It is unclear why Saloth Sar, with his undistinguished academic record, was awarded a scholarship in 1949 for further study in France. In an interview, his elder brother denied that the offer owed anything to his palace connections. It seems more likely that after working with Ieng Sary he had come to the favorable notice of such Democrats as Chheam Van, Cambodia’s new prime minister and the former principal of the Lycée Sisowath, and leu Koeuss, who won a landslide victory as a Democratic candidate in Phnom Penh. The Democrats controlled the Ministry of Education, which bestowed scholarships, and many of those sent to France had connections with the party. One of the scholarship students, Mey Mann, gave this explanation to Steve Heder, who interviewed him in 1997. Another explanation for the Democrats’ choosing Saloth Sar is that it was Democratic policy, inherited from Nagara Vatta, to encourage Cambodians to adopt trades like radio-electricity, carpentry, tailoring, and photography, which had been monopolized by the Vietnamese minority. Saloth Sar, a technical student already fluent in French, was an ideal candidate.26

In accepting a scholarship, Saloth Sar again joined an elite—as he had done each time he enrolled at a school. Since 1946, only one hundred Cambodian men and women had been awarded scholarships for tertiary studies in France. Most of them were still there in 1949. The cohort included members of Cambodia’s most prominent families as well as several who later became important politicians.27

Whether or not Saloth Sar and the others owed their scholarships to Democratic patrons, the party organized a dinner in Phnom Penh in August 1949 to honor the students scheduled to sail for France over the next two months. The dinner took place ten days before Saloth Sar and twenty colleagues were to board the S.S. Jamaique in Saigon for the month-long ocean trip. It is tempting to imagine the clamorous Chinese restaurant, cooled by ceiling fans, with Ministry of Education officials toasting these young men and women as the hope of Cambodia, and Saloth Sar’s shy smile in response to this attention and at the thought of what lay ahead. Once again, without much effort on his part, he had joined a vanguard. He probably was not looking forward to further studies, but he undoubtedly was thrilled by the prospect of a change of scene.28

CHAPTER THREE

Becoming a Communist, 1949—1953

The First Year in Paris