Foundation of the party and first divisions The party was founded in 1951, when the
Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) was divided into separate Cambodian,
Laotian and
Vietnamese communist parties. The decision to form a separate Cambodian communist party was taken at the Indochinese Communist Party congress in February of the same year. Different sources claim different dates for the party's founding and first congress.
Son Ngoc Minh was appointed as the acting
chairman of the party. The party congress did not elect a full
Central Committee, but instead appointed a Party Propagation and Formation Committee. At its formation, the Cambodian party was called the '''
Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party''' (KPRP). The Vietnamese heavily dominated the Indochinese Communist Party, and the Vietnamese party actively supported the KPRP during its initial phase of existence. Due to the reliance on Vietnamese support in the joint struggle against
French colonial rule, the party's history would later be rewritten, stating 1960 as the year of the party's foundation. According to
Democratic Kampuchea's version of party history, the
Viet Minh's failure to negotiate a political role for the KPRP at the
1954 Geneva Conference represented a betrayal of the Cambodian movement, which still controlled large areas of the countryside and which commanded at least 5,000 armed men. Following the conference, about 1,000 members of the KPRP, including Son Ngoc Minh, made a Long March into
North Vietnam, where they remained in exile. In late 1954, those who stayed in Cambodia founded a legal political party, the
Krom Pracheachon, which participated in the
National Assembly elections of 1955 and 1958.
Clandestine existence in Phnom Penh After returning to
Cambodia in 1953, Pol Pot threw himself into party work. At first, he joined with allied forces with the Viet Minh operating in the rural areas of
Kampong Cham Province (Kompong Cham). After the end of the war, he moved to Phnom Penh under Tou Samouth's "urban committee", where he became an important point of contact between the above-ground parties of the left and the underground secret communist movement. His allies, Ieng Sary and Hou Yuon, became teachers at a new
private high school, the Lycée Kambuboth, which Hou Yuon helped to establish. Khieu Samphan returned from Paris in 1959, taught as a University of Phnom Penh law faculty member, and started a left-wing French-language publication, ''L'Observateur''. The paper soon acquired a reputation in Phnom Penh's small academic circle. The following year, the government closed the paper, and Sihanouk's police publicly humiliated Khieu by beating, undressing, and photographing him in public—as Shawcross notes, "not the sort of humiliation that men forgive or forget". Yet the experience did not prevent Khieu from advocating cooperation with Sihanouk to promote a united front against United States activities in South Vietnam. As mentioned, Khieu Samphan, Hou Yuon, and Hu Nim were forced to "work through the system" by joining the
Sangkum and accepting posts in the prince's government. From 28 to 30 September 1960, twenty-one leaders of the KPRP held a secret congress in a vacant room of the Phnom Penh railroad station. Approximately 14 delegates represented the rural faction, and seven represented the urban faction. This pivotal event remains shrouded in mystery because its outcome has become an object of contention (and considerable historical rewriting) between pro-Vietnamese and anti-Vietnamese Khmer communist factions. The party was renamed the Workers Party of Kampuchea at the meeting. The question of cooperation with, or resistance to, Sihanouk was thoroughly discussed. A new party structure was adopted, and for the first time, a permanent Central Committee was appointed with Tou Samouth (who advocated a policy of cooperation) as the party's general secretary. His ally
Nuon Chea (Long Reth) became deputy general secretary. At the same time, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary were named to the Central Committee to occupy the third and the fifth highest positions in the party hierarchy. Another committee member was veteran communist
Keo Meas. In Democratic Kampuchea, this meeting would later be projected as the founding date of the party, consciously downplaying the history of the party before Pol Pot's ascent to leadership. The region Pol Pot and the others moved to was inhabited by tribal minorities, the
Khmer Loeu, whose rough treatment (including resettlement and
forced assimilation) at the hands of the central government made them willing recruits for a guerrilla struggle. In 1965, Pol Pot made a visit of several months to North Vietnam and China. He probably received some training in China, which enhanced his prestige when he returned to the WPK's liberated areas. Despite friendly relations between Sihanouk and the Chinese, the latter kept Pol Pot's visit a secret from Sihanouk. In 1971, the party changed its name to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). The party statutes, published in the mid-1970s, claim that the party congress approved the name change in 1971. and
Greg Grandin, have cited the United States' intervention and bombing campaign (spanning 1965–1973) as a significant factor which led to increased support for the Khmer Rouge among the Cambodian peasantry. According to
Ben Kiernan, the Khmer Rouge "would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilization of Cambodia. ... It used the bombing's devastation and massacre of civilians as recruitment propaganda and as an excuse for its brutal, radical policies and its purge of moderate communists and
Sihanoukists." Pol Pot biographer
David P. Chandler writes that the bombing "had the effect the Americans wanted – it broke the Communist encirclement of Phnom Penh", but it also accelerated the collapse of rural society and increased social polarization.
Peter Rodman and
Michael Lind claimed that the United States intervention saved the Lon Nol regime from collapse in 1970 and 1973. Craig Etcheson acknowledged that U.S. intervention increased recruitment for the Khmer Rouge but disputed that it was a primary cause of the Khmer Rouge victory.
William Shawcross wrote that the United States' bombing and ground incursion plunged Cambodia into the chaos that Sihanouk had worked for years to avoid. By 1973, Vietnamese support of the Khmer Rouge had largely disappeared. China armed and trained the Khmer Rouge both during the
civil war and the years afterward. When the
United States Congress suspended military aid to the Lon Nol government in 1973, the Khmer Rouge made sweeping gains in the country, completely overwhelming the
Khmer National Armed Forces. On 17 April 1975, the Khmer Rouge
captured Phnom Penh and overthrew the
Khmer Republic, executing all its officers. == Khmer Rouge in power ==