22 Individuals radicalized by these events included Hu Nim and Vorn Vet in Cambodia (Kiernan, HPP, p. 118). Thonn Ouk, a prominent Democrat then in Paris, noted the radicalizing effect Sihanouk’s coup had on Cambodian students there (author’s interview, October 1987).

23 A French translation of the essay appears as an annex to Serge Thion and Ben Kiernan, Khmers rouges! (Paris, 1981), pp. 357—361. Keng Vannsak identified ”Original Khmer“ as Saloth Sar in conversations with Ben Kiernan. Khmer daom has overtones of ethnic authenticity and racial purity (author’s interview with Khing Hoc Dy, October 1991), but this does not seem to be its overriding meaning. See Marie-A. Martin, Khmer doeum (Paris, 1997), a book about the Pear or Porr; and R. Baradat,”Le Samre ou Pear: Population primitive de l‘ouest du Cambodge,“ Bulletin de l’Ecole française d‘Extrême Orient 4 (1941). I am grateful to Vannsak for a copy of the original Khmer version. See also Serge Thion, ”The Cambodian Idea of Revolution,“ in Chandler and Kiernan, eds., Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea, pp. 16-17.

24 Forty years later, Pol Pot was quoted in the Bangkok Post (February 22, 1993) as referring to Sihanouk as ”more than 90 percent paranoid due to all sorts of hedonism, corruption, and debauchery.“ The Khmer wording is not available, but I suspect that Pol Pot was not referring to paranoia so much as to a mental unbalance that he traced to Sihanouk’s fondess for excess.

25 The word for ”soldier“ or ”recruit“ (transliterated here as pol) is spelled and pronounced differently in Khmer from ”Pol,“ Saloth Sar’s pseudonym. Intriguingly, Saloth Sar used the name ”Pol“ (or ”Paul“) on at least one occasion in Paris (author’s interview with Keng Vannsak, May 1987). It is conceivable that the nickname dated from his time at Ecole Miche, where students, regardless of their religion, were given saints’ names (like ”Paul“) by their Catholic teachers (Suon Kaset Sokho, personal communication). According to Thel Thong (personal communication), the name”Pol Pot is not unusual. ’Pol‘ is a common rural surname, and ’Pot‘ a widely used given name—like John Jones or Bill Smith.“

26 Steve Heder’s interview with Mey Mann, March 1997.

27 See Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy (New York, 1986), p. 58. A 1973 history of the Cambodian Communist party asserted that in its early days, the party had included ten members of the Communist party of France. Saloth Sar was almost certainly one of them, but none had returned from France when the Cambodian Communist party was founded in 1951. Some of the others were Sien An, Rath Samouen, Sok Knol, Hou Youn, Mey Mann, and Ieng Sary.

28 Nearly all of Sar’s formal training as a Communist, such as it was, occurred after his return to Cambodia in 1953. His mentors there would have been either Vietnamese or Cambodians who had received their training from the Vietnamese.

29 See Bruce Mazlish, The Revolutionary Ascetic (New York, 1976), especially pp. 92ff.