Ten years after the victory In April 1975 the US intervention in Indochina was defeated. The largest imperialist power in the world, using the most modern military equipment was not sufficient to crush the independent will of the populations of Indochina in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
In 1979 new military conflict began to break out in the region, this time between erstwhile allies in the revolutionary struggle. The contradictions which had been bubbling below the surface prior to 1975 came to a head. The frontier skirmishes between Cambodia and Vietnam developed into full-scale war; Chinese forces began to penetrate into the North of Vietnam.
On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the victory of the Indochinese revolution International Viewpoint takes a look at the lessons of the imperialist offensive, the liberation struggles and the current Sino-Indochinese conflict. We interviewed Pierre Rousset, author of two books on the subject of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP). In the first interview, Rousset talks about the nature of the imperialist war and the lessons for our solidarity work and in the second, about Cambodia, the evolution of the Khmer Rouge and the developments inside the country.
by imperialism, then your conclusion would be different. The more efedin the anti-imperialist solidarity, the less are the dangers of repeating the catas rophe. That is, that it is necessary tin give more support, earlier on.
Q. You mean one should hame given more support to the Khmer Rouge?
A. No, not necessarily. Tibe Cambodian Communist Party does mat only consist of the Khmer Rouge, an the Khmer Rouge is not recarible the Pol Pot faction. And, is any case the crisis in Indochina has, I chimi permitted a clarification of the debat with the Maoist currents of the 196 and 1970s over the conception solidarity.
You have to support struggles and therefore, you had to support the action of those organisations who were leading and directing those struggles, or else such support is merely abstract. But this does not mean that you necessarily support the policy and the programm of those movements.
The Maoist conception at the time was that support should be given on the basis of agreement with the programme of those organisations in struggle. Thus, one would support a Vietnamese front as much as a Cambodian one, depending on the programmes of the different fronts and parties that led them. Nowadays solidarity action is related to the situation in countries where there are several organisations for example in El Salvador, The solidarity movement cannot decide which one has the correct line. Solidarity is unitary. On the other hand, activists in the solidarity movement can, and should, think about the problems raised in the struggle and the risks involved.
As far as solidarity action goes, | would draw two lessons from the experience in Indochina. The first is that being engaged in solidarity work should not preclude independent political judgements. It should be possible to accompany solidarity work with a dialogue, and unity in action with freedom of expression.
But the other lesson is that solidarity is a very necessary and urgent task. That is why solidarity had to be without preconditions. Those in struggle don't have time to wait. And if they do have to wait, they will have to pay a heavy price for the lateness in the solidarity work. Concretely the American bombing of Cambodia in 1973 was probably the decisive turning point that allowed the Pol Pot faction to take control of the liberation movement. The coming to power of this faction of the Cambodian CP and the development of its policy can be explained also by other factors. But if the international solidarity movement had been able to tie Washington's hands and prevent that wave of bombings, the course of history might have been different.
17 inside the country.
Question. Ten years have gone by since the victory of the revolutions in Indochina. The liberation struggles in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos became real symbols for generations of activists in the advanced capitalist countries as well as in colonial countries. However, the victory of these revolutions has rapidly opened up new crises characterised by internal splits and by the eruption of military conflict between China, Vietnam and Cambodia.
Could we discuss the political lessons of the Indochinese revolutions and how to combine these lessons of prolonged revolutionary struggle against imperialism and for socialism with the lessons of the present crisis?
Answer. I think that the experience of the Indochinese revolution offers us many lessons which are interlinked. But in order to draw these lessons it is important to understand the problems in each country concerned and how much the current crisis in Indochina owes to the war. Many people regard the period of the liberation struggles before 1975 as the time of great hope and, completely separate from that, the period after 1978-1979 as a period of disillusion and the Sino-Indochinese war. Each period of course had its own problems that have to be analysed. However, you also have to take into account the policy of the regimes in Indochina, as well as the impact on Indochina of the bureaucratic conflicts between USSR and China. But the general context remains the heritage of colonial and imperialist wars, and, we must not forget today, the revenge policy of imperialism. oi imperialism. International Viewpoint 20 May 1985
Q. The war in Indochina has been over now for ten years or at least the imperialist war has. That is a long time. The main parties to the current military conflicts — that is the Chinese, the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge — are not merely puppets manipulated by Washington. Of course the imperialist powers benefit from these conflicts and try to stir them up, but isn't it to avoid the real issue if you put everything down to the 'heritage of the colonial and imperialist wars?'
A. I don't want to avoid the issue. I will try to take on board all these questions. But you have to begin by stressing the long-term effects of the war, because I really do believe that if you don't you cannot understand anything of the current problems. Also, it is important that the lessons we draw today about the crisis in Indochina don't outweigh those that flow from the historic victory against American imperialism. In the current ideological climate, at least in many Western countries, this question is becoming very important.
Lets take an example. If the explanation of the policies pursued by the Khmer Rouge in power can be found mainly outside of the context of the war and its effects, then, according to some activists, they should have been given less support ... or no support at all. If, on the other hand, you understand that the real evolution of the Cambodian Communist Party - the relation of forces between the different factions and the probable evolution of the Khmer Rouge faction were conditioned by the nature of the war imposed
Q. Isn't that rather hypothetical?
A. Of course. Its like saying if pigs could fly. You can't write a history which has not happened. But equally you should not think that the only development that was possible was the one which actually occured. You must weigh up the impact of events on the course of these struggles and on the social and political movements.
I will try to elaborate. I was once asked what was my explanation of the Sino-Indochinese crisis. My reply was to explain that it was a combination of factors of a differing order of importance; the effects of the war; the impact upon Indochina of the interbureaucratic conflicts between China and the USSR; the pincer movement policy of imperialism which aimed to nip revolutions in the bud; the weight of the national question and uneven development within Indochina as a whole, which was cut artificially by colonisation; the policies pursued by the national leaderships concerned; the state of the mass mobilisations etc.
My questioner was not satisfied. They wanted to know the main reason why hopes were dashed. I suspect they were thinking of the influence of Stalinism. I don't believe you can explain the crisis of Sino-Indochinese relations as stemming from one main reason. In order to understand its depth and brutality, many factors come into play and it is necessary to see how they combine. But if you absolutely had to separate out one determining factor I would reply that it was the relative isolation of these revolutions. Stalinism is only one aspect of this problem.
