This study traces the rise of Kampuchean communism from its inception in 1930 to the present. The author analyzes the socioeconomic and political conditions that brought Cambodia to an explosive stage in 1970 and documents the cataclysmic transformation that followed. The protagonist in this ongoing historical drama is the revolutionary movement known as the Khmer Rouge, or "Red Khmers." Their revolution was so ultraradical that even the communists were appalled. The Soviets studiously ignored it, the Chinese vainly tried to moderate it, and the Vietnamese ultimately destroyed it. In an...