27 On rural/urban responsibilities, see Kiernan, HPP, pp. 172-173. In his September 1977 speech, Pol Pot asserted that Nuon Chea had been put in charge of urban affairs after 1955, not in 1963. Presumably this legerdemain was effected to place “Pol Pot” retroactively in charge of the peasant sector, which was more honorable twenty-two years later.

28 Kiernan, HPP, pp. 169-248. See also the confessions of Chhim Samauk, Keo Meas, and Saom Chea; and Becker, When the War Was Over, pp. 94-105. A 1973 party history states: “Because there had not been any indoctrination, criticism or self-criticism sessions, and no directives on organization, liberalism was born in each individual [party member] which had a bad effect on the masses.”

29 Nuon Chea, “History,” which adds: “After Sieu Heng’s betrayal, Tou Samouth didn’t do any new work because he was old and also didn’t understand much” (ot sou yu‘l eichung). This uncorroborated assertion is obscure; Samouth at this stage was still in his 40s. On Sieu Heng, see author’s interview with Ty Sophen; and Kiernan, HPP, pp. 186ff. See also Saom Chea’s confession (April 1978). Vorn Vet’s confession, p. 9, declares that “in the Sihanouk era, the masses stopped believing in the revolution.”

30 Realites cambodgiennes (hereafter RC), October 16, 1959; L’Observateur, October 13, 1959.

31 See George McT. Kahin, Intervention (New York, 1986), pp. 110ff.; and Porter, “Vietnamese Communist Policy Toward Kampuchea,” in Chandler and Kiernan, eds., Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea, pp. 57-98.

32 Pol Pot, “Long Live the 17th Anniversary,” p. 23. In his “History,” Nuon Chea claims to have taken draft statutes of the new party to show to Vietnamese Communist officials in Tay Ninh (South Vietnam) before the September meeting. “The Vietnamese were unhappy,” he wrote thirty-seven years later, “because they saw that we had the ability to raise a strategic-tactical line and make [party] statutes by ourselves.”

33 On Son Ngoc Minh’s attendance at the Vietnamese congress, see U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, “Communism and Cambodia” (n.d. [probably 1971]), p. 29. Neither Sihanouk’s police nor U.S. intelligence services were aware of the subsequent Cambodian meeting.

34 Pun Than’s confession quotes Keo Meas in 1960 as saying, “We must become a Workers’ Party, like Vietnam.” On regional responsibilities, see Serge Thion’s interview with Ouk Boun Chhoeum (September 1981). See also Thomas Engelbert and Christopher Goscha, Falling Out of Touch: A Study on Vietnamese Communist Policy Toward an Emerging Cambodian Communist Movement, 1930—1975 (Clayton, Australia, 1994), which indicates that the program advanced at the 1960 meeting suggested that the party “must also be prepared to adopt a non-peaceful form of struggle”—a phrase that falls short of “armed struggle.”