning Cambodia to its ancient name Khmer. The United States recognized the Khmer Republic, but a month later they invaded it. Sihanouk found himself in exile in Beijing. And here the ex-king made a choice, entering into an alliance with the devil himself.

Little is known about Pol Pot. This is a man with the appearance of a handsome old man and the heart of a bloody tyrant. It was with this monster that Sihanouk teamed up. Together with the leader of the Khmer Rouge, they vowed to merge their forces together for a common goal - the defeat of American troops.
Pol Pot, who grew up in a peasant family in the Cambodian province of Kampongghom and received his primary education in a Buddhist monastery, spent two years as a monk. In the fifties he studied electronics in Paris and, like many students of that time, became involved in the left movement. Here Pol Pot heard - it is still not known whether they met - about another student, Khieu Samphan, whose controversial but imaginative plans for an "agrarian revolution" fueled Pol Pot's great-power ambitions.
According to Samphan's theory, Cambodia, in order to achieve progress, had to turn back, renounce capitalist exploitation, fattening leaders fed by the French colonial rulers, abandon devalued bourgeois values ​​and ideals. The perverted theory of Samphan was that people should live in the fields, and all temptations modern life should be destroyed. If Pol Pot at that time, say, had been hit by a car, this theory would probably have died out in coffee houses and bars without stepping over the boundaries of Parisian boulevards. However, she was destined to become a monstrous reality.
From 1970 to 1975, Pol Pot's "revolutionary army" turned into a powerful force in Cambodia, controlling vast agricultural areas. On April 17, 1975, the dictator's dream of power became a reality: his troops, marching under red flags, entered the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. A few hours after the coup, Pol Pot called a special meeting of his new cabinet and announced that the country would henceforth be known as Kampuchea. The dictator outlined an audacious plan to build a new society and declared that it would take only a few days to implement it. Pol Pot announced the evacuation of all cities under the leadership of the newly minted regional and zonal leaders, ordered the closure of all markets, the destruction of churches and the dispersal of all religious communities. Having been educated abroad, he harbored a hatred for educated people and ordered the execution of all teachers, professors and even kindergarten teachers.
The first to die were high-ranking members of the cabinet of ministers and functionaries of the Lon Nol regime. They were followed by the officer corps of the old army. All were buried in mass graves. At the same time, doctors were killed because of their "education". All religious communities were destroyed - they were considered "reactionary". Then the evacuation of towns and villages began.
Realization of Pol Pot's twisted dream - to turn back time and force his people to live in agricultural society Marxist - helped his deputy Ieng Sari. In his policy of destruction, Pol Pot used the term "get out of sight". "Cleaned" - destroyed thousands and thousands of women and men, old people and babies.
Buddhist temples were desecrated or turned into soldiers' brothels, or even just slaughterhouses. As a result of the terror, out of sixty thousand monks, only three thousand returned to the destroyed temples and holy cloisters.
Pol Pot's decree effectively eradicated ethnic minorities. The use of Vietnamese, Thai and Chinese was punishable by death. A purely Khmer society was proclaimed. The forcible eradication of ethnic groups had a particularly hard effect on the Chan people. Their ancestors - people from today's Vietnam - inhabited the ancient Kingdom of Champa. The Chans migrated to Cambodia in the XVII! century and were engaged in fishing along the banks of Cambodian rivers and lakes. They professed Islam and were the most significant ethnic group in modern Cambodia, preserving the purity of their language, national cuisine, clothing, hairstyles, religious and ritual traditions.
Young Khmer Rouge fanatics attacked the vats like locusts. Their settlements were burned, the inhabitants were expelled into the swamps, teeming with mosquitoes. People were forcibly forced to eat pork, which was strictly forbidden by their religion, the clergy were ruthlessly destroyed. At the slightest resistance, entire communities were exterminated, and the corpses were thrown into huge pits and covered with lime. Of the 200,000 vats, less than half survived.
Those who survived the beginning of the campaign of terror later realized that instant death was better than hellish torment under the new regime.

"bourgeois" criminals

According to Pol Pot, the older generation was corrupted by feudal and bourgeois views, infected with "sympathy" for Western democracies, which he declared alien to the national way of life. The urban population was driven from their habitable places to labor camps, where hundreds of thousands of people were tortured to death by overwork.
People were killed even for trying to speak French - the biggest crime in the eyes of the Khmer Rouge, as it was considered a manifestation of nostalgia for the country's colonial past.

