Many scholars consider the Cambodian Revolution of 1975 and the subsequent rule of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979 to be one of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century. During its brief tenure in power, this brutal regime embarked on a policy of ethnic cleansing that killed approximately 1.7 million people in a country with a prerevolutionary population of around 8 million. Led by Pol Pot, the head of the Khmer Rouge, Democratic Kampuchea implemented repressive policies unprecedented in history of communism. The Khmer Rouge dismantled the market economy, outlawed currency, attempted to eradicate religion, abolished leisure activities, depopulated the nation’s cities and towns, brutally repressed anyone who possessed advanced education, and even placed children in charge of labor brigades to better police adults. When the Khmer Rouge began committing genocide against ethnic Vietnamese and non-Khmer minorities within the borders of Democratic Kampuchea, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam invaded the country, overthrew Pol Pot, and installed a moderate Communist government. Many historians agree that the United States’ bombings and invasion of Cambodia in 1970 helped destabilize the nation and partially enabled the Khmer Rouge to come to power, but scholars struggle to explain why Democratic Kampuchea was so barbarous after 1975.
One group of writers argues that the Khmer Rouge constituted the best students of Marxist-Leninism. The French-educated, petit-bourgeois individuals who led this movement fused a Jacobean lust for terror and destruction of the ruling classes with a Marxist idealization of the working class. These historians emphasize that Communist movements in the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, and elsewhere espoused similar goals and made use of the same repressive measures as Pol Pot’s regime. Political violence in Democratic Kampuchea, these scholars assert, took more extreme forms than in other Communist revolutionary states because the war in Vietnam infused the Khmer Rouge’s leadership with a deep suspicion of external and internal enemies. Terror enabled the Khmer Rouge to come to power, rule over Cambodia for four years, and ultimately proved the regime’s undoing when the extreme violence convinced neighboring Vietnam to intervene to stop the bloodshed.
A different group of historians believes that political violence in Democratic Kampuchea was not the result of Marxist-Leninist ideology. These scholars emphasize that Cambodia’s unique culture and historical experience led to a peasant revolution, which the Khmer Rouge’s leadership rode to power instead of an orchestrated movement directed from the top. Centuries of exploitation rendered the Cambodian rural population deeply resentful of educated elites and landowners. The Khmer Rouge’s policies, these writers contend, did not follow Marxist-Leninist precedents because Pol Pot’s regime sought to depopulate the towns, turn intellectuals into peasants, and reject industrialization, policies Communists refused to implement in the Soviet Union or People’s Republic of China. This group of historians also alleges that the level of terror in Democratic Kampuchea varied across provinces and time periods, a factor that suggests the absence of coherent policies directing the violence or a revolutionary vision behind these measures. To these authors, Democratic Kampuchea at first appeared as a failed state inundated with furious revolutionaries and children armed with assault rifles, any of whom might kill or not kill according to personal whims. Violence increased in 1977, some authors maintain, not as the Khmer Rouge came to power, but when Pol Pot’s faction decided to establish total control over the eastern parts of the country, a region he deemed to be too sympathetic to the Vietnamese. The Khmer Rouge’s violence against minority ethnic groups complicates the historical understanding of this political movement, suggesting members of the group intended to create an ethno-centric nation state uncharacteristic of Communist regimes elsewhere.
A third group of historians accuse the Khmer Rouge of genocide against Cambodia’s Vietnamese, Chinese, and Muslim Cham minorities. According to these scholars, violence in Democratic Kampuchea derived from motives more akin to Nazi Germany’s desire to create an ethnically-pure nation state than the Communists’ ambitions to create class-less societies free from bourgeois influences. These writers accept Pol Pot’s rhetoric, which claimed the Khmer Rouge was determined to return Angkor to its past glory by purging non-Khmer populations and influences. Many of Cambodia’s urban residents and inhabitants of its border regions were members of minority groups, and these groups suffered disproportionately from the Khmer Rouge’s violent policies. In sum, scholars will continue to debate the origins and evolution of the revolution in Cambodia and provide new and innovative explanations for why this political movement took such a toll on its population.
Chandler, David P. and Ben Kiernan, eds. Revolution and its Aftermath in Kampuchea: Eight Essays. New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1983.
Chandler, David P. The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War, and Revolution since 1945. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.
Chandler, David P. Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot. 2nd Edition. Boulder: Westview Press, 1999.
Kiernan, Ben. Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79. 3rd Edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
Vickery, Michael. Cambodia, 1975-1982. Boston: South End Press, 1984.