The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79

An immense amount of detail and an immersive read.

a good read a must for those interested in asian politics some squeemish paragraphs mind so be warned he wasnt a nice man

This book is clearly a labour of love so far as the author is concerned. The research, the time, the emotion invested in this project is evident on every page. The quantity of interviews conducted by the author, and the assiduousness of his search for truth is most admirable. Mr. Kiernan details every discoverable event (many discovered by himself) that happened in Cambodia during this period and tells us about the actions and fate of all the major (and many of the minor) players in the tragedy. The weakness of the book is in precisely this exhaustiveness: the author insists on including every account, beyond what is necessary to portray a given phenomenon, and adds intimidatingly abundant footnotes. This makes it difficult for the non-expert reader to "see the wood for the trees". As such this book might perhaps alienate the reader looking for an overview, but would certainly enchant the reader looking for depth and detail.

Very interesting read. Thank you

Texto referencial fundamental e indispensável para todos aqueles que têm como objetivo marcar uma posição de resistência contra este grande flagelo da humanidade que foi (e continua sendo) o comunismo.

This is my first review of a book on Amazon, so I don't exactly know how to post reviews. So I'm going to publish it like an academic review.Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 is without a doubt one of the darkest chapters of human history. But what was their method of madness? Democratic Kampuchea (the state that the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia) is often lumped in with the socialists and communists, since the Khmer Rouge legally functioned as the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). The truth being, the CPK’s genocidal method of madness had nothing to do with communism. In Ben Kiernan’s remarkably well-researched tome, the CPK was heavily influenced by an extreme xenophobia for anything non-Khmer, a totalitarian mindset of complete control of society; all justified by an unscientific and delusional outlook of peasant society with socialist and communist language. The book’s format is chronological, starting with the Khmer Rouge’s victory over the Lon Nol government on April 17, 1975 and the emptying of Phnom Penh the next day, to the end of Democratic Kampuchea with the Vietnamese invasion and Khmer people’s revolt against the CPK in January 1975. The level of research that Kiernan does in his book clearly shows in the very beginning of the book (not counting the preface and introduction, which is called chapter one), showing how there were multiple factions within the Khmer Rouge who had very conflicting views. In the emptying of Phnom Penh, the “Eastern Zone” faction of the CPK led by So Phim (whose faction, incidentally, contained all of what can be considered “true” communists) were far more friendly with the city evacuees and were under the impression that the emptying was only temporary. The other zones, especially the “Southwest Zone” led by Ta Mok were very clear in their intention to permanently empty not just Phnom Penh, but all of the cities in Cambodia. Throughout Democratic Kampuchea’s entire existence, there was a desire to completely change every aspect of Cambodian society: anything that reeked of urbanism and foreign substance was heavily persecuted (both foreign substance and urbanism were lumped together by CPK logic), the peasant society was glorified by the CPK but was also heavily regulated (made worse by the banning of money, religion, and the establishment of “collective kitchens”). Minorities in Cambodia, especially the Cham Muslims and Vietnamese, were subject to a genocidal campaign to wipe out their culture and be integrated into the Democratic Kampuchean society, although the tiny minorities of Khmer Loeu and Kuoy were spared from CPK atrocities (if not promoted within its government). Class conflict had little emphasis for the CPK, as Kiernan constantly stressed throughout his study. For Democratic Kampuchea, it was the delusional desire to restore Cambodia to its past glory, something that sounds disturbingly similar to the fascist regimes of Germany and Italy. Thankfully, the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror ended in 1978 (one of the worst years of the regime in terms of human costs) with the combined resistance of Khmer communists (all hailing from the “Eastern Zone”) and the Vietnamese.Kiernan relies heavily on interviews of Cambodians (including surviving minorities) who had lived through Democratic Kampuchea. The risk of these interviews being unreliable is mute when considering that all of these accounts match the general situation of the time. All of these interviews are genuine in their account, with little sense of unreliability detected. Kiernan also relies on secondary sources to fill in the gaps of his own knowledge, while at the same time dedicating some pages towards debunking some arguments as to what motivated the Khmer Rouge to conduct such atrocities in Cambodia. Kiernan debunks Vickery’s argument that Democratic Kampuchea was a rare case of a peasant revolution that succeeded (although majority of peasants in Cambodia initially supported the Khmer Rouge prior to the takeover of Phnom Penh), as the CPK completely alienated all strata of Cambodian society by the time they were overthrown on January 7, 1979. Kiernan also debunks David Chandler’s argument that Democratic Kampuchea was the purest communist revolution in existence by showing that little effort was made towards industrializing Cambodian society, spitting in the face of economic data, and completely not recognizing its minorities (with notable exceptions as previously mentioned, although those smaller minorities were either too little to be relevant towards the larger society or were also mythologized by the Khmer Rouge). An interesting fact to point out is that until the Khmer Rouge were overthrown, the author himself did not believe that there was a genocide occurring in Cambodia. It may be safe to presume that the author saw the error of his ways and thoroughly studied Democratic Kampuchea to demonstrate that he has changed.As for the flaws of the book, there are several minor ones. Some accusations towards the Khmer Rouge are not cited, such as the interrogations of certain interviewees at the Tuol Sleng detention center, although it can be handwaved as being from an earlier citation that the edition of this book failed to cite (I have the third edition with me). The most serious flaw of the study does not have any to do with Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, or Democratic Kampuchea. It had something to do with North Korea, and Kiernan’s accusation that the socialist country also pursued a “no minority policy” in his second preface. The sources he cites only say that North Korea is ethnically homogenous. Of course, this assertion that North Korea is racist can be easily debunked by the country’s constant support for Iran, Palestine, China, Latin American revolutionaries, etc. And there are minorities in North Korea, and there is no credible evidence of persecution occurring within the country (there was even a 2006 documentary of a white American living in North Korea, never one instance within the documentary did the American in question encounter any persecution). This minor accusation was within the larger context of demonstrating that Democratic Kampuchea was the only “communist” country to enforce an incredibly racist policy among its own subjects and no other communist country ever pursued such a policy.Another minor flaw of the book is that it functions well as a giant sourcebook for those studying Cambodian history and radicalism. While it is not necessarily a bad flaw, it just means that reading The Pol Pot Regime takes great effort to complete, it is filled with vast statistics and information that can overwhelm the reader, and it is useful to have known something about Cambodia prior to Khmer Rouge takeover. For me, I have read the much shorter study "Kampuchea: The Revolution Rescued" by Irwin Silber (a study that Kiernan unfortunately does not cite, even though Silber provides the rare left-wing analysis of the Khmer Rouge) and that helped me read this tome. For those who want to read an authoritative and well-researched study of Democratic Kampuchea, then Kiernan’s study is recommended.

