Cambodia, 1975-1982

by Michael Vickery

Cambodia 1975-1982 presents a unique and carefully researched analysis of the Democratic Kampuchea regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (1975-79) and the early years of the People's Republic of Kampuchea (1979-89). When it was first published in 1984, the book provided one of the few balanced and reasoned voices in a world shocked by media reports of incredible brutality. Now, 15 years later, the book remains unsurpassed as an original historical document bringing a new interpretation based on the earliest primary sources - interviews with the Khmer people themselves.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Asia, Politics

384 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1983

About the author

Michael Theodore Vickery (April 1, 1931 – June 29, 2017) was an American historian, lecturer, and author known for his works about the history of Southeast Asia.

Vickery's research and writings have concentrated on ancient and modern history of Cambodia and Thailand with publications ranging from early history to contextual studies and interpretations of recent and contemporary Cambodia - being one of only a handful scholars, who comprehensively examined regional events during the 1980s.

Vickery essentially contributed to and helped to extend the scholarly debate of the Pre-Angkorian kingdoms, the classic age and the Post-Angkor Period, introducing and integrating the works of the Cambodian scholars Khin Sok and Mak Phoen by utilizing their alternative view-points.

In 1984, he published his "carefully researched"book "Cambodia 1975–1982" that covers the years of the Pol Pot era and its immediate aftermath. The work has since become a standard reference text on the Khmer Rouge Canon and Cambodia's Civil War decades before and after.

Vickery, who as a member of the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars is often labelled a "Marxist" historian by some scholars, is considered to be and regularly cited as a "Cambodia expert" and one of the "leading historians" on Cambodian history.

Reviews

[Andrew Tattersall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting alternativeish view on the Khmer Rouge (KR) and the subsequent People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). Thought provoking on the historical reflections of some of the things that happened and how they fit in with Cambodia and how people historically treated 'enemies', 'traitors' etc. Also, as many other commentators have said, in Chapter 5 where he analyses the nature of the revolution in Cambodia, as a peasant anti-city revolution that became nationalist and anti-Vietnam and compares it with the proletarian nature of other revolutions in Russia, China etc. The meat of the book is a collection of witness statements the aim of which seems to be that the KR were not so bad as the standard view has it but always ends with something like but then there was the torture and the slaughter. Can see how Vickery provided support to one of the KR leaders in their case at the tribunal as he suggests that much of what happeend depended upon the people on the ground rather than being driven from the top.

[Iker Zufiaurre · Rating 5 out of 5]

According to the official mythology, prior to the 1975 Democratic Kampuchea ("Khmer Rouge") takeover, Cambodia had been a "gentle land" of peace-loving Buddhists living in harmony. The reality was quite different. Cambodia had a long history of brutal violence practiced by the peasantry against their oppressors. Widespread popular rejection of the Buddhist religion also well preceded the assent to power of degenerate atheist Communists. The period of French colonialism had been one of harsh exploitation of the peasantry by a corrupt and venal urban elite, housed in Phnom Penh, which had devoted most of the country's resources to the consumption of foreign luxury goods rather than development. This pattern very much persisted into the post-independence period. The massive American bombing campaign waged in support of the Lon Lol coup government during the first half of the 1970s, acknowledged on all sides to have taken well over half a million lives, was cheered on by these same urban elites. It is furthermore worth noting that the horrors of forced population displacement also was no DK innovation. Phnom Penh's population had sharply increased through a mass exodus of many hundreds of thousands of peasant refugees generated by the American bombing campaign in the years preceding the "death march" out of Phnom Penh which Westerners so agonize over. As Vickery observes, "It is a strange kind of history which regards [the] displacement [of peasants from their land into Phnom Penh] as somehow less abhorrent or more 'normal' than the reverse movement of 1975." (17)

In order to propagate what Vickery calls the Standard Total View (STV) of ultimate Communist horror during the DK regime, the Western media establishment relied primarily on refugee reports which the content of which was selectively filtered and relayed with sensationalism to a mass audience. The refugees consisted overwhelmingly of the more privileged, urban sectors of the population whose interests had been harmed by the policies of the DK government and thus cannot be said to be adequately representative of the entire population. Vickery notes that "the atmosphere of the refugee camps was the perfect hothouse for proliferation of all sorts of rumors, distorted reports, and false stories which are dangerous ammunition in the hands of inexperienced or uncritical reporters." (67) He himself, upon visiting the Cambodian refugee camps in Thailand after the overthrow of the DK and conducting extensive interviews with the people dwelling therein, discovered that the actual testimony, upon more careful examination, displayed important nuances which in several crucial respects went against the STV. The main "scholarly" sources for the STV in the early years were the work of Barron and Paul, as well as Francois Ponchaud. The highly problematic nature of these authors' accounts of the Cambodian situation is reviewed. Interestingly, cracks in the STV facade started to appear even inside the establishment after the overthrow of the DK by the Vietnamese invaders, as the needs of propaganda had shifted towards demonization of the Vietnamese-installed Cambodian government and away from denunciations of the DK, now a Western ally. Suddenly, reports (including those of the CIA) started suggesting that things hadn't been that uniformly horrific under the DK, after all. Vickery's discussion of the sources and methods utilized in establishment accounts shows that one should be highly cautious about the lurid tales about Cambodia peddled in the Western mainstream. This is, of course, not to suggest that all atrocity stories were false by any means.

