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

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.


Spare them, no profit; remove them, no loss   September 5, 2003
Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium)
17 out of 21 found this review helpful

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'.


An Excellent Study of the Khmer Rouge Years   September 2, 2004
Matthew P. Arsenault (SW Michigan)
17 out of 19 found this review helpful

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.




Poorly written, untenable explanation of Khmer Rouge.   July 16, 1999
14 out of 16 found this review helpful

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.