Pol Pot Trivia Questions

Pol Pot aligned with China, not the Soviet Union. The Khmer Rouge viewed the Soviet Union as revisionist and even fought a border war with Soviet-backed Vietnam in 1978-79.

Under Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge abolished currency, banned private property, and forced the population into collective farms in a radical agrarian restructuring.

Pol Pot was born into a farming family in Prek Sbauv, not royalty. His father was a rice farmer and his uncle was a minor palace official, but he had no royal lineage.

Pol Pot died of natural causes (heart failure) in 1998, nearly 20 years after the Vietnamese invasion. He was not killed in combat; he lived in hiding and later under house arrest.

Pol Pot was born Saloth Sar in 1925. He changed his name during his revolutionary career, with 'Pol Pot' becoming his best-known alias.

Pol Pot studied radio electronics in Paris from 1949 to 1953 on a government scholarship and was a member of the French Communist Party during that time.

Pol Pot died on April 15, 1998, in a Khmer Rouge base near the Thai border, after being tried and sentenced to house arrest by his own associates.

Pol Pot never served as a Buddhist monk. He received a secular education, studied in France, and became a communist revolutionary. Some Cambodian leaders were monks, but not Pol Pot.