S2 Ep1: Les Khmers Rouges: Double Lives in Sihanouk's Golden Era

The Communist Party of Kampuchea was founded in 1960 at a secret congress held in a room above Phnom Penh's railway station. Among the men who came out of it with senior positions were a schoolteacher named Saloth Sar and a man who would later be known as Nuon Chea. In public they were teachers, students and clerks. The party's very existence was a secret, and would stay one for another seventeen years.

Time Period Covered: 1955 to 1960

How does the Communist Party of Kampuchea form? How does Saloth Sar become a married man and teacher? What are the consequences of Sihanouk's neutral foreign policy?

As peace broke out over Cambodia in the wake of the First Indochina War, the fledgling communist movement had to learn to survive in a newly independent country under the rule of Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Numbers dwindling and unable to openly resist the government, the 'revolutionary organisation', as they began calling themselves, found an avenue for recruits in the schools of Phnom Penh. The man who would become Pol Pot became a teacher.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to navigate a neutral path for Cambodia in the Cold War era, Sihanouk opens relations with China as well as the United States. This agenda will have consequences, as the CIA begins trying to undermine his government and even seek his removal. The resulting 'Bangkok Plot', a series of conspiracies against him, will be explained.

Sources

Philip Short Pol Pot: History of a Nightmare
David Chandler The Tragedy of Cambodian History, Brother Number One
Ben Kiernan How Pol Pot Came to Power
Milton Osbourne Sihanouk
Elizabeth Becker When the War was Over
Norodom Sihanouk My War with the CIA
Peter Froberg Idling Song for an Approaching Storm
Craig Etcheson Overview of Hierarchy of Democratic Kampuchea

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