Pol Pot

Pol Pot research papers may be based on biographical information or on the political career of Pol Pot. Paper Masters will help you outline the details of Pol Pot's life and legacy.

Current Biography, 1980 notes that Pol Pot claimed, "I am the son of a peasant." This, however, is contradicted by Martin, who states that his family was bourgeois. His father was, in fact, far from being a "peasant." The Encyclopedia of World Biography states that Pol Pot's father was a prosperous small landowner and that he had a measure of political influence due to his connections at the court of King Monivong. Martin quotes someone who knew him in his youth as being "a reflective man, very sober, very gentle, deliberate."The following are some facts about Pol Pot's early life:

• Pol Pot (originally named Saloth Sar) received his primary education in Buddhist and Catholic school
• He enrolled in a trade school carpentry program in Cambodia
• In 1949 he went to France to study electronics; he was able to do this because the French were determined to produce a technically trained elite in what was then their colony
• It was in France that he first became highly politicized, joining the Stalinist French Communist Party (Cambodian section) and adopting his nom de guerre, Pol Pot, which means "original Cambodian"

Pol Pots time in France allowed him to form friendships with the Ieng Sary and Son Sen, men with whom he was to be associated for forty years. Those who knew him while he was in France have said that he was "self-effacing" and "charming" and apparently gentle in manners.

Research papers on Pol Pot report that in 1975, although the people of Cambodia thought Sihanouk was the leader of the Khmer Rouge, they soon learned otherwise. The group's true leader, Pol Pot, possessed an ideology that rivaled Hitler's in intensity. His plan however was not only to destroy the nations religious foundations, but every aspect of the Cambodian society that did not meet the conditions of his new society. After seizing the capital city, the Khmer Rouge army forced the evacuation of the entire city into the county side, banned all institutions, outlawed the possession of property, burned banks, and outlawed all currency. Those seen as a threat to Pol Pot were executed on the spot, especially those who were educated or belonged to the former regime.

Pol Pot's new government, the Angka (The Organization) was infallible according to Pol Pot. His philosophy consisted of taking the nation to "ground zero". Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge instilled their new philosophies with a religious zeal unequaled by any other in the twentieth century. Before he seized power, approximately 95 percent of the Cambodian people practiced the religion Theraveda Buddhism; after his takeover, all forms of religion were banned. In fact, Pol Pot's new regime resulted in the total destruction of ethnic, racial and religious groups of Cham, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai and Buddhists in Cambodia.

Pol Pot's new ideology was not based on logic or implemented in such a way that it fit into Cambodian democracy. So intent was he on wiping out every trace of the former Cambodian culture that he instructed his forces to kill anyone who either expressed concern or looked like they might. Once the people were all evacuated to the countryside, Pol Pot put into place new rules that would establish his form of government as supreme. All people became farmers, regardless of their former positions in society.