Talking to Monks and Students

After Samouth’s disappearance, Saloth Sar became acting secretary of the party’s Central Committee, while Nuon Chea remained the deputy. In addition to teaching at Chamraon Vichea, Sar conducted occasional semiclandestine seminars on civic virtue, justice, and corruption that were attended by monks, students, military men, and bureaucrats. Sok Chuon, a Buddhist monk for ten years, attended one of these seminars in late 1962. Because Saloth Sar went into the maquis a few months later, Chuon’s memories are the last I have been able to obtain about Saloth Sar while he was living a double existence—known as a progressive schoolteacher to some and an executive of the Communist movement to others. The seminar was secret; those who came had been told about it individually. The building was guarded by policemen and “agents” sympathetic to Saloth Sar. The audience consisted of thirty monks, drawn from three wats in Phnom Penh, and perhaps twenty others, whom Chuon remembered as “teachers and students.”

The highlight of this meeting was Saloth Sar’s talk, which, nearly thirty years later, Chuon remembered vividly. Accustomed to Buddhist sermons, Chuon judged Saloth Sar’s speech as “harmonious and persuasive; he used examples skillfully. He made himself easy to like.” In his talk, Sar asked his audience to “consider Khmer society.” He mentioned that the government charged Cambodians fees when they were born, when they were married, and when they died. “No one can do anything,” he said, “unless the government gets its fee.” Even monks demanded money for their books of sermons (“Did the Buddha sell anything?” he asked rhetorically). Sar suggested that the government itself was rotten (puk roluy) and leading the people into deeper poverty. He spoke of a “new society” where fees would not be paid because everyone would be working (he was foreshadowing his years in power when no one was paid because money had been removed from circulation). To illustrate what was wrong with Cambodia, Sar drew his audience’s attention to royal dancers (srei suon) and female hangers-on (yey akar) at the palace, accusing them of “living off the people.” He failed to mention the debt he owed to three of these people for his tranquil, affectionate upbringing. His insensitive choice of targets suggests that by 1962 either Saloth Sar had rejected his family obligations or he was allowing childhood resentment at being taken from his parents to break to the surface. To those who knew nothing of his background, like those attending his talk, he was a heroic, depersonalized spokesman for a larger cause. His reputation, “whispered” among the people, had preceded him to the meeting. Chuon remembered that “he didn’t tell us his name, but we all knew already who he was.”39

These seminars were extensions of Saloth Sar’s talks at Chamraon Vichea and were reminiscent of the discussion groups in Paris and his united front work in 1954-1955. At the 1962 meeting Sok Chuon attended, no one was asked to join the Workers’ party, and no party officials were mentioned. Instead, Sar tried to raise people’s consciousness, develop their perceptions, and present himself as a model of smoothness, eloquence, and commitment. He was making similar speeches to his followers in the 1980s and 1990s, after the collapse of his regime.