If we consider the size of the armed forces, the amount of their power—airplanes, heavy guns, armed riverboats arrayed against us, the enemy was much stronger than we were. Why then did we defeat the enemy [in Chenla II]? This important victory was a victory of the will, transformed into attacks on the enemy.... These storming attacks (vdy samrok) were victories for the combatants, for politics and for economics.

Some of those attending the meeting would have interpreted Sar’s failure to mention the alliance with Vietnam as a harmless attempt to praise the Red Khmer’s own efforts and build their confidence. Others, however, would have taken his assumption of Khmer prowess at face value and would have endorsed “storming attacks” against enemies, problems, and crises confronting the “revolutionary organization” (angkar padevat), as the party styled itself at this time. This was the audience targeted by Sar. Like Shanouk and Lon Nol, Saloth Sar repeatedly claimed or implied that Cambodians were intrinsically superior to outsiders and immune from foreign influence. This enabled him to shrug off foreign models and to claim that his country’s revolution was autonomous and Cambodian as well as Communist and predictable.11

As the menace of Lon Nol’s army faded, Saloth Sar and the Cambodian Communist party turned to political and organizational matters. Sar wrote in January 1972, “We have the will to win. But this is not enough. We need proper policies, proper politics, and proper methods.” Without them, he said, a “revolution was like a blind man moving from place to place.” Enrolling and training party members was another urgent need, and so was raising the consciousness of workers and peasants, who were destined to lead the revolution. Other documents at the time suggested that even though 80 to 90 percent of Cambodia’s people “loved the revolution,” they needed to be taught what was good about it. “Farmers and workers must study,” a cadre noted, “so as to fall into step with the wheel of history [kong pravat‘sass].”

Although cadre were enjoined to behave properly toward the people—who formed “the basis of the revolution”—combatants often behaved abruptly when they moved into villages. Years later, a refugee from Kompong Speu described the process: “In 1972 the Red Khmers took over my village. I don’t know how they got there. I just saw them when they came. I don’t know where they lived. I just saw them walking around; they didn’t tell me where they lived. They would come by and give you a schedule of what to do and how to live.... You could not refuse to do anything.”12