Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
KAYSONE: THE MAN BEHIND THE BAMBOO CURTAIN
When Lao prime minister and communist leader KaysonePhomvihane died in 1992, party
leaders commissioned 150 bronze statues of him, which have since been erected in pavil-
ions across the country. Whether these busts are a faithful portrayal of Kaysone remains
irrelevant to most Lao, since from 1958 until 1975, the leader of the People's Revolution-
ary Party was rarely seen in public. Only now that the state has begun remaking itself in
his image is the cloud of secrecy surrounding him dissipating, but the lack of biographical
details about his life makes it difficult to discern the private Kaysone from the state-cultiv-
ated one.
What is known is that Kaysone was born in Savannakhet in 1920, the only son of a Vi-
etnamese civil servant father and a Lao mother. As a teenager he left for Hanoi, where he
studied at a law school under the name of Nguyen Tri Quoc before dropping out to de-
vote himself to the life of a revolutionary. By 1945, he had attracted the attention of North
Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, who instructed him to return home and infiltrate a Lao
nationalist movement supported by the American Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner
of the CIA.
Later that year, Kaysone and his followers deferred to the leadership of PrinceSouphan-
ouvong , whom he followed to Bangkok after the French returned to power in 1946. Soon
after, Kaysone joined the newly formed Committee for Resistance in the East, coordin-
ating anti-French guerrilla raids along the Lao-Vietnamese border and responsible for li-
aisons with the Viet Minh, a tie that was to earn him the trust of the North Vietnamese,
who eventually recruited him into the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP). After training
at the Viet Minh's military academy, Kaysone became commander of the Latsavong bri-
gade, the guerrilla unit in southeastern Laos that marked the beginnings of the Lao People's
Liberation Army. By 1950, Kaysone had been named defence minister in the Pathet Lao
resistance government, where he spent four years recruiting and training members for the
Pathet Lao's fighting force, of which he formally became commander in 1954. When the
Lao People's Revolutionary Party formed in 1955, Kaysone became secretary general - a
post he would hold for the next 37 years. His control of the revolutionary movement was
further solidified in 1959 when Souphanouvong and other Pathet Lao leaders were jailed
in Vientiane. Though Kaysone relinquished his post as commander of the army in 1962, he
continued to direct military strategy until the end of the Thirty Year Struggle in 1975.
It was only fitting that Kaysone - a man who disdained the perquisites of military rank,
indeed who was never even referred to by rank - should emerge as the first prime minister
of the Lao People's Democratic Republic in December 1975. For the next seventeen years,
Kaysone firmly held the reins of power in Laos and, among diplomats, earned a reputation
as a clever man, eager to learn and willing to acknowledge his mistakes. He earned praise
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