Long Live the 17th Anniversary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea

Long Live the 17th Anniversary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea

Speech by Pol Pot, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Kampuchean Communist Party. Delivered on September 29th, 1977. Unofficial translation prepared by: Group of Kampuchean Residents in America [G.K.Ran]. Printed into booklet form by Liberator Press, Chicago U.S.

The speech, split into three parts, was originally broadcast on Radio Phnom Penh, in part after the prompting by the Chinese government, of the Cambodian revolutionaries to reveal the existence of their Communist Party. Note the unironic use of language.

If you decide to you use any part of the this speech elsewhere, then please link back to this blog.

Introduction

Democratic Kampuchea is situated in Southeast Asia, roughly between 10 and 15 degrees of north latitude and between 102 and 108 degrees of east longitude. The area is estimated at 181,035 square kilometers. It extends over a distance of 540 kilometers from north to south, 570 kilometers from west to east.

It is bordered on the west and north by the Kingdom of Thailand, on the north by the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, on the east by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In the southwest, it is bordered by 460 kilometers of seacoast, including many dozens of islands, such as Koh Kong, Koh Tang, Koh Way, Koh Tonsay.

Democratic Kampuchea is an old marine gulf filled up by the alluviums of the Mekong River and the volcanic rise which was formed during the quaternary era. This geological formation explains the presence of sandy or granito-basaltic soils (called red soils) in the mountainous massifs, covered with dense forests, and in the tablelands of sandy clay soils in the plains and very fertile alluvial soils along the banks of the Mekong River and lakes.

Kampuchea is shaped like a wash-basin, running from northwest to southeast. It is bound to the south by the sea, and to the southwest and west by tablelands and ranges of mountains (the Cardamones and Elephant ranges at the medium height of 1,000 meters, with the highest peak being that of Aural at 1.813 meters), to the north (ranges of Dangrek at the medium height of 700 meters), to the northeast and to the east (tablelands of Ratanakiri, Haut-Chhlong and Mondulkiri). The southeastern part is flat and taken up by the valley of the Mekong River.

The center of the wash-basin is taken up by the plain of the Mekong River and that of the Great Lakes.

The Mekong River, 500 kilometers long, runs across Democratic Kampuchea from north to south. It is a majestic river whose width can reach three kilometers at certain places. It is navigable all year round from the city of Kratie in a distance of 300 kilometers. In front of the capital, Phnom Penh, the Mekong River is divided into two branches: the first has its original name, the second is called Bassac. It is also this place where the Mekong River meets the Tonle Sap River and joins it to the Great Lakes. The subdivision of the Mekong River into two branches and its junctions with the Tonle Sap River form a big “X” which is called “Chakdomuk” or “Four Arms” made up by the high Mekong to the northeast, and low Mekong to the southeast, the Bassac to the southwest and the Tonle Sap River to the northwest.

The Great Lakes lie in the northwestern part of the country, an immense natural water reservoir and overflow of 150 kilometers long and 35 kilometers wide, covering an area of 3,000 square kilometers at a depth of two meters during the low water. But during the high water, this area extends beyond 10,000 square kilometers and the water depth reaches 14 meters.

The Tonle Sap, a river 136 kilometers long and 500 meters wide, joins the Great Lakes to the Mekong River. In the rainy season, at the rise of the water, the water of the Mekong River flows into the Great lakes. IN the dry season, at the fall of the water, the water from the Great lakes flows backwards into the Mekong River. The Tonle Sap offers, then, this particularity: it has a current which changes direction twice a year, with the rise and the fall of the Mekong River.

Situated in the tropical zone and subject to the action of monsoons, Democratic Kampuchea has a hot and humid climate. The average temperature of the hottest months is 30 degrees Celsius, that of the coolest months is 26 degrees Celsius. The year is divided into three seasons: a rainy season, hot and humid, from mid-May to October; a dry sand fresh season, from November to February (minimum 16 degrees); a dry and hot season from March to mid-May (maximum 40 degrees).

Democratic Kampuchea is essentially an agricultural country. The main crop is rice, which constitutes the basic food of the population. Among the cereals and oleaginous plants are corn, beans, peanuts, soy beans and numerous varieties of potatoes, sweet potatoes, manioc. Fruits and vegetables are abundant. Tea, coffee and pepper are also cultivated. The principal industrial products are: rubber, coconut, cotton, sugar cane, jute, kapok, tobacco, grass cloth, mulberry for silkworms….

The forests in Democratic Kampuchea are among the most beautiful forests in Southeast Asia and have the best species of trees. The animal life is represented by herds of wild elephants, bouvines, different kinds of deer, civet-cats, squirrels….

The rivers and lakes are very rich in fish and fresh-water crayfish. The seacoasts are full of fish.

The mineral wealth is as yet relatively undeveloped. There is iron, coal, bauxite, phosphate, kaolin, gold, precious stones, marble, lime….

The people of Kampuchea have always lived in the present territory. For more than two thousand years they have been a political and economic entity, with their own history, traditions, culture, civilization and art.

The marvelous monuments of Angkor, universally considered to be one of the masterpieces of the world, are clear evidence of the brilliant civilization of the creative spirit of the working people of Kampuchea.

At present, Democratic Kampuchea has a total population of 8,000,000 workers, peasants and laborers, living in a society where there are neither rich nor poor, neither exploiting class nor exploited class and where equality, justice, democracy, harmony and happiness prevail within a large national union.

The people of Democratic Kampuchea include Khmers (99%) and numerous national minorities living together in the same great family, closely untied for defending and building the country.

The national and official language is Khmer.

Two Years after Liberation

On April 17, 1975, after struggling determinedly for five years and making many sacrifices in the revolutionary war of national liberation against U.S. imperialism’s war of aggression, the people of Kampuchea and their Revolutionary Army have totally and definitively liberated themselves from exploitation and oppression by imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism and all the exploiting classes. The whole nation has regained its soul. The worker-peasant people have regained their dignity and, with their Revolutionary Army, have become masters of their country and now control state power, firmly holding the destiny of the nation in their hands.

During these past two years, the worker-peasant people and the Revolutionary Army of Democratic Kampuchea, under the just and clear-sighted leadership of their Revolutionary Organization, have achieved much. Thanks to their resolute and stubborn struggle, to their determination, to their pure patriotism, and to their lofty revolutionary spirit, have consolidated worker-peasant state power and the gains of the revolution. They have repeatedly won great victories in all fields of national construction. By firmly upholding their independence, sovereignty and self-reliance, these forces have built a strong, broad-based, revolutionary mass movement. Though the road of independence and sovereignty may be full of hardships, they are firmly convinced that it is the road of honor and dignity.

In two years, they have proved that by mobilizing all their physical, moral and intellectual forces and by utilizing all the natural resources, they can successfully defend and build an independent, united, peaceful, neutral, nonaligned, sovereign and territorially integral Democratic Kampuchea.

Excerpt from “Democratic Kampuchea Is Moving Forward”.

Long Live the 17th Anniversary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea

(By Comrade Pol Pot, Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea)

Respected and beloved comrades representing the workers’ collectives,

Respected and beloved comrades representing the peasants’ collectives,

Respected and beloved comrades representing the three branches of the Revolutionary Army – Land, Sea and Air.

Respected and beloved comrades representing all government ministries and departments:

We are gathered here today to honor the Seventeenth Anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. I take this occasion to extend my greetings to the entire collectivist working class, which has waged and is waging the struggle everywhere – at every workplace, on every front – to contribute to the national defense, the building up of the country, and the raising of the people’s living standard, all toward carrying out, with a high sense of revolutionary responsibility, the glorious task which the Party has entrusted to them.

At this great meeting, I address my deep greetings to the collectivist peasant class, the members of the cooperatives throughout the country, who, as they have done in the past, are today zealously struggling to realize the objectives of the rice production plan. With a strong sense of responsibility and with the aim of contributing to the national defense, to the building up of the country, and to the rapid raising of the standard of living of the people, the peasants are carrying out this plan, which the Party entrusted to them in 1977.

Let me extend warmest and most profound greetings to the Revolutionary Army, which has struggled and continues to struggle to surmount every obstacle on every front, even in our most remote areas, in order to defend the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of our Democratic Kampuchea. They do this with a strong sense of revolutionary responsibility, thus making an important contribution to the building up of the country and to the rapid raising of the living standard of the people.

I address my profound greetings to all the comrades of the revolutionary government ministries and departments, who, as in the past, are today surmounting all difficulties and concentrating all their efforts to carry out the revolutionary tasks which the party has entrusted them, in order to make their contribution to national defense, construction of the country, and to the rapid raising of the people’s living standard.

I must express my deepest respect for all these comrades because, as in the past, at present and in the future, it is and will be our Revolutionary Army, our working class, our peasantry, our comrades in the revolutionary government ministries and departments, who, united in a single force, assure the defense of our sacred national territory, are building our new Kampuchea, and raising the standard of living of our people by the following slogan: “To progress by great leaps and bounds!”

This year, the celebration of the anniversary of the founding of our Party will be marked by an exceptional event that I will now officially make known to you. In commemorating the Seventeenth Anniversary of its founding, our Party has decided to solemnly proclaim, before our country and the whole world, the official existence of the Communist Party of Kampuchea.

Our people of all social classes and strata already know that it is the Communist Party of Kampuchea which is the sole genuine leadership of the Kampuchean revolution. Moreover, our people know perfectly well that, in order for successive revolutionary victories, culminating in the great victory of April 17, 1975, to have been possible, the leadership of the CPK was necessary. All the social classes and strata of our people, especially the workers, peasants and other revolutionaries, have learned to know and to appreciate the Communist party of Kampuchea for many years, even if we had not proclaimed our existence officially.

Because, for a long period of 17 years, our Party did not make its existence public, the entire Kampuchean people, especially the poor strata, waited impatiently for the solemn proclamation of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. They waited in order to praise the merits of the Party, which has made sacrifices in order to lead the people and the revolution of Kampuchea, and to liberate the nation and people.

This is why we are convinced that, from this time on, all the Kampuchean people will make the country ring with praise for the correct and clear-sighted Communist Party of Kampuchea, and they will increase the support they have always given to what they knew only as the “Revolutionary Organization of Kampuchea”. Everywhere, in the most remote areas, in the depths of the forests and on the mountains, across the plains and in the towns, the solemn proclamation of out Party will be greeted with cheers of joy.

Our friends around the world also know that no people in the world has won a revolution without being led by a working class party. Why then, in Kampuchea, where the people won victory upon victory until the greatest victory over U.S. imperialism, leader of world imperialism, had they never heard mention of the leadership of the communist party? Thus, all these friends have also awaited the solemn proclamation of the official existence of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in order to praise it and the great victory won by the Party, which led the Kampuchean people to the glorious victory of April 17, 1975.

On occasion of the official proclamation of the existence of our Party, all our people will be greatly elated. Our friends far and near on the five continents will warmly acclaim it, while the imperialists and reactionaries will be most bitter at the prestige and power of the Communist Party of Kampuchea.

The celebration of this Seventeenth Anniversary of our Party is, then, a historic moment for our nation, our people, our revolution and our Communist Party of Kampuchea. This is why, on this occasion, we must honor the memory of all the heroes and heroines from among all the people, the entire Revolutionary Army, and all the members of our Party. These comrades have endured every hardship, made sacrifice after sacrifice for the full liberation of Kampuchea, to make our country 100% independent; to totally liberate the people, particularly the masses of workers, peasants and other laboring people, who have suffered enslavement, deceit, oppression and exploitation for centuries, might have honor, glory, prosperity and prestige, such that there would be friends on five continents who would rejoice at the great victories of our revolution.

In honoring the memory of all these comrades and heroes who laid down their lives, moved by noble patriotic feelings, with lofty revolutionary spirit, and deep and noble feelings of love and devotion to the people and to the working class, we all pledge ourselves to find inspiration in their noble example, to show our gratitude to them, to be their worthy successors and to accomplish the noble tasks that the Party has entrusted to each of us. We all resolve to turn out sorrows, our anger, and our grief for the loss of these valiant comrades-in-arms into a strength ever more vigorous. We do this in order to fight to accomplish the tasks of the Party, with a heightened sense of revolutionary responsibility, an ardent patriotism, and a profound devotion to the people and to the working class, both in 1977 and in the years to come.

It is with this resolve to learn from the example of our comrades-in-arms who have passed away, that I propose, on the occasion of the celebration of the Party’s Seventeenth Anniversary, the following theme for out great meeting today: let us contemplate and learn from the revolutionary movement of the Kampuchean people, under the leadership of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, and learn from our people’s movement of revolutionary struggle, which in the course of the preceding generations, fought for national liberation, independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, in order to save the Kampuchean nation and to ensure its survival, so that Kampuchea will never again lose any territory, as it did before, in the era when the various exploiting classes were in power, when it lost some every year, every instant.

To make it easier to understand, my talk will be divided into three sections:

The first part deals with the struggle of the Kampuchean people before the founding of the Party, from the period of slavery to 1960, the year of the founding of the Communist Party of Kampuchea.

The second part deals with the national democratic revolution led by the Communist Party of Kampuchea, from 1960 to 1975.

The third part deals with the new stage of the Kampuchean revolution, the defense of Democratic Kampuchea, continuation of the socialist revolution and socialist construction.

The three parts, which I have just enumerated, outline the history of the revolutionary movement of our people, from its beginnings up to today. Our aim is to give a general idea of our revolutionary movement. We will not go into problems in detail, in their many aspects, but we are going to stick to explaining what, in our view, is at the root of our victories. It is because we have elaborated a strategy and tactics for our movement, because we have summed up our experiences in the course of our work, and because we have established throughout our struggle a correct line on political questions, on the building up of our forces, on military and economic questions, that we have won our victories. An examination of the various aspects of our movement, from its beginnings up to the present day, will show whether or not the Communist Party of Kampuchea is really a genuine Marxist-Leninist party, whether it is a genuine proletarian party. All the comrades will be able to make their own evaluations, based on the substance of our revolutionary movement.

These are questions which must be raised. Therefore, this meeting is not only held for a moment, after which you can go back and carry out your normal tasks. This meeting is one which we must all examine, judge and study the experiences of our revolutionary movement under the leadership of our Communist Party of Kampuchea.

