'The original Kampuchean (or Khmer) People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP) was founded in French colonial times, in September 1951, when the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1930, was dismembered into three national parties, the KPRP, the Vietnam Workers' Party and the Lao Itsala, prior to the independence of the three countries.
Tou Samouth, one of the Khmer Krom of southern Vietnam, was originally a Buddhist monk. In 1945, he was professor of Pali at Unnalom Monastery in Phnom Penh when an American air raid directed against Japanese military targets struck the building, causing several deaths. Samouth was so frightened by this event that he fled to the countryside, eventually making his way to Vietnam, where he joined the Viet Minh.
In the late 1940s, Samouth lectured groups of Khmer recruits on political awareness and economics.
Samouth went on to be a founder member of the Khmer People's Revolutionary Party, the precursor to the Communist Party of Kampuchea, along with Son Ngoc Minh. He was also one of the leaders of the United Issarak Front, a broadly leftist affiliation of various disparate elements of the anti-French resistance, the Khmer Issarak. When the Front formed its 'Khmer Resistance Government', Samouth was named as the Interior Minister.
As head of the Vietnamese-sponsored 'urban' faction of the Cambodian Party, Samouth's presence helped to attract many Buddhist monks to the left-wing cause. The 'urban' communists, as opposed to Sieu Heng's 'rural' cadres, advocated generally more moderate policies; in particular, they supported the presence of the Cambodian king, Norodom Sihanouk, as a figure of national unity and a useful ally in the North Vietnamese attempt to overcome the South.
It was within Samouth's faction of the Party that Pol Pot, and the other recent returnees from Paris who would form the nucleus of the Party's later incarnation as the Khmer Rouge, would gain experience. Samouth appears to have adopted Pol Pot as his protege, leading to the latter's rapid promotion within the Party subsequent to Cambodian independence'.
(NB: There was a fringe 'leftist' political party, The 'Pracheachun' (the People's Party), operating within Sihanouk's formal multi-party setup under his Sangkhum Reastr Niyum (Popular Socialist Community) Party in the 1950s and 1960s that is believed to be an arm of this Viet Minh sponsored movement. The Pracheachun is thus also regarded as a (or 'the') forerunner of the Cambodian People's Party (CPP).
Tou Samouth himself is the officially recognised founder of the CPP, and his image appeared in earlier bank notes issued under the Heng Samrin/Hun Sen regime.
Note also the present incorporation of the Sihanouk/Royalist faction into the formal political alliance favoured by Tou Samouth and Ho Chin Minh as an expedient, populist recruiting bate or strategy.
Source:
Dommen, A. The Indochinese experience of the French and the Americans, Indiana University Press, 2001, p.63
^ Ross, R. (ed) The KPRP Second Congress in Cambodia: A Country Study, Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1987
^ Thayer, N. Day of Reckoning, accessed 26-05/09
^ Kiernan, p.241
5 comments:
This is good history to learn. thanks
Why title it that way? I guess every chance you get to make other looks bad, you will do it in a heart beat. Nice..
The story and the background provided is very professionally done. It is good history to learn. I am not sure if I gree with the title either. I look like Khmerization trying to get response from the reader or trying to pain bad picture toward CPP.
Why title that way? You really think they are scheming for 60 years? Offer just history would have been more neutral but with the title, it shows Khmerization favor Sam Rainsy. Whatever it is, it is your choice. I am just a reader.
I can assure you, Khmerization is not responsible for the title (outside the brackets).
A lot of things that had been done to innocent people in their millions by the actors involved in that described period of history that could easily be considered far more inappropriate (or 'offensive') than this title is greeted by some of you gentle folk.
Anyhow, many thanks to Khmerization for your dedication and hard work.
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