In huge camps with no amenities other than a straw mat as a bed for sleeping and a bowl of rice at the end of the working day, in conditions that even the prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps of the Second World War would not envy, merchants, teachers, entrepreneurs, only survivors because they managed to hide their professions, as well as thousands of other townspeople.
These camps were organized in such a way as to get rid of the elderly and the sick, pregnant women and young children through "natural selection".
People died in hundreds and thousands from disease, hunger and exhaustion, under the clubs of cruel overseers.
Without medical assistance, except for traditional herbal treatments, the life expectancy of the prisoners of these camps was frustratingly short.
At dawn, people were sent in formation to the malaria swamps, where they cleared the jungle for twelve hours a day. unsuccessful attempts win new crop land from them. At sunset, again in formation, urged on by the bayonets of the guards, people returned to the camp to their bowl of rice, liquid gruel and a piece of dried fish. Then, despite the terrible fatigue, they still had to go through political classes on Marxist ideology, in which incorrigible "bourgeois elements" were identified and punished, while the rest, like parrots, kept repeating phrases about the joys of life in the new state. Every ten working days, a long-awaited day off was due, for which twelve hours of ideological studies were planned. The wives lived separately from the husbands. Their children began to work from the age of seven or were placed at the disposal of childless party functionaries, who brought them up fanatical "fighters of the revolution."
From time to time, huge bonfires made of books were made in the city squares. Crowds of unfortunate tortured people were driven to these fires, who were forced to chant memorized phrases in chorus, while the flames devoured the masterpieces of world civilization. "Lessons of hatred" were organized, when people were whipped in front of portraits of the leaders of the old regime. It was an ominous world of horror and hopelessness.
The Pol Potites severed diplomatic relations with all countries, postal and telephone communications did not work, entry into and exit from the country were prohibited. The Cambodian people found themselves isolated from the whole world.
To strengthen the fight against real and imaginary enemies, Pol Pot organized a sophisticated system of torture and executions in his prison camps. As in the days of the Spanish Inquisition, the dictator and his henchmen proceeded from the premise that those who fell into these damned places were guilty and they had only to admit their guilt. In order to convince its followers of the need for brutal measures to achieve the goals of "national revival", the regime gave torture a special political significance.
Documents seized after the overthrow of Pol Pot show that Khmer security officers, trained by Chinese instructors, were guided by cruel ideological principles in their activities. "Interrogation Manual S-21" - one of the documents later handed over to the UN - stated: "The purpose of torture is to obtain an adequate response from interrogators. Torture is not used for entertainment. Pain must be inflicted in such a way that
cause a quick reaction. Another goal is a psychological breakdown and loss of will of the interrogated. In torture, one should not proceed from one's own anger or self-satisfaction. It is necessary to beat the wearer in such a way as to intimidate him, and not beat him to death. Before proceeding to torture, it is necessary to examine the state of health of the interrogated person and examine the instruments of torture. You should not try to kill the interrogated by all means. During interrogation, political considerations are the main ones, causing pain is secondary. Therefore, you should never forget that you are doing political work. Even during interrogations, agitation and propaganda work should be constantly carried out. At the same time, it is necessary to avoid indecision and hesitation in the course of torture, when it is possible to get answers to our questions from the enemy. It must be remembered that indecision can slow down our work. In other words, in propaganda and educational work of this kind, it is necessary to show determination, perseverance, and categoricalness. We must proceed to torture without first explaining the reasons or motives. Only then will the enemy be defeated."
Among the many sophisticated torture methods used by Khmer Rouge executioners, the most favorite were the notorious Chinese water torture, crucifixion, and strangulation with a plastic bag. Site S-21, which gave the document its title, was the most infamous camp in all of Cambodia. It was located in the northeast of the country. At least thirty thousand victims of the regime were martyred here. Only seven survived, and even then only because the administrative skills of the prisoners were needed by their masters to manage this terrible institution.
But torture was not the only tool to intimidate the already frightened population of the country. There are many cases when the guards in the camps caught the prisoners, driven to despair by hunger, eating their dead comrades in misfortune. The punishment for this was a terrible death. The guilty were buried up to their necks in the ground and left to a slow death from hunger and thirst, and their still living flesh was tormented by ants and other living creatures. Then the heads of the victims were cut off and put on stakes around the settlement. A sign was hung around the neck: "I am a traitor to the revolution!"
Dit Pran, Cambodian translator for American journalist Sydney Schoenberg, lived through all the horrors of Pol Pot's rule. The inhuman ordeals he had to go through are documented in the movie Killing Field, in which before
for the first time, the suffering of the Cambodian people appeared to the whole world with stunning nakedness. The heartbreaking narration of Prana's journey from civilized childhood to the death camp horrified viewers.
“In my prayers,” Pran said, “I asked the Almighty to save me from the unbearable torment that I had to endure. But some of my loved ones managed to flee the country and take refuge in America. For their sake, I continued to live, but it was not life but a nightmare."