Allow me to present to you the first part of the speech dealing with the movements of struggle of the Kampuchean people before the birth of the Party, from the era of slavery to 1960.

The Struggle of the Kampuchean People, from the Slave Period to 1960

Kampuchea already has a history of more than 2,000 years. This history shows that Kampuchean society, like every other society, has gone through a number of different stages. Kampuchean society went through a stage of primitive communism. After primitive communism, it entered its slave period, then its feudal period. After this, it entered the stage of capitalism. Just recently, after the capitalist period, Kampuchean society has entered a new era, the socialist society. Thus, we have passed through all the history stages.

Within the framework of primitive communism, there were not yet any classes. Consequently, there was no class struggle. When Kampuchean society entered the slave period, it divided into classes: a class of slave owners and a class of slaves. In feudal society, there were landlords and peasants. In capitalist society, there were the capitalists and the workers, This is the real essence of each society that our country has known.

During the slave period, the feudal period and the capitalist period, particularly during the feudal-capitalist era, our country was also subject to foreign domination. For example, speaking only of the last period, Kampuchean society was a colonial and semi-colonial society, subject to the domination of the French, Japanese and U.S. Imperialists. Thus, all the foreigners came to exploit our country.

Were there class contradictions in slave, feudal and capitalist societies? Of course there were class contradictions! A number of comrades have studied the history of Kampuchea. It clearly shows that there was class struggle for a very long time between the exploited and exploiting classes.

1. In slave society, there was struggle between the exploiters (slave owners) and exploited (slaves or “owned servants”). These two factions were adversaries, sworn enemies in the life-and-death conflict. Those of the slaves who refused to be exploited, joined together to fight against their oppressors.

Did such struggle actually occur? Certainly it did! This is attested to by what is known about society and about exploitation, as well as by the social sciences. Our own history confirms it. In slave society, the exploited class struggled against the exploiting class. But this struggle was not guided by a correct line. History shows that the struggle of those times sometimes failed, sometimes triumphed. Some slaves became leaders of armies and defeated the slave owners, making themselves lords ion order to exploit others in their turn. This is not a path which served the masses of slaves, it did not serve the exploited slave class. This was a line which served the personal interest of some men and their cliques, in order that they might dominate and exploit others.

Did the oppressed accept oppression? Of course not! They fought back against the exploiters to defeat them. This is what happened during slave society. We can see that, throughout this experience, there was struggle., the slaves rose up in struggle. But this struggle did not culminate in success, because it was based on a line which does not serve the masses and the exploited classes. In the beginning, some leaders managed to deceive the masses. But the oppressed are quick to catch on when they are being exploited and to rise up against their exploiters.

The real substance of our revolution is the elimination of exploiting classes and the liberation of the exploited. We study this lesson to understand that now it is our Party, which is in power, and, if it ever followed a path of the slave era, it will be fought and overthrown by the worker and peasant masses. If the political line serves the workers, peasants and the broad masses of people, it will meet broad support. It constitutes a powerful force which assures strong national defense, rapid building up of the country and a rapid rise in the people’s living standard. The Party is the true representative of the poor classes. If it is not so, if the Parry exploits and crushed the people, the people will fight back and reject it. This is the experience of history.

We must always, everywhere, examine ourselves. It is not only the Party as a whole which must do it, but also every Party organization, every cadre, every member of the Party, every official in the factories, in the ports, in the energy service, in the salt marshes. If it no longer represents the basic classes, the exploited people, this Party will have no meaning, it can no longer claim to be the Party of the proletariat. The committees would have no meaning, being a chairman would also be meaningless. “Meaningless” in the sense that they no longer represent the proletariat. Such a party, such cadres, such committees would change their class nature and, thus, at that point, enter into contradiction with the proletariat.

What lesson can be drawn from the struggle during the period of slave society?

The positive point is that the exploited people, the slaves, struggled against the exploiting classes, the slave owners. The slaves were trained, forged in the course of successive struggles. This is the great lesson we must all learn from our poor people, who have made every sacrifice in the struggle to liberate the exploited classes and do away with the exploiting classes.

But another lesson, which me must not forget, is that without a correct political line, a struggle is bound to fail.

2. The history of our country clearly shows the existence of two classes in feudal society. There are the classes of feudalists and the landlords, and the peasant class. The feudalists and the landlords were the warlords, who exploited the peasant class in every way. Thus, the exploited peasantry entered into contradiction with the feudalist and landlord class and fought back against it. This struggle developed everywhere in the country. Some peasant movements were put down and destroyed, others defeated the feudalists and landlords. But the peasant movements which gained victory did not have a political line which could serve the exploited peasant class or end exploitation. On the contrary, the winners, in some places, made themselves feudalists, landlords or warlords, and in so doing, became the new exploiters of the peasant class. Did the exploited peasant class accept these new feudalists, landlords or warlords? Of course not! The peasants fought to defeat the new exploiters, as they had fought the ones before them.

This shows that there were movements of the exploited peasant class against the exploiting class of feudalists and landlords. But these movements of struggle each met with defeat.

What lessons can be drawn from this? One lesson is that the exploited peasant class was moved to rise in struggle. This struggle went on throughout a long period and developed in one movement after another. It mainly took the form of armed struggle, of war. Through this struggle, the exploited peasant class was trained, tempered with their own blood. They acted with courage and skill and won victories against the enemy.

The other lesson is that the struggle of the exploited class, at that time the peasantry, met repeated defeats despite its heroism.

What was the main reason for this?

Mainly, it was that there was no correct line which could powerfully and broadly mobilize the forces of the exploited class to crush the exploiters, the feudalists, landlords and warlords.

In this same feudal epoch, enemies came from abroad, some foreign feudalists and foreign reactionaries and colonialists came to invade our country. As invaders, they entered into antagonistic contradiction with the Kampuchean nation and people. They invaded, exploited and oppressed the Kampuchean nation and people, particularly the peasant class. At the same time, the Kampuchean nation and people, particularly the peasant class, rose up to drive out the foreign invaders, in order to be freed and to free the country and the people, particularly the peasantry. These movements of struggle appeared everywhere, one after another, taking the form of armed struggle. Some movements met defeat and were crushed. But, in other places, they won.

Even so, their victory was temporary, because those who were the victors did not possess a correct line to really liberate the country and really liberate the people, the exploited masses who comprise the peasant class. Once they won, they thought only of their own interest and the interest of their clique. They made themselves warlords and ruled like kings and viceroys, and they became the new exploiters of the peasant class. When the peasant people turned against them, they sought aid and protection from the foreign feudalists and reactionaries, or from the colonialists, cutting off much of the national territory for them or selling it to them, in order to continue to reign as kings, in kingdoms indebted to foreigners, collaborating with them in the exploitation of the peasantry.

This was the state of the struggle of the nation and of the peasantry during the feudal era. In reality, there was great heroism in this struggle, but it met defeat upon defeat. This was because there was no political line which could serve the nation and true national liberation, serve the people and the true liberation of the nation.

3. During the feudo-capitalist era, in particular, just after the Second World War, there were many movements among the people of Kampuchea. These movements were quite different in nature from the movements of earlier times, because colonialism and international imperialism had acquired more experience in sabotaging the movements of the exploited nations and peoples. These movements were:

a. The movement called the “Struggle for National Independence”, which included several political parties, such as the Democratic Party, the Freedom Party, the Mother Earth Party, the Hanuman Party, the Arrow Party, and many others in elections for their so-called “independence”.

In reality, however, these parties:
- were created out of the French colonial laws;
- made compromises with the French colonialists and were authorized by them;
- represented the classes of feudalists, aristocrats, big landlords, capitalists and other privileged strata.

Was their struggle really that of the people, in the interest of the people? Was it for national independence? Of course not! The essence of their so-called “struggle” was to obtain “independence” for Kampuchea from the French colonialists, in the interest of the feudalists, aristocrats, landlords, capitalists and the privileged strata. Of course, this form of struggle confused and deceived the masses only for a while. But, later, the masses cursed it and opposed it.

b. The Japanese fascists and the U.S. CIA created an “independence movement”, which they called “Popular Movement” or “Khmer Serei”, with Son Ngoc Thanh at its head. The slogan, “Demand independence from the French”, launched by Son Ngoc Thanh, could fool a few students for a while, but later, the “Popular Movement” or “Khmer Serei”, was condemned everywhere, spat upon and rejected by the nation and the people of Kampuchea, since its leader was a traitor to the nation. This so-called “struggle” to gain “independence” from France was, in fact, a struggle to gain “independence” for Kampuchea by the U.S. imperialists, whose aim was to transform Kampuchea into a neo-colony and a base for its military aggression.

c. There was another movement of struggle. This was the authentic revolutionary struggle of our people, particularly of the poor peasants, to wrest independence from the French imperialists. This revolutionary struggle developed in several parts of our country. The people made every sacrifice in combat against the enemy. It was an armed struggle, and, in the course of it, the people built their army and established their bases. But this revolutionary struggle of our people and their revolutionary gains vanished into thin air with the 1954 Geneva Accords.

What was the reason for this?

The lessons, which our people paid for with their blood during the history of their courageous struggle, show that the absence of a clear and correct line to guide the revolutionary struggle was the reason for the successive failures of our people.

Therefore, the following questions were raised.

How do we wage the struggle? What are its strategy and tactics? What are its orientation and its objectives? What forces should we rely on? What form should the struggle take? In fact, there was no independence, initiative or self-reliance.

Without a political line which gives judicious guidance, one becomes blind. Even with great strength and determination, one cannot win. One loses one’s orientation, one doesn’t know what to hold onto, one proceeds toward certain defeat and, in the end, ruin.

To summarize, our people have fought for a very long time, from the slave period to the struggle against the French, but they met one defeat after another. Throughout this period, the movement of our people has left us two major lessons:

The best lesson is that our people are courageous, moved by fierce patriotism, daring to struggle, daring to sacrifice themselves to fight enemies of the nation, the aggressors and the exploiters who are the class enemies.

We must grasp this special point well. If we do not, we are gravely underestimating our people. If we do not learn from the movement of our people since its beginnings, we cannot avoid thinking that our people do not dare to struggle, do not know how to struggle, that they are lazy, weak, cowardly, and have accomplished nothing. But, in fact, from generation to generation, our people have always struggled, have always shed their blood. They dare to wage armed struggle, which is the highest form of struggle; they even struggle bare-handed. Our people have struggled, they still struggle, they will struggle forever.

Are such people brave, or, are they cowards?

They are truly a brave people, truly worthy, having beautiful traditions of struggle. We must grasp this lesson and emulate it so as to keep our people’s good trait aloft and alive forever. The reality is that the people have struggled, a fact not imagined by some writer. Thus, whether or not we have confidence in the masses depends on the examination that we make of our people’s movement. Our people have dared to fight foreign invaders in every era. They dared to struggle against the French invaders, they dared to struggle against the Japanese invaders and the American invaders, they have always dared to struggle.

For this reason, we all place our complete confidence in our people, expand and strengthen this confidence, and rely on our people. The force of the people can carry out any task of the revolution.

The second lesson is that, although valiant, if the struggle is misdirected, it is going to lose. In the past, we did not have a line. Our people were very courageous, made immense sacrifices, but they continually met defeat because they did not base themselves on a correct line. There no line which could resist the foreign enemies who invaded us, there was no line to fight back against the class enemies who exploited us within the country. And so, from this negative experience, how can we draw a positive lesson?

We must have a correct line, we must have the leadership of a true party of the working class with a correct line,. When we possess a correct line which can mobilize the people’s forces, they will be very powerful.

Now, we must have a line, but what line? A line copied from others will not work. We must have a line coming from a position of independence and initiative, of deciding our own destiny. Self-reliance means relying principally and fundamentally on our own people, our own Army, our own Party, on the concrete revolutionary movement in our country.

Thus, we must elaborate a correct line to win victory. This is why we drew up the strategic and tactical lines of our national democratic revolution, the question to which I will address myself in the second part of my talk.

The National Democratic Revolution under the Leadership of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, 1960-1975

Based on the experiences of the centuries-long revolutionary struggles of our people, struggles marked by repeated defeats, our Party developed a political line to lead the Kampuchean revolution to victory.

In 1957 we created a committee in order to prepare the Party’s political line, which was made up of a number of cadres in charge of work in the countryside and others in charge of work in Phnom Penh. The committee studied and researched the history of our people’s struggle, summing up the positive and negative experiences in order to draw lessons which could help illustrate the Party’s line. The committee also studied the experiences of a number of revolutionary movements elsewhere in the world.

In light of these experiences, the committee worked out a draft proposal for the Party’s political line, based upon Marxism-Leninism and the principles of independence, severity and self-reliance, in order to be masters of our own destiny, applying Marxism-Leninism to the concrete realities of Kampuchea and Kampuchean society.

It should be noted that at that time the situation was characterized by difficult and complex struggles, both inside the country and abroad.

Inside the country, enemy repression had caused heavy losses since the time of the 1955 legislative elections. In 1956, the enemy continued to crack down and in, 1957, the repression intensified. In 1958, during the second elections, these attacks became more severe, especially in the countryside, and many people were arrested. The arrests continued and multiplied in 1959 and 1960, both in the countryside and in the cities. About 90% of our revolutionary forces in the countryside were destroyed in 1959, due to assassinations, arrests, recantations and surrender. This was the difficult situation at home.

Abroad, the situation at that time was also very complex, as a result of the confusion and uncertainty in the international revolutionary line.

It was in this situation that our committee charged with working out the Party’s line drew some clear and precise conclusions from our bitter experiences during the elections which the ruling class of that time had organized.

During the 1955 elections, the people’s forces throughout the country supported the revolution and the progressive side against the reactionaries and U.S. imperialism. But the people were unable to vote for the progressives, because the ruling class resorted to its guns, courts, laws, prisons and other repressive tools. The 1958 elections showed even more clearly that the people still loved the revolutionaries and supported the progressive policy against the U.S. imperialism, wanting to give the progressives state power and management of the affairs of the country and people. But in the elections of 1958, once again, the enemy made use of guns, laws, courts, prisons and every other repressive tool to prevent the people from voting for the revolutionaries, the patriots and progressives.

Do these experiences lead us to pursue electoral tactics in the struggle, or, rather, to find other forms of struggle through which to win victory and liberate our nation and people? The concrete situation of our movement posed the problem in this way.

