Pol Pot

Pol Pot (born Saloth Sâr; 19 May 1925 – 15 April 1998) was a Cambodian communist revolutionary, politician and a dictator who ruled Cambodia as Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea between 1976 and 1979. Ideologically a communist and a Khmer ethnonationalist, he was a leading member of Cambodia's communist movement, the Khmer Rouge, from 1963 to 1997 and served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981. His administration converted Cambodia into a one-party communist state and perpetrated the Cambodian genocide.

Born to a prosperous farmer in Prek Sbauv, French Cambodia, Pol Pot was educated at some of Cambodia's most elite schools. While in Paris during the 1940s, he joined the French Communist Party. Returning to Cambodia in 1953, he involved himself in the Khmer Viet Minh organisation and its guerrilla war against King Norodom Sihanouk's newly independent government. Following the Khmer Viet Minh's 1954 retreat into North Vietnam, Pol Pot returned to Phnom Penh, working as a teacher while remaining a central member of Cambodia's Marxist–Leninist movement. In 1959, he helped formalise the movement into the Kampuchean Labour Party, which was later renamed the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). To avoid state repression, in 1962 he relocated to a jungle encampment and in 1963 became the CPK's leader. In 1968, he relaunched the war against Sihanouk's government. After Lon Nol ousted Sihanouk in a 1970 coup, Pol Pot's forces sided with the deposed leader against the new government, which was bolstered by the United States military. Aided by the Viet Cong militia and North Vietnamese troops, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces advanced and controlled all of Cambodia by 1975.

Pol Pot transformed Kampuchea into a one-party state which he called Democratic Kampuchea. Seeking to create an agrarian socialist society that he believed would evolve into a communist society, Pol Pot's government forcibly relocated the urban population to the countryside and forced it to work on collective farms. Pursuing complete egalitarianism, money was abolished and all citizens were forced to wear the same black clothing. Mass killings of perceived government opponents, coupled with malnutrition and poor medical care, killed between 1.5 and 2 million people, approximately a quarter of Cambodia's population, a process which was later termed the Cambodian genocide. Repeated purges of the CPK generated growing discontent; by 1978 Cambodian soldiers were mounting a rebellion in the east. After several years of border clashes, the newly unified Vietnam invaded Cambodia in December 1978, toppling Pol Pot and installing a rival government in 1979. The Khmer Rouge retreated to the jungles near the Thai border, from where they continued to fight. In declining health, Pol Pot stepped back from many of his roles in the movement. In 1998, the Khmer Rouge commander Ta Mok placed Pol Pot under house arrest and shortly afterward, Pol Pot died.

Taking power at the height of global communism's impact, Pol Pot proved to be divisive to the international communist movement. Many claimed that he deviated from orthodox Marxism–Leninism, but China and later the US supported his government as a bulwark against Soviet influence in Southeast Asia. He was widely denounced internationally for his role in the Cambodian genocide and he was also regarded as a totalitarian dictator who was guilty of crimes against humanity.