Of course, the Vietnamese could not have won without Chinese and Soviet aid, without the anti-war movement in France and then in the United States and without the international solidarity movement. But they had to fight hard to get this support and they had to undergo the experience of many betrayals and desertions. Imperialist war was waged in Vietnam almost without interruption for 35 years. At several points the Vietnamese were in a position to win definitively because of their truly heroic struggle. And by that I mean the Vietnamese people and and the organisations who led the organisations who Ted the fight, above all the Vietnamese Communist Party.
Before 1975 victory eluded them at every one of these points because of international factors over which they had no direct influence. In 1945, they won independence. The French workers movement, starting with the PCF (the French Communist Party) and the SFIO (the name of the Socialist Party at the time allowed the government to send a powerful expeditionary recovery force. In 1954, after the Vietnamese victory at Dien Bien Phu, French colonial power was paralysed and potentially defeated. In Moscow and Peking, the West found willing allies for imposing 18 a compromise on the Vietnamese - the Geneva Accords which sowed the seeds for the second Indochinese war.
In 1965, South Vietnam could have been liberated. But the American government were able to send another expeditionary force this time with as many as 550,000 troops. They were able to begin massive bombardments in the North.
In 1968, again an insurrection almost took off in the South - the Tet offensive. But Washington was able to give the order for the bombing of Saigon itself through the use of aircraft carriers outside of the range of the liberation forces.
Here also the lesson is a dual one. It is an object lesson in the tremendous resources thrown up by the revolutionary struggle. Vietnam was able to win despite 35 years of imperialist war, despite the powerful intervention of colonial expeditionary forces, despite the direct involvement of Us forces, despite the total war that the 'Vietnamised American war' was. It was the first time that the US had been beaten in a direct confrontation and, so abjectly, by the people of an imperialist-dominated, economically backward country.
But Vietnam emerged really hammered by this ordeal. All because at four or five crucial moments at least, they were not able to count on the decisive international support to which they had every right. The Vietnamese were not able to destroy French military or US military power at its source, in the imperialist heartlands. In order to paralyse this military power, they needed the intervention of the French and then the American masses and the support of the international solidarity movement, including in the so-called Socialist Bloc. International solidarity remained way below the quality of the struggle itself. And it is now first and foremost the people of Indochina who are paying the price today of this failure.
Q. But would that have really changed anything even if victory were possible in 1945, 1954, 1965 or 1968? I am not talking about the amount of suffering involved. Obviously, the number of dead, wounded, orphaned and refugees would have been a lot less. But in terms of the political regime? Would the Vietnamese or Cambodian regimes have been radically different?
A. Of course. Just in passing, for example, the Khmer Rouge did not exist in 1945 or 1954. This specific current was a product of the disappointment of the Geneva accords in 1954 which forced Cambodian communists to officially disappear from the political map of the country. In 1963, and even in 1968, the Khmer Rouge was still very weak and probably did not yet have the political profile that they had from 1973 on. I don't know what the Cambodian regime would have been like if there had been total victory in Indochina at any of those points but, in any case it would have been something very different from what emerged in 1975.
And this is also true for Vietnam even if the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) retains more historical continuity. A revolution involves a population, social classes, a party or several parties and an army. Everything develops in function of the development of that struggle. And the relation of forces between these different factors also changes. We will come back later to the example of Cambodia, which is the really essential issue.
In 1968 again, victory in Vietnam could have been that of a mass insurrection. The population was organised into bodies created for, and by, the insurrection. The line of the VCP effectively combined the guerilla tactic, the war of movement and mass insurrection. In 1975, it was over. Not because the VCP no longer wanted to rely on the mass insurrection in the main population centres but because American policy had succeeded in denying any possibility of that.
A significant proportion of the population had become refugees; repression had destroyed many of the urban and rural underground structures; the working class had been systematically disrupted both socially and economically; and the exhaustion of large sections of the masses was beginning to make itself felt.
A real revolution took place in 1975 but Saigon did not liberate itself. It was
Vietnamese prisoners being led away by American GIs (DR)
International Viewpoint 20 May 1985
compa passively (and happily) liberated by the armed forces. In the meantime tens of thousands of local revolutionary cadres had been killed. They had to be replaced by cadres who were inexperienced and unrepresentative because they came from other areas. All this affected the situation in Vietnam after the victory very profoundly and constituted one of the most important elements of the difficulties that developed afterwards. A Vietnam victorious in 1968 or 1965, in 1954 or in 1945 would have been a different Vietnam.
I repeat. The line of the VCP was to support insurrection with guerilla action, not to replace insurrection with military conquest. But after 1968, the partial successes of US policy rendered this policy largely inapplicable in certain regions in the south and above all in Saigon.
Q. All that explains the problems immediately following the victory. But ten years later?
A. Ten years later that is still an important element in explaining the situation. One must not think that the effects of such a war on a country like this will be only fleeting. Is ten years really such a long time? Thirty-five years of war, ending in the Vietnamised 'American war', what does this mean in reality? There has never been such a long and total war. The second mao- a long and total war. The second IndoInternational Viewpoint 20 May 1985
The triumphal entry of Vietnamese fighters in Saigon, 30 April 1975, (DR)
chinese war was without precedent. In it was concentrated enormous military resources in a very small theatre of operations.
The intensity of the bombing was much more significant than that in Europe during the Second World War (see box on page 21). It destroyed both nature and human beings. The effects of defoliants and other chemical products which were widely used still continue to be felt. The war destroyed many elements of the social fabric and created millions of refugees inside the country. This was all due to the profound shake-up of the war and the artificial war economy. These refugees have become completely rootless in the society.
The war affected people and their psychology as well. It affected the different organisations, their way of functioning and the mentality of their members. The Vietnamised 'American war' was a total war because it used any means, military and non military; it was acted out in all areas - military, economic, social, cultural, psychological, ecological. It is in this respect that this war was the most modern and the most terrible that humanity has ever known.
At the time we did not really understand exactly what this war meant. And now, new generations will say; "the Vietnamese war, I don't know anything about it'.. But without understanding what this war meant it is impossible to understand what is is impossible to understand what is going on today.
