The Cambodian Genocide Similarities

The Cambodian genocide was an agrarian genocide founded on the ideals of Stalin and Mao’s communistic ideals. While the Arminian genocide was founded on the belief that the Armenian population was joining the Russian army to fight against the Ottoman Empire. Some Armenians did fight with the Russian army, but it should not have led to the systematic elimination of men, women, and children in that order. The Khmer Rouges policies of forced movement from a modern society to an agrarianist state is undoubtedly questionable when understanding the policies of the Khmer Rouge. While in the aspect of the Ottoman Empire, they removed people for elimination purposes only. Both of these genocides have many similarities and differences, and it is a historian’s

Lebensraum refers to origins and policies of a form of settler colonialism connected with agrarianism that existed in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s. The Nazis used this term to take lands away from Austria and Poland. Like the Nazis, the Ottoman Empire coveted lands that the Armenians occupied which was called Turkestan. The reason the Ottoman Empire wanted this land was due to it belonging to the Ottoman Empire at one point in its history, arguing that they were striving for their old empire. When looking at the Cambodian Genocide and its attempted acquisition of the Khmer Krom, we see the Khmer Rouge try to capture parts of the old Khmer empire. The Khmer Rouge fought a bloody war against the communists of North Vietnam and inevitably failed to take the land. Both of these societies implemented vast land expansion during their genocides to create living space and recapture areas of their historic empire, which according to Kiernan is a part of genocidal tendencies. Interestingly enough, land expansion also allows for the movement of classes, which leads to the rising of the peasant population to the ruling

When looking at the Cambodian genocide, they were more in relation to the Nazis with their use of the camp system (Tuol Sleng), while the Armenian genocide was more pre 1941 Nazi extermination. I would compare their death marches and removal from property to the Nazis from 1933 to 1941 where there was still other options for these people, but not in the case of the Armenians. There were deliberate attacks on the populace by murdering death squads released by the Ottoman Empires prisons. In contrast, one can make an analogy to the poles eliminating their Jews in their villages.

Another thing to look at is that Cambodia was a revolution trying to change a societies social norms, where as in the Ottoman Empire, it was a destruction of a people and had truly nothing to do with revolutionist tendencies. The Khmer Rouge truly pushed for the old Khmer Empire that built wondrous buildings such as the Angkor Wat and survived on the agrarianism ideological principles of that time. In conclusion, I think if one is to compare and contrast these two different genocides, one must incorporated Nazi Germany. The reason I believe this is because it creates more similarities Overall, these two genocides are extremely different in this author’s opinion due to one being a revolution and the other being a deliberate