Revolutionary culture broke sharply with the past. A party spokesman discussing the plan went so far as to say: “If we chose [prerevolutionary] ‘culture’ [as a basis for education] it would lead to a life and death disaster for the Party.” These ideas echoed those in vogue in China at the time. The only manifestations of culture mentioned in the plan were revolutionary poems and songs—although “books for reading” are mentioned earlier in the text as components of everyday life, along with the “light study of politics and culture” (emphasis added). The songs and poems, in turn, would “describe good models ... in the building of socialism.”16

The plan’s proposals for education noted that “half study, half work” would be a watchword (as in China), that primary education would commence “from 1977 onwards,” and that secondary education would proceed “simultaneously ... to some extent” (emphasis added). The once bookish leaders of the party were intrigued by the idea of illiterate praxis. In fact, although some basic textbooks were printed under Democratic Kampuchea, few primary schools and no secondary schools seem to have been opened until 1978. Although the plan’s proposals for secondary curricula were stillborn, those for history are nonetheless of interest. History would consist of “the revolutionary struggle of the people, the revolutionary struggle for the nation, the revolutionary struggle for democracy, the revolutionary struggle for socialist revolution and the struggle to build socialism.”17

The closing pages of the plan reiterated the party’s importance for Cambodia and the party center’s importance for the party. “The decisive factor is the Party.... If the Center pervades everything, the Party will pervade everything ... and so will the army and so will the people.”

With hindsight, it is easy to criticize the Four Year Plan as slapdash, naive, and uninformed. It can almost be seen as a ritual performance, part of Cambodia’s becoming an authentic Communist state. A reading of the plan gives the impression that it was written so that “socialist” Cambodia could resemble other socialist countries—which prided themselves on their plans—rather than with a serious view of improving the material welfare of the Cambodian people. It was an abrupt, muddled, and perhaps desperate attempt by Pol Pot to “grasp the wheel of history”—a favorite Red Khmer locution—to gain control of Cambodia’s future.

The Crisis of September-October 1976

At the beginning of September 1976 Mao Zedong died, and on September 18, coinciding with the funeral services in Beijing, Pol Pot paid a glowing tribute to him, stating publicly for the first time that Cambodia was run by a “Marxist-Leninist” organization and adding that there was much to be learned from Mao’s theoretical writings. This is the only reference in Pol Pot’s writings where he admits that he read Communist literature.18