He really wasnt a communist, he was more of a weird agrarian socialist. He rejected Marxs historical materialism and the conclusions it makes about how the workers must seize power. Instead, he envisioned that in the semifeudal society of Cambodia, the “city people”, whether they were bourgeois or workers, were the exploiters, the marxist equivalent of the bourgeoisie, while the “countryside people”, were the exploited, the marxist equivalent of the proletariat. This notion stemmed from the fact that in Cambodia landlords who owned farming land lived in the city, not in the countryside. Thus, Pol Pot made no distinction between urban workers and the bourgeoisie, they were all exploiters of the farmers to him. As you can see, this ideology is extremely arbitrary and idealistic, not marxist at all. He also was an ultranationalist, wanting first and foremost a strong and independent Cambodia, a Cambodia for khmers only, a Cambodia strong like during the Ancient Khmer Empire, a Cambodia that would build a new Angkor Wat. Cambodia came first, communism second. This explains much of what he did.

Now lets see some history. The origins of the Khmer Rouge go back to 1930, when Ho Chi Minhs Communist Party of Indochina was formed, following marxism leninism. After WW2, the party split in 3 branches, one for each country (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia). Thus in Cambodia, the Khmer Peoples Revolutionary Party (KPRP) was formed in 1951, following too marxism leninism. Then in 1960, the KPRP split in 2 parties due to the Sino Soviet Split. The first party, which retained the name KPRP, took a prosoviet stance, staying marxist leninist. The second, which called itself Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), took a prochinese stance, becoming, at least de jure, maoist. Pol Pot became leader of the CPK upon its founding. As soon as the CPK was founded, its ultranationalist ideals were obvious. While de jure the CPK had split from the KPRP over the Sino Soviet Split, in reality, the CPK had split because the KPRP was very influenced by the Comminist Party of Vietnam (CPV), which Pol Pots ultranationalism considered unacceptable. The CPK pursued extreme secrecy, not announcing its name and existence until 1976. Instead, the party called itself “the organization” (angkar in khmer).

The CPK wasnt very successful in recruiting members until 1970, when the US, after a coup that toppled the neutral (in regards to the Vietnam War) king of Cambodia Norodom Sihanouk and installed the US puppet Lon Nol, invaded Cambodia, beginning a massive carpet bombing campaign intended to destroy viet minh militias operating in the border areas of Cambodia with South Vietnam. This brutal campaign killed tens of thousands of peasants and destroyed thousands of homes and harvests. The cambodian peasants were angry and desperate, and Pol Pot stepped in to save them. The CPK, after allying with North Vietnam, China and the former khmer king (who was exiled in Beijing) who gave it support and weapons, launched an armed insurgency against the Lon Nol regime, starting the Cambodian Civil War. This war ended in 1975 with Lon Nol fleeing to the US and the victorious Khmer Rouge (the army of the CPK) marching into Phnom Penh. The CPK proclaimed Democratic Kampuchea, a new socialist republic.

Now the CPK had a completely destroyed country ravaging with a massive famine due to the carpet bombing. Instead of fixing the issue, they made things worse. First they emptied Phnom Penh, bringing everyone to the countryside. Now this by itself wasnt bad, because they feared retaliatory US bombings over the city and also there was no food in the city, it was in the countryside. But then came the worst. To solve the famine, they needed a new harvest. But instead of asking for help from China, Vietnam or the Soviet Union, asking for food, tractors and agricultural machinery to make a huge harvest quickly and solve the famine, the CPK decided to just enslave all the “city people” (including workers, who according to Pol Pots fucked up ideology were class enemies) and make them grow rice MANUALLY 8-10 hours a day while giving them little to no food to eat. They would work under starvation for months, only to then have their whole harvest brought away from them by soldiers. These harvests were either given to “countryside people” to eat or exported to east bloc countries in exchange for weapons. As you can expect, this wasnt very successful. Up to 2 million people, most of them “city people”, starved to death. Now was this genocide? Personally i dont think so, since Pol Pot didnt create the famine nor did he want to kill those people. However he is definetely to blame for their deaths, since it was his incompetence that caused them. All he had to do to avoid this was mechanizing agriculture with the help of China, Vietnam or the USSR. But he didnt do it.

While the 2 million starved wasnt genocide, Pol Pot did commit genocide. As i said earlier, he was an ultranationalist who despised all nonkhmer cambodians. Now whether what ill explain now was ordered by the CPK leadership or was done by rogue Khmer Rouge units is a matter of speculation. Nevertheless, the Khmer Rouge started systematically oppressing and killing ethnic minorities. Vietnamese, thais and even chinese, whom he was allied with! This was most definetely a genocide, whether it was ordered by Pol Pot or not. Then, to make things even more worse, he started stirring up trouble with Vietnam. This was both because of his ultranationalism (he was racist) and because Vietnam was a USSR ally, while Cambodia was a China ally. First as i said he started genociding cambodian vietnamese. Then he started raiding border villages and he killed vietnamese inside Vietnam, torturing them to death often like in the Ba Chuc massacre. Vietnam tried to negotiate but he refused. So in December 1978, Vietnam launched a full scale invasion of Cambodia together with rebel Khmer Rouge units led by Heng Samrin and Hun Sen. The unpopular CPK regime, which had also begun bloody purges targeting any “enemies of Cambodia”, collapsed immediately, with its soldiers surrendering en masse. In just 2 weeks, in early 1979, vietnamese troops had entered Phnom Penh, having liberated most of Cambodia. Democratic Kampuchea was abolished.

Then, the rebel Khmer Rouge units, together with khmer communists who had been exiled in Vietnam, reconstituted the provietnamese KPRP (which had largely disappeared during the Cambodian Civil War when most of its members either fleed to Vietnam or joined the Khmer Rouge), which proclaimed the Peoples Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). This new socialist republic followed soviet style communism and was backed by Vietnam. After this, Pol Pot showed again that his communism was fake, when he immediately rejected communism and formed a coalition of monarchist and ultranationalist groups backed by China and the CIA. This coalition used guerilla warfare and terrorism against civilians to destabilize the PRK. Then in 1989, as communism and the USSR were in decline, an agreement was reached between Vietnam, the PRK and the CIA backed groups. The PRK became a capitalist monarchy, led by Sihanouk again. Liberal elections were organized, where monarchist parties and the KPRP (now called Cambodian Peoples Party and reformed into a liberal party) won, forming a coalition government led by former khmer communist Hun Sen. The vietnamese army withdrew from Cambodia, and Pol Pot was betrayed by everyone. CIA, China and monarchists stopped supporting him, and he took refuge in rural areas that were still controlled by the Khmer Rouge. He died there of old age. Cambodian army raids eventually destroyed the Khmer Rouge in the late 90s, bringing it to an end.

So, what can we learn from this? READ FUCKING THEORY. Yes, read theory. Pol Pot didnt know theory, so he invented a bullshit idealist ideology instead. Also he was a racist and an incompetent idiot. I dont think he had bad intentions, i think he believed he was doing the right thing, but in the end millions died. He is a good example of what a communist movement shouldnt be like.