Our own experiences taught us that we must adhere to the principles of independence, national sovereignty and self-reliance, basing ourselves on the experiences of our own revolutionary movement, in order to determine our concrete political line, it is in this way that the committee worked out a proposal for the Party’s line, a proposal which became the basic line presented to the 1960 Party Congress.

The First Party Congress was convened on Phnom Penh on September 30, 1960, while enemy repression was raging. To give an example which illustrates the situation at that time, I would like to mention that among the comrades who were then under arrest or in prison were our most distinguished intellectuals, such as the comrade president of the State Presidium. If the enemy did not hesitate to attack well-known intellectuals, it was even freer to attack the workers, the peasants and ordinary people.

It was in this bleak situation that we successfully convened our Party’s First Congress, right in the railroad yards of Phnom Penh itself. Among the Congress participants were 14 peasant representatives, in charge of work in different rural areas, and seven representatives of the cities, 21 delegates in all. In such a tense situation, with the enemy intensifying its repression, the participation of 21 representatives at the Party Congress, was, in itself, a life-and-death struggle. Had the enemy discovered the site of the Congress, the entire leadership of the Party would have been destroyed, the line of the Party would never have seen the light of day, the revolution would have been gravely endangered and the future jeopardized.

But we were determined to hold the Congress, because the revolutionary situation urgently demanded the adoption of a correct line to lead us. Without a correct line, the revolutionary movement would have been in grave danger. It would have headed toward defeat, and the entire revolution would have been jeopardized. And so, this situation made us determined to hold the First Congress at all costs, to assure its success, to adopt the Party line, which would enable us to lead the revolution to inevitable victory.

I said that the First Congress of the Party was held on September 30, 1960. Actually we met for three days and three nights. September 28, 20 and 30, 1960. The meetings lasted for three days without interruption; from start to finish, we were shut up in the room, without leaving.

The Congress marked a historic turning point for our nation, our people, our revolution, and for the working class of Kampuchea. It was the day on which the Communist Party of Kampuchea, a genuine Marxist-Leninist party was definitively born.

The First Party Congress decided three important questions:

1. The basic strategic line of the national democratic revolution;

2. The party constitution;

3. The election of the members of the Party’s Central Committee, assuring leadership on a national level.

Now I will deal with some of the essence of the fundamental line of our Party in the national democratic revolution.

What did we decide at the time? Let us look again in order to see if our decisions were correct or not. The fact that we have won one victory after another, leading up to the great victory of April 17, 1975, clearly proves that our line was correct. Nonetheless, we want to make this reexamination to clarify the reasons and the scientific analysis which led us to our fundamental line.

Firstly, the Congress analyzed and defined the real nature of the Kampuchean society at that time. What was the nature of our society at that time? What were its contradictions? It was absolutely necessary to answer these questions. This was basic to the definition of our tasks. A correct analysis of Kampuchean society allows the correct definition of the tasks of the revolution; on the contrary, an incorrect analysis would lead to equally incorrect tasks.

Kampuchea at that time was a satellite of imperialism, in particular, U.S. imperialism. This meant that Kampuchea was neither independent nor free. Kampuchea was a semi-colony, in a situation of dependency in imperialism in general and, in particular, on American imperialism. This was the conclusion of our analysis.

Could this analysis be made without struggle? Of course not! We had to struggle within our own ranks, and we had to struggle also in certain circles in society. At that time, within out nation, there were some people who believed that Kampuchea had been independent since 1949; others claimed that independence had been won in 1954, thanks to the Geneva Accords. Aside from the difference on the date, both these views agreed that Kampuchea was independent.

But did the true nature of the society and of the country in those days support this talk of independence? Of course not! Neither the economy nor the culture were independent. Nor was Kampuchea independent politically. Some sectors were independent, but others were not. It was the same for our social life. Not being independent means being dependent on foreign countries, dependent on foreign imperialism in general, headed by U.S. imperialism. Kampuchea was not at all independent in military affairs. The Khmer-U.S. military agreements of May 16, 1955, were proof of this. Besides, the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) had stretched its “umbrella” over Kampuchea. Consequently, although independent and neutral in form, Kampuchea, in essence, in its true nature, was not.

In actuality, the economy was entirely dominated by imperialism. It was the same for culture. The society and lifestyle were under imperialist influence, especially within the ruing circles.

We this defined the Kampuchea of those days as a country enslaved by imperialism, a semi-colonial country, because Kampuchea was under foreign domination in economy, culture, social and military affairs, and therefore was not independent.

This analysis should convince anyone that there were contradictions. Kampuchea was certainly not totally dependent, but it was half-way dependent. This being the case, were there contradictions?

Of course there were! There was a contradiction between the Kampuchean nation and foreign imperialism, particularly U.S. imperialism. It was not armed aggression, but there was economic, cultural and social aggression, as well as military aggression in the sense that the Kampuchean Army was subject to imperialist control in every way.

Consequently, by its very nature, Kampuchean society was prey to contradictions. It could not have been otherwise. Some people tried to bury the contradictions, insisting that they did not exist. But, in fact, the contradictions existed. There were contradictions between the Kampuchean nation and imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism, and they had to be resolved. They had to be resolved through a correct definition of our revolutionary tasks, namely, by uniting the whole nation into a single force in the struggle against imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism, for independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

This was the task of the national revolution. It meant that imperialism had to be driven out and the nation liberated.

This was what we found to be the solution, and we did not waver in applying it. If we could not find the solution, we would not have been able to give a correct definition to our tasks, and we would not have fought against imperialism. Moreover, after finding out the solution, if we had not taken a resolute position, the tasks would not have been defined in a clear way, and we would have been hesitant and unsteady. Sometimes we would have fought, sometimes we wouldn’t have.

Our Party correctly determined the contradictions which existed within Kampuchea. Therefore, we took up the task of mobilizing all the people’s forces in order to drive our imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism. We mobilized everyone who was against imperialism, against U.S imperialism, in particular. This was one of the correct tasks.

At that time, the exploiting and reactionary classes used to say: “Against whom should we struggle, since there are no Americans here?” But as for us, we based ourselves on the scientific analysis of the society. What was the nature of the society, the true nature of the economy, of the Army, of the culture? Were they independent or not? This was how we proceeded. We were not confined to the formal appearance of things. Because of the essence of its economy, its culture, its social life, its Army, Kampuchea was not independent. Therefore, Kampuchea was dependent or semi-dependent.

In this situation, did we want independence? The people certainly wanted independence. It was, then, necessary to set the task of mobilizing the people to struggle against imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism, in order to win independence.

Secondly, the Congress analysed and defined the contradictions within Kampuchean society. At the time that we were working out the Party’s line. Kampuchean society was divided into five distinct classes: the working class, the peasant class, the petty bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie and the feudal class. In all, there were five classes.

Were there contradictions between these various classes?

There were, and they were complicated ones. There contradictions between the workers and the capitalists, between the petty bourgeoisie and the capitalists, between the peasants and the landowners, between the capitalists and the peasants, etc…. The contradictions were complex and very entangled. But, which contradictions played the dominant role in society at that time?

To answer this question, we had to find, among other the many contradictions in society, the one which involved the majority of the population. Which class most exploited others? Which class was the most exploited and the most numerous?

An examination of the Kampuchean society of the time revealed that the peasants were 85% of the country’s entire population. Therefore, the peasants were the overwhelming majority of the population. They were exploited by all classes. They were exploited by the capitalists and the landlords. However, it was from the landlords that the peasants suffered the worst, most varied and most direct exploitation. Thus, 85% of the population, that is, the peasants, were in contradiction with the exploiting class which oppressed them directly, the landowners. Among all the contradictions within Kampuchean society, the contradiction which played the dominant role was that between the peasants and the landlords, because the peasantry represented the overwhelming majority, 85%, of the population. From whom did the peasants suffer exploitation? It had to be a priority to resolve this principal contradiction in order to mobilize the forces of the peasantry, who were the greatest force.

Thus, in Kampuchean society of those days, the contradictions were many and complex, but there was one contradiction among them which played an overwhelmingly dominant role, this was the contradiction between the peasant class and the landlord class.

The landlords exploited the peasants in every way, and this exploitation existed even in the most remote areas of Kampuchea. We made direct investigations for several years in our villages and communities, and we assembled direct details on this subject.

I will give an example. Thmor Koul, in the province of Battambang. During the years 1957-58, this was a region of vast rice plantations. Some 90% of the farmlands were in the hands of the landowners. Of the tens of thousands of people in Thmor Koul, only four to ten persons were landowners, who monopolized 90% of the land. Tens of thousands of peasants shared the remaining ten percent of the farmlands. This is why we concluded that there was an impoverishment in the countryside. That is to say, the peasants were becoming more and more impoverished. The rich peasants, who only cultivated their land themselves, eventually became middle peasants. The middle peasants who cultivate their land themselves and were exploited part of the time, became lower-middle peasants. The lower-middle peasants, little by little, became poor peasants, and the poor peasants, having little by little lost all their land, had to emigrate to the cities, where they became laborers, workers, pedicab drivers, or porters. This was the process of impoverishment in the countryside. Only the landlords became richer.

These were the contradictions in Kampuchean society, everywhere in Kampuchea.

Here is another document resulting from our investigations in the community of Dontey, which is situated in the eastern part of Kompong Cham province, in the Eastern Zone. We studied how the landlords exploited the peasants and what forms this exploitation took.

A pair of black cotton shorts coast, at that time, two to three riels. But, it cost the peasant 10 to 15 bushels of rice at harvest time. In this area, for their annual needs, a middle peasant family of five persons, husband, wife and three children, had only 30 bushels of rice per year, including the rice for food and seeds. So, with 15 bushels of rice for one pair of shorts, for two pairs of shorts, they would need 30 bushels of rice, the total income of a middle peasant family for a whole year. (Note: a bushel or “thang” equals roughly 40 kilograms).

Such then was the intensity of the exploitation which raged in our countryside. Those who did not see these problems did not realize how intense the exploitation was. Therefore, the contradiction was a life-and-death contradiction. This was a profound contradiction in Kampuchean society, one which touched 85% of the population. It was for this reason that the First Party Congress defined this contradiction as an antagonistic contradiction.

This being the case, how could this contradiction be resolved? The peasants had to be mobilized in the struggle against the exploiting class. The landlords. That was the only solution. But to win, the peasants had to have other social forces on their side. Our concrete experience had clearly shown that once we succeeded in mobilizing 85% of the people, the rest would follow, except for a small minority.

That is how we defined our tasks in the democratic revolution. By “ democratic revolution” we mean the liberation of the people. Concretely the liberation of the majority 85% of the people, the peasant class. To liberate the peasants, who make up 85% of the population, is to liberate all the people at one blow. Among the 15% remaining, the great majority would follow the masses of the peasantry, who form a powerful revolutionary force. Not only powerful in quantity, but also in quality, since the contradiction between the peasantry and the landlords is a life-and-death contradiction. Understanding this force is the key to victory. To consider our peasants backward, unclean, miserable, crude, incapable of making revolution, is to fall into a grave error in analysis. It is not proceeding from a scientific analysis of the contradictions within our society.

In fact, 85% of the population constitutes an immense force, because of its numbers and because of the profound contradictions which affect it. The contradictions generated hatred, but, in the past, the contradictions were buried. Why? Because the landlord class, the holders of power and the spiritual leaders were in the service of the ruling classes to dope the people. The belief that bad and good deeds from another life resulted in present conditions served the deceive the peasants and prevent them from seeing the contradictions. And yet, the contradictions were there. To arouse the peasants so that they saw them, burned with class hatred and took up struggle.

This was the key problem, the fundamental problem which was decisive for victory. Such was the conclusion of our analysis and such was our conviction.

In summary, the national democratic revolution had to accomplish two tasks:

1. Fight imperialism;

2. To fight the feudal landowners. To fight not just the individual landowners, but also their system of feudal exploitation.

According to this line, we had to mobilize the poor peasants and the lower-middle peasants. The cadres in charge of work in the countryside did not live in the towns, but in the remote areas. It was there that we were able to learn how many bushels of rice the peasants consumed each year and how many bushels of rice they had to pay for a pair of shorts. We knew how poor and lower-middle peasants were exploited, because we lived with them, and we carried out agitation and propaganda among them about feudal and semi-feudal exploitation, and the exploitation by the merchants and capitalists.

Comrades, examine the situation at that time! How did the struggles in the countryside develop, beginning in 1964?

In 1964, 1965, 1966, and 1967, the struggles developed with great force. Our movement was very powerful. It was in upheaval. In 1964 and 1965, the movement was already strong. In 1966, it became even more powerful. In 1967, it became an extraordinary force. By the thousands, by the tens of thousands, the peasants demonstrated, rose up, marched on the administrative offices of the communes, districts and provinces, in order to regain control of the land. Every form of struggle was used, including petitions and meetings with deputies. But what is especially important, the peasants armed themselves with scythes, knives, axes and hatchets, and other traditional weapons. Weapons in hand, the peasants surrounded police stations and military posts, resorting to revolutionary violence because the ruling classes refused to solve the problem of the lands which they had grabbed from the poor peasants in collusion with the landlords. The ruling classes were the feudalists, the landlords and the capitalists. How could they satisfy the demands of the peasants? They couldn’t. Their lies and their deceit could only help them for a time. When, after several actions, the peasants still had not recovered their lands, their discontent was transformed into anger, then class hatred, hatred arising from the class contradictions. At this stage, how could the problem be solved? There was nothing left for the peasants but to take up their scythes and axes and drive out the landlords, who had grabbed their land. From that point on, they no longer feared death, because they had nothing, and this was already like death for them.

Such was the movement of our peasants, a movement of great impetus, which was spreading through the entire country.

Some people asked us where our forces were and whether it would be possible for us to make revolution with only our bare hands as weapons. They did not see the seething and roaring strength of our people, with their class consciousness fully awakened. This class consciousness was not due solely to the propaganda and educational work of our Party, but was acquired in the course of struggle, through class hatred and the unresolved class contradictions. Problems like these led our peasants to find the solution in revolutionary violence. The decision through their own experiences in struggle. Thus, we were able to agitate among and mobilize 85% of the peasants throughout the country. I t was a prodigious force, and that is why we dared to struggle. Our Party believed in the people. Why? Because the Party had clearly seen the class contradictions and seen that the people were struggling through their own movement to revolve them. Our role was only to guide them to unite their strength, so that they would not go into combat without concentrating their forces.

