Laos in 1975: People's Democratic Revolution -- Lao Style

Abstract

THE UNEXPECTEDLY RAPID Communist victories in Cambodia and Vietnam in 1975 conditions that critically altered the precarious political balance in Laos. The right-wing elite were demoralized by the dramatic collapse of their counterparts in Saigon and Phnom Penh, and despondent at the clear evidence that the U.S. would no longer intervene militarily in their behalf. The Lao Communists, on the other hand, were jubilant at the success of their fellow revolutionaries and emboldened to move, during May, toward complete control of the year-old Provisional Government of National Union (PGNU) even while maintaining the coalition facade required by the Vientiane Agreement of February 21, 1973. In December, having sufficiently consolidated their power, the Lao Communists abruptly dissolved the PGNU, abrogated the monarchy, and the Lao People's Democratic Republic. Thus, the year ended with the completion, in Lao Communist terms, of the 30-year national democratic revolution. This decisive outcome was not achieved without the Pathet Lao (PL) deftly orchestrating events, both military and political, to bring about the final collapse of their adversaries. As the PL leadership has explained, the sudden Communist victories in Vietnam and Cambodia created a very favorable opportunity for the revolution in Laos. So struggle movements were expanded and a program for seizing power by step was mounted.' Kaysone Phomvihan, the Party Secretary and new Prime Minister, interpreted events in 1975 as follows: