milk
11th December 2010, 20:21
This might be of interest.
Pol Pot's speech at the 1977 Congress of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. The speech where he officially revealed the existence of the CPK, and offered an analysis of Cambodian society, fitting it into a rather vulgar evolutionary scheme of historical stages, recognisable to those with even a cursory knowledge of orthodox Marxist theory. Of course it was just cutting the feet to fit the shoes, to demonstrate that the Cambodian revolution was actually socialist within a Marxist context. Of course, it wasn't, but it's an important document nonetheless, the locus classicus of CPK periodisation and historical anaylsis.
The speech was also downright dishonest, with regard to the origins and development of the Cambodian Communist movement. A revising of history, cleansing the movement of any Vietnamese involvement. With Pol Pot saying that the Congress marks the seventeenth anniversary, it shows that this revising of Communist history placed the founding of the Party in 1960, the year when, after years of ruthless repression by Prince Norodom Sihanouk’s police, what was left of the Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party (founded with Vietnamese guidance in 1951) secretly met at a Phnom Penh railway yard on its ninth anniversary, and when some of those radcials who would form the Pol Pot group, gained considerable positions in the organisation’s hierarchy. In actual fact, the name of the KPRP was not changed to the Communist Party of Kampuchea until 1963, when General Secretary Tou Samouth’s disappearance (and probable murder by Sihanouk’s police), saw Saloth Sar take his place, and the organisation’s move into the rural maquis.
This revision was done to cleanse the Cambodian Communist movement of any unacceptable Vietnamese involvement, and in his speech Pol Pot deals very briefly and dishonestly with the colonial period in Cambodia, and in relation to the Vietnamese (the hated enemy), the CPK could not be seen to have been cooperative or even (in fact, as it actually was) founded largely by Vietnamese Communist guerrillas during their fight against the French. From my blog, the below quote from David P. Chandler’s paper Seeing Red: Perceptions of Cambodian History in Democratic Kampuchea, illustrates this neatly:
The speech is vague about the colonial era per se, and resistance to the French is dated only from the end of World War II. Pol Pot’s mishandling of the historical record raises doubts about how much he expected his audience to know about the era he was discussing, and questions about whether he believed what he was saying. In any case, he spoke of two strands to anti-colonial resistance. In the first of these:
“the Japanese fascist clique and the American CIA give birth to a political movement demanding independence, calling it the ‘Peoples’ Movement’ or the Free Khmer,’ with the contemptible Son Ngoc Thanh as leader.”
By telescoping Japanese support for Son Ngoc Thanh in 1943-1945 into American support for his anti-Sihanouk movement after 1953, Pol Pot ignores any other non-Communist resistance to the French and, incidentally, the years in which most resistance of any kind took place (1945-1954). At the same time, to demonstrate the legitimacy of the CPK, he apparently feels obliged to give it an ancestry of some sort from the period of resistance and liberation. The so-called “fascist” strand is unacceptable, and so is the radical one he fails to mention, which was sponsored by the Vietnamese and in 1951 organized a Cambodia-based, Vietnamese-supported Communist Party (KPRP). Rejecting these contending (and occasionally cooperating) forces, Pol Pot places the roots of the CPK among anonymous, leaderless peasant masses which, he asserts, fought long and courageously against the French. There is no evidence that such a movement ever existed, although it is essential to Pol Pot that he provide the CPK with forerunners who are equally uncorrupted by “fascism” and by cooperation with any Vietnamese.
The poor English translation was done by an obscure group which likely no longer exists, and about which I have been unable to find much information: the Group of Kampuchean Residents in America. It's the only English-language copy of the speech I've gotten hold of so far. The now-defunct Liberator Press, once based in Chicago, US, printed the copies of Pol Pot’s speech and was the old press of the October League/Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) (USA). The Party that gained fraternal status with the Communist Party of China after the death of Mao Tse-Tung.
