D. V. MOSYAKOV. HISTORY OF CAMBODIA. XX CENTURY. Moscow: IV RAS, 2010. 743 p., ill. (Istoriya stran Vostoka. XX century)

Reading the voluminous work (743 pages) of D. V. Mosyakov was unexpectedly easy, because it turned out that the monograph was written well, and in some places it was simply fascinating. First of all, this applies to the main plot of the book - the history and deeds of the Khmer Rouge. I remember how all the scientific (and not only) communities, both here and abroad, were shocked when an incomprehensible horror reigned in Cambodia, then renamed Kampuchea, which could not find an adequate explanation and made everyone shudder. And it is quite understandable that the Khmer Rouge's struggle for power, their relations with the Norodom Sihanouk and Lon Nol regimes, and the internal party "showdowns" in the Khmer Rouge camp have occupied a central place in the monograph, starting with chapter III.

D. V. Mosyakov's monograph is a fundamental work covering the period from the establishment of French power in Cambodia to the formation of the modern political regime in the Kingdom of Cambodia. The book is based on the study of a huge array of archival sources, first introduced into scientific circulation, and generalization of almost all available scientific literature on the history of the country in the XX century.

This is mainly the history of the kingdom after the end of World War II. Such attention to this particular segment of Khmer history is quite understandable: it was at this time that the country embarked on its own path of political and social development, replacing in a short time all the main forms of organization of the political regime inherent in the XX century - from the monarchy and the regime of personal power of Sihanouk to the military-republican (Lon Nol), totalitarian (Pol Pot) and the authoritarian regime (Heng Samrin). If we add to this the administration of the country by the United Nations Interim Administration (UNTAC) and the modern so-called constitutional - democratic regime that followed, then we can say with confidence that Cambodia is the only country in the world that has experienced such changes in such a relatively short period.

However, it seems to me that the author left out the previous history of the country: the period from 1863 (the establishment of the French protectorate) to 1945 in the book is given only 50 pages. But the history of the country, viewed through the prism of political and social modernization (and this aspect is considered by the author to be one of the main aspects when considering the development of the country in the XX century), began not in 1945, but in the colonial period. In addition, the very idea of the series " History of the countries of the East. XX century " implies coverage of this story (albeit with a focus on subjects close in time to us) more or less evenly throughout the XX century.

Dmitry Mosyakov carefully analyzes the process of internal modernization of Cambodian society, trying to answer the question of why events in the country developed this way, and not otherwise. He explains how and for what reasons the modernization of Cambodian society has strayed into such blind social dead ends, as a result of which the country has lost both political stability and general awareness of national goals for many years.

One more important detail of the reviewed monograph should be noted here: the author describes and analyzes the Cambodian history both as a tragedy of the people, and as a tragedy of the politicians who ruled these people, under whose direct leadership the country deviated from the traditional path of Asian modernization, most often reduced to a compromise of elites, and

D. V. Mosyakov analyzes various decisions of the Cambodian rulers, examines their motivations and consequences, and other possible options for action, and as a result, we have a complex picture of the difficult choice of development paths and the reasons for the mistakes made by politicians at that time. Sihanouk's desperate attempts to maintain his power and peace in the country in the 1960s and prevent a civil war are beautifully described. But the inexorable fate of political realities that proved stronger than the Khmer leader's power forced him to make an agreement with the North Vietnamese Communists and deploy their troops on Cambodian territory. Obviously, this led to the country's involvement in the Indochina War, but the refusal to introduce Vietnamese troops would have led the country to the same result.

D. V. Mosyakov shows Sihanouk as a hostage of circumstances, forced to suppress the uncompromising, radical coup-oriented movement of the left and communist forces, uprisings of poor and landless peasants inside the country, which hardened people, weakened his power and brought Cambodia to the brink of civil war. The monograph describes in detail the period of the civil war itself, associated with the coup of General Lon Nol in March 1970. According to the author, this politician and his entourage also act as hostages of circumstances: they did not want bloodshed, they did not want civil war, but they got all this in full. In the sections devoted to Lonnolov's rule (Chapters VII and VIII), attention is drawn to a thorough analysis of the agrarian programs of the new government, their limitations and unattractiveness for the majority of the peasant population. And we can agree with the author that this was an urban regime overthrown by a coup supported by urban strata, and alien to the majority of peasants.