Q. But other countries have been destroyed by war and they recovered fairly rapidly. Take Germany after the Second World War for example.
A. The Indochinese war was much more serious than the Second World War for those who went through it. Countries like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia are very different from Germany. The material strength of Germany was for a time destroyed. The population also suffered badly in other countries in Europe. But the basic potential represented by the education, the skills of the workforce, scientific and technical knowledge, the industrial past, remained. It was on this basis and with the support of the Western powers who feared communist revolution, that Germany was able to rebuild itself as it did.
None of this applies to a country like Vietnam. Economic and social backwardness is aggravated by the disaffection of key sectors of the elite, the intellectual layers, the cadres and the technicians whom the country needs so badly. The effects of the physical social and psychological destruction of the war are much more profound. Im addition, it is necessary to rebuild the country in the face of a policy of open sabotage by the US of course, but also by
19
China, and in spite of piecemeal aid policy on the part of certain countries in Western Europe.
I think that there we are touching on two fundamental problems. The first concerns the war and the revolution. Our current - I speak for myself at least -had a naive view of the relationship between the two, which led to errors of perspective about the dynamic of the victory. We underestimated, although this might be described as an error of youth, the negative effects of the war by looking only at the depth of the struggle. The most "infantile leftists" even thought that the longer the struggle lasted, the better it was, because the consciousness of the masses was supposed to rise in the crucible of combat.
That is not true, or it is only temporarily true. When the war lasts too long, -the negative effects prevail over the positive results of revolutionary mobilisation. In the aftermath of the victory in Vietnam, there has been a decline in the mobilisation, both among the masses and among the cadres, a sort of relaxation after too great and too prolonged an exertion. That has played an important role, including in the spread of bureaucratic phenomena.
One cannot underestimate the impact of a long and total war such as the one in Vietnam. You have to understand the enduring consequences for the country. That brings us back to the problem of solidarity: International mobilisation must help to block such counterrevolutionary wars, or to stop them as quickly as possible after they have started. This is a timely question for Central America and also for the Philippines.
Q. Ten years ago, the Khmers Rouges came to power. The experience of their rule, which lasted from 1975 to 1978, was a traumatic one, most of all for the people who went through it but also for all those who felt solidarity with the liberation struggle in Cambodia that was led by the Khmers Rouges. (1)
I would like to take up the basic questions posed by the Cambodian experience, including the problems this terrible experience poses for us as revolutionary Marxists.
You said that the rise to power of the Pol Pot faction was determined by the type of war that was imposed by Washington. Isn't that too easy an answer?
A. I said that the evolution of the Cambodian Communist movement was " conditioned" by the course of the American war, not "determined." That is more than a nuance. Political history is not a record of inevitabilities. But you have to understand how it was possible for a current such as the Khmers 20
Q. And the second fundamental problem?
A. It is that the tasks of solidarity do not end with the victory. The tasks of economic and social reconstruction, as well as those of defence, are extremely difficult in backward countries. Here again, international aid is a very important factor, as the example of Nicaragua shows today.
However, partially because of the shock created by the emergence of new conflicts in Indochina and partially also because the leaderships in Indochina themselves underestimated the gravity of the problem, the solidarity movement virtually stopped after the victory in 1975. The Fourth International has adopted resolutions — and continues to adopt them at its world congresses - stressing the need for continuing solidarity with the Indochinese revolutions. But, for many reasons, we have not been able to translate these resolutions into action.
So, among the most important lessons of the Vietnam and Indochinese experience are those that concern solidarity. That is, there must be unity of action respecting the diversity of opinions. And at the same time solidarity is an urgent matter and cannot be subordinated to prior conditions. That is, there is a necessity for internationalism.
Above all, confronted with the disillusions and tragedies of Indochina, we cannot draw the conclusion that less help should have been given. On the contrary, what was needed was more help, quicker and more effective help, and that is what will be needed, moreover, in the future. Rouges to come to power. To do that, you have to consider what the kingdom of Cambodia was like, the impact of the wars and revolutions on a regional scale, and the sort of war the Americans waged. The Cambodian tragedy included exceptional elements. It was really a unique case, and therefore the analysis also has to be specific.
Q. Was the Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge really so unique? Wasn't it just an exacerbated form of what we have seen elsewhere, Stalinism in the USSR, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution in China, the "Boat People" of Vietnam, and the invasion of Cambodia?
A. Already in that list, you are mixing up very different things. But I don't think that the Khmer Rouge phenomenon can be really equated with any previous case. That is, moreover, why I hope that it will not be repeated.
There was a mass liberation struggle and a revolution in Cambodia. This real struggle was a component of a deepgoing revolutionary process, a process of permanent revolution that unfolded throughout Indochina. The Khmer Rouge movement arose both out of the national liberation movement and out of the Cambodian, Indochinese, and international Communist movement. This broadly distinguishes Cambodia from other cases that might be mentioned, such as the regime of Idi Amin in Uganda. It is also why this truly disastrous experience poses profound questions for us. In fact, it was the outcome of a struggle with which we had to identify.
However, what happened in Cambodia is without precedent in a contemporary revolution. This is true in all aspects. It is as if the Khmers Rouges wanted to start off from zero in every field. On the level of the economy and material, a lot of goods were deliberately destroyed - from rubber treatment centers to automobiles, and even the furniture of homes in Phnom Penh.
Agriculture was spared — although the number of crops was reduced in order to concentrate more on rice - and so were other basic industries, such as electricity, repair shops, etc.
On the social level, the cities were entirely emptied of their inhabitants, who were removed to rural work camps. The first elements of a new working class began to be built up from the Khmer Rouge peasant army. Even in the country-side, the villages were progressively broken up. Family and religious life were shattered in the name of collectivism. "Labor armies" were often constituted on the basis of age groups.
The whole educational system collapsed and began to be reconstructed on the most elementary basis. On the ideological level, not even the classics of Marxism or Leninism had a place. The ideological production was The ideological production was extremely poor, mainly radio broadcasts. Even in the narrowly political field, if there ever was a state that was synonymous with "a band of armed men" (Lenin's classical definition), a skeleton of a state, it was the Khmer Rouge state.
