Plenty of grass

The Khmer Rouge, also known as the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), controlled the Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Their leader, Saloth Sar or Pol Pot, was inspired by Chinese Maoism and envisaged a "Super Great Leap Forward" for his nation (or at least his regime). Almost the entire urban population of Cambodia was deported to the countryside, virtually enslaved and forced to dig canals and grow rice in a frantic attempt to "develop" the country. Mass starvation, terror and chaos followed as Cambodia descended into the nightmare of "Year Zero". The exact death toll will remain unknown, with estimates varying from 700,000 to 3 million, with 1.5 million being the scholarly consensus. In a country of about 7 million people, this amounts to one of the worst genocides in recorded history! Even worse, perhaps, was the fact that the mass murder was carried out by a government against its own people. As a final mockery, Pol Pot's genocidal regime styled itself "Democratic Kampuchea (DK)".

"Pol Pot Plans the Future" is a collection of rare and originally confidential documents from the inner circle of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. Only about a dozen internal policy documents have survived from the DK archives. There probably weren't many such documents to begin with, quasi-Masonic secrecy being one of the pivots of the CPK. Even the *existence* of the party, and the leadership role of Pol Pot within it, were initially kept secret from the Cambodian people, the ruling group simply being called Angkar (The Organization). The documents are chilling to read, but in a sense reveals nothing new. They simply confirm what everyone knew already: the mad actions of the Khmer Rouge regime were the result of decisions made by Pol Pot and his closest aides at the centre of power.

Three things stand out in the documents, none of them unexpected. First, the strong sense of paranoia. Pol Pot claims that the party is heavily infiltrated by traitors at every level. These traitors are like bacteria and must be "smashed". Being silent or politically confused is itself a form of dissidence, and hence a sign of treason. Treachery is almost seen as genetically inherited, although Pol Pot graciously allows that children to treacherous parents are only 50% treacherous themselves! 90% of all applicants for Communist Party membership are said to be unreliable. More rational, perhaps, is the fear of foreign enemies. Yet, the documents hardly mentions that the DK was supported by both China and North Korea, making the situation sound worse than it actually was. Unsurprisingly, every failure of the regime's policy is blamed on traitors of various kind, and the short reign of Pol Pot was accompanied by the usual Stalinist purges and forced "confessions". The book contains the "confession" of a defrocked party leader, Hu Nim, who was supposedly a CIA agent from start.

The other thing standing out are the insane development plans. Before the Indochina War, the average yield of rice in Cambodia was one ton per hectare. In a war-ravaged country, Pol Pot demanded that *all* rice fields produce three tons per hectare. Well, not all. Some were expected to produce even more: six, seven or even ten tons per hectare. Yet, Pol Pot admits that Cambodia lacks modern agriculture, technology and capital. In a discussion on the Western Region, he even admits that large parts of it are arid, but demands impossible production targets anyway. He acknowledges that many people complain about the lack of fertilizer. Pol Pot's solution? He orders that human excrement and urine be used to fertilize the fields. This must be *the* ultimate parody of a planned economy, in which the top leader decrees that the enserfed peasants pee more to make the rice grow better. Of course, the end result was anything but comic, with entire regions handing over their entire rice production to meet the targets, causing mass starvation as a result.

Ironically, the logic of the Khmer Rouge smacked of "capitalism", despite their ultraleftist form of "socialism". The goal of the regime was to produce enormous quantities of rice at a break-neck speed, and then sell the rice at the world market in order to obtain capital for industrialization. In other words, Cambodia was to become a gigantic monocrop operation producing for the capitalist world market. Sounds familiar? Pol Pot actually expected Hong Kong and Singapore to buy the rice. Note that the enormous increase in rice production was to take place through pre-modern agriculture, with ploughs drawn by cows or enslaved humans, and with human feces being an important fertilizer. At one point, Pol Pot actually admits that the Cambodian authorities don't have good and detailed maps of their own country.

The editors point out that the economic plans of the pro-Vietnamese regime which toppled the Khmer Rouge were hampered by the lack of detailed maps as late as the mid-1980's. The statistics published in the documents are equally unreliable or bogus, sometimes simply repeating the same figures for different regions of the country. How the economy can be planned under such conditions is left unclear. "Brother Number One" has no real answers, except exhortations to "attack", to "implement the action line", to "raise consciousness", to "be strong", and so on. His industrialization plans were just as unrealistic as the plans for agriculture. In 1976, Pol Pot seems to have expected Cambodia to begin industrializing already by 1980, and confidently predicted the existence of enormous oil fields in uncharted waters off the Cambodian coast.

The third thing that stands out is the strong emphasis on collectivism. "Individualism" is explicitly said to be the main enemy and ideological deviation. It's also verboten to believe in a "system of plenty" or to request foreign aid from the "Free World" or the Soviet bloc. One dissident is attacked for *not* wanting to take propaganda photos of happy cows with ploughs, preferring to take pictures of modern tractors instead! Family life should be abolished, and the entire population should be organized into work brigades which dine communally. Money had been abolished by the regime shortly after taking power in 1975. Eating desserts is the only material incentive mentioned in the documents. Pol Pot emphasized that the communal desserts must be prepared by professional teams to keep the people happy and contended (so they can urinate better for fertilizer, I suppose). At one unguarded moment, the CPK admits that while collectivization is completed, "consciousness" still lags behind. In other words: the Cambodian people don't accept the full-scale collectivization imposed by the Khmer Rouge. Perhaps they didn't like the desserts?

Readers versed in Marxist ideology will also notice a few blatant revisions of said ideology in the CPK documents. Thus, the peasants rather than the workers are said to play the vanguard role in the revolution, "independent workers" are explicitly said to be an enemy, and the CPK boasts about leaping to full socialism at once, rather than taking the detour through a "democratic" revolution (the official Soviet or Chinese position). Cambodia and its revolution is said to be entirely unique. Even on that score, Pol Pot alias Brother Number One wasn't entirely correct: none other than Marx had condemned Bakunin and Nechayev for their secret, super-hierarchic revolutionary organization and their projected "barrack socialism", complete with, surprise, communal dining.

One thing lacking from the CPK documents is the involuntary humour so typical of Soviet and Chinese Communist propaganda. Perhaps the internal character of the documents explains this oversight? However, a few absurd details have crept in. In his confession, Hu Nim refers to Pol Pot with the collective term "The Organization". I have already mentioned the General Secretary's recommendations concerning pee. This statement, also by Brother Number One, is equally priceless: "Compared to other countries, we have very many more qualities. First, they have no hay. Second, they have no grass." No? Well, at least there was plenty of grass on the Cambodian killing fields...

Sometimes, I have to remind myself that this guy actually killed over a million people, and got away with it!

"Pol Pot Plans the Future" might be to narrow for the general reader, but it's probably an indispensable complement to other books on Democratic Kampuchea for the advanced student. The translated documents are introduced, annotated and put in context by the editors, David Chandler, Ben Kiernan and Chanthou Boua.