波尔布特：恶梦的剖析

 波尔布特：恶梦的剖析

菲利普-肖特

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对领导现代最神秘和最可怕的政权之一的人进行了扣人心弦的权威性描述。

在波尔布特统治的三年半时间里，超过一百万的柬埔寨人（占全国人口的五分之一）被处决或死于饥饿。波尔布特是一个理想主义和隐居的人物，他试图通过一场激进的平等主义革命向他的人民灌输道德纯洁和自我放弃的价值观。在这个过程中，他的国家陷入了疯狂，成为一个思想的集中营，一个在杀戮场上被强制服从的奴隶国家。

一个共享繁荣的乌托邦梦想是如何变异为人类有史以来最糟糕的噩梦之一的？为了了解这个几乎难以想象的谜团，菲利普-肖特探讨了波尔布特从早年到死亡的生活。肖特花了四年时间走遍柬埔寨，采访了红色高棉运动的幸存领导人，其中许多人以前从未说过话，包括波尔布特的姐夫和红色高棉的前国家元首。他还翻阅了中国、俄罗斯、越南和柬埔寨本身以前封闭的档案，以追踪一个人的命运和他所领导的国家的毁灭。

这本强有力的传记揭示了波尔布特和红色高棉并不是一次性的反常现象，而是从所有民族共同的灵魂黑暗中发展出来的。柬埔寨的历史和文化与美国和其他国家的干预相结合，为这场灾难埋下了伏笔，其恐怖程度在当今世界令人不安的事件中回响强烈。

Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare

Philip Short

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A gripping and definitive portrait of the man who headed one of the most enigmatic and terrifying regimes of modern times

In the three and a half years of Pol Pot's rule, more than a million Cambodians, a fifth of the country's population, were executed or died from hunger. An idealistic and reclusive figure, Pol Pot sought to instill in his people values of moral purity and self-abnegation through a revolution of radical egalitarianism. In the process his country descended into madness, becoming a concentration camp of the mind, a slave state in which obedience was enforced on the killing fields.

How did a utopian dream of shared prosperity mutate into one of the worst nightmares humanity has ever known? To understand this almost inconceivable mystery, Philip Short explores Pol Pot's life from his early years to his death. Short spent four years traveling throughout Cambodia interviewing the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge movement, many of whom have never spoken before, including Pol Pot's brother-in-law and the former Khmer Rouge head of state. He also sifted through the previously closed archives of China, Russia, Vietnam, and Cambodia itself to trace the fate of one man and the nation that he led into ruin.

This powerful biography reveals that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were not a one-off aberration but instead grew out of a darkness of the soul common to all peoples. Cambodian history and culture combined with intervention from the United States and other nations to set the stage for a disaster whose horrors echo loudly in the troubling events of our world today.