The story of people lost in history

People on the Left of the Crossroads; the Story of the Madiun Uprising, September 1948 By Soe Hoe Gie Yayasan Bentang Budaya, Yogyakarta, July 1997 312 and XIX pages

YOGYAKARTA (JP): To fully comprehend the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) uprising in Madiun, East Java, in September 1948, we must first understand the variables leading up to an event which swallowed the revolution movement's own children.

These were international influences -- especially international communism -- and the political development in Java on the national independence historical stage beginning in 1926.

The declaration of an Indonesian republic on Aug. 17, 1945 held a different meaning for each population group. The term even differed in meaning for the Central Indonesian National Committee (KNIP) and the palace, Indonesia's political elite, and the condition of awareness developing outside the two.

For top leaders, the revolution was a matter of rational and pragmatic balance. Their position and responsibility compelled leaders to think about dealing with the actual circumstances before them.

Sutan Sjahrir, the first Indonesian prime minister, described the revolution as a struggle for the lives and destiny of millions of people. It could not be treated as a personal matter. Leading the way for the people was a mere matter of calculation, not a matter of will in itself. That meant making several compromises with the Dutch through talks, and with national feudal sides like the pamong praja (civil service).

For youths imbued with the radical spirit established in 1926, these views were a betrayal of the revolutionary ideals. For them, the revolution had a wider meaning than mere national independence, state sovereignty and economic freedom. Independence was a renewal of life and liberation from all old values.

This was evident when youths, pushed by the revolutionary spirit, violated and denied fundamental values like marriage, parental and family relationships, and formal values like attitudes towards the civil service and the feudal aristocracy.

The Linggarjati and the Renville agreements disappointed the youths, who saw them as a compromise with the colonialists. They were dismayed when the government appointed a minister named Tan Poo Gwan, who was reputedly fond of cockfights, a pastime popular with the feudal nobility.

Combined with this was the return to positions of power of civil servants, which denoted the resurrection of the old order in the youths' eyes. They were also disappointed Sjahrir did not include younger members from their ranks in his cabinet.

This gave rise to growing frustration among the young fighters and in the community in general. In this oppressive situation, two reactions sprang up. First, one of nonideological puritanism, as the case of Dr. Wiroreno reflects.

As a doctor directly in contact with the reality of the people's lives, he had had enough of the regents and the civil servants, whom he saw as extortionists and henchmen of the colonialists. For him, politicians were clowns and sorcerers who always came out ahead. That was the reason he settled in Kudus, a town close to the demarcation line, and not in Yogyakarta, which he saw as a hotbed of decadence of the revolutionary ideals.

In his puritanical attitude, Wiroreno found himself one with the revolutionary ideals, and unwittingly he was taken in by the communist ideology without actually becoming a communist.

The second reaction was of loathing supported by ideological nuances. The target of the revolutionary youths was the groups which formerly collaborated with the Dutch and the Japanese, and now wanted to hold the reins of power in the Republic.

In such a situation, Musso emerged as the savior for the left wing of the Indonesian Revolution Struggle, which had led when Amir Syarufudin was in power with his Socialist Party, but subsequently fell. His reputation deteriorated because his soft line policy toward capitalist countries was rejected by the youths.

The coming of Musso also brought the mission to herald the change in policy line taken by international communism. When the world's fascist forces like Japan and Germany had risen in the 1930s, international communism had viewed the fascist powers as more dangerous than the force of its ideological enemy, international capitalism.

The awareness subsequently made international communism revise its confrontational politics with international capitalist countries into compromise politics to face the fascist forces. After the fascists were brought down, international communism returned to its initial political line against capitalism.

This more or less effected changes in tactics as well as strategies carried out by the left wing of the Indonesian Revolution Struggle. By fusing the three left-wing parties at the time -- the Socialist Party, the PKI and the Labor Party -- then revising their political line by returning to hard-line politics, and lastly building a rival government named the People's Democratic Front (FDR) with its center of power in Madiun, the PKI won a place in the hearts of the youths because it was seen as anticolonialist and antifeudal.

It was here that Musso assumed a decisive role in the format of the struggle of the left wing, which later on resulted in various changes in the national political constellation, culminating in the Madiun Affair.

Soe Hok Gie wrote this work as his history thesis at the University of Indonesia. It is quite undistinguished in itself, but its major point of interest is its author, an idealistic young man who, according to the late Harsja Bachtiar, an expert staff at the Ministry of Education and Culture, was frighteningly correct and uncompromising. Soe died at the age of 27 in 1969 due to poisonous fumes on Mount Semeru.

As in Soe Hok Gie's three other works, Catatan Seorang Demonstran (A Demonstrator's Note), Dibawah Lentera Merah (Under the Red Lantern) and Zaman Peralihan (Changing Era), there is a familiar, storytelling style to his prose. Historian Ahmad Syafii Marif is correct in the introduction when he says the book reads like a novel.

Another commonality among Soe Hok Gie's works is his humanist tendencies. People are presented as complete with all their human dimensions. This makes his characterizations rich in all emotional textures, which are usually left out as irrelevant in those works described as scientific. Removed from debate over its literary strengths and weaknesses, this book deserves a place on the shelves of private libraries.

-- Denny Bobby Caesar Hariandja

The writer is a member of the MATA study group in Yogyakarta.