Not all of this happened at once, although some of the most draconian measures were taken immediately after the victory, and thus were very badly prepared for, such as the deportation of the people who were then concentrated in the urban centers. There was a bloody factional struggle within the Khmer Rouge movement itself, since, in the context of common ideological principles, there were real political differences. But the whole pattern took form very rapidly, within about two years.
Of course, in retrospect, we have 1. For an outline of the history of the Khmer Rouge movement, see the article by Pierre Rousset,_"Le radicalisme sanglant du regime Khmer Rouge," published in Inprecor, IV's French-language sister magazine, No. 122, April 5, 1982.
International Viewpoint 20 May 1985
Aborted revolution in Cambodia
Aborted revolution in Cambodia
found the origins of many elements in the Khmer Rouge "ideology" in the existence of racist-nationalist Khmer currents, or the national intransigence or the national intransigence of Yugoslavia against the USSR in 1950, when the future Pol Pot visited the country.
The nucleus around Pol Pot had gone through the experience of a very Stalinist CP - the French Communist Party in the 1950s - where the successes of forced collectivization and Stakhanovite industrialization were praised and oppositionists were smashed. The example of the Great Leap Forward at the end of the 1950s in China, followed by the Cultural Revolution and its catastrophie ultraleftism with respect to economic goals and the forms of mass mobilization, were also influential.
However, the Khmer Rouge system was something new, even if it often drew inspiration from the worst and the most caricatural aspects of the historical examples mentioned above. In particular, the overall practice of the new regime was really without precedent.
I stress the practice of this regime, because I don't think that the key to the orientations followed by the Pol Pot faction after the victory lay in a theoretical "model" of development applied from the "top down" without any regard for reality by intellectuals who played the role of apprentice sorcerers. The key lay in the power struggles.
If it was decided immediately to deport the population concentrated in the cities - who included many refugees from the rural areas - this was not to make them into peasants. Nor was it to forestall American bombings, otherwise the deportations would have been a passing episode. It was to break up a social milieu that the dominant faction of the Khmer Rouge could not control.
If it was decided to disintegrate family and religious life and break up the traditional rural communities, this was not to achieve a collectivist ideal. It was to destroy the bases of potential social opposition. If it was decided to liquidate successive generations of cadres of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in bloody purges, this was not to resolve an ideological conflict and flush out foreign agents. It was to consolidate the position of a dominant faction that in 1975 controlled only the top rungs of the party and a few regions of the country.
Q. And you call that a workers state, that is, a dictatorship of the proletariat?
A. Yes.
Q.. Do you really believe that? Are you sure of that analysis?
A. No.
Q. But isn't that a decisive question for determining the line of a revolutionary international? For example, when there is a military confliet with another country, such as Vietnam?
A. I think that it is an important question, but it is not decisive for determining our line. I know that may seem a bit strange, but let me try to explain what I mean.
Why did the majority of our movement characterize the Khmer Rouge period in Cambodia as a workers state? First of all, for a negative reason. Contrary to what a minority of our movement believed, we thought that it was hard to characterize as a "bourgeois state" a state apparatus that started out by liquidating, often physically the bourgeoisie and all social strata associated with it.
In Cambodia, the old bourgeois state was broken up more thoroughly than any one ever had been before. The capitalist economy and even money itself were eliminated, being replaced by administrative distribution and barter, which inevitably led to the appearance of a parallel economy based on the black market. (2)
We also based our position on some positive criteria, flowing from the fact that the origins of this state were in a Communist-led national liberation revolution. Moreover, this state arose in a regional context that was one of a real process of permanent revolution. But it has to be recognized that this sort of approach has its dangers. It defines by elimination. This is not a bourgeois state, therefore ... It also defines by analogy: This state grew
Carnage left by the Khmer Rouge (DR) out of a revolution similar to the one that transformed Laos and Vietnam.
The specific reality of the Cambodian revolution has to be analyzed more. So far we • have not done that except partially. For my part, I have been able to work on the studies done on the refugees and on historical documents by people like Steve Heder and Ben Kiernan, who are recognized specialists on these questions. But I have not yet been able to assimilate the more recent work done by people such as Michael Vickery (3). Even with more study of the specific reality of the Cambodian revolution, we may never be able to go much further than firmly based hypotheses, because we are dealing with a brief and very unstable process. 2. On the debate in the Fourth International on the situation in Indochina see the following articles in Intercontinental Press, published weekly in New York until 1982 when it became fortnightly: "Advances in the fortnichtlv. " Advances in the Indochinese Revolution and Imperialism's response: Fourth International Minority Resolution," in special issue on Indochina debate, No. 21, June 4, 1979; "Was Pol Pot Regime a Workers State?" by Fred Feldman and Steve Clark, No. 7. February 26, 1979; Ernest Mandel, "Behind the differences on the Military Conflicts in Southeast Asia," No. 13, April 9, 1979; and "War and Revolution in Indochina — What Policy for Revolutionists?," by Steve Clark, Fred Feldman, Gus Horowitz, and Mary-Alice Waters, No. 27, July 16, 1979. See also the special summer issue of Inprecor in 1979. 3. See in particular Steve Heder, "Revolution and Counter-revolution in Kampuchea," AMPO. Tokyo, Vol. 12, No. 3, third quarter of 1980: Serge Thion, Ben Kiernan, Khmers rouges, Albin Michel, Paris 1981; Ben Kiernan and Chantou Boua, Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea, 1942-1970, Zed Press, London, 1982: Michael Vickery, Cambodia, 1975-1982, George Allen and Unwin/Southend Press. Sydney, 1984.
21
THE FACTS
- Between 1964 and 1973 the US dropped 7.5 million tonnes of bombs on
North and South Vietnam, including 400,000 tonnes of napalm bombs, that is three times more than the tonnage of bombs used in the Second World War and the Korean war put together.
- In the same period, 3 million tonnes of bombs were dropped on Laos, a country with less than 4 million inhabitants.
- Eighty-six million litres of herbicides and defoliants were dropped on
South Vietnam, destroying half the forests.
- One million Cambodians died in the course of the US war between1970 and
1975.
58,655 American soldiers died in Vietnam; the number of Vietnamese dead
- has never been established precisely, but it must be several million people.
