The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), also known as the Angkar, was a Maoist communist political party in Cambodia which existed from 1951 to 1981. It was one of three parties to emerge from the division of the Indochinese Communist Party into three national branches, and it was underground for much of its existence, opposing the Cambodian monarchy. The CPK's Khmer Rouge militant wing seized power in 1975 at the end of the Cambodian Civil War, and the CPK established Democratic Kampuchea, a far-left dictatorship which was responsible for the Cambodian Genocide against non-Khmer people and opponents of the regime. The CPK adopted a Maoist version of communism and was supported by China and the United States against Marxist-Leninist Vietnam, which invaded Cambodia in 1978. In 1979, the Vietnamese overthrew the CPK and allowed for the leftist Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party splintergroup of the CPK to replace the CPK as the governing party. In 1981, the CPK formally dissolved.
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