Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge

Pol Pot (born Saloth Sar, 1925-1998) had been educated in Paris in the 1950s, where he encountered radical communist ideas. He led the Khmer Rouge through years of guerrilla warfare. The Khmer Rouge ideology combined extreme Marxism-Leninism with Cambodian nationalism, radical agrarianism (the belief that peasant society was superior to urban society), and xenophobia. Pol Pot was influenced by Maoism, particularly the Great Leap Forward, though his policies were even more extreme.