It is tempting to speculate about what impressed Saloth Sar while he was in Yugoslavia. Certainly he had never seen social mobilization or public works on such a large scale, nor had he worked so hard as a member of a team. That summer, Yugoslavia was suffering from a severe drought, and famine, food riots, and a Soviet invasion were genuine possibilities. It was a dramatic time. Yugoslavia confronted these challenges much as the Soviet Union had done in the early 1920s during the era of “war communism”—by mobilizing the people’s revolutionary will. Sar followed this example when he came to power.

Saloth Sar’s response to Yugoslavia was probably similar to that of leu Yang, another Cambodian who went there. Yang wrote a letter of thanks to the Yugoslavian authorities in which he described his experiences in glowing terms, using phrases that foreshadowed some of those in favor under Pol Pot’s regime twenty-five years later. “Everywhere,” Yang wrote, “the People’s Federal Republic of Yugoslavia resembles an enormous work site where factories, roads, railways and hydraulic centers are being built. This effort is also worthy of praise because the strength of all the people, united around their leaders, gives them the chance of gaining successive victories, knowing that it is a question of national survival.”8 When Sar returned to Paris to reenroll, the study of radio-electricity must have seemed irrelevant and tame.

Political Developments in Cambodia, 1950—1951

Saloth Sar and the other Cambodian students in France followed political developments at home as closely as they could. In 1950-1951 these consisted primarily of maneuvers among political parties in Phnom Penh and the gradual estrangement of King Sihanouk from the most successful party, the Democrats. Sihanouk’s hostility and the Democrats’ eclipse narrowed the political options for many Khmer students in Paris. Then, in January 1950, a dramatic event in Phnom Penh shook their faith in orderly procedures and in the Democrats’ long-term chances for political power: The party’s charismatic leader, leu Koeuss, was killed by an assassin. Those who had hired the killer were never identified, but suspicions focused on the French, the king, and the freewheeling prime minister Yem Sambaur, who had taken office after Sihanouk had dissolved the Democrat-controlled National Assembly several months before. Koeuss’s funeral drew an enormous crowd—a warning to Sihanouk that the Democrats were still influential.9