The speech can be found here (http://padevat.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Pol-Pot-Speech-1977.pdf). (PDF)
Pol Pot's speech at the 1977 Congress of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. The speech where he officially revealed the existence of the CPK, and offered an analysis of Cambodian society, fitting it into a rather vulgar evolutionary scheme of historical stages, recognisable to those with even a cursory knowledge of orthodox Marxist theory. Of course it was just cutting the feet to fit the shoes, to demonstrate that the Cambodian revolution was actually socialist within a Marxist context. Of course, it wasn't, but it's an important document nonetheless, the locus classicus of CPK periodisation and historical anaylsis.
The speech was also downright dishonest, with regard to the origins and development of the Cambodian Communist movement. A revising of history, cleansing the movement of any Vietnamese involvement. With Pol Pot saying that the Congress marks the seventeenth anniversary, it shows that this revising of Communist history placed the founding of the Party in 1960, the year when, after years of ruthless repression by Prince Norodom Sihanouk’s police, what was left of the Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party (founded with Vietnamese guidance in 1951) secretly met at a Phnom Penh railway yard on its ninth anniversary, and when some of those radcials who would form the Pol Pot group, gained considerable positions in the organisation’s hierarchy. In actual fact, the name of the KPRP was not changed to the Communist Party of Kampuchea until 1963, when General Secretary Tou Samouth’s disappearance (and probable murder by Sihanouk’s police), saw Saloth Sar take his place, and the organisation’s move into the rural maquis.
This revision was done to cleanse the Cambodian Communist movement of any unacceptable Vietnamese involvement, and in his speech Pol Pot deals very briefly and dishonestly with the colonial period in Cambodia, and in relation to the Vietnamese (the hated enemy), the CPK could not be seen to have been cooperative or even (in fact, as it actually was) founded largely by Vietnamese Communist guerrillas during their fight against the French. From my blog, the below quote from David P. Chandler’s paper Seeing Red: Perceptions of Cambodian History in Democratic Kampuchea, illustrates this neatly:
The speech is vague about the colonial era per se, and resistance to the French is dated only from the end of World War II. Pol Pot’s mishandling of the historical record raises doubts about how much he expected his audience to know about the era he was discussing, and questions about whether he believed what he was saying. In any case, he spoke of two strands to anti-colonial resistance. In the first of these:
“the Japanese fascist clique and the American CIA give birth to a political movement demanding independence, calling it the ‘Peoples’ Movement’ or the Free Khmer,’ with the contemptible Son Ngoc Thanh as leader.”
By telescoping Japanese support for Son Ngoc Thanh in 1943-1945 into American support for his anti-Sihanouk movement after 1953, Pol Pot ignores any other non-Communist resistance to the French and, incidentally, the years in which most resistance of any kind took place (1945-1954). At the same time, to demonstrate the legitimacy of the CPK, he apparently feels obliged to give it an ancestry of some sort from the period of resistance and liberation. The so-called “fascist” strand is unacceptable, and so is the radical one he fails to mention, which was sponsored by the Vietnamese and in 1951 organized a Cambodia-based, Vietnamese-supported Communist Party (KPRP). Rejecting these contending (and occasionally cooperating) forces, Pol Pot places the roots of the CPK among anonymous, leaderless peasant masses which, he asserts, fought long and courageously against the French. There is no evidence that such a movement ever existed, although it is essential to Pol Pot that he provide the CPK with forerunners who are equally uncorrupted by “fascism” and by cooperation with any Vietnamese.
The poor English translation was done by an obscure group which likely no longer exists, and about which I have been unable to find much information: the Group of Kampuchean Residents in America. It's the only English-language copy of the speech I've gotten hold of so far. The now-defunct Liberator Press, once based in Chicago, US, printed the copies of Pol Pot’s speech and was the old press of the October League/Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) (USA). The Party that gained fraternal status with the Communist Party of China after the death of Mao Tse-Tung.
The speech can be found here (http://padevat.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Pol-Pot-Speech-1977.pdf). (PDF)