Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

5-16-2025

Keywords

Cambodia, Cham Muslims, Kulaks, Resistance, Soviet Union

Abstract

This research paper conducts a comparative analysis of resistance to genocidal violence under two twentieth-century communist regimes: the Soviet Union in the 1920s-1930s and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the late 1970s. Drawing upon academic sources, survivor testimonies, and archival materials, we analyze the dynamics of genocidal violence and the resistance it provoked in each context. With a focus on the Cham Muslims and Soviet kulaks, this paper examines how groups targeted during each regime’s social reengineering projects resisted violent policies, both collectively and individually. While the Cham Muslims were persecuted primarily on religious and ethnic grounds, and the kulaks on socioeconomic terms, both groups faced policies of forced collectivization, repression, and destruction. We analyze both organized, collective forms of resistance including the Cham revolt on Koh Phal and the Parbigskii uprising in Siberia, as well as everyday forms of resistance such as religious concealment, cultural preservation, and forms of identity masking such as “self-dekulakization.” Although large-scale resistance was ultimately crushed in both cases, less visible everyday forms of resistance offered meaningful, if limited, means for cultural preservation and survival. By comparing these two cases, this paper contributes to broader understandings of how identity, capacity for resistance, and state power shape the strategies and effectiveness of resistance under genocidal regimes.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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