Pol Pot
Establishing the new government: 1975

On 20 April 1975, three days after Phnom Penh fell, Pol Pot secretly arrived in the abandoned city. Along with other Khmer Rouge leaders, he based himself in the railway station, which was easy to defend. In early May, they moved their headquarters to the former Finance Ministry building. The party leadership soon held a meeting at the Silver Pagoda, where they agreed that raising agricultural production should be their government's top priority. Pol Pot declared that "agriculture is key both to nation-building and to national defence"; he believed that unless Cambodia could develop swiftly then it would be vulnerable to Vietnamese domination, as it had been in the past. Their goal was to reach 70 to 80% farm mechanisation in five to ten years, and a modern industrial base in fifteen to twenty years. As part of this project, Pol Pot saw it as imperative that they develop means of ensuring that the farming population worked harder than before.

The Khmer Rouge wanted to establish Cambodia as a self-sufficient state. They did not reject foreign assistance altogether, although they regarded it as pernicious. While China supplied them with substantial food aid, this was not publicly acknowledged. Shortly after the taking of Phnom Penh, Ieng Sary travelled to Beijing, negotiating the provision of 13,300 tons of Chinese weaponry to Cambodia. At the National Congress meeting in April, the Khmer Rouge declared that it would not permit any foreign military bases on Cambodian soil, a threat to Vietnam, which still had 20,000 troops in Cambodia. To quell tensions arising from recent territorial clashes with Vietnamese soldiers over the disputed Wai Island, Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, and Ieng Sary travelled secretly to Hanoi in May, where they proposed a Friendship Treaty between the two countries. In the short term, this successfully eased tensions. After Hanoi, Pol Pot proceeded to Beijing, again in secret. There he met with Mao and then Deng. Although communication with Mao was hindered by the reliance on translators, Mao warned the younger Cambodian against uncritically imitating the path to socialism pursued by China or any other country, and advised him to avoid repeating the drastic measures that the Khmer Rouge had imposed before. In China, Pol Pot also received medical treatment for his malaria and gastric ailments. Pol Pot then travelled to North Korea, meeting with Kim Il Sung. In mid-July he returned to Cambodia, and spent August touring the South-Western and Eastern Zones.

You have a lot of experience. It's better than ours. We don't have the right to criticise you... Basically you are right. Have you made mistakes or not? I don't know. Certainly you have. So rectify yourselves; do rectification !... The road is tortuous.

— Mao's advice to Pol Pot, 1975

In May, Pol Pot adopted the Silver Pagoda as his main residence. He then relocated to the city's tallest structure, the 1960s-built Bank Buildings, which became known as "K1". Several other senior government figures—Nuon Chea, Sary, and Vorn Vet—also lived there. Pol Pot's wife, whose schizophrenia had worsened, was sent to live in a house in Boeung Keng Kâng. Later in 1975, Pol Pot also took Ponnary's old family home in the rue Docteur Hahn as a residence, and subsequently also took a villa in the south of the city for his own. To give his government a greater appearance of legitimacy, Pol Pot organised a parliamentary election, although there was only one candidate in every constituency except in Phnom Penh. The parliament then met for only three hours.

Although Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge remained the de facto government, initially the formal government was the GRUNK coalition, although its nominal head, Penn Nouth, remained in Beijing. Throughout 1975, the Communist Party's control over Cambodia was kept secret. At a special National Congress meeting from 25 to 27 April, the Khmer Rouge agreed to make Sihanouk the nominal head of state, a status he retained throughout 1975. Sihanouk had been dividing his time between Beijing and Pyongyang but in September was allowed to return to Cambodia. Pol Pot was aware that if left abroad, Sihanouk could become a rallying point for opposition and thus was better brought into the Khmer government itself; he also hoped to take advantage of Sihanouk's stature in the Non-Aligned Movement. Once home, Sihanouk settled into his palace and was well treated. Sihanouk was allowed to travel abroad, in October addressing the UN General Assembly to promote the new Cambodian government and in November embarking on an international tour.

The Khmer Rouge's military forces remained divided into differing zones and at a July military parade Pol Pot announced the formal integration of all troops into a national Revolutionary Army, to be headed by Son Sen. Although a new Cambodian currency had been printed in China during the civil war, the Khmer Rouge decided not to introduce it. At the Central Committee Plenum held in Phnom Penh in September, they agreed that currency would lead to corruption and undermine their efforts to establish a socialist society. Thus, there were no wages in Democratic Kampuchea. The population were expected to do whatever the Khmer Rouge commanded of them, without pay. If they refused, they faced punishment, sometimes execution. For this reason, Short characterised Pol Pot's Cambodia as a "slave state", with its people effectively forced into slavery by working without pay. At the September Plenum, Pol Pot announced that all farmers were expected to meet a quota of three tons of paddy, or unmilled rice, per hectare, an increase on what was previously the average yield. There he also announced that manufacturing should focus on the production of basic agricultural machinery and light industrial goods such as bicycles.
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