24 See the confession of Muol Sambath (Nhim Ros) and confession of Kong Sopal (Kuu). See also Tung Padevat (August 1975): 36—37: “In March-April 1967 an armed uprising took place in Battambang, brought on by contradictions on a national scale as well as by local contradictions, but the Party ordered that [fighting] cease so as to draw lessons from these contradictions and from this armed struggle.” See also Tung Padevat (December 1976—January 1977): 44: “The Party Center said: ’Desist for a moment. Wait until the struggle can occur on a national scale.‘” Chou Chet’s confession asserts that the uprising occurred “under the impetus of party leaders in the northwest,” suggesting a fissure between party veterans in Battambang and the leadership in the northeast. On Kuu, see Vorn Vet’s confession, p. 18. Kuu survived the DK period but disappeared after 1979 (Steve Heder, personal communication). In the Livre noir, p. 28, Pol Pot asserted that following the Samlaut uprising, the Vietnamese were “overcome with panic”; he added (p. 47) that the Vietnamese told the Red Khmer to stop the armed resistance “after the outbreak at Samlaut.” The party’s orders calling off the resistance may have reflected Vietnamese fears of alienating Sihanouk as well as their own prudence. See captured Red Khmer notebook in Indochina Archives (Douglas Pike Collection), University of California, Berkeley (hereafter Pike Archives), which asserts of Samlaut that “even though victorious, our people agreed to lay down their arms and return to their farmlands.”

25 See Kiernan and Boua, Peasants and Politics, pp. 180-181; Chandler, Tragedy, Chapter 5; Kiernan, HPP, pp. 277ff.; Vorn Vet’s confession; and author’s interview with Sok Chuon (June 1990).

26 Pol Pot, “Long Live the 17th Anniversary,” p. 38.

27 See Kheang Sim Hon’s confession. On conditions toward the end of 1967, see Bu Phat’s confession. Kiernan, HPP, p. 181, asserts that “by December 1967, word had been passed around that the Samlaut rebellion was about to enter another phase”; this rumor may have reflected decisions taken at the study session. In 1978 the Livre noir noted (p. 34) that if the party “had not carried out armed struggle, it would have been condemned to disappear.” According to Engelbert and Goscha, Falling Out of Touch, Saloth Sar wrote to the Chinese authorities in October 1967, in a letter intercepted by the Vietnamese, that “we are preparing the implementation of a people’s war which has moved toward an unstoppable point.” He also praised “the line of people’s war which Chairman Mao has pointed out in terms of independence, sovereignty and self-reliance”—turns of phrase that must have been distressing to the Vietnamese. Nuon Chea, “History,” claims that the decision to implement armed struggle was taken by Communists in Phnom Penh acting under his leadership.