Pol Pot was a Cambodian communist revolutionary, politician and a dictator who ruled Cambodia as Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea between 1976 and 1979. Ideologically a communist and a Khmer ethnonationalist, he was a leading member of Cambodia's communist movement, the Khmer Rouge, from 1963 to 1997 and served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981. His administration converted Cambodia into a one-party communist state and perpetrated the Cambodian genocide.
Pol Pot
Prek Sbauv, the village where Pol Pot was born and spent his early years
Sâr arrived in Paris on 1 October 1949. Paris pictured in 1950.
In Paris, Pol Pot was inspired by the writings of Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin (pictured together in 1949) on how to conduct a revolution
A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a small clique. The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the republic in times of emergency.
20th-century leaders typically described as dictators, from left to right and top to bottom, include Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany; Augusto Pinochet, President of Chile; Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party; Benito Mussolini, Duce and Prime Minister of Italy; Kim Il Sung, Supreme Leader of North Korea
Julius Caesar outmaneuvered his opponents in Ancient Rome to install himself as dictator for life.
Giuseppe Garibaldi proclaimed himself dictator of Sicily in 1860.
Under Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, Syrian military inflicted industrial-scale atrocities on civilian population during the Syrian civil war. These include hundreds of chemical attacks, such as the Ghouta chemical attack, the largest chemical attack in the 21st century.
