The great leap forward6/11/2023 ![]() Typically, there’s an expected period of transition so that people keep doing their jobs and the economy can prepare itself for more radical change later, when it’s secure to do so. The most important first thing was to disperse the mob and bring them under control, which was one major reason for the ‘death march’ out of the cities, where all citizens were marched at gunpoint into the countryside, where many old and infirm simply died along the way.Īll money and market activity was essentially banned, something which no other communist revolution ever tried to do immediately. Even worse, the Khmer Rouge was now in a position of holding two million people they considered ‘traitors’. The country was in ruins, the people displaced from their necessary jobs and with US aid now stopped, famine was inevitable. ![]() It took a while before the super great leap forward was officially announced, but you can now probably see just how dire the situation was. Early Khmer Rouge Control Pol Pot, head of the Khmer Rouge It was then, the very same day that Phnom Penh was ‘liberated’, that the entire population was marched out of the city and into the country. Many of these ‘new people’ were killed on the spot in revenge, while many more hid their vital skills to escape detection. They had fled their advance to stay with the American-backed traitors! A strict divide now grew within Cambodian society, the ‘old people’ who had backed the Khmer Rouge during the revolution and the ‘new people’ who only joined by virtue of the war’s end. By 1975, the Cambodian army collapsed and the Khmer Rouge took power.ĭespite everything I just said about the deep importance of the professionals and industrial workers, there was a problem for the Khmer Rouge. Even more so as the depopulation of the countryside into the cities, coupled with the carnage of the war had left fields untilled and famine only staved off by slim US aid drops. Many of these were the professionals of Cambodia, the industrial workers and highly educated specialists that were needed to engage in proper nation-building after the civil war. Many thought they were fighting for Sihanouk and knew nothing of socialism.Īs the Khmer Rouge slowly advanced across the country, refugees fled further and further back until the capital Phnom Penh held up to two million residents, far more than its pre-war peak of around 600,000. At this time, nobody even knew who led the Khmer Rouge or much about their political platform. An enormous civil war broke out, followed by a coup that somehow led to a political alliance between the communist Khmer Rouge and the ousted Cambodian prince Norodom Sihanouk. By the time of Cambodia’s independence, it was deeply impoverished and with an overwhelmingly rural population.Īfter being dragged into the Vietnam war, where illegal US bombing of neutral Cambodia killed tens of thousands of civilians and devastated the countryside, a communist movement loosely affiliated with the Vietnamese began organising itself in the dense countryside. Vietnam prospered at its expense for a time and then France prospered at the expense of both. ![]() To begin with, going way back, Cambodia had historically been an imperial subject of foreign powers who didn’t really have much interest in developing it as a country. So I’ll just give you a quick summary of what led to the Super Great Leap Forward. So if you weren’t willing to read that whole series of articles, I don’t blame you. The Context Khmer Rouge enter Phnom Penh in 1975 ![]() The brief time from 1975 to 1979 that they were in power was among the bloodiest regimes of the cold war. I’ll warn you though, it’s not the most pleasant of reads. Now, who are the Khmer Rouge? If you’ve got like… An hour to kill, I’ve done a massive series of blogs on the history of their rule, from foundation to dissolution. What you may not know so much about is the Super Great Leap Forward, a truly ingeniously named programme initiated by the Khmer Rouge. I imagine most people have heard of the ‘Great Leap Forward’, the ill-fated Chinese attempt to industrialise in the 1950s. ![]()
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