This was the analysis formulated by the First Congress. It opened the way to correct orientation for our Party. If we could not have grasped it, we would have taken a wrong path.

Some people believed only in the importance of parliamentary struggle. The Party certainly had to carry on the struggle in the Assembly, but this was a supplementary form of struggle. It did not constitute the principal form of struggle in our revolution. It was not strategic, but only tactical. The struggle through the press is a form of struggle which was utilized to incite the opinion of the broad masses, but this, too, was not the principal form of struggle.

The fundamental force of our revolution is the peasants. In our country, the situation is different from the industrial countries. The workers were not the principal force of struggle of our revolution. In the beginning, we were also active among the workers. Sine 1955, we were able to organize the workers’ movement throughout the country. The comrade who is assistant secretary of our Party was given the task of leading the movement. However, our working class was numerically few. The movement was active in each factory, but it could not withstand enemy repression. Every time the movement rose up, it was soon destroyed. The movement would reemerge, and the enemy would destroy it again.

Take the railroads for instance. The movement there was the most powerful movement of the working class in our country, but it was crushed. Because of the tortures they suffered, some comrades who survived became insane.

Therefore, the working class, by its class nature, is the leading force. However, it was few in number and completely under the grasp of the enemy in the factories and workplaces.

Thus, our analysis of Kampuchean society in that period – that the peasants were in contradiction with the landlords – was fundamentally correct.

On the basis of this analysis, we have full confidence in our own forces. Despite what some people said, whatever the difficulties, we remained unshakable in our belief. Our people struggled very hard, and they struggled under the correct leadership of the Party.

One incident among many others, in incident from that period which I am going to use as an example, shows the richness of our people’s forms of struggle.

Krava, in the community of the same name in the Baray District, is a remote village, situated at the edge of the forests of the banks of the Stung Chinit River. The enemy heavily suppressed the people of this community, subjecting them to all sorts of exploitation, particularly land grabbing. The inhabitants had struggled. The enemy had arrested all the men. There was no one left in the village but women and children. The Party then recommended a supplementary form of struggle in the Assembly.

The peasant women immediately said: “What? Us, struggle in the Assembly? We, who know nothing of Phnom Penh or the Assembly? Struggle with whom, and against whom?”

We told them to take a bus from Kompong Cham and, once in Phnom Penh, to take pedicabs and ask the drivers to take them to the house of Chau Sen Kosal, president of the Assembly, and to stay there until he came home. They came in a group, with children in hand, babies in their arms. The pedicabs let them out at the house of Chau Sen Kosal. There, they refused to leave, staying for several days until Chau Sen Kosal finally agreed to arrange for the return of their husbands and lands.

This was how our illiterate peasants, who had never known the Assembly or any city, let alone Phnom Penh, had nonetheless dared to struggle under the leadership of the Party. The forms of their struggle were varied. The people are an immense force, capable of doing anything. Why? The reason is that our analysis of the contradictions and our manner of solving them was correct, and we were able to mobilize the necessary forces for a correct solution.

This is the line we adopted. Once we made the analysis of the contradictions within Kampuchean society, how did we determine the forces of the revolution and its enemies?

There were tow enemies who had to be fought: the first was imperialism, particularly U.S. imperialism. The second was the feudal class, the landlords, the reactionary compradors.

The forces of revolution were the workers, the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, the national bourgeoisie, and the prominent patriots and progressives. If we managed to mobilize only a small number, we would not succeed in the struggle. If we mobilized only some of them, we would have succeeded to some extent. If we mobilized all these forces, we would win completely. If we managed to mobilize a large powerful force, we would win a tremendous victory. This was the factor determining whether we would win or lose. Therefore, we had to know how to mobilize the forces of the workers, peasants, petty bourgeoisie, national bourgeoisie and the patriotic personalities.

How could we mobilize the workers, peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, the national bourgeoisie and the prominent patriots?

We proceeded according to the line already sketched. We had to keep the principal contradictions always in sight. The principal contradictions were with imperialism and the feudal, landlord system, which we had to combat. As to the secondary contradictions, they had to be resolved by reciprocal concessions in a way that allowed the unity of all the forces against imperialism, especially American imperialism, and the system of the feudalists, landlords and reactionary compradors. By basing ourselves on this line, we united all our forces.

We divided our work according to these different forces. Some of our comrades were assigned to work among the workers; others to work among the peasants; others still among the petty bourgeoisie, intellectuals, students and pupils; and others among Buddhist priests, the national bourgeoisie and among prominent progressives and patriots. That is to say, we united all who could be united, not only the workers and peasants, but also the petty bourgeoisie (the pupils, students and intellectuals) and the national bourgeoisie, the prominent patriots and progressives. We united everybody.

But how were we able to unite these people? Our policy had to be correct, our reasoning sound. The people had to understand our reasoning. Our policy had to conform with their interests for them to give us support. We talked to them, had meetings with them, Sometimes they agreed with us, sometimes they didn’t. We came back again and again. First they didn’t see the true nature of U.S. imperialism. But gradually, they ended up seeing it more and more clearly and uniting with us to combat it, to win independence, peace and neutrality.

All the forces had their role to play, but the basic forces were the peasants, who represented 85% of the people. We succeeded in mobilizing them, and this allowed us to unite the others in the course of the work. In this way, we were able to mobilize out forces. These forces, representing 95% of our people, united against the enemy.

It is true that these forces are different in kind: some are strategic forces, others, tactical forces. We consider the workers and peasants to be the strategic forces.

The petty bourgeoisie, the pupils, students, intellectuals of every kind, are allies of the workers and peasants. They were allies in the past, and they are still allies today.

The national bourgeoisie constitutes a supplementary force in the framework of the national democratic revolution. It is not the fundamental force, because it is unstable. Sometimes it takes the side of the enemy, sometimes the side of the revolution, whichever way the wind blows stronger.

As for tactical forces, they are the prominent people from the feudal aristocracy, the comprador capitalist class or the landlord class, who are willing to struggle to some extent against the enemy. We tried to unite all these people. Samdech Penn Nouth and Samdech Sihanouk, Samdech Supreme Patriarch Choun Nath of the Mohanikay Buddhist Order and the Samdech Supreme Patriarch of the Thumayuth Buddhist Order are prominent people whom we strove to rally. We rallied everybody. Our line was right and we applied it correctly.

Following our united front line, we united all the national forces in a large and solid united front, on the basis of the worker-peasant and under the leadership of our Party. We achieved excellent results in organizing these strategic and tactical revolutionary forces, which had the effect of winning to the revolution more and more important forces and of driving the enemy into greater and greater isolation.

We pursued our policy of uniting different forces, even to the point of differentiating among our enemies, so as to target only the most reactionary. We divided our enemies into three groups, and likewise, our position toward each group was different.

1. To win over the enemies who could be won over, even if only under certain circumstances;

2. To neutralize those who could be neutralized, so they could not carry out actions against us;

3. To isolate the most reactionary, in order to defeat them.

In this way, we succeeded in differentiating our enemies, and, in certain circumstances, in making use of their internal contradictions. Let us take one case. The traitors Sim Var and Sam Sary were both agents of the CIA. The traitor Sim Var was from from Son Ngoc Thanh’s group, “Khmer Serei”. The traitor Sam Sary was also a CIA agent. But during a certain period, we succeeded in establishing unity of action with Sim Var in order to defeat Sam Sary. Sim Var cooperated with us for two or three years. He then turned against us, and we consequently revised our position towards him.

This was taking advantage of every opportunity to unite broader forces to defeat the enemy. I f we had been rigid and sectarian, we would have missed opportunities to unite broader forces to serve the revolutionary movement. But such forces were only tactical. We concentrated on the strategic forces, the workers and peasants, and especially the poor and lower-middle peasants, who were found everywhere in our country.

Clearly, without this kind of line, without this way of applying the kind of uniting broad forces, victory would have been out of the question. No revolutionary movement can victory without uniting all its forces.

We won victory in the national democratic revolution because we organized our forces according to this line.

It was our Party’s line to distinguish the strategic and tactical forces, those matters of principle on which we must be intransigent, those questions on which we must be able to unite, and other questions of detail on which we must make concessions for the sake of unity against the principal enemy. It is this line which guided us.

These last two years since liberation are two key years, because we emerged from our dire difficulties brought on by the devastating war. But we passed through them successfully and relied basically on our own forces.

Why was this possible? Because our people made the revolution. Without the revolutionary forces of the people, we would not be where we are. The organization of our forces is basically correct. It is certainly not 100% successful, but successful in the overwhelming majority of our work, there are some negative aspects, but the positive aspects predominate. We were able to successfully prepare our forces. We have not fallen into subjectivity, in the sense that we have not made revolution without concern for the reality of our country.

The revolution does not disperse, it unites the forces to the greatest possible extent. The revolution is so grandiose, so profound, it replaces the old with the new. It is a great upheaval. The revolution, then, is not at all an ordinary undertaking. To win, the revolutionary forces must be organized thoroughly.

Since the First Congress of our Party, we have based ourselves on these principles and drawn lessons in the course of struggle. On the basis of these principles, the errors committed were rectified in the course of the work to better organize, consolidate and constantly enlarge our forces. That was why our national democratic revolution was prodigious.

What is the source of the prodigious power of our national democratic revolution? It is the force of the masses of the people. This is what decides everything: politics, economics, the military, social questions, the war at the front, as well as production in the rear areas.

The entire population was set in motion. There are no more unused forces. That is the lesson, and we are all profoundly convinced of this.

After preparing and building the revolutionary forces to defeat the enemy, what forms of struggle did we have to use?

The First Congress of our Party specified the following forms of revolutionary struggle:

The first form of struggle was to use revolutionary political violence and revolutionary armed violence. We resorted to revolutionary violence in both political and armed struggle to oppose and attack the enemy.

The second form as legal, semi-legal and illegal struggle, taking illegal struggle as the basic form.

We took the illegal forms as the basis because, normally making revolution is “illegal”. There is no law of exploiting classes authorizing revolution. To mobilize the people for struggle is “illegal”, but don’t we dare to struggle anyway? If you make revolution, you must dare to struggle, because revolution is “illegal”. Revolution overthrows the old power and installs a new power. It is for this reason that our line specified illegal forms as the basis.

We brought this question up in order to clarify our views and our position. If this question had not been perfectly clear, we could only have waged a legal struggle. If the laws has not authorized our struggle, we would not have dared to wage it, which means we would not have made revolution. Thus, the forms of struggle were a matter of revolutionary principle in our march to victory.

Third were the open, semi-open and clandestine forms of struggle as the basis, because the enemy did not allow us to make revolution. Consequently, to make revolution, to do agitation among the people, we had to go among the people, do propaganda among them and arouse the people, taking the clandestine form of struggle as the principal form.

Open forms of struggle are not enough. They can only operate on the surface and do not penetrate deeply among the people. Let us take the case of the press. We could have published 100 dailies, but we would have only been able to write within the framework of laws of the state of the feudalist and capitalist classes. Thus, the revolutionary content could not have reached the people. The class content, the content of the struggle to overthrow the exploiting classes, could not have reached the people at the grassroots. We need correct lines of action and correct forms of struggle to be successful in our work, to mobilize our forces.

The party also attached importance to a good division of labor among the cadres. To some cadres, it assigned open work, to others, work as a deputy in the Assembly, or as a member of government under the old regime, or as a functionary in the administration, as well as open work in various mass organizations and in the press. These are different forms which can be used to incite the masses. In this way, we divided work among ourselves.

However, there were some sections of clandestine work which were organized to carry out agitation secretly among the people. In Phnom Penh, there sections which carried out open work, and sections which carried out secret work. It was the same in the countryside, there were some sections for open work and others for secret work, Secret work was the fundamental thing; it allowed us to defend the revolutionary forces and also allowed us to arouse the people. If all of us or too great a number of us had been working openly, the enemy would have been able to destroy or all of us.

These are the forms of struggle needed to effectively make use of all the forces among the people. We did not use these forces carelessly, so as not to expose them needlessly to destruction. In making use of all these forms, our struggle spread throughout the country. We were able to carry on our struggle both in the countryside and in the cities, both secretly and openly, in the Assembly, in the government, in associations, mass organizations, the press, associations for the expansion of education, even in the cremation societies, associations for defense of the pagodas, and associations for defense of Buddhism. We could wage the struggle there, mobilize the many to the greatest possible extent, using different forms and slogans.

At the same time we were waging a political struggle, we made use of many different forms, in the matter of a people’s war. Thus, we would attack the enemy no matter where. We could lead many large scale attacks, as well as small scale attacks.

This was our work of continual mobilization and the training of the people. Thanks to the use of all these forms of struggle, we built up our forces. If we had struggled only in the countryside, we would have lacked forces in the cities. Had we, on the other hand, fought only in the cities, we would not have had the strength in the countryside. So we struggled both in the countryside and the cities, both openly and secretly, legally and illegally.

It is the same for the role of the cities and the countryside. We fell into neither leftism nor rightism. If we has only carried on our work in the rural areas, thinking that the role of the cities was negligible, this would have been leftism. If, on the other hand, we had considered the countryside had played only a minor role, and the important thing was the urban struggle, thinking that only the latter us capable of gaining world attention, this would have been rightism,. In both cases, we would have neglected the strategic forces of the peasantry. Our Party did not fall into either leftism or rightism, because we fought both sides. We had a well-defined line of action, we struggled at the same time in the cities and the countryside, while taking the countryside as the support base.

Such was our line of action. Why did we take the countryside as the base and why did we not take the cities as the support base?

The cities could not be the base. True, the population there is large, but the city is small, the enemy is all over it. The Assembly, the courts, the prisons, the police, the Army – they were all there. The networks of the enemy’s repressive apparatus were concentrated there, and the social composition of the town is very complex.

By contrast, the countryside is vast. The enemy is spread thin there. In some villages, there is not even the shadow if the enemy, militarily or otherwise. In some communities, there are only one or two soldiers or police. This means the enemy forces in the countryside are weak. The peasants there are numerous. The class composition is good.

This is why we took the countryside as the revolutionary base. First, as the political base with the peasant masses as the force. Second, as an economic base: we could live there, produce and share problems of livelihood together with the people. Third, as a military base. Fourth, as a base to serve as a headquarters for the various leading bodies of the Party.