Ben Kiernan has written a thorough, well-researched account of the rise and fall of the Pol Pot Regime. He does an excellent job of proving how racist the Khmer Rouge were and how that racism informed their policies and actions. The depopulating of the cities in 1975 was not only driven by the ideology of: country-dwellers grow rice, city dwellers buy and sell it, thus the latter are parasites. A huge percentage of minorities, such as Vietnamese, Chinese and Chams, lived in the cities, so the policy victimized them more than Khmers, who were the vast majority in the country, especially those areas controlled by the Khmer Rouge as the latter won the 1970-1975 war against the Lon Nol regime.Xenophobic racism informed Pol Pot's incursions into all 3 of his neighbours, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. He and his followers had a special hatred and paranoia of the Vietnamese, partly driven by their desire to get the Mekong delta back for Kampuchea.The Khmer Rouge's racism and irredentism were more reminiscent of Adolf Hitler than of Karl Marx.I do have to agree with other reviewers' criticism of Kiernan's writing style. He isn't a very engaging writer; here's an example of his awkward, redundant prose:"For Cambodia's ethnic Chinese, Democratic Kampuchea was the worst disaster ever to befall any ethnic Chinese community in Southeast Asia." p. 295.I would have appreciated more information on British professor and Khmer Rouge apologist Malcolm Caldwell, who Kiernan seems to have known personally. Kiernan does describe Caldwell's murder in Cambodia in December, 1978, after the latter had a private tete-a-tete with Pol Pot.Overall, though, this is the most thorough look at Democratic Kampuchea I've seen and I do recommend it to anyone interested in that part of the world, or in genocide or the results of xenophobia and racism.

Es mag sein, daß dies die einzige halbwegs vollständige Studie des mörderischen Pol-Pot-Regimes in irgendeiner Sprache ist, aber das heißt noch lange nicht, daß das ein gutes Buch ist – ganz im Gegenteil.In detailversessener, ermüdender Faktenhuberei wird die Geschichte dieser vier Jahre (1975-79) erzählt, aber der Autor kann überhaupt nicht schreiben, findet nie zu einer großen Linie und – was schlimmer ist – nie zu einer Erklärung des schrecklichen Geschehens. Gewiß: er kennt das Land, er hat mit den üblichen soziologisch-empirischen Methoden ein paar hundert Leute interviewt, hat Fakt um Fakt zusammengetragen, aber verstanden hat er nicht viel.Er weiß nicht, warum in einem winzigen Land mit knapp 8 Millionen Einwohnern in nur vier Jahren ein Viertel der Bevölkerung, also 2 Millionen Menschen, ermordet wurde, kann nicht sagen, warum ein sturer, selbstgerechter, kleiner Haufen (keine tausend Hanseln) selbsternannter marxistischer Befreier so viele unterdrücken und in den Tod schicken konnte. Kiernan kann all das immer nur konstatieren. An Land und Gesellschaft geht der Autor mit denselben Methoden heran, mit denen man von mir aus die Stadtflucht aus Detroit oder die Probleme von Inner-City-Blacks in der Bronx untersuchen würde, was aber hier zu nichts führt.In jedem Kapitel werden dem Leser überdies hunderte kambodschanischer Namen um die Ohren gehauen, Namen, mit denen der Leser nichts anfangen und sie mit nichts verknüpfen kann.Auf eine Auseinandersetzung mit den vielen westlichen Unterstützern des Terrorregimes der Roten Khmer verzichtet der Autor gleich ganz - vielleicht weil er selber Dreck am Stecken hat. Auf den wenigen Seiten (442-48), in denen er sich mit dem widerlichen westlichen Revolutionstourismus des Jahres 1978 befaßt, ist er auf jeden Fall äußerst zurückhaltend.Das einzig Gute, was man über dieses Buch sagen kann, ist, daß der Autor ganz am Schluß (S. 456-65) die Gesamtzahl der Opfer (es sind nach seiner Rechnung genau: 1.671.000) des Roten-Khmer-Regimes mathematisch-statistisch herleitet und sowohl überzeugend begründet als auch gegen wesentlich niedrigere Schätzungen stringent verteidigt.Irgendwie fällt es einem schwer zu glauben, daß der Autor Professor an der renommierten Yale-Universität ist; aber gut, das zeigt dann halt, daß auch an teuren Eliteuniversitäten Menschen lehren, die keine guten Bücher schreiben können.Das Buch selbst ist in winziger Schrift auf schlechtem, holzhaltigem Papier gedruckt; auf den ebenso schecht gedruckten Fotos ist kaum etwas zu erkennen.

WELL DONE