Interesting, but overwhelming
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Admittedly, having not lived at the period when the Khmer Rouges were in power, I knew nothing of the regime. All I had was a kind of hazy image of some blood thirsty dictator in Cambodia who was rather nasty.
So it was that I came across this book quite by accident, and thought, why not? I've always had a thing for history.
Initially, and I'll be honest, I found the book a daunting prospect. It was not so much the length as the cramped writing packed into each page, the myriad personalities, not helped by the fact that they change their names every five minutes, the number of organisations and the political situation at the time. And that is my main fault with the book. You are treated to a wealth of information. It comes so fast, and so detailed, that often you are only left with a vague impression, as you have to kind of filter the relevant information. But then, surely that is a fault of mine. As a serious historian it is the duty of Short to provide all the information, and this he does.
I also found that Short kind of brushed over certain subjects. For instance, when exactly did Sar become the Central commitee secretary? When did he make the step from a mediocre student in the Cercle Marxiste to his extreme vision of Communism? Why did Vorn vet end up in S 21?. Some quite major incidents are mentioned almost carelessly, while Short goes into depth about such irrelevant things as Sihanouks tour of the Khmer Rouge sites.
What I do like is the portrait it paints of the CPK, not so much as a totalitarian regime, but as an ideaoligist state, driven by international subterfuge both in the form of a U.S, bombing Cambodia to a pulp to cover it's own withdrawl from Vietnam, and China, eager to stop Vietnamese expansion.
I was impressed with how it portrayed the culture of lies and secrecy that would prove the regimes undoing, while also concentrating on the lives of ordinary Khmers, forced out of Phnom Penh to join collectives. It left me with a good notion of where Pot failed, why 1.5 million people died, at all levels, from top officials detained in Tuol Sleng and massive starvation on the ground level.
One thing I am glad, that I was not born in 'democratic' Kampuchea. I seriously advise this book if you seek a good understanding of Cambodia at this time.
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A DEFINITIVE HISTORY
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Philip Short has set out to provide a pretty much definitive account of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge's rise to power and eventual fall. He has achieved great success in doing so.
`Pol Pot...' charts the rise of the Cambodian left (and Pol Pot's rise within it) from the time of the French Empire until the aftermath of Khmer Rouge tyranny and Pol Pot's eventual death in the late 1990's.
Short goes to great lengths to provide a detailed history of the decades between the crumbling of French Indo-China and the beginnings of the Khmer Rouge. He also gives a detailed account of the early lives, not only of Pol Pot (real name Saloth Sar), but also the other main players in the Khmer Rouge regime, thus giving very personal dimensions to the regime they helped create. This is set in context of the wider issues and history of the region, with particular reference to Cambodia's long-term domination, particularly by Vietnam, but also Thailand. All of this he does with finesse. Regardless of the level of detail, Short manages to engage the reader. This is not his greatest achievement though.
The real strength of his writing is in that he manages to do the seemingly impossible and present the Khmer Rouge with a human face. This he achieves through examining the peculiarities of Khmer collective psychology, the origins of the people who made up the rank and file of the Khmer Rouge, the cold logic governing their particular extremist brand of communism, and how these things drove their behaviour during their brief tenure.
Even within the communist pantheon of the 1970's, Democratic Kampuchea (as Cambodia had been renamed) remained rather an oddity and not simply because of its ideological extremism. Short discusses the influences of the French (and not Russian) revolutions, Buddhism and Pol Pot's desire at once to reclaim the `golden-age' of the Khmer civilisation (identified as the era of the Khmer empire, ruled from Angkhor Wat), usurp the Vietnamese Communists' dominance of the Cambodian revolution and cleanse the Khmer people through purgation. These factors he deftly combines to provide an overall view of Khmer Rouge ideology and how it came about. He also sheds important light on the reasoning behind the genocide committed in the killing fields and why the regime failed so quickly.
Pol Pot: History of a Nightmare, will provide the academic and lay-reader alike, with a detailed analysis of one of the twentieth Century's worst human catastrophes. Highly Recommended.
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A superb biography
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Short combines academic rigour, meticulous research and easy-flowing prose to produce a biographical gem! What comes out is as much the biography of a nation people (the Khmer) as of Pol Pot... something Short clearly believes is as important, if not more so, than the politics and cold-war machinations which lead to the rise of the Khmer Rouge in the first place. There is a big cast of actors in this book, which makes it a tough read at times, but if you are looking for a serious and dispassionate study of a dictator and the horrors he set upon a whole nation, this is the one!
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Superb study of the man and his regime
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As a rule, I'm not very keen on biographies of political leaders. They often focus narrowly on the individual, leaving an impression that they far more central to historical events than is often the case. Philip Short avoids this pitfall by using the chronology of Pol Pots life to explore the wider history of Cambodia from the 1920's onwards. Eye witness testimony is used heavily throughout the book, with a careful balance of opposing views. Unlike many biographies, this one doesn't try to "pschoanyalyse" its subject, and is all the more convincing for it.
By the end of the book, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge comrades come across not as monsters, but as idealists who let their dreams of a Communist utopia override the welfare of ordinary Cambodians. When the dream proved impossible to acheive they were reluctant to admit defeat, so rather than compromise they purged the middle ranks of their regime and tried to impose the same policies again. Each successive attempt ended in greater disaster, as the purges left fewer and fewer competent personnel. Crop yields spiralled downwards, and the urban population that were forced to work on the massive collective farms were the first to die.
The deaths of ordinary Cambodians were not only the result of economic mismanagement and the resultant famine. Suspected political opponents, intellectuals and the professional classes were tortured at places like the notorious S-21 prison. The motives behind the targeting of particular social groups are clearly explained in the book, the terrible result of the ideological path that Pol Pot and his colleagues followed. The way this ideology evolved is covered in great detail - the most interesting aspect of which is the strong influence of post-war French philosophy that the Khmer Rouge leadership were immersed in as students in Paris. This combined with Stalinism, Maoism, (both popular amongst French Communists) and particular Combodian traits such as the Buddhist suppression of individualism to form the Khmer Rouge version of Communism.
In conclusion, you can learn a great deal from this book, whether you're just interested in Pol Pot as an indivudual, or interested in the wider history of the Khmer Rouge and Cambodia.
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The definitive biography on Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge
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Founded during the 1950s, the Khmer Rouge became infamous for their ruthless guerrilla fight against the Lon Nol regime and their murder of about two million people during their 1975-79 rule. Forced out of power in 1979 by the Vietnamese invasion the Khmer Rouge survived the 1980s with the help of Thailand and China. Following the Paris Agreement in 1991, it began to fade and following the death of Pol Pot in 1998 it practically ceased to exist. This is what Philip Short's biography of Pol Pot is about. It is of course significantly more detailed than the above. Short follows Pol Pot from birth through school to Paris where the Khmer Rouge ideology was founded. And he is right, the similarities with the French Revolution and various aspects of Stalinism are indeed striking. The formation of the Khmer Rouge and their take-over of the country are again explained in detail, so is the gruesome 1975-79 period. When I read the book I occasionally felt that the structure of Cambodian society may have made it easier for the Khmer Rouge to gain power and hang on to it. The Khmer Rouge resistance period of the 1980s is well covered; so are the factors leading up to Pol Pot's arrest in 1997 and his end in 1998. There are plenty of books on Pol Pot and various aspects of the Khmer Rouge rule. This should be one of the best.
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