The monograph focuses on the causes, policies, and consequences of the Polpot regime in Cambodia. This is perhaps the best part of the study, which reads with relentless tension, like a literary work, like a kind of apocalyptic phantasmagoria. And strangely, at first glance, the world became interested in the Cambodian horror, some hard-to-imagine and hard-to-explain phenomenon, and, frankly, stopped paying attention to this country when it became peaceful, as it was before the tragic events of the 1970s.

It seems that the events of those years in Cambodia (then - Kampuchea), which the author not only described perfectly, but also analyzed (and much of this analysis will remain in science), are still difficult to explain from any rational and theoretical point of view. It was as if some dark force had broken out of people and forced them to commit irrational-suicidal acts. However, in my opinion, the comparison (moreover, according to D. V. Mosyakova, a certain copying) of the turns of the political struggle and the general tragedy of the events in Cambodia with the Soviet history of the Stalin era or with the Chinese history of the Mao era is somewhat strained. Why not compare it to the third Ur Dynasty in Sumer or the Qin Dynasty in China? After all, over Pol Pot's Cambodia hovered the spirit of universal destruction (no matter what Pol Pot himself said) and total horror in the absence of anything constructive, while in the USSR and the PRC an industrial society was being created, however, at the cost of huge sacrifices.

Of course, there are some parallels. For example, for the first time published in Russian, the tragic letters of Pol Pot's former associates, who became "deviators and opportunists", "agents of foreign powers". In this connection, the author's observation is interesting that this generation of revolutionaries fell victim not only to suspicion on the part of the leader and his inner circle, but also to the impossibility of building the utopia that they dreamed of together with the leader.

The period of the People's Republic of Kampuchea, from the overthrow of the Pol Pot regime in 1979 to the proclamation of the State of Cambodia in 1990, is an interesting one. In the center of these sections is the struggle for power of political groups that defended various ways of developing the country. Some advocated the return of a political and economic system similar to that built by Pol Pot, but only without the excessive brutality of his rule, while others advocated a policy of pragmatism determined by the real problems of society. A careful analysis of the struggle between the conservative-communist group Heng Samrin and the group of reformers and pragmatists led by Hun Sen, in which each battle ended not with the defeat of the vanquished, but with a compromise that took into account the interests of both winners and losers, allows us to understand how the foundation was laid for future national reconciliation and the formation of a political system.

The last chapters of the monograph are also read with great interest, especially those that describe the situation in the country on the eve of the fateful 1993 elections held under the auspices of the United Nations. The author explains how the UN administration and the great powers interested in the success of the elections managed to force the Khmer Rouge not to disrupt them, not to turn the voting period into a continuous series of bombings, attacks and murders.

The absolute advantage of the work is not only the use of the main foreign and domestic literature on the history of Cambodia, but also the personal impressions of the author who lived and visited this country more than once. Many archival materials stored in the Russian State Archive of Contemporary Political History (RGASPI) and the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (WUA of the Russian Federation) are being put into scientific circulation for the first time. In a sense, this is exactly what the scientific community has long been waiting for from our specialists in Eastern Indochina. The use of Russian archives gives the work credibility and credibility and allows you to create a version of events that would differ significantly from what was written earlier in the West and in China. In this regard, the author's idea, confirmed by archival materials, that the role of the USSR in the peace settlement process in Cambodia is clearly underestimated is important. In fact, it was Moscow that was one of the main initiators and participants of this process, and the use of Soviet opportunities to persuade the "Cambodian friends" made it possible to set them on the path of real, rather than feigned, reconciliation and ending the country's long-standing civil war.

So, we can say that D. V. Mosyakov's monograph is a new and very convincing version of Cambodian history, based on a huge layer of sources and literature analyzed in the most thorough way. The publication of the book is undoubtedly a new achievement of Russian Oriental studies.

Permanent link to this publication: