About the Talk

In 1979, the Vietnamese army seized Phnom Penh, toppling Pol Pot's notoriously brutal regime. Yet the Khmer Rouge did not disintegrate. Instead, the movement continued to rule over swathes of Cambodia for almost another two decades even as it failed to become a legitimate governing organization. In this talk, I argue that the Khmer Rouge's successes and failures were both driven by a refusal to dilute its revolutionary vision. Rather than take the moderate tack required for viable governance, it pivoted between only two political strategies: united front and class struggle. Through the stories of three key leaders - Leng Sary, Son Sen, and Ta Mok - I track the movement's shifting from one strategy to the other until its dissolution in the 1990s.