This is the role of the rural base. We realized this through practice. From the beginning of 1960, the members of the Central Committee gradually transferred their activities to the countryside. Since 1963, 90% of the Central Committee members moved there. We had to live in the countryside in order to directly mobilize the peasant masses. At the same time, we continued our work in the cities. In this way, we compelled the enemy to disperse his forces. He could not concentrate them either in the countryside or in the cities. We attacked him simultaneously on both fronts so as to weaken him.

Thus, once the political line of the party was grasped and assimilated the struggle movements both in Phnom Penh, the other big cities, and in the rural areas grew rapidly.

1963: This was the year all U.S. aid was rejected. This was a great event in our struggle. It was the result of the people’s struggle, the struggle of the pupils, students, intellectuals, workers and peasants, of the Buddhist monks, aided also by the struggle of our prominent people working in the Assembly and the government, and supported by the struggles in the countryside.

1964: January – a huge demonstration mobilized many tens of thousands of people in Phnom Penh against U.S. imperialism and the clique of the traitor Lon Nol. That same year, in the month of March, another big demonstration united hundreds of thousands of people in front of the U.S. Embassy. The crowd attacked the premises, tore down the American flag and trampled it. These were some of the events which illustrate the pitched struggle of the population in the cities.

1965: This was the year diplomatic relations with U.S. imperialism were broken off, the culmination of the continued, powerful struggles of our people.

These struggles gave considerable support to the struggle in the countryside. They created favorable conditions for the consolidation and forceful development of the revolutionary forces.

What was the situation in the countryside? In 1964, 1965, 1966 and 1967, the struggles followed one another throughout the country without respite, taking many forms, but mainly the form of the struggle for land reform.

In 1967, the situation was ripe in the countryside throughout Kampuchea. The people armed themselves with knives, axes, clubs and other weapons they could lay their hands on to attack police stations and military garrisons. The revolutionary violence then reached a high level. It was in this ripening revolutionary situation that an armed uprising broke out in 1967 in Samlaut in Battambang Province. This was set off by the people, through their own movement. The Party Central Committee had not yet decided on general armed insurrection throughout the country. The armed explosion in Battambang was explained by the fact that the movement of struggle of the peasants in that region had reached the boiling point. But the Party was there to give leadership to the movement and decided to suspend temporarily the armed struggle in Battambang until the whole country could complete its preparations. If Battambang had rushed into struggle alone, the enemy could have concentrated all its forces there to crush the revolutionary forces.

Thus, in 1967 the situation in the countryside had reached a new height, like dry straw in the rice fields in March and April, which needs only a small spark to set it on fire. Thus, the situation was ripe.

We arrived at this evaluation of the situation of our people’s revolutionary movement after studying and analyzing these struggles. This is why in the middle of 1967, following the experience of the armed uprising in Samlaut, Battambang, the Party decided to initiate an open phase of armed struggle to defend the revolution and, at the same time, to create conditions for the consolidation and development of the revolutionary forces. If not, then enemy would have destroyed the revolutionary forces. It was necessary to begin the armed struggle because we had already prepared the people: the class hatred and national hatred were explosive. The people were already tempered by their experiences in struggle; they were struggling with their bare hands, with sticks, with knives.

This was the situation in the countryside and the cities. At that time, the enemy was wavering and incapable of facing the revolutionary forces, because we were attacking simultaneously in the towns and countryside, in perfect coordination.

Basing itself on these experiences, the whole Party was unanimous in it conclusion: if we continued to wage only the political struggle, and, if we did not take up armed struggle, we would be incapable of defending the revolutionary forces and we would be even more incapable of consolidating and expanding them.

And so we launched the armed struggle in 1968.

January 1968: Insurrection in the Northwest Zone. We captured four to ten enemy guns, which were then used to continue the attack.
February 1968: Insurrection in the Southwest Zone. There nearly 200 rifles were taken from soldiers of the provincial guard and from the military garrisons, certainly not an insignificant number of weapons at that time. They were captured not with guns, but with bare hands, by mass insurrection. As a result, from this time on, we had the means to mount still more powerful offensives.

March 1968: Insurrection in the Eastern Zone, The the enemy had advance knowledge. while the Regional Committee was in the midst of a meeting to organize an uprising like the one in the Southwest, the enemy took its arms out of the area. So, at the hour of the outbreak of armed struggle there were only a few rifles in the Eastern Zone. The enemy was then free to attack the people and the revolutionary forces for more than three months, in April, May and June. Our bases were destroyed. The homes and villages were devastated, the popualtion killed and dispersed. It was only in July that we could make the counter attack. We mounted an assault on an enemy outpost and captured 70 weapons, which we used as capital to build our armed forces.

The people’s hands were empty, but they were already trained in revolutionary violence, already trained in the struggle, they had already gained some experience in the struggle. So the people were capable, barehanded, of seizing arms from the enemy.

The Northern Zone rose up in an insurrection in march 1968. Only four guns were captured. We dealt the enemy some sharp blows, and we withstood his counter attacks, but the struggle was very hard.

March 30, 1968: It was the turn of the Northeast Zone for an uprising. Four or five guns were captured. Added to the three or four previously used to defend the headquarters of the Party’s Central Committee, we had a total of 10 guns for the entire zone.

Only the Southeast Zone had a substantial number of guns. The other zones only had a very few. What was the quality of these weapons? They were all old models: out of ten shots, nine were duds. We fought on despite this.

From January to May 1969, our guerrilla movement spread through the whole country. The guerrillas were in 17 of Kampuchea’s 19 provinces. We took guns in the course of battle. No zone could come directly to the aid of another, since they were very far apart. Our leading body was dispersed; it was in the Northwest, Southwest, east, Northeast and in Phnom Penh, places very far from each other. All contact involved at least a month’s delay, since in meant a trip on foot or by elephant, and it was constantly necessary to evade the enemy to avoid ambush. In a month, the situation would be greatly changed, and the monthly report would no longer correspond to the new situation by the time it reached headquarters of the Central Committee at Ratanakiri. Similarly, the directives sent in reply would be outdated and could not be applied to the new situation. Because of this, the directives could only state our general line, principles and broad orientation. Each area had to reply on itself and correctly apply the political line of the Party. Despite all this, each area successfully defended, developed and consolidated its forces.

As a result, from 1968-69 to march 1970, we established these bases:

First, the support bases. In the Northeast, we had a solid support base with a population of more than 30,000. By a “support base,” we mean a base which is inaccessible to the enemy. Counting the support bases in the Northwest, East, and Southwest, our support bases had a population of around 60,000. A population of 60,000 in support bases is quite considerable.

Second, the guerrilla bases. Guerrilla bases come after the support bases. These are bases which we controlled solidly, but which, in spite of everything, the enemy could penetrate from time to time. In the entire country, out guerrilla bases in the years 1968-69 to march 1970 had a total population of around 300,000.

Third, the guerrilla zones. “Guerrilla zone” means a zone divided between us and the enemy. It is a combat zone. We could penetrate it to hit the enemy, but the enemy could also penetrate it. It is a zone in great disorder. In the guerrilla zones in the country as a whole, we had a population of around 700,000.

And so, during the civil year of the year 1968-69 to early 1970, we had a total population of more than a million people, counting the support bases, guerrilla bases, and guerrilla zones in the whole country.

Such a force is not negligible. It is not measured only in numbers, it is the force of the poor and lower-middle peasants, the force of a people who have already gained experience in struggle upon struggle. it is, then, a really powerful force.

Barehanded in the beginning, we now had succeeded in building a considerable force. In 1968, we were really barehanded; we didn’t have a single weapon, not one doctor, no medicine, no grain or rice. However, we dared to struggle because we had the power of the people firmly in out hands. To have the power of the people in out hands is to have at our disposal all the necessary revolutionary forces: guerrilla forces, armed forces, forces of production to support the revolutionary war. It meant we could get doctors, pharmacists, couriers… It meant we could get everything we needed at both the front lines and in the rear.

As far as our Army is concerned, at the beginning of 1970, the regular units totalled only an active force of 4,000 fighters for the whole country. These 4,000 fighters represented a considerable force for our guerrilla war. But, it was, above all, an army with a high degree of fighting spirit.

For example, in 1968, the regular army in the Northwest had only 70 fighters, divided into seven groups. There were only three handguns for each group of ten. Besides the handguns, there would be one or two grenades, a few flintlock rifles, some poisoned arrows, and nothing else. In1969, the force grew to 10 groups. it was only in late 1969 that i became a platoon, then in early 1970, a company. Only 30% to 40% were armed.

We were already under heavy enemy attack when we had only seven groups. In 1969, the traitor Tou Long, enemy chief of staff, the traitors Lon Nol, Sirik Matak, Saksuth Sakhon, Sosthene and nearly all the enemy military chiefs mounted a huge offensive against Ratanakiri. They engaged 18 battalions, a third of their army, with infantry units, some armored cars, artillery and air support. Our regular army in the Northeast numbered just 150 fighters, 150 fighters who could not all fight at the same time because they did not have enough weapons. They had to split into two groups of 70 fighters, each taking turns in the fighting, because of the shortage of guns. Using the tactics of guerrilla warfare, we were able to attack the enemy, defend our support base, consolidate and extend the guerrilla base, and consolidate and extend the guerrilla zone.

Our operations were not limited to Ratanakiri Province. We penetrated Stung Treng Province, then in Mondulkiri Province, and we continued our advance, attacking deep within enemy zones. As a result, at a 1969 council meeting of the enemy cabinet, the traitor Tiou Long, as chief of staff, gave a pessimistic report, admitting that the situation in Ratanakiri was serious. The traitor Lon Nol swore that in Ratanakiri the Khmer Rouge occupied a territory equivalent to three times the area of Kompong Chnang province.

Elsewhere, the situation was no different. In the Southwest, we attacked the enemy simultaneously in the provinces of Kampot, Takeo and Kompong Speu. In the Eastern Zone, our activities reached Highway Seven. At night, our army was in complete control of Highway Seven. Thus, in the years 1968 and 1969 and until March 1970, our regular units numbered only 4,000 fighters in the wgole country, but this army had a great fighting spirit.

As for our guerrilla units, in the whole country. they numbered 50,000 fighters at the beginning of 1970; 50,000 guerrillas who could attack the enemy everywhere. The guerrillas would go into combat alone, or in groups of two or three, but with only one rifle, a rudimentary flintlock, or a crossbow, grenade or mine. they fought any way they could, with any kind of weapon. They were very active. They never put themselves on the defensive. They didn’t wait for the enemy, but constantly went ahead, searching for the enemy, acting on the principle of attacking in order to better defend themselves. In order to be able to defend the support bases, they had to wage offensive actions, to attack the enemy first. It was only by attacking the enemy first, that he could be kept from coming into our zone. So the guerrilla units went int battle everywhere, since they were made up of people who lived in the area and knew in depth all the terrain, each forest, each stream, each valley.

In its operations, the enemy mobilized their infantry, tanks, artillery, transport vehicles and planes. However, in the Northeast, as in other mountainous and jungle regions, enemy planes, tanks, artillery, and trucks lost their effectiveness. The bombs and shells fired at random in the vast forests and mountains were lost in the trees and ricks and never caused the slightest loss to our population. as to tanks and trucks, our deep forests and our mountains were inaccessible to them. There remained the infantry. Against them, we set traps, snares and hunting spears of all sorts and we cut down trees to throw obstacles across all the paths and roads. If the enemy tried to penetrate, he was at the mercy of our guerrilla units, which were te masters of the terrain, in their own forests.

This was people’s war, based on guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare was waged everywhere, the guerrilla could attack anywhere.

We could thus mobilize all the people to attack the enemy without waiting for regular units. This is what proves the effectiveness of our line of people’s war based on guerrilla warfare, which was invincible.

With guerrilla units of 50,000 fighters in the whole country, we attacked all over, without letting up. Everyone, without exception, no matter where they were, looked for some way to wipe out the enemy. If every group of three guerrillas or unit of 10 guerrillas succeeded in killing or wounding one enemy solider per day, with 50,000 guerrillas in the whole country, this would make a considerable number of enemy soldiers put out out of action each day. This was how the enemy forces were continually weakened by our guerrillas.

We had faith in our line of peoples war. We had faith not only in arms, but in our line of people’s war.

Our Army numbered 4,000 fighters and our guerrilla units, 50,000. After the coup d’etat of the U.S. imperialists and the traitor Lon Nol, these units were immediately converted into regional units ans ubits iod the regular army, into regiments and battalions. These were not simply formed from ordinary village people. they came right out of the guerrilla units, units which has two or three years of combat behind them. These units were thus trained in combat. This was what most frightened the enemy.

U.S. imperialism, in spite of its electronic systems and spy rings everywhere, was nevertheless mistaken in its strategic evaluation of our forces. It was seriously mistaken in both its political and military estimates. In its political strategy, it assumed that, soon after the coup d’etat, the puppet Lon Nol would be able to win over the “Khmer Rouge.” But on the contrary, it was the revolution which united all the national and people’s forces in the whole country to mount a crushing attack on U.S. imperialism. Thus, the imperialists committed an enormous strategic blunder in their political analysis.

Secondly, in their military analysis, they believed that we had no army, no military force whatsoever. They predicted that after the coup d’etat, their combined military forces, with the cooperation of the traitor Lon Nol’s army, could without difficulty crush us in a single blow. But, in fact, we already had 4,000 fighters in our regular army and 50,000 guerrilla units who were well-trained and seasoned in battle.

Immediately after the coup d’etat, broad, spontaneous demonstrations and uprisings broke out everywhere in the country, sweeping the enemy away like a tidal wave, overpowering the enemy in entire regions and villages, communes, districts, and some provinces. Revolutionary administration was immediately set up everywhere. Tens of thousands of weapons captured from the enemy came immediately into the hands of the People’s Armed Forces of National Liberation, from the regular army units to the regional forces and district, commune and village guerrilla units. We then had regular units in sufficient numbers. Together with the guerrilla units, our armed forces moved onto the offensive everywhere in the country, advancing in a powerful offensive and with total mastery.

Thus, the U.S. imperialists, made another gross strategic military blunder. But they would have been defeated even if their estimated and predictions had been correct. Even if they had gained precise information about out strengths, they could not escape defeat, because our people’s war of national liberation was an invincible war.