Skull mounds

Pran was lucky enough to survive this bloody Asian nightmare and reunite with his family in San Francisco in 1979. But in the remote corners of a devastated country that survived a terrible tragedy, there are still mass graves of nameless victims, over which mounds of human skulls rise with mute reproach.
In the end, thanks to military might, and not morality and law, it was possible to stop the bloody slaughter and restore at least a semblance of common sense to the tormented land. Britain should be given credit for speaking out in 1978 against human rights violations after reports of rampant terror in Cambodia through intermediaries in Thailand, but this protest went unheeded. Britain issued a statement to the UN Commission on Human Rights, but a representative of the Khmer Rouge hysterically retorted: "British imperialists have no right to talk about human rights. The whole world is well aware of their barbaric nature. Britain's leaders are drowning in luxury, while the proletariat has the right only unemployment, sickness and prostitution."
In December 1978, Vietnamese troops, who had been in conflict with the Khmer Rouge for many years over disputed border areas, entered Cambodia with the help of several motorized infantry divisions, supported by tanks. The country fell into such decline that, due to the lack of telephone communications, it was necessary deliver combat reports on bicycles.

In early 1979, the Vietnamese occupied Phnom Penh. A few hours before, Pol Pot left the deserted capital in a white armored Mercedes. The bloody dictator hurried to his Chinese masters, who provided him with shelter, but did not support him in the fight against the heavily armed Viet Cong.
When the whole world became aware of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime and the devastation that reigned in the country, aid rushed to Cambodia in a powerful stream. The Khmer Rouge, like the Nazis in their time, were very pedantic in recording their crimes. The investigation uncovered journals in which daily executions and torture were recorded in the most detailed way, hundreds of albums with photographs of those sentenced to death, including the wives and children of intellectuals liquidated in the initial stages of terror, detailed documentation of the notorious "killing fields". These fields, conceived as the basis of a labor utopia, a country without money and needs, in fact turned out to be mass graves of the day of burial of people crushed under the yoke of cruel tyranny.
Pol Pot, who seemed to have gone into oblivion, has recently reappeared on the political horizon as a force claiming power in this long-suffering country. Like all tyrants, he claims that his subordinates made mistakes, that he faced resistance on all fronts, and that those who died were "enemies of the state." Returning to Cambodia in 1981, at a secret meeting among his old friends near the Thai border, he declared that he was too trusting: "My policy was correct. Overzealous regional commanders and leaders on the ground perverted my orders. Accusations of massacres are vile a lie. If we really destroyed people in such numbers, the people would have ceased to exist long ago."

Angel of Death

A "misunderstanding" at the cost of three million lives, almost a quarter of the country's population, is too innocent a word to describe what was done in the name of Pol Pot and on his orders. But, following the well-known Nazi principle - the more monstrous the lie, the more people is able to believe in her - Pol Pot is still eager for power and hopes to gather forces in rural areas, which, in his opinion, are still loyal to him.
He again became a major political figure and is waiting for an opportunity to reappear in the country as an angel of death, seeking revenge and completing the work he had previously begun - his "great agrarian revolution."
There is a growing movement in international circles to recognize the massacre committed in Cambodia as a crime against humanity - like Hitler's genocide against the Jews. There is a Cambodian Documentation Center in New York, run by Ieng Sam. Like the former prisoner of the Nazi camps Simon Wiesenthal, who long years collecting evidence around the world against Nazi war criminals, Yeng Sam, a survivor of the terror campaign, is accumulating information about the atrocities of the criminals in his country.
Here are his words: "Those who are most guilty of the Cambodian genocide - members of the cabinet of the Pol Pot regime, members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, military leaders of the Khmer Rouge, whose troops took part in the massacres, officials who oversaw executions and directed the system of torture - continue active in Cambodia, hiding in the border areas, they are waging a guerrilla war, seeking to return to power in Phnom Penh.
They were not brought to international legal responsibility for their crimes, and this is a tragic, monstrous injustice.
We, the survivors, remember how we were deprived of our families, how our relatives and friends were brutally murdered. We witnessed how people died from exhaustion, not able to endure slave labor, and from inhuman living conditions to which the Khmer Rouge condemned the Cambodian people.
We have also seen Pol Pot's soldiers destroy our Buddhist temples, shut down our children's schools, suppress our culture and eradicate ethnic minorities. It is difficult for us to understand why free, democratic states and nations do nothing to punish the guilty. Doesn't this issue cry out for justice?"
But there is still no fair solution to this issue.