The story of people lost in history

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.