International Viewpoint 20 May 1985
566.58
Sihanouk delivers a speech. Today he has allied with the Khmer Rouge against the Phnom
Penh regime (DR)
The Khmer Rouge regime lasted barely more than three years, an instant on the historical scale. In three years, the social base of the regime steadily shrank, and the movement in power continually ate itself away in more and more devouring purges. Behind the cardboard facade created by the Khmer Rouge by means of a few authoritarian reforms, the society was disintegrating. This is why the system set up by this regime - the work camps, etc. - collapsed when the Vietnam troops intervened in December 1978 and broke the straightjacket represented by the government in Phnom Penh. When the announcement came of the fall of Pol Pot, the population moved spontaneously en masse to return to their villages, to find their families, or 22 to go back to the cities.
I think that it is useful and necessary to continue to study what really happened. Maybe it will be necessary to correct or qualify what I say here. It has to be done, because it will help us develop our thinking about important questions regarding the course revolutions may take in countries or regions that are particularly poorly prepared socially and economically for processes of permanent revolution. These problems challenge the theoretical concepts we use, making it necessary for us to clarify them.
However, the Cambodian case was really an "extreme" one, having arisen in really very specific circumstances. It was an unstable phenomenon, which probably could not have been stabilized. It should not be the basis for building up any theory. If it is necessary to find a formula to describe this reality, I would say, as a working hypothesis, that the Khmer Rouge state was a stillborn workers state.
I imagine that our debate over the class character of the Khmer Rouge state seems totally otherworldly to a lot of people. It is, if it were given a central importance that it cannot have for the reasons indicated. There are, nonetheless, important questions underlying this discussion, as for example on the nature and the evolution of the Khmer Rouge army. This army not only constituted the base of the new state that emerged from the revolution but over the years it came to represent the essential part of its stable social base. The ones who derived privileges from the regime, other than the unpurged cadres of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, were the soldiers who generally lived in separation from the population, for example controlling several villages from a camp in the jungle.
Q. What was the evolution of this army?
A. Here, we are probably touching on one of the most important special features of the Cambodian revolution. I don't think that this was a "classica]" peasant army, that is, similar to those in China or Vietnam. The dominant faction in this army, which was linked to the Pol Pot faction, came, it seems, from regions that before 1970 had already felt the impact of the market economy but where the social differentiations in the traditional society had remained very little developed. As for Pol Pot's Praetorian guard, it was recruited from particularly backward highland tribes whose support the Khmer Rouge leader had been able to win very early on.
What is more, this army seems to have been particularly marked by the air war launched by Washington, especially by the massive bombing in
1973, which was aimed primarily at the rural population centers, which constituted rather densely inhabited zones. The bombing was intended to break up the social base of support for the military resistance of the liberation movement in the context of the withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam. And, in fact, it seems that in this respect at least the American military policy was much more successful in Cambodia than in Vietnam and Laos.
Why was this so? Probably because the Khmer population was very loosely organized both politically and socially but was, nonetheless, not made up of nomadic tribes like those in the highlands of Laos, where there was also ferocious bombing. The social base of the Khmers Rouges was much less solid than that of the Vietnamese forces. And still more important, the village social organization - housing
International Viewpoint 20 May 1985
structure, social groups, cultural groups -was much looser, much more individualist than in Vietnam.
The pagodas, it seems, were virtually the only centers of collective life, while in Vietnam the villages were marked by a considerable social and cultural cohesiveness. This loose social structure in Cambodia is probably one of the elements that explains the particularly devastating effect of the American bombing. It was massive, carpet bombing of heavily populated areas, which broke up a social structure incapable of absorbing such a shock.
It seems that the 1973 bombings and their consequences in a way represented a turn that profoundly marked the Khmer Rouge army. Another working hypothesis is that this army came to be made up, qualitatively more than in the past, of the socially "uprooted." In revolutionary armies, uprooted elements have always been numerous, but in the Khmer Rouge army they seem to have had a decisive weight. These uprooted elements no longer had any village, or any family, owing to the upsets caused by the war. The army less and less reflected a real social base in the villages. More and more, it came to be made up of declassed elements, generally of peasant origin. And it was this army that in 1975 became the underpinning of the new regime. This is one of the factors that make the analysis of this revolution specific and complicated. Q. Why was the 1973 bombing so massive? A. Because Washington concentrated its entire air fleet on Cambodia for six months. It had just signed the Paris Accords on Vietnam and had to stop bombing the latter country. It knew that it was also going to have to give up its grip on Cambodia. So, the Pentagon wanted to take advantage of the time it had left to destroy as much as possible One of the Khmer Rouge educational classes (DR International Viewpoint 20 May 1985 a society that it could not force into subjugation. Cambodia in 1973 is one of the many tragic examples over the course of the Indochina war that illustrate the monstrous and criminal character of the American intervention.
The American war in Cambodia was much briefer than in Vietnam or even in Laos. But it was devastating. The American war in Cambodia (1970-1975) took the lives of about a million human beings, out of a total population of around 7 million in 1970. The estimations of the human cost of the policy followed by the Pol Pot regime vary - and it is necessary to take into account the "delayed" deaths from the war, especially in the first months after the Khmer Rouge victory. The estimates of the deaths for which the Pol Pot regime itself is responsible range from 400,000 to a million and a half, with the figures for the period between April 1975 and January 1979 often running between 700,000 and 800,000.
Q. Could you summarize the factors that in your opinion conditioned the evolution of the Cambodian Communist movement and prepared the ground for the Pol Pot faction's temporary victory?
A. I want to remind you that these are only elements of an analysis and working hypotheses. In my opinion, you have to consider first of all the character of the Cambodian social formation in the stage of development it had reached before 1970. The cities were cut off from the countryside, being inhabited by the elite and emigrants, often Chinese or Vietnamese. There was an agricultural proletariat on the rubber plantations that was cut off from the peasantry because it was made up of Vietnamese emigrants. There was a peasantry that had already rebelled in some regions against the impact of a new market economy and against the exactions of the functionaries and military officers.
But the country had not yet experienced more than the beginnings of the full-blown agrarian crisis that has hit a lot of dependent nations, bringing a structural destabilization in the countryside and not just poverty and oppression. Finally, Cambodia was a country of very strong individualist traditions.
