Editing Khmer Rouge (section)

==== Early history ====
The history of the communist movement in Cambodia can be divided into six phases, namely the emergence before [[World War II]] of the [[Indochinese Communist Party]] (ICP), whose members were almost exclusively Vietnamese; the 10-year struggle for independence from the French, when a separate Cambodian communist party, the Kampuchean (or Khmer) [[Cambodian People's Party|People's Revolutionary Party]] (KPRP), was established under Vietnamese auspices; the period following the Second Party Congress of the KPRP in 1960, when Saloth Sar gained control of its apparatus; the revolutionary struggle from the initiation of the Khmer Rouge insurgency in 1967–1968 to the fall of the Lon Nol government in April 1975; the Democratic Kampuchea regime from April 1975 to January 1979; and the period following the Third Party Congress of the KPRP in January 1979, when [[Hanoi]] effectively assumed control over Cambodia's government and communist party.<ref name="Morris">{{cite news|url=http://editorials.cambodia.org/2007/04/vietnam-and-cambodian-communism.html|publisher=Cambodian Information Center, Source: The Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association|first=Stephen J.|last=Morris|title=Vietnam and Cambodian Communism|date=20 April 2007|access-date=30 July 2019|archive-date=8 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190808180119/http://editorials.cambodia.org/2007/04/vietnam-and-cambodian-communism.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

In 1930, [[Ho Chi Minh]] founded the Communist Party of Vietnam by unifying three smaller communist movements that had emerged in northern, central and southern Vietnam during the late 1920s. The party was renamed the Indochinese Communist Party, ostensibly so it could include revolutionaries from Cambodia and Laos. Almost without exception, all of the earliest party members were Vietnamese. By the end of World War II, a handful of Cambodians had joined its ranks, but their influence on the Indochinese communist movement as well as their influence on developments within Cambodia was negligible.<ref name="Tyner">{{cite book|title=The Killing of Cambodia: Geography, Genocide and the Unmaking of Space|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Gfac3N6GOYAC|first=James A.|last=Tyner|publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.|year=2008|isbn=978-0754670964|pages=44, 51, 54–55, 60–62, 68|access-date=2 June 2020|archive-date=13 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231013183134/https://books.google.com/books?id=Gfac3N6GOYAC|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Viet Minh]] units occasionally made forays into Cambodian bases during their war against the French and in conjunction with the leftist government that ruled Thailand until 1947. The Viet Minh encouraged the formation of armed, left-wing [[Khmer Issarak]] bands. On 17 April 1950, the first nationwide congress of the Khmer Issarak groups convened, and the [[United Issarak Front]] was established. Its leader was [[Son Ngoc Minh]], and a third of its leadership consisted of members of the ICP. According to the historian David P. Chandler, the leftist Issarak groups aided by the Viet Minh occupied a sixth of Cambodia's territory by 1952, and on the eve of the [[1954 Geneva Conference|Geneva Conference]] in 1954, they controlled as much as one half of the country.<ref name="Chandler 2007" />{{rp|180–1}} In 1951, the ICP was reorganized into three national units, namely the [[Vietnam Workers' Party]], the [[Lao Issara]], and the Kampuchean or Khmer People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP). According to a document issued after the reorganization, the Vietnam Workers' Party would continue to "supervise" the smaller Laotian and Cambodian movements. Most KPRP leaders and rank-and-file seem to have been either [[Khmer Krom]] or ethnic Vietnamese living in Cambodia.

According to Democratic Kampuchea's perspective of party history, the Viet Minh's failure to negotiate a political role for the KPRP at the 1954 Geneva Conference represented a betrayal of the Cambodian movement, which still controlled large areas of the countryside, and which commanded at least 5,000 armed men. Following the conference, about 1,000 members of the KPRP, including Son Ngoc Minh, made a Long March into [[North Vietnam]], where they remained in exile.<ref name="Tyner" /> In late 1954, those who stayed in Cambodia founded a legal political party, the Pracheachon Party, which participated in the 1955 and the 1958 National Assembly elections. In the September 1955 election, it won about 4% of the vote but did not secure a seat in the legislature.<ref name="Doyle">{{cite book|title=Keeping the Peace: Multidimensional UN Operations in Cambodia and El Salvador|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GNC-XxHxIdYC&q=cambodia+September+1955+election+Pracheachon+Party&pg=PA31|last1=Doyle|first1=Michael W.|last2=Johnston|first2=Ian|last3=Orr|first3=Robert C.|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1997|chapter=Politics in Cambodia|page=31|isbn=9780521588379|access-date=18 October 2020|archive-date=13 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231013183136/https://books.google.com/books?id=GNC-XxHxIdYC&q=cambodia+September+1955+election+Pracheachon+Party&pg=PA31#v=snippet&q=cambodia%20September%201955%20election%20Pracheachon%20Party&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref> Members of the [[Pracheachon]] were subject to harassment and arrests because the party remained outside Sihanouk's political organization, [[Sangkum]]. Government attacks prevented it from participating in the 1962 election and drove it underground. Sihanouk habitually labelled local leftists the Khmer Rouge, a term that later came to signify the party and the state headed by Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan and their associates.<ref name="Morris" />

During the mid-1950s, KPRP factions, the "urban committee" (headed by Tou Samouth) and the "rural committee" (headed by Sieu Heng), emerged. In very general terms, these groups espoused divergent revolutionary lines. The prevalent "urban" line endorsed by North Vietnam recognized that Sihanouk by virtue of his success in winning independence from the French was a genuine national leader whose neutralism and deep distrust of the United States made him a valuable asset in Hanoi's struggle to "liberate" South Vietnam.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/9610196/Norodom-Sihanouk.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220111/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/9610196/Norodom-Sihanouk.html |archive-date=11 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=Norodom Sihanouk Obituary|publisher=Telegraph Media Group Limited|work=The Telegraph|date=15 October 2012|access-date=30 July 2019}}{{cbignore}}</ref> Advocates of this line hoped that the prince could be persuaded to distance himself from the right-wing and to adopt leftist policies. The other line, supported for the most part by rural cadres who were familiar with the harsh realities of the countryside, advocated an immediate struggle to overthrow the "[[Feudalism|feudalist]]" Sihanouk.<ref name="Yimsut">{{cite book|title=Facing the Khmer Rouge: A Cambodian Journey|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jSdYz91-sJYC&q=khmer+rouge+struggle+to+overthrow+feudalist+Sihanouk&pg=PR11|first=Ronnie|last=Yimsut|publisher=Rutgers University Press|year=2011|chapter=Forward|page=forward xi|isbn=9780813552309|access-date=18 October 2020|archive-date=13 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231013183137/https://books.google.com/books?id=jSdYz91-sJYC&q=khmer+rouge+struggle+to+overthrow+feudalist+Sihanouk&pg=PR11#v=snippet&q=khmer%20rouge%20struggle%20to%20overthrow%20feudalist%20Sihanouk&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref>