Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This much heralded history by the Australian historian Kiernan has turned out to be a big disappointment. Despite his access to enormous amounts of information, he shows no talent for organizing the material, nor being able to discern what is important from what is trivial. His prose style is extremely dull. And as many reviewers have pointed out (e.g. New York Review of Books, Washington Post) his explanation of the Khmer Rouge (misnamed the Pol Pot regime) as being primarily motivated by racism, doesn't hold water. The overwhelming majority of the Khmer Rouge victims -- some of whom included many of my relatives -- were from the ethnic Khmer majority, not from Cambodia's ethnic minorities. Kiernan, as a former supporter of Pol Pot (until 1978) who is now a supporter of the current Hun Sen regime in Cambodia, seems determined to protect what he considers the "good" idea of communism from the bad reputation of Pol Pot. As an Australian educated Cambodian, who has studied the history of communism, I find Kiernan's perspective quite bizarre, not to say morally repugnant. A far better written and more reliable account of the topic is Elizabeth Becker's When The War Was Over. The most reliable academic history is David Chandler's Tragedy of Cambodian History and the relevant sections of his briefer History of Cambodia.

Without argument, Ben Kiernan is one of the the top Cambodia scholars working on the subject today. He has been in and out of Cambodia since the 1970's, including a trip shorty after the fall of the DPK in 1980. In 1995, Khmer Rouge forces even accused Kiernan of being a "war criminal," beaming the macbre message from guerrilla radio stations along the Thai border.

The Pol Pot Regime, a follow up to Kiernan's How Pol Pot Came to Power, begins with the DPK takeover following the fall of the Lon Nol government. He then provides a nearly 500 page systematic study of the Pol Pot regime.

Kiernan breaks the study down into three parts. The first segment discusses the very early days of the DPK and their paranoid attempt to cling to their hard-won power by emptying the cities, creating agrarian communes and exterminating the human remenants of the Lon Nol era, 1970-75.

Kiernan labels this section, "Wiping the Slate Clean." Indeed, that is exactly what the Khmer Rouge intended to do, wipe the 'slate,' Cambodia, clean- in order to usher in a new era, even going so far as to declare 1975 Year Zero.

Following "Wiping the Slate Clean," Kiernan begins to discuss the evolution and implementation of Khmer Rouge policies. It seems as though the ultimate goal of these radical Marxists was to create an agrarian utopia regardles of cost, even at the risk of turning the nation into one giant charnel house. Following the forced exodus of all major towns and cities, Cambodians were forced into the countryside to grow rice which the DPK felt would lead to the re-emegence of the great Khmer power of the past. The result was starvation and disease on a scale never before seen.

Although production was quite high, the Khmer people were placed on starvation rations. Nearly all surplus rice was exported in exchange for goods and military hardware to support the emerging bloody conflict with neighboring Vietnam. This leads us to Kiernan's third section illustrating the subsequent demise of the DPK.

As the war with Vietnam began to escalate, so did paranoia within the Party Cental. "Enemies" were ferreted out and executed, including numerous high ranking cadre and military commanders. In 1977, the purges were spiraling out of control. It wasn't long until a small contingent of DPK leaders grew fearful and disillusioned with the Central Party. A number of now famous commanders, most notably the current Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, fled to Vietnam and garnered support for the liberation of Kampuchea. Kiernan does an excellent and indepth job of studying the stucture of the DPK purges and why they lead to the ultimate collapse of the Pol Pot regime.

The Eastern Zone of Cambodia, from where the liberation leadership emerged, was was the most heavily purged, not only due to it's close proximity to Vietnam, but also because the Eastern Zone cadre, from the earliest days of the revolution, tended to be less brutal in their treatment of Cambodians, essentially making them weak in the eyes of the Party leadership.

Aside from exterminating native Khmer's, the Pol Pot regime launched pogroms against any ethnic minorities, claiming those who were not pure Khmer were in possession of Vietnames minds.
It would seem that the DPK was seeking not only an agrarian utopia, but one that also preserved racial purtiy.

In conclusion, Kiernan's work is an invaluable source for one working to understand the intricacies of Cambodia during the 1970's. The Pol Pot Regime was the main source I used prior to visiting Cambodia and although it only covers a brief segment of Cambodian history, it still was extremely helpful in understanding the people and their terribly sad past.

