20 See Frank Smith, Interpretive Accounts of the Khmer Rouge Years: Personal Experiences and the Cambodian Peasant World View (Madison, Wis., 1989). Cambodian refugees often spoke of the Pol Pot era as fulfilling the Buddhist prophecies of disaster (put tumniay) that they had absorbed as children or as monks. Ong Thong Hoeung recalled lectures by Ieng Sary in 1977-1978 in which he admired tribespeople because “they dared to sacrifice their lives to save their chiefs.” Hoeung also said that much of Pol Pot’s favorable reputation among the Khmer came from his “travels through the forests ... like someone in a Cambodian legend” (author’s interview, February 1990). Colm, “Pol Pot,” quotes a former bodyguard: “We carried Pol Pot [in a hammock] because he was a big man, neak thom. He’d lie down in the hammock and not walk. More than 10 or 20 people a day would carry him up and down the mountains. When they carried him, if they brushed him against a branch, they’d beat the porter.” See also Solange Thierry, “Brai et Himavant, les themes de la forêt dans la tradition khmère,” Cambodge (special issue of Asie du Sud-est et monde insulindien) 13, 1—4 (1982): 121—134.

21 For a detailed narrative of the uprising, see Kiernan and Boua, Peasants and Politics, pp. 166-205. Nuon Chea’s “History” suggests that Communists in Phnom Penh, of whom he was the leader, followed the rebellion much more closely than did those in Ratanakiri.

22 See Hu Nim’s confession in David Chandler, Ben Kiernan, and Chanthou Boua, eds. and trans., Pol Pot Plans the Future: Confidential Documents from Democratic Kampuchea, 1976—1977 (New Haven, Conn., 1988), pp. 245ff.; and the confession of An Seng Hen (Chun) (December 1977): “In 1967 our revolutionary movement reached a boiling point throughout the country ... Sihanouk shouted his opposition to the movement on the radio ... government officials everywhere lost their positions.” The fact that these popular intellectuals were unwilling, unable, or forbidden to join their superiors in the northeast had important repercussions. Nuon Chea, in his 1997 history of the CPK, noted that “in 1967 there was a revolt in Samlaut but this movement was not yet ripe (tum) so the party decided to quiet it down first. The people revolted and we contributed (ruom psom) too.” Nuon Chea’s stance is consistent with Communist practice, whereby the party, theoretically infallible, assumes full responsibility only for success.

23 See Kiernan, HPP, pp. 256ff.; the confession of Ruos Mau; author’s interview with In Nath (June 1987); and Debré, Cambodge, pp. 111ff. Phnom Vay Chap was known in Communist circles as a “mountain of heroes” (see Chandler, Kiernan, and Boua, eds. and trans., Pol Pot Plaus the Future, pp. 290-291).