From the political standpoint, the way that the French granted independence in 1953 favored the survival of the semireligious influence of the royal family. And Sihanouk, an autocrat coming from this family, who ruled the country up until 1970, was able to exploit this.
As for the Communist movement, its native Khmer base was still limited. With respect to the social and political forces in the country, the conditions for a revolutionary struggle on the national level were only beginning to ripen. But the country was plunged into a whirlpool of revolution and counterrevolution by the almost inevitable overflowing of the imperialist war in Vietnam.
Such an overflow had already taken place during the French war, before 1954. The Americans themselves precipitated events in 1970, when they first overthrew Sihanouk through Lon Nol and then invaded the country. The revolution was then to begin to move but at a forced pace and with a very fragile social and political base of its own. As I already explained, it was in this context that the 1970-1975 war had tragically disintegrating effects on Cambodian society.
All these tendencies were aggravated by the emergence of deep divisions between the Communist movements in Vietnam and Cambodia, divisions reflected by the rise of the Pol Pot faction. This is perhaps the most important difference from Laos, a country still more backward from a social and economic standpoint.
These disputes had several sources. Temporary divergences of interest appeared on several occasions, as was almost inevitable. This happened for example in the 1960s when the Vietnamese, faced with the American war, temporized with Prince Sihanouk, who held a more or less neutralist position. At the same time, the Khmers Rouges were waging armed struggle against the Sihanouk regime in several areas. The Americans were still far away from these zones. The main and immediate enemy was, thus, not the same in the two cases.
It was possible to surmount these temporary divergences of interest. This was accomplished, moreover, on the military level. After the American intervention in Cambodia in 1970, the Indochina-wide military front was reconstituted. But on the political level unity was not rebuilt, to the contrary.
Q. Why?
A. Because of the specific evolu-
23
tion of the currents involved, in particular of the Cambodian Communist movement. But another reason was the impact of the Sino-Soviet and SinoVietnamese conflicts. The 1954 Geneva Accords had already been a difficult experience for the revolutionists in Indochina. Moscow and Peking had imposed a compromise that was very costly for all three countries. The conclusion drawn from this by what would become the Khmer Rouge current, which had not formed at the time, was that the Cambodian Communists had been abandoned by everybody and that from then on they would have to go it alone. Moreover, most of the Cambodian cadres involved in the armed struggle before 1954 had taken refuge in North Vietnam, and a lot of those who remained in Cambodia were killed. To an extent, therefore, it was a new party that formed around the group of "returnees from France," including Saloth Sar, alias Pol Pot.
The USSR and China played on these tensions. The Kremlin maintained links with the pro-American puppet regime of Lon Nol right up to the end. China encouraged the "independence" of the Khmer Rouge from the Vietnamese. When the old cadres of the Cambodian movement came back from Hanoi after the American invasion of Cambodia in 1970, they were isolated and then progressively liquidated by the Pol Pot faction. These purges became extensive after 1973. A wider and wider sea of blood separated the Vietnamese from the Cambodian Communists, who feared the power of their neighbors.
When the split between the two movements became definitive in 1975, once the Americans and their local relay regimes were defeated, China gave decisive aid to the Khmer Rouge and to their anti-Vietnamese line. From that time on, the Khmer-Vietnamese clashes were subsumed into the framework of the Sino-Soviet and Sino-Vietnamese conflict and became more and more insoluble.
The impact of the interbureaucratic conflicts initiated in Asia under Stalin and consummated in the Sino-Soviet split at the start of the 1960s became a deadly threat to the unity and revolutionary dynamic of the struggles in the region. The mortal danger that such conflicts represent for liberation struggles is, thus, also one of the lessons that the revolutionary movement can draw from the Indochinese experience.
Q. But wasn't there a real danger that Cambodia would be dominated by Vietnam after the victory?
A. Perhaps, although the Vietnamese have long been very careful in this regard. They knew about the liquidation of those in the Communist Party of Kampuchea who were close to them. In the confusion surrounding the 1975 events, they could have tried to assume direct control over the new
24 regime in Cambodia. They did not. Why? One might throw out a lot of reasons, from a conviction that it would have been an error to act that way to a fear that if they did, it would lead to direct conflict with China.
In any case, you have to take account of the national problem and the uneven development in Indochina as a whole, which was artificially cut up by the colonialists. But the "Pol Pot solution" was the worst kind of answer, even from the standpoint of safeguarding the country's independence. This "solution" involved an immediate break between the Vietnamese and Cambodian revolutions once military victory was achieved. It profoundly weakened the revolutionary dynamic in Cambodia itself, precisely because of the relative unripeness of the social conditions for revolution in the country. Revolutionary Cambodia needed to lean on the Vietnamese revolution.
The Khmer Rouge policy, although it generally ran counter to that of Deng Xiaoping in China, made Cambodia a pawn in the Sino-Vietnamese conflict. The determination of the new government in Phnom Penh to eliminate any potential political or social opposition in the country also led it to raise a hue and cry about a "foreign danger" represented by Vietnam, thereby justifying all its hard-line measures. In this way a vicious circle began.
As for the United States, it gradually discovered the scope of the VietnameseKhmer split. Delighted with this unexpected stroke of luck, it also started fanning the flames. The military conflict on the frontiers of Vietnam and Cambodia, which started very soon after the victory in 1975, came to degenerate in 19781979 into full-scale war.
Q. You said just now that it was not essential to have a definitive analysis of the character of the Cambodian state to take a line toward the SinoVietnamese conflict. But is this really so? Wouldn't your analysis of this question change a lot of things?
A. What I said is that it is impossible to make a "definitive analysis" of this question, and this was still more the case in 1979. It was necessary, therefore, to manage without such an analysis. In such a case, you cannot derive a whole political orientation from working hypotheses, no matter how well founded they are.
Q. But are not revolutionary policies toward wars based on a principled position, which is based primarily on the class character of the states involved?
A. Yes, in three cases at least. The first is an interimperialist war, in which we take a position of revolutionary defeatism. The second is in a conflict between an imperialist power and a dependent country threatening to turn the latter into a direct colony. In this case we defend the dependent country. case, we defend the dependent country. Finally, in a conflict between an imperialist power and a workers state, even a bureaucratized one. In this case, we defend the workers state.
