So long as the Vietnam War was in progress—first against the French, then the civil war between the Communist regime in the north and a U.S.-backed anticommunist regime in the south—the Vietnamese Communists tried to avoid taking sides in the SinoSoviet conflict. The Vietnamese Communist regime desperately needed political, diplomatic, and particularly military help from both the Soviet Union and China. We have noted elsewhere in this volume that at least some foreign Maoists considered that the Vietnamese refusal to support establishment of a Maoist Communist International was to be major factor in the Chinese leadership’s failure to set up such an organization.
Once the U.S. forces were driven out, and South Vietnam had been overrun by the Communists, ancient Sino-Vietnamese rivalries surfaced once again. These culminated in actual armed conflict in 1979. Thereafter, the Vietnamese sided strongly with the Soviet party and the government in its quarrel with the Chinese, and provided the USSR with military bases, until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Much the same thing happened insofar as Laos was concerned. Arthur J. Domen wrote in 1980, “The Beijing reactionaries’ were blamed for disrupting the ‘trend of peace and security’ that had prevailed in Indochina after the 1975 Communist takeovers. … Following China’s attack on Vietnam in February, Lao-Chinese relations all but broke down completely. In an interview with Pravda, Kaysone (Kaysone Phomivihan, head of the Laotian CP) made the point that China was to blame: “The main threat to our revolutionary gains now comes from China, which is pursuing a policy of expansion and great-power chauvinism. The situation on the Lao-Chinese border remains tense.”[714]
Only in Cambodia (Kampuchea) did there arise a party that took the Chinese side, and that was in turn was supported by the Chinese. With the acquiescence of the Chinese, the Cambodian Communists, or Khmer Rouge, carried out one of the most bizarre social experiments organized by any Communist regime anywhere.
Until the overthrow (with U.S. support) of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who had turned a blind eye to the North Vietnamese use of Cambodia’s eastern provinces as a route to transport men and supplies to their forces in South Vietnam, and the establishment of the regime of General Lon Nol, early in 1970, the Vietnamese had not encouraged Communist guerrilla activities against the Cambodian regime. However, after March 1970 they did so, and it was reported that by 1975, there were as many as 50,000 Communist-led Khmer Rouge troops fighting against the Lon Nol government.
In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, a city of about 2 million people. Sidney Schanberg wrote in the New York Times about what happened next: “Using loudspeakers, or simply shouting and brandishing weapons, they swept through the streets, ordering people out of their houses. At first we thought the order applied only to the rich in villas, but we quickly saw that it was for everyone as the streets became clogged with a sorrowful exodus. In Phnom Penh, two million people suddenly moved out of the city en masse in stunned silence. … Hospitals jammed with wounded were emptied, right down to the last patient. They went—limping, crawling, on crutches, carried on relatives’ backs, wheeled on their hospital beds.”[715]
Fred Feldman and Steve Clark, writing in the Trotskyist Intercontinental Press, described the wider scope of this move by the Khmer Rouge. They wrote, “Similar forced evacuations were carded out in other cities, including Battambang and the port of Kompong Som. At least 3 million people were involved in the exodus. How many died is unknown. But adequate medical care—already much reduced by war and U.S. cutoff of aid—was almost impossible to obtain. The urban population was scattered against its will over the countryside and set to work growing rice, repairing dikes, building dams and canals, digging irrigation ditches, and carving out other projects aimed at restoring and extending agricultural production.”[716]
Feldman and Clark went on, “In its drive to restrict consumption and accumulate a surplus to fund… industrialization, on the other hand, the Khmer Rouge apparatus eliminated most public education; nearly abolished professional health care and hospitals; closed libraries and other cultural institutions; ended phone and mail service; stopped publishing books or newspapers; and slashed recreation and entertainment. Labor was intensified to an extreme. The twelve-hour day was institutionalized.”[717]
The Khmer Rouge regime, led by Pol Pot, was outspokenly Maoist. Peter A. Poole noted that after Mao’s death there was “a carefully arranged memorial ceremony for Mao Tse-tung in Phnom Penh. The Chinese ambassador, who was present, also stated that the Cambodian Revolutionary Organization was Marxist-Leninist and ‘fraternal’ party to the Chinese Communist Party.”[718]
The Khmer Rouge regime soon developed border disputes with Vietnam. In April 1978, Lowell Finley commented on these problems. He noted, “The Vietnamese have released some very detailed accounts of Cambodian attacks. They released photos that were taken in the spring of 1977 in border areas which show villages destroyed and people dismembered and disemboweled, allegedly by Cambodian forces. It’s very difficult to really judge the charges that have come out.”[719]
Finley elaborated on the factors lying behind the border incidents. He said, “It’s not a ‘simple’ border dispute. There’s a definite element in it of disagreement over which maps to use and exactly where border markers should be. But behind it lies a long history of hostility between the two countries that goes back centuries—and of relations between the two Communist movements in Cambodia and Vietnam. There’s also an element of conflict in the background between the Soviet Union and China.”[720] He added, concerning the Khmer Rouge, “Although the current leaders are Marxists, they still identify with the past and feel that there is a national glory that they want to recapture.”[721]
The Khmer Rouge remained in power until January 1979. In the previous month, “the Vietnamese news agency reported that an organization, the Kampuchean National Front for National Salvation, had been formed, held a congress, and elected a fourteen member Central Committee headed by Heng Samrin. The news agency also reported that the National Front through its military arm, the Kampuchean Revolutionary Armed Forces, had as its goal the overthrow of the Pol Pot regime.”[722]
Of course, it was the Vietnamese Army, rather than Cambodian rebels, that ousted the Khmer Rouge regime, and installed one headed by Heng Samrin. That move began a thirteen-yearlong occupation of Cambodia by the Vietnamese.
However, the Khmer Rouge continued to control some border areas of Cambodia, and to conduct guerrilla operations against the Vietnamese-backed regime. Furthermore, the Chinese continued to back the Pol Pot group. Peter A. Poole wrote in 1980 that “Pol Pot and some of his colleagues who survived the invasion continued to receive arms and supplies from China, enabling them to continue to harass Vietnam’s army of occupation.”[723]
714
Arthur J. Domen, in
715
Quoted by Fred Feldman and Steve Clark,
718
Peter A. Poole, in
719
Interview with Lowell Finley, Codirector, Southeast Asia Resources Center, in
722
Peter A. Poole, in
723
Peter A. Poole, in