Establishment of the People's Republic of Kampuchea (1979–1989) On 8 January 1979, after the DK army had been routed and Phnom Penh captured by Vietnamese troops the day before, the KPRC proclaimed that the new official name of Cambodia was the '''People's Republic of Kampuchea''' (PRK). The new administration was a
pro-Soviet government supported by a substantial Vietnamese military force and civilian advisory effort. Despite the Vietnam-sponsored invasion and control, and the loss of independence that went along with it, the new order was welcomed by almost the entire Cambodian population due to the Khmer Rouge's brutality. However, there was some plundering of the almost empty capital of Phnom Penh by Vietnamese forces, who carried the goods on trucks back to Vietnam. This unfortunate behaviour would in time contribute to create a negative image of the Vietnamese soldiers. Heng Samrin was named head of state of the PRK, and other Khmer
communists that had formed the
Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party, like
Chan Sy and
Hun Sen, were prominent from the start. As events in the 1980s progressed, the main preoccupations of the new government would be survival, restoring the economy, and combating the Khmer Rouge insurgency by military and political means. The PRK was a communist state. It continued the socialist revolution that had been started by DK, but abandoning the Khmer Rouge's radical policies and channelling the efforts of building
socialism through more pragmatic channels in line with the policies marked by the
Soviet Union and the
Comecon. Very soon it would be one of the six countries regarded as socialist, and not just developing, by the USSR. Regarding ethnic minorities, the People's Republic of Kampuchea was committed to respect Cambodia's national diversity, which brought some welcome relief to the ethnic
Thai,
Vietnamese,
Cham and the "
montagnards" of the northeast. The
Chinese ethnic minority, however, perceived as an "arm of the hegemonists" continued to be oppressed, even though many of its members, mainly among the trader community, had endured great suffering under the Khmer Rouge. The speaking of
Mandarin and
Teochew was severely restricted, in much the same manner as under Pol Pot.
Restoration of cultural and religious life ,
East Germany in 1986. One of the main official acts of the PRK was a partial restoration of
Buddhism as the state religion of Cambodia and temples were gradually reopened to accommodate the
monks and to resume a certain measure of traditional religious life. In September 1979 seven old monks were officially reordained at
Wat Unnalom in Phnom Penh, and these monks gradually reestablished the Cambodian
sangha between 1979 and 1981. They began rebuilding the community of monks in Phnom Penh and later in the provinces, reordaining prestigious monks who had been formerly senior monks. They were not allowed, however, to ordain young novices. Repair works were started in about 700
Buddhist temples and monasteries, of the roughly 3,600 that had been destroyed or badly damaged by the Khmer Rouge. By mid-1980 traditional
Buddhist festivals began to be celebrated. The DK had exterminated many Cambodian intellectuals, which was a difficult obstacle for Cambodia's reconstruction, when local leaders and experts were most needed. Among the surviving educated urban Cambodians who could have helped the struggling country to its feet, many opted to flee the communist state and flocked to the refugee camps to emigrate to the West. Despite its efforts in the educational field, the PRK/SOC would struggle with the general lack of education and skills of Cambodian party cadres, bureaucrats and technicians throughout its existence. Cambodian cultural life began also slowly to be rebuilt under the PRK. Movie houses in Phnom Penh were re-opened, screening at first films from
Vietnam, the
Soviet Union, Eastern European socialist countries and
Hindi movies from India. Certain films that did not fit with the pro-Soviet designs of the PRK, such as
Hong Kong action cinema, were banned in Cambodia at that time. The domestic film industry had suffered a severe blow, for a large number of Cambodian filmmakers and actors from the 1960s and 1970s had been killed by the Khmer Rouge or had fled the country. Negatives and prints of many films had been destroyed, stolen, or missing and the films that did survive were in a poor state of quality. Cambodia's film industry began a slow comeback starting with
Kon Aeuy Madai Ahp (), also known as
Krasue mother, a
horror movie based on
Khmer folklore about
Ahp, a popular local
ghost, the first movie made in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge era. The restoration of cultural life during the PRK was only partial though; there were socialist-minded restrictions hampering creativity that would only be lifted towards the end of the 1980s under the SOC.
