Полпотівське «Взірцеве суспільство» у дискурсі історії повсякдення

Abstract

Using the methodological principles of everyday history, the authors of the article study the perception of the Pol Pot’s dictatorship by the victims of the regime. This methodological approach is seen as the optimal tool of cognition, which allows recreating the psycho-emotional state of the subjects of the historical process (in the case of the article – those who fell victim to the bloody Khmer Rouge experiment in Democratic Kampuchea), to find out their emotions, to analyze survival strategies and functioning of a totalitarian society. At the same time, the authors of the article think that the application of the methodology of everyday history strengthens the humanistic principle in studying history, promotes the development of high school students’ skills in applying elements of psychohistory in the study of the past and present. The realities of everyday life in Democratic Kampuchea are reproduced by the authors of the article from the day the Khmer Rouge took control of the Cambodian capital. Using the memoirs of Rithy Panh and Pin Yatai, two victims of the totalitarian regime, the authors reconstruct the perception by the population of the process of forced deportation, the integration of victims into new realities in the process of the communist experiment. In this way, the article traces the process of creating an «ideal society» in Democratic Kampuchea and analyzes the perception «from below» of key changes in its social, political and economic life. Describing these realities, the authors of the article indirectly reconstruct the psychological condition of those whom the Khmer Rouge     «re-educated» with the help of agricultural labor. The history of everyday life in Democratic Kampuchea is also reproduced in the context of the urbicide in the chronological framework of 1975–1979; in the case of this country, it was an important component of the genocidal process.