We can describe ours as a people’s war because it was a war of the people, it was the entire people who were making war, with their own movement. All the energies of the people were set in motion and hit the enemy on all fronts and in every area, with every kind of weapon, with creative spirit and initiative.

Our people’s war was invincible. This was our conviction, based on our confidence and pride in our people and our Army. With our people and our Army we were able to liberate our own country. Furthermore, we were confident of the power to defend it because, for one thing, we stood for justice, we stood for correct revolutionary principles, we did not violate the sovereignty of any country, we did not interfere in the internal affairs of any country, we had no aggressive designs against any country. For another thing, people’s war, already waged for national liberation, is destined to assure the defense of our country. It has a scientific character issuing from the revolutionary practice of the masses and is profoundly based upon the masses.

Our women fighters were very courageous. In the history of our Army, we have had women’s units, both battalions and regiments. These units took part in hand-to-hand combat on the front lines. they fought on a number of fronts, especially on the Lower Mekong, at the outskirts of Phnom Penh, where they attacked and cut off its contact with other parts of the country in 1975, as well as in Phnom Penh in the general offensive of 1975. What made this possible? It was possible because our whole people made the revolution, and because we had a powerful revolutionary movement.

On Our Party’s Military Line

1. Build our Army by ourselves, on the principles of independence, initiative and self-reliance, with the direct participation of all the people in the war. To have a revolutionary Army, you must have a revolutionary people. It is necessary to organize a broad, strong revolutionary movement to be able to organize a strong revolutionary army, with both regular forces and strong regional forces, and guerrilla forces everywhere, capable of attacking at any point and at any moment.

2. Our policy on forming the cadres of the Revolutionary Army. The cadres of our Revolutionary Army were formed right on the battlefield and continued to harden themselves and develop on the battlefield, in combat. Only the cadres of the Revolutionary Army, formed in the fire of combat, can acquire the necessary experience and forge a sound ideological, political, and organizational position. Only such cadres are capable of fully analysing the situation of the enemy and of ourselves and of applying the line of combat strictly according to the political line of our Party.

3. Our policy on equipping our Army and using weapons. We base ourselves on the principle of relying fundamentally and essentially on our own forces. To rely on our own forces means to seek any means to attack the enemy in order to seize his weapons, use them ourselves in battle, care for weapons captured from the enemy and bring out the creative spirit of the masses to repair and fashion every kind of weapon we can. The aid of our foreign friends was only supplementary support, depending on the opportunities and the concrete situations. During the five years of war waged by our people against the U.S. imperialist aggressors, more than 80% or our armament was weapons seized from the enemy.

As to the use of weapons, our policy consists of using every weapon at our disposal. We use them more or less according to our means, but always economically and depending on the needs and the importance of the fronts, without tying ourselves down by rigid norms. Generally, in the course of five years of war, only 70% of the soldiers in our regular units were armed.

Our Revolutionary Army correctly applied the military line of our Party. This is what gave it is fighting spirit and great effectiveness.

We must continue to draw inspiration from this experience and apply correctly the line of our Party on the building of our Army, while basing ourselves on the principles of independence, initiative and self-reliance. As our country is still poor, there is no other way for us to be independent and sovereign in every situation, except to continue to apply our Party’s military line and the line of the peoples war while relying on ourselves.

On Our Party’s Line of Struggle

Our party defined its line of struggle in this way: to struggle at the same time on the military level; on the political level, in arousing the population against the enemy; on the economic level, in cutting off all their supplies; and on all other levels, especially in dismantling their spy rings and in building among the enemy troops a movement of resistance to the war of aggression.

This line of struggle on every level assured us of a superiority which grew each day, while the enemy became exhausted and collapsed in whole regions. the enemy met with one defeat after another: military defeats, political defeats, economic defeats, defeats in maintaining their supplies. Politically, they became each day more isolated, Their forces deserted them, steadily, draining their manpower away, to the point where they could no longer find recruits. More than this, their sources of supply became more precarious daily and ended by drying up completely. their masters, the U.S. imperialists, were obliged to go to great lengths to transport their supplies. they had to send around 40,000 tons of supplies each month just to the Lon Nol clique which was in Phnom Penh.

On Our Party’s Line of Combat

Our party also concretely defined its line of combat in great detail in order to be able to attack the enemy under any circumstances. Our line of combat was: to launch offensives continuously, giving constant play to creative spirit and initiative on every front. We waged conventional warfare and guerrilla warfare at the same time, while taking guerrilla warfare as the base in order to harass the enemy everywhere without let up, and while using conventional warfare to wipe out enemy troops. We combined large, medium and small-scale attacks, made them follow one another ceaselessly, attacked day and night, in dry season and in rainy season, relentlessly, so as not to leave the enemy time to catch their breath or reorganize, consolidate and develop their forces. We divided the enemy into smaller units, attacking the flanks, the rear, the weak points, and avoiding a frontal attack at all times.

In this way, we could attack the enemy at any time, whether our forces were small, medium-sized or large. At the same time, we could preserve our forces and wipe out the enemy to the greatest extent possible.

The line of our Party, which consists of struggling in every area ans in using every form of combat, allowed us t direct strong and repaeated blows against the enemy and to win victories on every front, throughout the country. Concretely:

At the beginning we saw that the enemy was weakest in the countryside. We combined military attacks by regular and guerrilla units, with mass insurrections to take power at the village and commune levels. Proceeding in this way, each day we enlarged our liberated regions in the countryside and forced the enemy to retreat in some isolated towns, at the same time that we tied down enemy forces in scattered positions where the communications and supplies became more and more difficult for them.

It was in this situation that we took measures to cut off the enemy’s routes of strategic communications, following our line of combat, especially our tactic of dividing the enemy into smaller units. It was in this way that from 1970 to 1974 we cut off and controlled all the enemy’s strategic ground communication routes, that is, Highway One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven. At the same time, in 1972, 1973 and 1974, we succeeded in periodically cutting off the strategic waterways. Even the Lower Mekong, on which the enemy concentrated the greatest attention, was periodically cut off in thise years. When the lines of communication on ground and river were cut off in 1974, the U.S. imperialists and the clique of the traitor Lon Nol found themselves extremely isolated in Phnom Penh and a few provincial capitals.

It was in this situation, when the U.S. imperialists and the Lon Nol traitor clique were in their death throes, that our Party’s Central Committee, in the course of its June 1974 session, resolved to mount the decisive offensive to liberate Phnom Penh and the entire country. We dared to mount this offensive because we had completely grasped the enemy’s situation and our own.

The plan of our offensive was: to attack Phnom Penh, cut off the Lower Mekong and attack the provincial capitals still under the temporary control of the enemy. The control of the Lower Mekong was the key factor in the total liberation of Phnom Penh, the attacks on other towns being complimentary operations.

Carrying out the decision of the Party Central Committee, during the rainy season of the year 1974, we actively prepared our forces on the political, ideological and organizational levels. At the same time, our Revolutionary Army assimilated still further our Party’s line of combat at the front.

Our entire Revolutionary Army enthusiastically received the new mission of the Party and, showing the highest revolutionary heroism, were determined to carry out at all costs, for the Party, the revolution, the working class and the people, to totally and definitively liberate Phnom Penh and the rest of the country. We readied our forces correctly and painstakingly for the final assault on Phnom Penh and for the attacks on the provincial capitals. It was thus that the decision of the Party Central Committee to liberate Phnom Penh and Kampuchea during the 1975 dry season could be totally and perfectly carried out, following strictly the line of independence, initiative and self-reliance, and taking our destiny into our own hands.

On April 1, 1975, we liberated Neak Leuong. The U.S imperialists shipped the traitor Lon Nol to Hawaii and changed horses, in the hopes of maneuvering after their defeat to counterattack the revolution at the moment it gained control of Phnom Penh.

On April 12, 1975, the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea mounted an all-out assault and totally liberated Phnom Penh at 9:30 AM.

We won the great victory as the result of the final offensive for the total liberation of Kampuchea and the Kampuchean people on April 17, 1975. We thus brought to a close the national democratic revolution.

The line of our Party defined in 1960 had set for us the following tasks:

1. to make the national revolution by eliminating the imperialists, especially the U.S. imperialists, from Kampuchea;

2. to make the democratic revolution by abolishing the reactionary system of the feudalists and the comprador capitalists.

We had completely realized these two tasks on April 17, 1975; the Communist Party of Kampuchea had led the struggle of our people for 15 years, the struggle of the Kampuchean people had undergone difficult and tragic tests, and some extremely complex situations. But we had a correct political line, we had the Communist Party of Kampuchea to lead us on a correct path. Thus, whatever the difficulties, we fought until the great victory of April 17, 1975.

In the course of those 15 years, our people made immense sacrifices which just added to the immense sacrifices of centuries and of millenia of past struggles. Our national anthem brings out the meaning of this struggle.

Our national anthem is not the work of one or two composers, it is the work of our whole people, who wrote it with their own blood, blood which our people generously shed over the centuries. It is a stirring call to our generation and to future generations. The sacrifices of our people are handed down and written in our national anthem. Each sentence, each word, expresses the true nature of our people’s struggle. It is this blood, changed into class and national hatred, which led to the victory of April 17,1975, and which calls us to resolutely defend people’s power and our country, and to build a prosperous and peaceful Kampuchea by great leaps and bounds. This is why we entitled out national anthem, “April 17, the Glorious Victory.”

We were already determined and we still are determined to do everything to transform each drop of blood shed by our heroes into a stand of revolutionary patriotism, into a firm class stand, in order to guard forever our territorial integrity and to lead well the work of national construction aiming to rapidly render our country prosperous, to bring our people’s standard of living to a higher level in the near future, in a society where true justice, equality and harmony reign.

We have seen how many, how enormous were the sacrifices of our people. We must always honor them so as to value the bravery of our people, to learn from them and reinforce and develop our heroism from generation to generation.

Let us listen to, respect and sing our national anthem, for it represents the struggle of our people. For more than 2,000 years, our people lived in disgrace and in the darkes shadows, without any light.

Then the daylight shone. The brightest day of all for out people was April 17, 1975. For this reason, we made April 17 the title of our national anthem. This anthem was composed by generations of our men and women combatants and people. Our national anthem was born following April 17, 1975, when Democratic Kampuchea was born.

Our Revolutionary Army, our fighters and our people are the real composers of our national anthem. Born on April 17, 1975, with Democratic Kampuchea, the anthem belongs to all of us.

We now know the essence of the history of our people’s struggle. In order to carry out our task well, we must pay constant attention to our own revolutionary education, without consideration of rank or age. We cannot lead the work of defense and national construction well without rapidly tempering ourselves to develop solid revolutionary qualities.

The young comrades, whether single or married, must generously throw themselves into their own ideological education, overcoming all obstacles. Pledge yourselves body and soul to the revolution! Youth is a period of life in which there are very rapid changes. It is a time when consciousness is most receptive to revolution and when we are in full possession of our strengths.

This, then is a general directive of our Party. It is the youth of today who will take up the revolutionary tasks of tomorrow. Also, you must continually temper yourselves, so as to provide the revolution with its relief forces. Do not disdain the small jobs, do not fear the difficulties. No matter what work the collective assigns you, apply yourself to do it well. When you do make errors, the collective will help you to correct them. This is the only way to temper yourselves. We will correct the errors in the course of our work, with the new experiences we have acquired. The more we work, the better we learn. We must regularly sum up our experiences. We want to train our young people in all sorts of work. we need cadres skilled in all tasks, as strong in combat against the aggressor as in production.

In comparison to the young, our older comrades already have a little less physical and intellectual strength. But these comrades must educated themselves in order to make a better contribution to the running of the country and to better carry out their revolutionary tasks. Those who have a long revolutionary history must not be narrow-mined or opinionated. If they neglect their education, they will no longer be able to do their tasks well. In national defense and construction and in many other areas, we need tested cadres with sound ideological and political positions. All these qualities can only be gained through constant effort.

The veteran comrades, too, must make an effort. Our Party and our revolution need all the forces and especially the tested veteran cadres who have a sound stand. it is necessary to educated ourselves no matter what our age. All our forces are capable of carrying out their tasks. We devote ourselves body and soul to the revolution because of the greatness of our tasks. We have totally liberated our country, and we have fully secured its defense. Nonetheless, to better defend it in the future, our forces must always be sound. They must make a firm and consistent commitment to the defense of our national territory from coast to coast.

We all know the Angkor of past times. Angkor was built during the slave period. It was our slaves who built it under the yoke of the exploiting classes of that time, for the enjoyment of the king. if our people were capable of building Angkor, they can do anything. Our people brought about the glorious April 17, 1975. We must lift up our nation’s soul, ournation’s pride, to carry out the work of national defense and construction and to secure out country’s future.

The second part of my talk dealing with the national democratic revolution is over. We move now to the third part, dealing with the new period of the revolution, in which the tasks are the defense of Democratic Kampuchea, the continuation of the socialist revolution and the construction of socialism in Kampuchea.

The new stage of our revolution began only two years ago. In contrast with the national democratic revolution, which covered many decades and in the course of which we had undergone many revolutionary tests and massed vast experiences before reaching the glorious April 17, 1975, this new stage is still very short, and our experience is consequently quite limited. Nonetheless, we must examine together this new period of the Kampuchean revolution, its situation and our first experiences. And, as a result of the experiences issuing from our present revolutionary practice, we will certainly improve our work.

On the New Stage of the Kampuchean Revolution, Defense of the Democratic Revolution, Continuation of the Socialist Revolution and Socialist Construction

Now let us examine and analyze the situation in Kampuchea and Kampuchean society after April 17, 1975, in order to concretely determine the contradictions and the manner of resolving them, while precisely defining the revolutionary tasks of this new period.

Firstly, with the tremendous victory of April 17, 1975, our country was totally and definitively liberated. We fully and completely regained our independence and sovereignty 100%, which we now enjoy to an extent unprecedented in the 2,000-year history of our country. We are all deeply proud and happy with this situation.

But, because we have won total independence, does this mean that we no longer face the threat of foreign enemies, foreign imperialists and reactionaries, who once again seek to make us dependent in military affairs politics and economics, as well as in other spheres?

The concrete situation shows us clearly that foreign imperialists and reactionaries always harbor the strategic and fundamental aim of weakening our country and reconquering it.