However, there are other types of conflicts, unfortunately, in which we cannot base ourselves on such a "principled position." One example is a war between two dependent countries, as in the case of Iran and Iraq. Another is a conflict between two workers states, as in the case of China and Vietnam. There is also the case of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
In all such cases, we have to start off from a very concrete analysis of what is really involved in the conflict in order to determine our line. Obviously, it is always necessary to make a concrete analysis, but in the "classical" cases cited before, we can nevertheless start out from a position of principle in defining an orientation. If the concrete analysis is wrong, we set a wrong line. This is what happened to us at the start of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. (4)
Q. But this concrete analysis has to take account of the character of the states involved, of imperialist policy, and so forth.
A. Of course. But in the case that concerns us here it was sufficient to recognize that there was a Cambodian revolution and that the Khmer Rouge regime was not a mere tool in the hands of the imperialists. At the time, it was not eyen a pliant tool in the hands of the Chinese bureaucracy. We did not have to say as a certainty that this was a workers state. Nor, conversely did we have to say definitely that it was a bourgeois state because at a given moment Washington, realizing what was happening, started to play Pol Pot against Vietnam, American imperialism's main enemy in the region.
As I have already said, I accept as a working hypothesis that the Khmer Rouge regime was a still-born workers state. That does not prevent me from agreeing with the position taken by our international movement, which has not made the immediate withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia a principle. If you started from a principle, without bothering to look at the reality of the situation, you would have to demand the immediate withdrawal of Vietnamese forces from the Cambodian workers state and, moreover, not demand the immediate withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan!
However, concrete analysis immediately brings to light a major difference between the two cases. In Afghanistan, the great majority of the population was opposed to the Soviet intervention. In Cambodia, on the other hand, the
Vietnamese intervention and the fall of
4. For the position of the Fourth International on Afghanistan, see the resolution
"Pour un Afghanistan independent, federal et socialiste," which was published in Inprecor
No. 105, July 6, 1981.
International Viewpoint 20 May 1985
Pol Pot was greeted with relief. That is obviously a big difference.
Q. Nonetheless, at the beginning we called for the immediate withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia and not of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.
A. That is precisely because in the one case the concrete analysis was wrong (Afghanistan) and in the other it largely remained to be done (Cambodia).
Q. You say that the bulk of the Cambodian population greeted the Vietnamese intervention with relief. Didn't they fear that the Vietnamese would stay?
A. Yes. But before anything else they wanted the fall of Pol Pot. The internal resistance was exhausted. It is difficult to find out exactly what the scope was of local or regional revolts against the Pol
Pot government before 1979. But, in any case, they were insufficient. In the wake of the American war, the regime had managed to paralyze the capacity for active social resistance. And the purges had decapitated successive generations of local cadres.
After the liquidation of the "Khmer Vietminh" who were trained in the period of the French war, a number of Khmer Rouge cadres were gotten rid of. Most of the 12,000 people tortured and executed at the ill-famed prison of Tuoi Sleng belonged to the national liberation movement. In a country such as Cambodia that represented a terrible loss. In the eyes of the population, the Vietnamese were the only alternative left. Even today, it seems that the majority tolerate the presence of the Vietnamese because they fear the return of the Khmers Rouges above all else.
Q. Nonetheless, the Khmers Rouges
CHRONOLOGY still have a considerable force. The figure of 40,000 fighters is often mentioned, and it seems that they can operate deep in Cambodia.
A. That's right. But what is surprising about that. They were a regime in power an army in power. It's natural that there should be something left. They have been welcomed and taken care of in Thailand. where they can still reorganize their forces out of the range of their enemies. They get considerable military aid from China and constant help from Bangkok.
Moreover, it is easy to penetrate deeply into Cambodia. It is a country of vast forests and large mountain ranges, favorable for guerrilla movements. The Khmers Rouges must still have supporters in various places, and so they should be able to count on a support network. Moreover, despite the terror that the previous reign of the Khmers Rouges struck into the village people, the latter probably still help them sometimes, foe various reasons. They may be frightened
June 1941. Formation of the Vietminh (Front for the Independence of Vietnam) under the leadership of the Indochinese Communist Party.
July 1941. Occupation of strategic points in Indochina by Japanese forces, with the agreement of the pro-Vichy colonial administration.
October 1941. Manifesto of the Vietminh calling for "unity of all antifascist forces to struggle against French and Japanese colonialism until Vietnam is completely liberated."
1944. The Vietnminh begin guerrilla war against the imperialist forces.
March 9, 1945. The Japanese army assumes full control, disarms and interns the French troops.
August 17-25, 1945. Following the capitulation of Japan, the people's committees led by the Vietnminh take power, first in Hanoi and subsequently throughout Indochina. This is the "August Revolution."
September 2, 1945. In Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh declares the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). The Vietminh have only a thousand armed fighters.
1945-1946. An unstable situation. Chinese, British, and French troops are in Indochina. The Vietminh negotiates with France over independence, while building up an army of 100,000 fighters.
December 19, 1946. Insurrection against the French in Hanoi. The government of the DRV retreats into the jungle. This is the beginning of the first Indochina war.
May 7, 1954. Decisive victory of the Vietminh over the French army at Dien Bien Phu.
July 1954. The Geneva Conference. The French grant "independence" to the three countries of Indochina (Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam). Vietnam is divided at the Seventeenth Parallel between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the North and the pro-imperialist regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in the South. The country is supposed to be reunited after free elections set for 1956. They will never take place, because of the refusal of Diem, backed up by the Americans, who have taken over from the French.
1954-1960. Ferocious repression in South Vietnam: 90,000 executions, 100,000 political prisoners.
May 1959. The Vietnamese Communist Party decides to organize armed struggle in South Vietnam. In fact, it had already begun in a piecemeal way.
December 1960. Formation of the National Liberation Front (NLF) of South Vietnam. There are already 685 International Viewpoint 20 May 1985
American "advisers" in the country. Three years later there will be 16,000.
March 1964. The American Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, announces to the National Security Council in Washington that the South Vietnamese region is "on the verge of total collapse."