[ElectricSheep · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal overview of Democratic Kampuchea and the subsequent PRK government and the role of Vietnam by a historian with deep experience with the country and armed with plentiful and diverse testimony describing the social fabric of Cambodia beforehand. The relations between the various elements of Cambodian society, the conditions of Cambodia after the civil war, the ideology of the peasant movement which overthrew the Lon Nol regime, and the social basis and problems faced by the PRK government are analyzed very satisfactorily. He goes as in depth as he could have, considering the lack of documentation, in how policies regarding food allotment, executions, treatment of "new people", and corruption in the Party varied from region to region, Damban to Damban, cooperative to cooperative, and village to village, and how the social structure of the country at the time caused such ideas and material realities.

From being tolerable with adequate food and high tolerance of the "new people" in one village to horrifically brutal when local peasants had little patience for the newcomers in another, from a village with ample food sources such as vegetables and rice feeding everyone, to a location where a swarm of urbanites without survival skills had been forced into undeveloped lands and practically left to die in brutal ways. Testimony of cannibalism and executed corpses strewn throughout the forests can be next to testimony of the most targeted population, ex-soldiers of the Lon Nol government, spending the entire DK years with ample fish and rice for their whole family. However, stability for each of the years is also not a given, with all the Party factionalism exploding into multiple bloody purges which could see massively corrupt mini-tyrants being gotten rid of and the food situation improved, or executions becoming rampant when they hadn't been before. The way Vickery goes through his testimony is quite special, and despite the long list of Cambodian town names and Damban numbers, the story of each of the regions of Cambodia and how the Party based in each region interacted with their population and each other is laid out in a very digestible and engaging way, although it can be quite confusing considering how absurd and confusing the politics of the time was and in the extreme ways it manifested.

A strong, strong recommendation. Not just for understanding Democratic Kampuchea, but also for understanding the consequences of poor Party structure and utopian poor-peasant ideology mixing with catastrophic material conditions, both from the historical Mode of Production which gave rise to the Bureaucrat-capitalist society of Sihanouk times and the devastating war of the fascist Lon Nol. The later PRK government and its conflict with DK is also given a proper analysis, from its political origins to the role of Vietnam and the outside socialist bloc, to the problems it faced from its political organization to its social basis. Vickery's writing is surprisingly clear, engaging, and organized for all 300 pages, and provides more than I could have asked for.

[Devourer Connecticut · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and vital look into the Democratic Kampuchea period and the early stages of reconstruction under the Peoples Republic of Kampuchea backed by Vietnam. This book dispels many myths about Democratic Kampuchea, however in no way does it support the Khmer Rouge, which are emphatically denounced as brutal, irresponsible and anti-marxist in their peasant fetishism, brutality and fanaticism. The perspective on the Peoples Republic of Kampuchea compares the radical proto- fascistic Khmer Rouge to the more-marxist oriented Vietnamese which instituted far more humane policies than the Khmer Rouge.
It is interesting to note how clearly peasant oriented the revolution of 1970-1975 was and how much preferential treatment was given to the base peasants. The vast majority of the horror stories which came from Kampuchea in this time were from "new people" who were treated as objects by the Khmer Rouge. I find it interesting likewise how Vickery points out the similarities that the Khmer Rouge had with the book "Utopia" by Thomas Moore. A must read for a thorough and unbiased understanding of what happened in Cambodia throughout the 1970s.

[Conor Cj · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant and quite exhaustive study of Democratic Kampuchea. I certianly wouldn't recommend this as your first book on the subject as there's little to no introduction to some of the names and places and chapters on the different areas of Cambodia and the divergent policies pursued therein is exhaustive but impenetrable for those unfamiliar with the subject. However after reading Beckers "when the war is over" this made a fantastic accompliment and is brilliant in its analysis, detail and scratching in its critique of other authors on the subject and there sources, methodology.

[hazel]

A very interesting look into to the factors that caused the rise of the DK regime, and critically assessed commonly held assumptions (the standard view) about this period of history. My only issues were that I thought there were be more about life under the regime in general (rather than specifically whether areas were “good or bad” based on food and number of executions people remember, I wish there were more descriptions of life). I was also worried that at times the author seems to display a bias that calls into question the objectivity of the later chapters.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

very nice marxist book on democratic kampuchea and the first couple of years of the prk. particularly worth reading is chapter 5, where he talks about the nature of the cambodian revolution and compares it to other revolutionary movements in countries with similar conditions. his conclusion, which is fairly convincing, is that dk wasn't marxist at all, but had more to do with utopian populist peasant movements.