Thus, a contradiction exists between the foreign imperialists and reactionaries on the one hand, and Democratic Kampuchea on the other. This is the contradiction with foreign eneimes, who wish to commit aggression against us and annex our independent and sovereign Kampuchean territory.

This contradiction and that of the preceding period are of different natures, because, in the previous period, Kampuchea was under the yoke of the imperialists, colonialists and their lackey’s, the reactionaries. Our revolutionary task, then, is no longer the same; no longer is it the revolution for national liberation and independence. Our revolutionary task now is to defend our country, to defend Democratic Kampuchea: defend out independence, our sovereignty and out territorial integrity within our present borders, defend the worker and peasant power of our Party, and safeguard the sacred victories of the revolution.

Now that we have achieved national independence, this is the primary task facing us. Secondly, at the same time that our nation was completely liberated, so was our people, most particularly, the masses of workers, peasants and other laborers.

The workers, peasants and other laboring people constitute 90% of the popluation, with the peasant class alone representing 85%. Thus, when we add the workers and other toilers to the peasantry, the figure of 90% is entirely correct.

Once free, the laboring people have become the motive force which attracts and wins over the other 10% of the population. Among the capitalists, landlords and other strata who make up this 10%, there are many elements who are for the revolution, and who even take part in the revolution. Among these strata, there are some patriots who rejoice that the nation is liberated from the humiliating state of enslavement in which it had been maintained for centuries, and now is full of dignity and enjoys great prestige everywhere. These elements do not constitute a negligible force; they represent eight to nine percent of the population.

So, in all, 98% to 99% of the population has been liberated. This is an immense victory for out revolution and for all our people, because for generations, our people and nation had been enslaved by the imperialists, colonialists and reactionaries. The masses of workers, peasants and other laboring people, in particular, suffered the greatest misery.

But now, in our new and just society, are there still contradictions? If so, what are they? What forms do they take and how must they be resolved? Let us examine this with the aim of correctly defining the tasks of our revolution in its new stage.

The concrete situation of our new Kampuchean society and the excellent fact that our people have been completely liberated and have united resources and efforts to defend and build the country energetically have not prevented our new society from encountering contradictions.

On the one hand, there are contradictions among the people, because we all carry vestiges of our old class character, deep-rooted for generations, and, after all, the transition to revolutionary proletarian character is still quite recent. We consider these to be contradictions among the people, which can be resolved by education, study, criticism and self-criticism, and periodic self-examination of our own revolutionary lifestyle, under the supervision and with the aid of the collective; all this, under the leadership of the Party. It is important consistently carry out thorough-going educational work, which is aimed at developing collectivist and socialist ownership and gradually eliminating the idea of private ownership. Our goal is to continue to build the revolutionary strength of the people, so that each of us becomes a revolutionary of the new Kampuchea, who zealously defends and builds the country, and who contributes to the rapid raising of the people’s living standards.

Our cooperatives, which are collective organizations of our people throughout the country, have demonstrated their great strength since their beginnings in 1973. During U.S. imperialism’s war of devastation, the collective force constituted by the cooperatives was capable of defeating U.S. imperialism and, at the same time, of producing enough to meet the needs of the front and improve the conditions of life of all our people. Likewise, after liberation, thanks to the collective strength of the cooperatives, we were able to fully guarantee national defense, develop production, and successfully improve the living conditions of nearly eight million inhabitants of our country. All this was done in complete independence and by relying on our own resources. it is the same in other areas. The work down collectively yields excellent results, while work undertaken in an individualistic manner leads inevitably to inextricable difficulties and failure.

On the basis of this analysis of the new Kampuchean society, our Party set as its revolutionary task the carrying out of the socialist revolution with greater energy, greater firmness and in greater depth, thus to guarantee success in all areas, both presently and in the future.

Similarly, within the new Kampuchean society, there are life-and-death contradictions owing to the presence of enemy agents, who belong to the various spy networks of the imperialists and international reaction and who secretly implant themselves to carry out subversive activities against our revolution.

These antagonistic contradictions are also due to another infamous handful of reactionary elements, who carry out their counterrevolutionary work and sek to destroy our Kampuchean revolution. These elements are small in number, one to two percent of the population. Some camouflage themselves and try and pass for thje people, while others work openly.

We do not consider these traitors, these counterrevolutionary elements, to be part of the people. They are enemies of Democratic Kampuchea, of the Kampuchean revolution and of the Kampuchean people. Contradictions with these elements must be solved by the measures proper for enemies: separate, educate and win over the elements which can be won over; neutralize the elements which are wavering, preventing them from doing any damage to the revolution; and, finally, isolate and eradicate only the smallest possible number of those elements who are cruel and persist in acting against the revolution and the people, and who collaborate with foreign enemies to destroy their own people and their own revolution.

Thirdly, we have all just seen that our people, 90% of whom are workers, peasants and other laboring people, have liberated themselves. In addition, there are also patriotic elements, constituting eight to nine percent of the population, who followed and joined the revolution. This comes to a total of 98% to 99%.

To liberate 98% to 99% of the population, especially the working people, is to liberate a vast productive force. Historical materialism has clearly shown that man is the determining factor in production. So, our people – who, in the past were a wasted force, suffering unspeakable humiliations and brutal exploitation, deprived of all initiative and any chance of working to improve their conditions, who could not build up their country and make it prosper – today, our people are free. They have smashed the old system of production, which was based upon exploitation.

Should we stop there or take on new tasks? We must continue to consolidate and develop new, independent, equal and collective relations of production in order to increase production, build up the country and raise the people’s living standards by great leaps and bounds. All this was completely unknown in the exploitative and oppressive old society, under the old relations of production. It is for these reasons that the Party has set socialist construction in all areas of Democratic Kampuchea as its new task.

To sum up, according to our analysis of the situation in Kampuchea and Kampuchean society after liberation on April 17, 1975, our revolutionary tasks are as follows:

A. To defend Democratic Kampuchea with detemrination, to defend its independnece, its soverighnty, its territorial integrity within our present borders, to defend the worker and peasant state power of the Party and to defend the sacred conquests of our revooution to the best of our ability.

B. To continue to improve and deepen the socialist revolution; concretely, to continue the consolidation and the development of the socialist collective system in every area.

C. To concentrate all efforts to build socialism in Democratic Kampuchea, that is to build socialism better and faster in all fields.

In the light of the new tasks of our revolution, let us now examine our work, the favorable conditions and the difficulties, the strengths and weaknesses, the unity and the contradictions, and the manner in which we have resolved these contradictions.

As I have already indicated, the new period of our revolution began only two years ago. Thus, we are not yet in a position to draw definitive conclusions. We must gradually learn from our experiences, perfect our work and continue to advance in pursuit of the new tasks of our revolution.

In the course of this period, in which we have made the socialist revolution and built socialism in our country, we can say that we have tried hard, and we have achieved good results. However, the road ahead is long one.

Generally, in carrying out the tasks of our revolution, we have encountered favorable conditions, as well as difficulties of all sorts, and we have some strengths and weaknesses, both from the subjective and objective points of view. But, in summing up, our strengths pre-dominate, and we are gradually advancing towards success in carrying out the new tasks of our revolution.

I am now going to give a concise summary in two parts. The first deals with the situation of the socialist revolution, which we consider to be the important and fundamental basis for the accomplishment of the new tasks of our revolution. The second part deals with the situation in the mass revolutionary movement in defense of the country and for the building of socialism.

The General Situation of the Socialist Revolution

The general situation of the socialist revolution in Kampuchea is on the whole good. We have solidly laid the foundations for our collectivist socialism, and we are continually improving them, while consolidating and developing them. Concretely:

1. The old relations of production, based upon exploitation and oppression, have been abolished and the new, independent, equal, socialist and collective production order is being gradually consolidated and developed.

2. The forces of production, especially the laboring people representing 90% of the population, are completely liberated. They are undergoing a transformation and are now developing into a tremendous strong movement for production, full of enthusiasm, vitality, initiative and creative spirit. This immense force, which was sleeping for centuries because of its oppression at the hands of various exploiting classes, has awakened and is bravely and vigorously moving into action.

3. The collective peasant cooperatives throughout the country, which were founded in 1973 during the air war waged by U.S. imperialism, are developing and being strengthened, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Since their founding in 1973, the cooperatives have passed many tests and are successfully serving the revolutionary movement in every area. During the war, the cooperatives were the source of everything: manpower for the Army, the economy, transport, and other areas. After the war, they were given the task of promoting production, thus improving the living conditions of the people. They carried this out in complete independence, relying on their own strength, and have taken full responsibility for supporting and feeding the new people, completely liberated on April 17, 1975.

Presently, our cooperatives are collective units, very solid from the political, ideological and organizational point of view. They are carrying out their revolutionary tasks well, transforming our once barren, arid and miserable countryside into a countryside each day more luxuriant, provided with reservoirs of every size, networks if canals covered with rice paddies and green fields. Each cooperative has become a small collectivist society, an entirely new society, freed from corrupt and depraved culture and traditions. It is a new healthy society, which is consolidating and developing itself constantly, where equality and harmony prevail. the living conditions such as food, health services, culture and education, are being consolidated and developed.

While strengthening and developing qualitatively, our cooperative units also continue to increase in size. on the average, 50% of the cooperatives are made up of 700 to 1,000 families, 30% of 400 to 600 families, and 20% of 100 to 300 families. One can see that, in general, our cooperatives are on the scale of communes. Only a small number still remain the size of villages.

4. Apart from the aforementioned questions, we continue to operate without the use of money, with no daily salary. Our entire people, our Revolutionary Army, all our cadres and all our fighters live in a collective system through the communal support system, which is being improved with every passing day. This is a successful step toward the solution of the contradictions between the cities and the countryside, between the workers and the peasants, between manual workers and intellectuals, between the cadres and the masses, between the economic infrastructure and the superstructure. We continue to solve these contradictions in accordance with the nature of the contradictions themselves. However, we already have initial sketches and basic plans for future work. We have endeavored to follow the concrete experience of our movement, in order to improve, promote, consolidate and develop this experience, so it will correctly serve our revolutionary movement.

5. There is another important aspect of the situation which gives us cause for celebration and strengthens our confidence in the revolutionary movement. This is the immense power of our people, who are enthusiastically and eagerly participating in the socialist revolution and socialist construction. Concretely, all those who, in the old society, belonged to the class of the poor and lower-middle peasants are fully satisfied with the collective system and with the cooperatives, and they support them with all their hearts.

Formerly, they and their families could only provide for themselves for two to five months of the year. To be able to survive the rest of the year, they were obliged to abandon their homes, their villages and rice paddies to go to work as pedicab drivers and porters at a miserable wage. now, they eat well all year long. Their living standard is up to that of the middle peasants of the old society. What is more, they have doctors and medicines in their cooperatives. They are learning to read, to write and do arithmetic. they are benefiting from the political education, which broadens their understanding daily. More important, they themselves have the power to direct and manage their cooperatives.

Thus, they have become the true masters of the lands, the rice paddies, harvests, indeed, of the fruits of their labor. In a word, they have fully gained their dignity. These former poor and lower-middle peasants represent 75% of the total population. This immense force is very powerful in its numbers, but, even more, in its revolutionary force.

As for those who were middle peasants and petty bourgeoisie in the old society, they are equally satisfied with the collectivist system of the cooperatives. So far, as their food supply is concerned, their situation has not changed. But, even more than the guarantee that they and their families will have enough to eat, they are now also fully assured of adequate medical care. In addition, they have access to education, culture and political study, which, which opens broader and broader spectrums to them, permitting them to become revolutionary and patriotic citizens of new Kampuchea, who each day grow more aware politically. Finally, the practice of democratic centralism fully guarantees them the right to participate in the leadership and management of the cooperatives.

The former middle peasants and petty bourgeoisie make up 20% of the total population. Added to the 75% above, this constitutes 95% of the people. This figure represents a powerful force from the standpoint of politics, as well as of ideology, organization, and proficiency in all branches of activity, especially in production, and raising the living standard and national defense. They are a motive force, who bring with them the remaining 5%, most of whom are patriots and want to take part in the revolution. From the strictly material viewpoint, the living standard of this 5% has fallen in some respects, because in the cooperatives, the living standard is only that of a middle peasant.

But this standard of living is perfectly adequate. What is important to them, however, is that they can see with their own eyes that our country has at last become independent, our people are truly worthy of admiration, our countryside is being completely transformed, and the future of our country and people is bright. Many things reinforce their confidence in the new revolutionary regime. They can be thus assured that under the new system their children will grow up honorably and be made into good citizens and patriots, who are devoted to the people and take part in the world of national defense and national construction. They will make the contributions they should to the prosperity and greatness of their country. In the old days, our people never imagined these things were possible. Among this five percent, at least three to four percent are for the revolution.

Thus, to summarize, 98% to 99% of the population are for the revolution. they make the socialist revolution and build socialism with all their heart, and they have complete confidence in the bright future of our country and people.

6. Along with the five factors listed above, there is another important one: the implementation of the Party’s dictatorship of the proletariat in all areas of our revolutionary activity.

We promote broad democracy among the people by a correct application of democratic centralism, so that this immense force will mobilize enthusiastically and rapidly for socialist revolution and construction, at great leaps and bounds forward. As in the past, this force, full of spirit and enthusiasm, full of creativity and initiative, is taking part in the defense of the country, in socialist revolution and construction. When the strength of all our people is unleashed, the revolution is already victorius. Our revolutionary movement during the 5 years of war national liberation has shown that was true. Our revolutionary movement at this time confrims that this is always true.

On the other hand, we absolutely, without hesitation, apply the dictatorship of the proletariat to our enemies and to the tiny handful of reactionary elements who oppose the revolution, who seek to destroy it, who sell out to the foreign imperialists and reactionaries in order to ruin their own nation, their own people and their own revolution.

The general situation of our socialist revolution shows that we have laid the foundations of our collectivist socialism. Therefore, we must continue to strengthen them, develop and improve them unceasingly.

The Situation of the Kampuchean Revolution in the Area of National Defense and Socialist Construction in All Fields

Regarding our efforts to defend Democratic Kampuchea, safeguard our independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity within our present borders, and preserve the worker-peasant state power of our Party, and the fruits of victory of our revolution, we have totally succeeded. We have defended, safeguarded, and preserved all these things on the basis of the principles of independence and initiative.

