ABSTRACT
The year 1975 also witnessed Communist triumphs in other Southeast Asian countries. The kingdom of Laos, which had been a battlefield during the Vietnam War, fell to the Communist group Pathet Lao, which had Soviet backing. In Cambodia, rule by Communist forces called the Khmer Rouge also began in 1975 when Pol Pot came into power. Pol Pot’s radical reforms, inspired by Maoism, caused large-scale starvation and hardship for the Cambodian people, while his brutal purges brought the death toll of his reign to nearly 2 million before the invading Vietnamese ousted him in 1979. Civil unrest continued in Cambodia until the United Nations stepped in to administer free elections in 1993, when a constitutional monarchy was restored.
