The Terrible Chimeras Of Cambodia - Alternative View

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The Terrible Chimeras Of Cambodia - Alternative View
The Terrible Chimeras Of Cambodia - Alternative View

Video: The Terrible Chimeras Of Cambodia - Alternative View

Video: The Terrible Chimeras Of Cambodia - Alternative View
Video: Cambodia's Dark Past (Full Documentary) | TRACKS 2024, March
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Every state committed to communist ideology considers it its duty to oppose itself to the capitalist West. An alternative system of values, a planned economy - and, of course, the destruction of everything capitalist on its territory. Democratic Kampuchea approached this too diligently, leaving aside all doubts and common sense.

In less than four years, the Khmer Rouge led by Salot Sar (aka Pol Pot) killed, according to various estimates, from 1 to 3 million people, which is about a third of the total population of Kampuchea. This atrocity, recognized by modern Cambodia as genocide, made it possible to designate such a radical communist regime as one of the most inhuman in human history.

"Pure" communism

The Khmer Rouge's rise to power was largely aided by the civil war that has raged in Cambodia since 1967. The pendulum of sympathy of the population, exhausted by many years of bloody conflict, leaned towards the communists because they were the only party that did not receive support from outside - while the enemy, represented by the government troops of King Norodom Sihanouk, was financially and technically supported by the United States and South Vietnam. True, unsuccessfully - the strategic initiative finally passed to the Khmer Rouge, who in 1975 entered the capital of Phnom Penh.

Having settled in a new place and in a new status, Pol Pot, the general secretary of the communist party that came to power, began to act. A faithful follower of the ideas of Stalinism and Maoism, even while studying in France, he believed in the need to abandon the temptations of bourgeois civilization, which had to be achieved at any cost. And first of all, he dealt with the former representatives of the collapsed monarchy, and also destroyed potential opposition.

In principle, at first, the development of the situation in Cambodia strongly resembled our domestic events, when the Bolsheviks also gained the upper hand in the Civil War, and then began to build "their new world." But, unlike Lenin and Stalin, Pol Pot went even further in understanding the mechanism of building communism in a single country.

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The beginning of hell

On April 17, 1975, a red flag was raised over Phnom Penh, and in the early morning of the next day, residents of this and other cities were literally ordered to throw their belongings and go into a bare field. Those who refused to leave their homes were ruthlessly killed.

The evicted from the cities were forcibly united into rural communes, where everyone was forced to work, interrupting only for food and sleep. As absurd as it may sound, the Khmer Rouge really did not see the point in the urban population. Firstly, large agglomerations could become a refuge for potential opposition, and secondly, under communism people would live in communes where private property would be completely absent. The Khmer Rouge realized this brilliantly - an ordinary Cambodian did not have anything of their own, not even jewelry, which Pol Pot called "the chains that bind hands, feet and the revolutionary movement." Also, in his opinion, the freedom of Cambodia, renamed Democratic Kampuchea, fettered the structure of the population, which the communists divided into the "main people" (supporters of the communists from the very beginning of the civil war),in need of "serious re-education" (residents of the cities controlled by the old government) and sentenced to unconditional destruction (clergy, officials and military of the former monarchy).

In Kampuchea, the concept of a "besieged fortress" was implemented. The country broke off diplomatic relations with the whole world - an exception was made only for similar Stalinist dictatorships like the DPRK, Albania and Romania. The Soviet Union, the bulwark of world socialism, was not included in this “honorable” list. Moreover, the Khmer Rouge, having seized the capital, defeated the Soviet embassy (they were barely persuaded to release the diplomats sentenced to death), and a little later they rejected an invitation to pay a friendly visit to Moscow. All attempts by the KGB to create agents in Kampuchea failed. But the main enemy was proclaimed neighboring Vietnam, on the border cities of which the Cambodians made regular attacks. Even the unification of the country into a single communist Vietnam did not change the situation - it was still hated and called for absorption within the framework of the geopolitical concept of the “Great Khmer Empire”, which was also planned to include Thailand and Laos. However, it never came to practical implementation.

And yet, in the conditions of complete isolation of the state, Pol Pot continued the main work of his entire life - "building one hundred percent communist society" in just a week. The essence of the Khmer Rouge regime will become known to the world community only after its fall a few years later.

New on the ruins of the old

In the meantime, local communists, at the suggestion of Pol Pot, literally destroyed the country. Gangs of juvenile bandits throughout Kampuchea smashed cars and buildings, destroyed equipment in factories. Telephone communications were completely destroyed. The building of the national bank was blown up as unnecessary - because the money was canceled. Foreign languages were banned, schools and universities were closed. It got to the point that glasses became a symbol of unreliability - a Cambodian, according to Pol Pot, it was enough to be able to read government decrees, all other knowledge was considered unnecessary and even harmful to the life of their wearer. The abandonment of the former Cambodia was so complete that all bicycles and household appliances with razors and sewing machines were destroyed. A year later, there was literally nothing left of the economy.

But, of course, for ordinary Cambodians, all these problems did not exist. In between their work, political workers were engaged in their education, giving lectures on the advantages of Marxism. It was possible to speak only about "a wonderful life in a beautiful country" - the special services quickly learned about any other behavior through denunciation.

Separately, it should be said about the war against religion, which the Khmer Rouge started inside the country. On April 18, 1975, a day after the capture of Phnom Penh, the head of the Mahannikai Buddhist group, Huot Tata, was killed. All the ministers of Buddhism were also eliminated. The communists completely destroyed the local Christian community with laity and priests - only about 60 thousand people. The Tyams (Asian Muslim people) were forced to raise pigs. All those who refused to engage in pig breeding were killed. Christian and Buddhist temples were destroyed, mosques were blown up or turned into pigsties.

What we fought with

Fighting the Vietnamese inside Kampuchea and making daring forays into the territory of a neighbor, the Khmer Rouge ran into the natural reaction of Hanoi. She showed herself in full force in 1978, when the Cambodians made a particularly brutal attack on the Vietnamese settlement of Batyuk - about 3 thousand people were killed in the clashes. At the end of the year, Vietnam invaded Kampuchea. The ranks of volunteers immediately began to replenish en masse at the expense of the local population, brought to white heat by the Pol Pot regime.

It took about six months for the Vietnamese troops to take control of all the major cities of Kampuchea. The Khmer Rouge went underground and fiercely guerrilla fighters from the jungle. By the 1990s, resistance had eased. However, to this day, the remnants of the Khmer Rouge trades in robbery in the vast Cambodia.

The new government, led by Heng Samrin, got a country with a destroyed economy and a population that had shrunk after monstrous repressions.

Pol Pot's regime became a monstrous warning about the possible consequences of the implementation of the principles of radical left ideologies.

Stanislav OSTROVSKY