15 Others affiliated with the group included Khieu Komar, Thiounn Prasith, Ok Sakun, and Kenthao de Monteiro. As a philologist, Keng Vannsak spent many years attempting to modernize the Khmer language by finding or coining terms appropriate to twentieth-century life. Although Vannsak failed to say so, it seems likely that another text discussed by the group would have been Stalin’s History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, from which Saloth Sar may well have drawn some of his ideas about conspiracies inside the Cambodian Communist movement and the postrevolutionary continuation of class struggle. See Andrew G. Walder, ”Cultural Revolutionary Radicalism: Variations on a Stalinist Theme,“ in William Joseph et al., eds., New Perspectives on the Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), pp. 41-62; and Robert C. Tucker, Stalin: The Years in Power (New York, 1990), pp. 530ff. Sar’s reading of French Communist literature in Paris probably had suggested Stalin, rather than Ho, as a role model. See E. H. Carr, ”A Great Agent of History,“ in T. H. Rigby, ed., Stalin (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966), pp. 133—142. A Cambodian who attended the study sessions but wished to remain anonymous suggested that the Cambodian-Ianguage meetings angered Vietnamese in the CPF who ”wanted to control the Khmer.“

16 Debré, Cambodge, p. 82.

17 Kiernan, HPP, p. 121; Marie-A. Martin, Le mal cambodgien (Paris, 1989), p. 105; and interviews with Keng Vannsak (May 1988) and Thiounn Mumm (February 1990). In 1997, Mey Mann told Steve Heder: ”This was the first time that anyone in Paris had learned anything concrete“ about the Issarak. ”We were all operating in the dark. Our only source of information was through that Vietnamese delegation.“ Those who attended the conference included Hou Youn, Thiounn Prasith, Thiounn Mumm, and five others. The flag was resurrected in 1979 by the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). In 1989 the lower half of the flag became blue (just as the ”NLF“ [National Liberation Front] flag in southern Vietnam was a North Vietnamese flag with its lower half blue). The five-towered yellow motif, perhaps a Khmerization of Vietnam’s five-pointed star, remained the same. Debré, Cambodge, p. 84, reported that students returning from Berlin were even more action oriented than they had been before. According to Thiounn Mumm, ”Saloth Sar did not go because he had been to Yugoslavia“ (interview with Steve Heder, April 1980).

18 For a helpful chronology of events affecting the French Communist party in the early 1950s, see Dessanti, Les Staliniens, pp. 250-267. See also Philippe Robrieux, Histoire du PCF, 4 vols. (Paris, 1985-1990); and Irwin Wall, French Communism in the Era of Stalin (Westport, Conn., 1964), Chapter 5. On p. 119, Wall referred to 1949-1953 in the CPF as ”years of blunder and vacillation.“ ”Springtime“ quotation from author’s interview with Jacques Verges (October 1987). Restaurant information from author’s interview with Pierre Brocheux (May 1987).

19 From author’s interview with Thiounn Mumm.

20 Khmer Peace Committee, Khmer Armed Resistance, p. 7, refers to the assassin as a ”Khmer patriot.“

21 See Chandler, Tragedy, pp. 57—61; and Kiernan, HPP, pp. 98ff.