Word: vatthana
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...some 5,000 Soviet advisers), Laos has been struggling since 1979 to sustain a socialist course unfettered by Hanoi's doctrinaire style. When the Pathet Lao Communists took over in Vientiane in 1975 after the U.S. withdrawal from Viet Nam, they quickly forced the resignation of King Savang Vatthana and instituted hard-line Marxist policies that brought the country to the edge of ruin. Private trade was banned, the few existing factories were nationalized, and restrictions on private life burgeoned. The Pathet Lao appropriated livestock and went so far as to require young people to obtain approval from party...