All of our comrades and our people have now completely grasped the line and the stand of our Party and the government of Democratic Kampuchea. Our Kampuchean people adhere to the sacred principles of living peacefully, honorably, and as masters of their own country. They are building a national society in conformity with their profound aspirations and with a line which they have chosen for themselves.

In the past, our people were forced to live the lowly existence of slaves. Our country was plundered and oppressed by foreign reactionaries, feudalists, colonialists and imperialists. We lost much of our territory. Our present borders are the distressing result of successive waves of foreign aggressions, expansions and annexations.

Since April 17, 1975, when Kampuchea was totally and fully liberated, the people have become the true masters of our country and our destiny. Our people have a strong and correct sense of patriotism.

Although their history has been one of misery, our people do not dig up past grudges, but turn their attention toward the present and the future.

Our people do not harbor animosity towards anyone, nor have we any intention of committing aggression or expanding our territory at the expense of anyone else. We don’t want even one inch of anyone else’s land. Ours is a small country with a small population. The political system of Democratic Kampuchea absolutely does not permit us to aggress against another country. A small and weak country does not usually go and swallow a big country. World history records that it is only the reactionary ruling classes of big countries, those of the Hitler type, who invent pretexts to provoke and accuse small countries of encroachment, and then use these pretexts to justify their own aggression and expansionism.

Democratic Kampuchea has no reason to commit aggression against anybody. We have an area of 181,000 square kilometers with upwards of six million hectares of farmland. Our Tonle Sap Lake, Tonle Sap River, Mekong River, Bassac River and ponds and lakes abound in fish. Our dense forests, soil and subsoil have rich natural resources. We have only eight million people. In terms of land under cultivation, each peasant household can handle an average of five hectares of land. In view of this, Democratic Kampuchea has absolutely no need to annex anybody’s land. Moreover, we have just come out of a war of tremendous devastation. We need all the time and all the strength that we can muster, in order to build up our country and improve and raise our people’s living standard in as short a times as possible. We very much need and treasure our independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity. We are striving constantly to develop close, friendly relations with all the countries in the world, both near and far, as is evidenced by the visits of Kampuchean delegations to many countries around the world, beginning in 1975, immediately after the liberation of our country.

We also resolutely respect the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of other countries. However, our people and our Revolutionary Army are determined to defend our independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity within our present borders. Today, our Kampuchean people have taken the destiny of their country into their own hands. This has become possible because of the history of bitter, tortuous and heroic struggles, and the innumerable sacrifices which resulted in the defeat of U.S. imperialism and its running dogs on April 17, 1975. Thereafter, these people will absolutely never allow anyone to aggress, interfere, subvert, provoke or violate our country, or alter its borders. This correct stance of our people has won support of friends near and far, on five continents, because it is just. Over the last 2 years, despite the many problems we have had to solve since the war’s end, our people and our revolutionary Army firmly grasping the nature of U.S. imperialism and its lackeys, and all forms of reactionary enemies, and constantly maintaining revolutionary vigilance, have smashed all attempts at aggression, subversion, provocation by enemies of all kinds. We have successfully protected, strengthened and expanded the fruits of the revolution, the state power of the revolution, and totally safeguarded the independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and borders of our country by relying on the principles of complete independence, initiative and self-reliance. Our success in this has created excellent conditions for the better defense of Kampuchea and has given us a great opportunity to plunge deeper into the building of our country.

Our Democratic Kampuchea once again solemnly declares that we will absolutely not provoke any country and we resolutely and firmly stand on the principles of mutual respect for each other’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity and equality.

Our task on national defense has been very successful up to now. Nevertheless, we have to keep a high level of revolutionary vigilance in order to be on alert against all potentially aggressive and provocative attempts by the enemy.

In the effort for national reconstruction, our Party bases itself on the concrete conditions in the country. Ours is a backward agricultural country, which has been devastated by the destructive war of aggression waged by U.S. imperialism. With complete confidence, we rely on the powerful revolutionary spirit, experience and creative ingenuity of our people. We take agriculture as the basic factor and use the fruits of agriculture to build industry, in order to rapidly transform Kampuchea from a backward agricultural state into a modernized one. We also intend to rapidly transform the backward, agricultural Kampuchea into an industrialized country by standing firmly on the principles of independence, initiative and self-reliance.

In the field of agriculture, our Party has focused on solving the key problem of water conservation in order to maximize rice production, which is the fundamental staple food. In the past dry season of 1977, the people of our cooperatives built many large water reservoirs in every village and region, each with a storage capacity of 100 to 200 million cubic meters of water; medium-sized reservoirs of 50 to 60 million cubic meters of water; and small reservoirs of 50 to 60 million cubic meters of water in every district. Together, these reservoirs contain 2.8 billion cubic meters of water, including the water in canals, which have a total length of several hundred kilometers. These projects can irrigate rice fields of about 250,000 hectares in both rainy and dry seasons. The people of the cooperatives also built five dams on the Prek Thnot Stream to aid the irrigation of 60,000 hectares of farmland; two dams on the Chinit Stream for the irrigation of 20,000 hectares of farmland; three dams on the Pursat Stream for the irrigation of 30,000 hectares of farmland; one dam on the Battambang Stream for the irrigation of 40,000 hectares of farmland; and other dams on the Seam Reap, Knabanh and other smaller streams. In total, in 1977 our cooperative peasants built all sorts of water projects, which solved the water problem during all seasons, dry as well as rainy, for 400,000 hectares of farmland. All of these have been built by our workers and peasants relying entirely on their own efforts, with their own bare hands and their hoes.

At the same time a vigorous mass movement to collect and produce natural fertilizers and agricultural chemicals from locally abundant natural raw materials has also made progress. During 1976, we collected about 80% of the rice crop, in accordance with our plan. This provided us with enough food for our people, an average of 312 kilograms per capita, and also enable us in 1977 to begin exporting tens of thousands of tons of rice, in order to accumulate capital for our national defense and construction efforts. Natural rubber and other agricultural products are also being produced.

In industry, our Party also bases itself on the concrete conditions in the country, paying special attention to the factories, which serve agricultural production and the people’s livelihood. With this in mind, we have built many new factories, and we have repaired and converted existing ones which were previously dependent on foreign raw materials into factories which now rely basically on locally available raw materials.

Along with industry, we are paying great attention to the expansion of handicrafts at the level of various local and regional production units, in order to help accelerate economic growth. Our main aim is to set up, consolidate and gradually develop large, medium and small industrial and handicraft networks in Phnom Penh, various villages, districts, sections and cooperatives, and to strengthen and expand them steadily.

In the field of culture, and education, our Party’s aim is to learn through practice of serving the movement to defend and build the country. Theory goes with actual practice, study with the actual serving of the production movement. Our schools in the cooperatives and the factories are very important,. Our education has a strong national and mass base. At this time, efforts are being made to expand learning of science and technology. In the immediate future, our important goal s to eradicate illiteracy. In the old society, there were some grade schools, high schools, colleges and universities, but in the countryside, 75% of the people were illiterate, especially the poor and lower-middle peasants. Even in the cities, 65% of the working people were illiterate. Now, after just two years of national liberation, only 10% of the adult population remains illiterate. We are solving this problem through the mass line and with compulsory mass education.

Education in the old society, copied from foreign systems, was alien to the concrete conditions of the country. it was incapable of defending and building the country, and incapable of improving the people’s livelihood. It was totally reliant on foreign aid. Now, in order to serve the movement to defend and build the country well and rapidly, many movements to learn science and technology have been launched. We learn through experimentation and work at the same time, and through summing up our experiences. Technological knowledge of rice production, rubber production and other industrial technology has been mastered to a great extent. We can see that our present system of education effectively serves the movement to defend and build the country and to improve the people’s livelihood. Along with this, our children, youth, workers, peasants, men and women combatants have also received education in revolutionary patriotism. They all know quite clearly who are the enemies and who are the friends of their revolution and of the people’s revolutionary movements for national liberation around the world. They firmly stand on the side of the revolutionary people of the world.

In the field of social welfare and public health, we have been successful. In order to keep the whole people healthy, our Party has founded a revolutionary medical corps made up of people who have a high sense of sacrifice and dedication to producing medicines from local ingredients and natural herbs. Our medical personnel deepen their medical skills while carrying out actual work. We have expanded the pharmaceutical center and are building hospitals in Phnom Penh, in cooperatives, villages, districts and sectors throughout the country. On an average, for every 100 families in the cooperatives, there is a hospital building with three nurses and one pharmacist. Our people’s health is rapidly becoming excellent. We have successfully wiped out various social diseases and addictions. We are now concentrating on the eradication of malaria. In the past year, which was the first of the four-year plan for the eradication of malaria, we achieved 70% to 80% of our program’s objectives. We must continue striving to raise rapidly the people’s standard of living and improve their health, because we need to increase our Kampuchean population to 15 to 20 million over the next 10 years. As for decadent remnants of the previous society, left over from imperialism and the exploiting classes, like lumpenism, prostitution and other crimes, these have been completely wiped out by the great mass movement to “clean up and wipe out.”

The good results thus achieved by our Kampuchean people under the correct and clear-sighted leadership pf the Communist Party of Kampuchea in the past years constitute great new victories in the present phase of our Kampuchean revolution.

However, to fulfill the expressed desires of our people, we still have a long way to go. We must double our efforts, rapidly rise the standard of living of our people in all fields even further, so that each person continues to be strong and healthy and have a resolute sense of patriotism and so the Kampuchean population can increase in number rapidly enough to effectively defend and build our Kampuchea into a prosperous and developed country by leaps and bounds. We have no reason to reduce our population or to level it off. Today, our population, which is nearly eight million, falls short of the country’s potential need, which is for more than 20 million people. Therefore, our aim is to increase the population as quickly as possible.

At present, although our people’s standard of living has not reached the point of affluence, the people are at a level at which they are basically assured of all needs in all fields, for all people, without exception. Compared with 1975, when the devastating war had just ended, at present, we have made considerable progress.

This is what I would like to tell you about our achievements so far in the fields of national defense and socialist construction in our country.

Many friendly people and countries are rejoicing at the successful achievements of our Kampuchean people. They have expressed great sympathy and support for us.

Our Party and our people regard the sympathy, encouragement and solidarity from friends near and far, all over the world, as the most powerful support for our political stand of independence, initiative and self-reliance, and our politics of independence, sovereignty, neutrality and nonalignment. Our Party and our people take this opportunity to express our most sincere thanks to those friends, near and far.

Our Party and our people firmly believe that their efforts to carry out the revolution in our country well, to defend and build the country, and to rapidly raise the standard of living of our people, while upholding the principles of independence, initiative and self-reliance, are a small contribution to the revolutionary movements of the world’s people in the struggle for national liberation for those people whose countries are under oppression, and to the struggle to defend independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations, especially the nonaligned and third world countries.

If we take a look at the world situation, we find that it is favorable to the people and the revolution. The oppressed people and nations, the people of the nonaligned countries and the third world countries have achieved a high political awareness. They are beginning to be firmly convinced of their own strengths, to know their allies and to have a high level of understanding of the true nature of the policies of imperialism and expansionism. They are resolutely taking their destiny into their own hands. At the same time, they are greatly tightening their unity with one another, in order to smash and wipe out all attempts by imperialists and expansionist great powers of all kinds to create disunity, division and dissension. This is a powerful historical tide which no force on earth can stop. The revolutionary and progressive people of the world will certainly score more victories. Our party and the people of Kampuchea must exert all our efforts to contribute to this historical tide and surge forward more powerfully.

I end this presentation of my report in our mas meeting here, having described the history and line of the our people’s movements, from the beginning up to the present, on the occasion of the Seventeenth Anniversary of the founding of the Party, as well as on the occasion of the official unveiling of our Party. The essence of the line of our Party, the revolutionary movement of our people, our Revolutionary Army and our men ans women combatants is so far-reaching that it cannot be described in totality here.

What I have described is just a sketch of the general view, made with the desire to explain to you the aim of our country’s revolutionary movement, from the beginning up to now. At a later date, we will meet to consolidate, expand and deepen our discussions on each problem. We must study, sum up and learn from the experiences of our people’s revolutionary movement, in order to build our party, ourselves and our forces, promote our revolutionary movement, and repay the service of our fallen people and comrades-in-arms, who died leaving their achievements in our firm grasp. These achievements now belong to all of us, therefore, we must strengthen and develop them. With due revolutionary humility, we can say that the situation of our revolution to date has been excellent. From all points of view, the situation is excellent, in qualitative as well as quantitative change.

None of the splendid results of our work in the past would have been possible without the monumental efforts exerted by our people of all generations, by our Revolutionary Army in all it successive stages, and by the men and women combatants and cadres in all ministries and departments. All of us have endeavored with the highest sense of revolutionary responsibility to carry out our revolutionary tasks well under the leadership of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. Only under its guidance could we have achieved such excellent results. Our journey has been long, considering the length of the revolutionary movements in our country. However, at the same time, we must have revolutionary humility. We must see our victory as a great victory, but we must also see that our tasks are still numerous and more difficult: defending the country, safeguarding Democratic Kampuchea, protecting the Kampuchean revolution, preserving worker-peasant state power, and the heavy task of building the country rapidly into a prosperous and glorious country, so as to raise our people’s standard of living and bring happiness and glory to our people, as well as contribute to the well-being of the revolutionary people of the world.

In conclusion, on behalf of the entire Communist Party of Kampuchea, I express best wishes to comrade representatives of the workers and peasants, Revolutionary Army, ministries, and all departments who are in this meeting, and, through you, I would also like to extend best wishes to all comrades, workers, peasants and combatants who could not come to this meeting. May all of you enjoy good health, great strength, sharp vigilance and complete success in vigorously carrying out all the tasks entrusted to you by the Party.

LONG LIVE THE SEVENTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDING OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF KAMPUCHEA!

LONG LIVE THE CORRECT AND CLEAR-SIGHTED KAMPUCHEAN COMMUNIST PARTY!

LONG LIVE THE GREAT KAMPUCHEAN PEOPLE!

LONG LIVE THE EXTREMELY INVINCIBLE AND HEROIC KAMPUCHEAN REVOLUTIONARY ARMY!

LONG LIVE GLORIOUS DEMOCRATIC KAMPUCHEA!