Reconstruction hampered At least 600,000 Cambodians had been displaced during the Pol Pot era when cities had been emptied. After the Vietnamese invasion freed them, most Cambodians who had been forcefully resettled elsewhere in the countryside returned to the cities or to their original rural homesteads. Since families had been disrupted and separated, many Cambodians freed from their communes wandered over the country searching for family members and friends. Following the invasion there were severe famine conditions in the country, with some estimates reaching 500,000 affected. Traditional farming had been so severely interfered with that it took time to be established anew. Meanwhile, the Khmer Rouge commune system had completely collapsed, following which there were no jobs and not enough food to eat. It took six months to begin the gradual repopulation of Phnom Penh, as electricity, water and sewage systems were reestablished and street repair and removal of garbage were undertaken. To compound the situation for Cambodia, the Western nations, China and the ASEAN states refused to provide reconstruction assistance directly to the new government. Owing to US and China's opposition to the international recognition of the PRK, the
United Nations relief and rehabilitation agencies were not allowed to operate within Cambodia by the
UN authorities. The bulk of international help and aid from Western nations would be diverted to refugee camps along the
Thai border.
Refugee situation Faced with a destroyed country and lack of international aid, large numbers of distraught Cambodians flocked to the Thai border in the years that followed. There, international help provided by different international aid organisations, many of them backed by the United States, was available. More than US$400 million was provided between 1979 and 1982, of which the United States, as part of its
Cold War political strategy against communist Vietnam, contributed nearly $100 million. In 1982, the US government had initiated a covert aid program to the non-communist resistance (NCR) amounting to $5 million per year, ostensibly for non-lethal aid only. This amount was increased to $8 million in 1984 and $12 million in 1987 and 1988. Along with other armed factions, the Khmer Rouge launched a relentless military campaign against the newly established People's Republic of Kampuchea state from the refugee camps and from hidden military outposts along the Thai border. Even though the Khmer Rouge was dominant, the non-communist resistance included a number of groups which had formerly been fighting against the Khmer Rouge after 1975. Large swathes of formerly inaccessible
tropical forests were destroyed, leaving a negative
ecological legacy. Despite the help of the Vietnamese Army, as well as of Soviet, Cuban and Vietnamese advisers, Heng Samrin had only limited success in establishing the PRK in the face of the ongoing civil war. Security in some rural areas was tenuous, and major transportation routes were subject to interdiction by sporadic attacks. The presence of Vietnamese throughout the country and their intrusion into Cambodian life added fuel to the traditional Cambodian anti-Vietnamese sentiment. In 1986, Hanoi claimed to have begun withdrawing part of its occupation forces. At the same time, Vietnam continued efforts to strengthen the PRK and its military arm, the
Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Armed Forces (KPRAF). These withdrawals continued over the next two years, although actual numbers were difficult to verify. Vietnam's proposal to withdraw its remaining occupation forces in 1989–90—one of the repercussions of the dismemberment of the Soviet bloc The State of Cambodia lived through a time of dramatic transitions triggered by the
collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. There was a reduction in Soviet aid to Vietnam which culminated in the withdrawal of the Vietnamese occupying forces. The last Vietnamese troops were said to have left Cambodia on 26 September 1989 but probably they did not leave until 1990. Many Vietnamese civilians also returned to Vietnam in the months that followed, lacking confidence in the ability of the PRK's new avatar to control the situation after the Vietnamese military had left. Despite the quite radical changes announced by Hun Sen, the SOC state stood firm when it came to the one party rule issue. The leadership structure and the executive remained the same as under the PRK, with the party firmly in control as the supreme authority. Accordingly, the SOC was unable to restore Cambodia's monarchical tradition. Although the SOC reestablished the prominence of monarchical symbols, like the grand palace in Phnom Penh, that was as far as it would go for the time being, especially since
Norodom Sihanouk had steadfastly associated himself with the CGDK, the opposition coalition against the PRK that included the Khmer Rouge. The result of this moral breakdown was that students revolted in the streets of Phnom Penh in December 1991. The police opened fire and eight people died in the confrontations. Conditions for
ethnic Chinese improved greatly after 1989. Restrictions placed on them by the former PRK gradually disappeared. The State of Cambodia allowed ethnic Chinese to observe their particular religious customs and Chinese language schools were reopened. In 1991, two years after the SOC's foundation, the
Chinese New Year was officially celebrated in Cambodia for the first time since 1975.
Peace agreement Peace negotiations between the Vietnam-backed regime in Cambodia and its armed opposition groups had begun formally and informally after the mid-1980s. The negotiations were extremely difficult, for the Khmer Rouge stubbornly insisted in the dismantlement of the PRK/SOC's administration before any agreement could be reached, while the PRK/SOC leadership made it a point of excluding the Khmer Rouge from any future provisional government. As a result, the Cambodia came under
United Nations administration, with the establishment of the
United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) at the end of February 1992 which supervised the
cease-fire and the ensuing general election. The state was finally dissolved with the restoration of the
Kingdom of Cambodia in September 1993. ==The one-party system in the PRK/SOC==