The book by Jean Lacouture which has just appeared (The Cambodian People Must Survive!"] refers to "madness' of the Cambodian leadership. Isn't that a bit abrupt?
Jean Lacouture: What I have tried to explain is why the Cambodian leaders parted company with socialist reason.
The victors of 27 April 1975 suffered an extreme weakness of cadres and of revolutionary implantation. A revolution is most prone to excesses when it feels weak and threatened, with little support among the people.
The Cambodian revolution was an improvised revolution, even though victory achieved seven or eight years after the organisation of the The resistance still remained very local, basically limited to the forests.
So there was a real upsurge - of the old mole, if you like -which was extremely brutal and unrestrained.
One can explain many of the actions the Cambodian leadership by the feeling improvisation, of isolation, the youth of the cadres and the fighters, the victors' feeling of floundering in a hostile sea.
Another basic explanation is that the Cambodian leadership had always been in the shadow of the Vietnamese suffered from it, and determined at any price to come out in opposition to the orientation of the Vietnamese leadership.
Very sharp conflicts were already apparent in 1954 and 1973 over the strategic choice between negotiating or carrving on fighting. From 1973 there was even the Cambodian physical liquidation of cadres who had spent any length of time in Vietnam and were thought to support the Vietnamese strategy.
Daniel Hemery: The key which allows us to understand what has been happening Cambodia is in my opinion the struggle for power. For power of the Red Khmers was very weak and local.
It seems to me that they had a VCLy serious competitor: Sihanoukism. The monarchy nad immense presuge. I tne struggle against Lon succeeded, it was because the peasants were mobilised in the name of a royal myth.
In 1975 there was a struggle for power. The Red Khmers weren't at all sure of themselves They probably mobilised the young poor peasants, but that was a fragile base all the more fragile that Vietnamese supported hanouk at the time.
It seems to me that there lies the explanation for the mass Georges Boudarel: It is clear WHeR coup against Sihanouk took place in 1970, the Vietnamese were the first to the was was the Cambodian youth dig clay to make bricks Nol support him.
It is a fact that three-quarters of Cambodia was liberated at the end of 1970.
Khmers had nothing at all. It was the Vietnamese Battambang. They trolled Cambodia.
It was then that the return the took place of the thousand Cambodian cadres Sibeen evacuated to Vietnam in 1954.
But the situation evolved against Sihanouk. The slogan Cambodia become: against the third force, i.e. Sihanouk a ne Vietnamese-trained Communists, the former
Khmers, those
alongside the Vietminh in the struggle against French colonBut the Red ialism.
The Vietnamese say that they who were could have intervened had they con- wisneato, and unals truc were in Cambodia in 1971 and they left; they own comrades to be killed, they who had allowed the leadership to be North taken by those who now turn against them.
Jean Lacouture: One could not expect much was discipline from the Cambodian militants, who had only just left the forest - kids of 14 or 15, who knew no other life than the Issarek machine-gun hands illiterates, fault.
The leadership, allowed their largely nationalism.
revolutionary List.
they had Vietnam bombing and the food abroad come back roots revolution. were taxes.
Sloped slowly. even in 1965 only.
communist was Cambodian Think Jean people were They Party.
Vietnam, choice;
Jean framework cooperation was made arrangements.
very largely.
stuck in their It was an adolescent revo undergone lution a revolution of kids and it wasn't their fate.
however, was formed in what was very view internationalist framework. But it went back to isn't Never has a revolution, We saw it recently when floods ravaged Cambodia as and Laos.
Pol Pot refused all foreign aid.
revolutonal It's unprecedented, to refuse der.
sure.
and medicine for the people because it comes from Many other kind of internationalism has been rejected as never Daniel Hemery: I would like to Peru to the historical of the Cambodian Cambodian communists didn't have thirty years of clandestine activit it was a very and recent movement.
special of Cambodia in Indochina meant that all the colonisers extracted The repression there was less harsh.
Thus the intelligentsia deveconsciousness very They isolated, WELC — a few hundred The Cambodian peasantry Was not impregnated like the Vietnamese peasantry by the movement. There nihilist aspect the revolutionaries. would have happened with the Russian nihilists in power!
Lacouture: But these Marxists, they claimed to adhere to Marxism.
created a Communist To justify their policy towards the Cambodian leaders explain that they had no Vietnam's wish dominate Indochina left them HO CHICLE DUELO STUPHIC UI become dependants as in Laos.
Lacouture: So, in the of COCHICSC or a federation, the amoodlans nacto choose between the system imposed on the Laotians and their own rabid ultra-nationalism?
But Laos is a 'non-existent' country! There is a completely respectable Laotian people, but there has never been a Laotian state. It was invented under the occupation, at Vichy in 1941. It Run from this and that, one of the worst colonial But Cambodia is a completely coherent nation, with a history, unified language, a culture, a religion and priests which also unity it The Cambodians can't say to us that unless they had done what they did they would have Not the Laotians today — which is, in my opinion, a typically colonial have all sorts reservations from this point of on the Vietnamese strategy, even if it is to defend themselves vis-d-vis China. But serious for the Cambodians to say that they could have been colonised There were possibilities for cooperation between the Vietnamese and Cambodians, as to one nation with another, group Sabata for trial JAROSLAV Sabata, a spokesperson for the Charter human rights manifesto in Czechoslovakia, goes on trial this week accused of insulting a government official.
The alleged incident took place last October when police broke up a Charter meeting the Polish Workers Defence Committee (KOR) on the Polish-Czechoslovak borThe original charge was one of assaulting a police officer. It is believed to have been reduced because of international pres Sabata, who is 52 and has suffered two heart attacks, faces a prison sentence of up to a year.
Peruvian strike A GENERAL strike started in on Tuesday despite attempts at intimidation from the government. The country's military rulers have declared a state of emergency, suspended all constitutional guarantees banned a of political weeklies The strike is protest against the government's economic policies and planned to go on for three days. Free Ben Bella HOUARI Boumedienne, the Algerian dictator, is dead. He played a useful role for by eliminating those sections of the FLN leadership who were inspired by the model of revolutionary Cuba.
Their leader was Ahmed Ben Bella, a charismatic figure who planned to move Algeria leftwards. His weakness lay in his failure develop any strategy for mass mobilisations to settle political accounts with the right wing of the FLN.
This proved to be a fatal error. He was overthrown by a military coup and imprisoned in 1965. Boumedienne took his place. Ben Bella has been kept under house arrest for thirteen years.
A campaign for his release has been launched in France and should be supported by all socialists. Any openings in the political situation could see his major political leader.
German THE German steelworkers strike ended too late to be covered in our article on the opposite page. The settlement was something of a setback for the struggle for a 35-hour week.
The strikers won only a four per cent pay rise and, instead of a reduction in the working week, the union leaders cooked up a deal over annual holidays.
Defend Astrid Proll THE extradition proceedings against Astrid Proll have resumed at Lambeth magistrates court in south London. Supporters of the West Ger man, a former member of the Red Army Fraction who faces charges of attempted murder and robbery, had their cars searched by police.
A picket outside the court demanded that Proll be allowed stay in Britain and condemned her detention in the men's prison at Brixton.
Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 11
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round-table Boudarel
WHAT underlies the fighting in Cambodia? A discussion Lacouture and historians Daniel Hemery and Georges - all active in the Indochina solidarity
journalist Jean
their contributions. who fought
I movement - was recently organised by the French revolutionary daily Rouge. We reprint excerpts from