February 1965. Beginning of intensive bombing against North Vietnam.
March 1965. US president Johnson sends the first combat troops to South Vietnam. They will reach a maximum number of 542,000 in 1969.
1968. The Tet Offensive of the NLF. The liberation forces take Hue and occupy part of Saigon. Johnson decides not to run for reelection. Richard Nixon is elected to the presidency in November on a peace platform. He will begin the "Vietnamization" of the war, which involves reducing the number of US soldiers and making more use of the puppet Saigon army, backed up by US air power. At the same time, the CIA sets in motion Operation Phoenix, in which 650 US agents will direct the systematic liquidation of NLF cadres. According to official American figures, 20,987 "subversives" are killed. Other estimates talk about 100,000 deaths.
March 1970. Overthrow of the neutralist Sihanouk regime in Cambodia, to be replaced by the American puppet Lon Nol.
May 1970. Massive intervention of US troops against the NLF "sanctuaries" in Cambodia. Beginning of the national liberation war led by the United National Front of Kampuchea (FUNK).
1972. Major NLF offensive in South Vietnam.
January 1973. The Paris Accords. US forces withdraw from Vietnam. Massive bombardment of Cambodia by the Americans.
April 17, 1975. The Khmers Rouges take Phnom Penh.
April 30, 1975. The North Vietnamese Army and the NLF take Saigon.
1975-1978. Border conflicts between Vietnam and Cambodia.
December 1978-January 1979. Vietnamese arty supported by Khmer rebels invades Cambodia. The Pol Plot regime falls.
February 1979. Chinese troops invade the norther border areas of Vietnam, but withdraw after a few weeks
they may have a grievance against the Vietnamese, they may consider it opportune or hope for a reward, or simply it may be that they cooperate alternately with every armed group that shows up. I would say that to a certain extent the Khmers Rouges can operate more easily because they do not represent any immediate danger, they are not about to return to power. The population does not have too much to fear from them, although they have massacred the passengers in the trains they have attacked.
Q. Isn't that a rather cynical view of things?
A. I am working on the basis of incomplete information. But I think that you have to take into account the depth of the social crisis the old kingdom of Cambodia went through. The Sihanouk regime had begun to go into crisis before 1970, then there was the American war, then the reign of the Khmers Rouges, then the Vietnamese intervention, and now a simmering war. You have to consider the way the population and families have been moved around, the trauma; this is a society that has been completely ripped apart.
Cambodia today is not a gulag. I imagine that there is a doubly arbitrary repression, because there are no legal rules or public control. That is very likely a problem. But political repression is probably directed only against relatively limited circles. In other aspects, Cambodia is a surprisingly free country. There is very little control of economic activity, trafficking and smuggling are generally tolerated by the authorities. This is also a problem because the fortunes that are being made are probably becoming a powerful corrupting agent. Khmer Rouge soldiers (DR)
26
Where military battles are more threatening, the population is probably subject to war measures. But in the country as a whole, the Vietnamese forces seem to be discreet and the Phnom Penh administration weak. Freedom of trade is certainly greater in Cambodia than in Vietnam.
I don't think that there is really any mass "national movement" against Vietnam in Cambodia. Nor is there any social struggle against the Phnom Penh administration. There is, in fact, passive support by a large part of the population for the existing regime. But only a small minority seems to be giving it active support. The passive support is the result of the desire to prevent the return of the Khmer Rouge to power and of the fact that the Cambodian administration is demanding very little from the population (taxes are very low for example.
A cynical attitude toward politics and collective action, individualism, and family economic activity seems to characterize the majority of the population. The society seems less capable than ever of collective mobilizations.
Q. Isn't this a very grave problem? How can the crisis be resolved without a very broad social mobilization of the Cambodian masses?
A. This is, to be sure, along with the consequences of the international relationship of forces, one of the problems that makes a real solution of the crisis of Cambodian society very difficult. Let's take, for example, the line we have adopted on the international level. We not demanding the immediate are withdrawal of the Vietnamese forces. Why?
On the one hand, because the population is not calling for this. That is important. Secondly, because an unprepared withdrawal of the Vietnamese forces could signal a sudden resurgence of the civil war, the return in force of the Khmers Rouges; an intervention of pro-imperialist troops, in particular Thai troops, under the pretext of restoring order, and possibly under the banner of Sihanouk; a new mass exodus to Thailand and Vietnam; or an explosive upsetting of the regional relationship of forces. None of these possibilities would lead either to peace or to the resolution of the crisis of Cambodian society.
However, the Vietnamese presence cannot be institutionalized. The population will not accept a prolonged occupation if it feels capable of protecting itself. And as long as the Vietnamese remain in force, any internal crisis will take the form of a national crisis, even if the point of departure for such a crisis is, for example, a social conflict opened up by a strengthening of the already strong bourgeoisie of traders and traffickers.
This is why we have aways insisted that every measure should be taken to prepare the way for the fastest possible withdrawal of Vietnamese troops. But this presupposes not only strengthening an independent Cambodian administration and a Cambodian army. Both have been strengthened to a certain extent, but they still do not have any capacity for independent action. For that something more fundamental is required, a revival of the activity - the self-activity - of the masses, a capacity on the part of the masses for collective activity. We are apparently still far from that.
Q. We will come back later to the Vietnamese policy itself. What do you think of the scope of the Cambodian crisis?
A. I think that it expresses in a dramatic form the body of contradictions that the revolutionary movement has to confront and to which it has to find an answer. This is a real knot of contradictions, the result of the difficulties encountered by a revolution that was accelerated by the impact of war on a country where the social crisis was only beginning to mature.
Here also you can see the weight of the national question in the regional ensembles created by colonialism. This shows, moreover, the pernicious consequences of an imperialist policy that in the face of defeat aimed consciously at weakening the victorious people to the greatest possible extent in order to trap it in a military, diplomatic, and economic vise. The tendency to war contained in interbureaucratic conflicts, and especially the Sino-Soviet conflict in Asia, has made this crisis still more difficult to resolve.
For all these reasons, I don't think that there will be any rapid solution to the Cambodian crisis, and all the more so because it will have to be resituated in the context of the relationship of forces in the region.
International Viewpoint 20 May 1985