In 1976-1977 Pol Pot concentrated on the “Four Year Plan to Build Socialism in All Fields” and the purging of “enemies,” which was carried out in large part at the party’s interrogation center known as S-21 in the Phnom Penh suburb of Tuol Sleng. These programs fit with his priorities of “building and defending” the country. To build the country it was essential to take charge of its economic activities; to defend it, it was essential to eliminate enemies of the state. Pol Pot later blamed the uneven results of his all-embracing, radical Four Year Plan on “enemies” just as Stalin and Mao Zedong had done when their grandiose economic plans ran into trouble. The speed with which the Cambodian plan was set in motion, moreover, was traced to the urgency of defeating the “enemies” before they could sabotage it. In Pol Pot’s words, “Enemies attack and torment us. From the east and from the west, they persist in pounding us and worrying us. If we are slow and weak, they will mistreat us.”4

The plan and the purges can also be linked to Cambodia’s intensifying confrontation with Vietnam. This smoldering conflict, fanned by Cambodian cross-border raids in 1975 and 1976, burst into flame in April 1977 and led to successive Vietnamese incursions. Contradictory evidence suggests that Pol Pot, always distrustful of Vietnam, did not desire a full-scale war and that he hoped Vietnam would leave Cambodia alone. He was drawn toward confrontation, however, by his military commanders, by Vietnamese intransigence on the frontier issue—which matched his own—and by his patrons in Beijing, who saw Vietnam as a Soviet satellite, a thorn in their side, and an ungrateful client. The ensuing military hostilities, as well as the plan’s shortcomings, kept it from working and accelerated the purges. In 1976-1977 Pol Pot saw the plan and the purges as the best way of building a society that could withstand the Vietnamese.

The Four Year Plan

On August 21, 1976, Pol Pot convened a meeting of the “party center” (Central Committee) to introduce the Four Year Plan to build socialism in agriculture, industry, health and welfare, education, and so on. It was scheduled to take effect at the beginning of 1977. The plan had been actually inaugurated at an “agricultural meeting” at the end of 1975 following consultations between the party center and the various zones. It had been unveiled again at a longer meeting convened in late July. On both occasions Pol Pot had presented the plan as a fait accompli; discussion of its provisions was muted or nonexistent.

In essence, the plan sought to achieve socialism in Cambodia within four years by collectivizing agriculture and industry and by spending money earned from agricultural exports to finance agricultural production, light industry, and eventually heavy industry as well. Capital accumulation, ironically, was to occur in a society in which money, markets, and private property had been abolished.