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CAMBODIA AFTER THE KHMER ROUGE: Inside the Politics of Nation Building. By Evan Gottesman. New Haven (Connecticut), London: Yale University Press. 2003. xxvi, 428pp. (B&W photos, map.) US$35.00, cloth. ISBN 0-300-08957-0.
In January 1979 a blitzkrieg Vietnamese invasion toppled the regime of the Khmer Rouge, of Democratic Kampuchea (DK). The Vietnamese swiftly replaced the defunct regime with one more to their liking, which called itself the Peoples' Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). Its upper ranks were composed of former Khmer Rouge cadre, like Hun Sen, Heng Samrin and Chea Sim, who had all defected to Vietnam, fearing for their lives during the purges that swept through DK in 1977 and 1978. Khmer who had spent the DK period in Vietnam filled other posts.
Evan Gottesman's absorbing book is the first analytical study of the PRK, which endured Vietnamese military occupation and widespread international neglect until September...