This much heralded history by the Australian historian Kiernan has turned out to be a big disappointment. Despite his access to enormous amounts of information, he shows no talent for organizing the material, nor being able to discern what is important from what is trivial. His prose style is extremely dull. And as many reviewers have pointed out (e.g. New York Review of Books, Washington Post) his explanation of the Khmer Rouge (misnamed the Pol Pot regime) as being primarily motivated by racism, doesn't hold water. The overwhelming majority of the Khmer Rouge victims -- some of whom included many of my relatives -- were from the ethnic Khmer majority, not from Cambodia's ethnic minorities. Kiernan, as a former supporter of Pol Pot (until 1978) who is now a supporter of the current Hun Sen regime in Cambodia, seems determined to protect what he considers the "good" idea of communism from the bad reputation of Pol Pot. As an Australian educated Cambodian, who has studied the history of communism, I find Kiernan's perspective quite bizarre, not to say morally repugnant. A far better written and more reliable account of the topic is Elizabeth Becker's When The War Was Over. The most reliable academic history is David Chandler's Tragedy of Cambodian History and the relevant sections of his briefer History of Cambodia.

The three stars are awarded for the detailed content of the book- it's only good point. The style is very academic, lacking life and fails to captivate. Despite the book being named after him, Pol Pot is hardly mentioned in it's 465 pages. Furthermore the book isn't self contained- if you want to know how Pol Pot came to power, you'll have to read another of Kiernans books. Here he paints an incomplete picture, merely informing us of US governments prominent role (surprise, surprise..), whereby Nixon had 150,000 civilians killed in illegal bombings, which were capitalised on by the Khmer Rouge to get mass support. The book also basically ignores what happened after Pol Pots fall, thus leaving it seemingly incomplete. Also, you'll need to know about the Vietnam war and Mao's China, as Kiernan doesn't bother to briefly explain either, despite them being pivotal in this context.

What the book does excel at is it's main focus- the role of racism in Pol Pots exceedingly bizarre, deranged and horrific strain of communism, which consisted of an intense xenophobia, especially focused against other communist countries. Still, this doesn't make up for the stale writing style. Overall, this book is not for the casual reader, and is more suited to those who know a fair amount about Cambodia in this era.

Ben Kiernan's reports of eye-witnesses of the genocide by the inhuman Pol Pot regime is terribly shocking, to say the least. You need a strong stomach to read this relentless slaughtering of men, women, children and BABIES. It is quite frankly emotionally and humanly really depressing.
One gets cold in the back when one sees what pure totalitarian ideology and raving racism are capable of, when implemented by a party (or one man) which wields total power in a single country.

Ben Kiernan is right when he states that 'the two important themes in the history of the Pol Pot regime are the race question and the struggle for central power by the French-educated Pol Pot group'. All means (relentless infighting and killing) justified the end (take total power).
There is however a third theme: ideology. Total power allowed the implementation of pure ideological policies.

Pol Pot's regime was racist, e.g. the liquidation of the Cham people and the ethnic Chinese. This was real ethnic cleansing. But there was more. Ethnic Khmer who came from other countries were considered as enemies and were coldly liquidated.
It was also a totalitarian regime that turned the whole Cambodian country in a monstrous concentration camp. All communication between people was paralyzed: 'know nothing, hear nothing, say nothing'.
Criticizing the infallibility of the Angkar was a crime punishable by the death penalty. But inside Angkar nepotism was rampant.
The similarities with the Stalinist USSR regime are overwhelming.

Ben Kiernan stresses rightly the impact of the destabilizing US bombings of Cambodia (about 150000 civilian deaths). Part of the Khmer peasantry was alienated and turned to the Red Khmer.
More, the US supported the Pol Pot regime and, into the bargain, secretary of State Brzezinski tried to get international support for Pol Pot, because he was an enemy of Vietnam. Mind-boggling.

This book should be read as a reminder of the murderous sufferings inflicted on a largely innocent population by a totalitarian and blind ideology, IMPORTED FROM THE WEST.
This should hopefully never happen again. Although we know that, I agree on a lesser scale, some aspects of Pol Pot's dreadful regime are still raging in some parts of the world.
A depressing, but must read.
I also recommend David Chandler's excellent biography of Pol Pot 'Brother Number One'.

Ben Kiernan, as one of the leading experts of this field, does provide invaluable information on the situation of this time. He gives an organized and relatively detailed view on several key issues such as the indentured agrarian state, the extermination of Cambodians due to ethnicity, their background, etc, and foreign intervention with major players such as the U.S, China, and Vietnam. However, I did hope he would go further in detail to the "Pol Potism" he refers to in several of his articles. The overall sense of identity and the changing sense of nationalism present in the regime is also perhaps, not as adequately touched upon.

In addition, the book is mainly for the academic audience who wish to learn more and perhaps do some research into the topic of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979. In addition, some general knowledge of the South Eastern theatre and the ongoing historical situation of that time is recommended for a more complete perspective. Furthermore, the book is not recommended for readers who wish learn more about Pol Pot as a person.

However, highly educational and still incredibly valuable as a resource, it is highly recommended (along with other key books) to readers who wish to understand the conditions and context of Kampuchea (Cambodia) from 1975 to 1979.

Honestly, I would have preferred no to buy it... But whatever, I bought it.

Alright, this book it's just an extensive collection of testimonies (and sometimes testimonies of testimonies) that may be important (and should be because it involves so much suffering) but are not what I expected of this book. There's too much stuff like "he heard from... that in the village of" or "she was told by... that this happened in". Sorry, but I was expecting more personal opinion and research explained by the author.

These testimonies could have well been used as references, but not as the main bulk of the book.

Besides, it looks that the author constantly wants to explain - based in these testimonies - that Democratic Kampuchea wasn't a communist state but a nazi one (?) because they persecuted Chams, Chinese and Vietnamese.

OK, some people may buy this - but not me.

Chams were persecuted not for their ethnicity but for their religious resilience (they were first of all, Muslims) that transformed them in highly counterrevolutionaries. Chinese were persecuted no for their ethnicity but for their social class (they were first of all, city dwellers and shop-owners) that transformed them - again - in counterrevolutionaries. Vietnamese were persecuted not mainly for their ethnicity but because they were considered citizens of a "deviacionist" and hostile country: Vietnam.

Obviously it is genocide to kill someone because their religion or ethnicity; and it should be classify as genocide to kill someone because their social class or political affiliation, but this two categories are not included because the former USSR, China and the Varsovia Pact pressured (with reason) the UN to not to put them in the official declaration.

And that's why has been so hard to make a genocide case against the Khmer Rouge, because their main victims were Khmer.

Kiernan's racist argument goes down in flames when the other Kampuchea's ethnicities as the Khmer Loeu (mountain tribes) were not persecuted but even went up their way as favorite bodyguards of Pol Pot himself.

Besides, something that bothers me is the constant tendency of Kiernan of creating an imaginary "communist resistance" of eastern cadres against the "nazi" southwestern cadres of the Khmer Rouge, led by "true" revolutionaries as Heng Samrin and Hun Sen, like some kind of Tom Cruises fighting against Hitler (?).

And his references for the epic battles of the anti-Pol Pot resistance are... Yeah, you guessed it: Heng Samrin and Hun Sen.

May be some will fall for it, but again not me.

Everybody knows that Heng Samrin and Hun Sen were as ruthless and cruel as Pol Pot or Son Sen, and they just changed sides when they saw the writing in the wall (a certain lost war with Vietnam), but they're still the same totalitarian thugs - installed by Hanoi - that win pseudo-democratic elections by lobbing grenades at opposition rallies and using fraud so blatantly that even old Sihanouk would be proud of it.

Make no mistake here, Kiernan tries hard to convince readers that Khmer communism wasn't communism but nazism, and the actual warlords in charge of modern Kampuchea (all of them former KR cadres) were revolutionary saints with no blood in their hands.

Sorry, I don't buy it... Kiernan is just a bad loser, that's all.

I recommend "Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare" by Philip Short or "Brother Number One: A Political Biography Of Pol Pot" by David P Chandler instead.

PS: Damn! Did I write all of this? Fairly long review.

I wish this book were written better. I'm awarding 4 stars on the basis of the importance of the topic and the enormous amount of valuable data collected by the author. This is a very detailed attempt to reconstruct the experience of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge period. This is difficult because of the paranoid secrecy of the regime and lack of much formal documentation. A great deal of the primary data for reconstructing the history of Cambodia during this period comes from interviews with survivors, a large number of them collected by the author. Kiernan's efforts to collect data and to assemble it into a reasonable narrative are admirable. A defect of this book, however, is that Kiernan seems to be writing primarily for his fellow Cambodia specialists, not for a general audience. You really need to already know at least the basic narrative history to get the most out of this book. Kiernan proceeds through the tragic history of the Khmer Rouge period with a detailed effort to reconstruct events at the center of power and in all the provinces. This is admirable and the level of detail is convincing but to be really effective in terms of increasing reader understanding, it is necessary to regularly take a step back, provide a narrative summary, and also to give readers some understanding of the relevant regional and international context for these events. Kiernan also scants analysis in favor of his fine grained narrative. Important points like the importance of Cambodian nationalism and the putative role of racism emerge almost implicitly. Kiernan would have done better to discuss these issues and the evidence for and against his interpretations explicitly. In some ways, this book is an effort to write political history as social history. This history from below aspect makes this book an excellent source for other scholars in this and related fields. This is admirable and Kiernan's scholarly dedication deserves respect, but this book could have been much more than what it is.

This book are outstanding as one that explained the Cambodian war and its atrocities. It explained the rise of the Pol Pot's party and much of the atrocities in detail.One must be able to stomach its atrocities which is quite mind-boggling as inhuman treatment are occured around the country.For a number of times,i'd got to stop reading halfway because of its Holocaust-like atrocities.Its ideology of Marxism madness are spread thru' out its regime.

As one who has lived through the Khmer Rouge years, I find this work indispensable in trying to make sense of the actual working of the Khmer Rouge during those years. Although a bit dense for the average reader, I believe it is worth the extra time to sift through the voluminous materials presented in the book.