From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka
in 1917.103
The fact is, however, that Tan Malaka had neither contact with the Trotskyist movement nor an understanding of the ideas that differentiate it from Stalinism. His references to Trotsky are scattered and contradictory. He speaks highly of him when discussing the Russian revolution and Trotsky’s role as commander of the Red Army, but when it comes to the disputes between Stalin and Trotsky, he quotes from the official History of the CPSU, which he apparently came across for the first time in 1946 (Thesis, p. 34). He uses that hardly unbiased interpretation of Trotsky’s positions to refute the allegation that he is a Trotskyist. The fact that Tan Malaka can do this without even a hint of understanding that Stalin may have falsified Trotsky’s views reveals, perhaps more clearly than the actual refutation of the “charge,” how little Tan Malaka knew of what had gone on inside the International from 1928.
There is evidence that Tan Malaka read Trotsky’s The Real Situation in Russia (an English translation of Trotsky’s speech to the 1927 congress of the CPSU at which he was expelled from the party).104 I have found no evidence that Tan Malaka ever read any other of Trotsky’s works.
Trotsky’s own writings give no indication that he knew of the existence, let alone the political views, of Tan Malaka.105 One would have thought that of all Trotsky’s supporters, Henk Sneevliet (Maring) would have made an attempt to reach Tan Malaka with the ideas of the left opposition, but two recent biographies of Sneevliet provide no clues to such an endeavor.106
During the postwar period, the press of the Fourth International carried a number of articles expressing general support for Tan Malaka’s position on the need to fight for independence and to distrust negotiations with Dutch imperialism.107 In the knowledge that Tan Malaka was taking a stand independent of, and in opposition to, the compromise approach of the PKI, the Fourth International tended to take a particular interest in him; but they had no direct contact, and they had insufficient evidence on which to base a political characterization.108
As far as I have been able to ascertain, the Australian Trotskyists made no effort to contact the Indonesian exiles from Digul, whom the Dutch brought to Australia as the Japanese army advanced, so that the occupying force would be denied the services of these rebels. In fact, a part of this group, those who still considered themselves PKI members, followed the international Stalinist line of collaboration with the national bourgeois government against fascism, and agreed to work with the Netherlands Indies government-in-exile in Australia. Other radical nationalists and followers of Tan Malaka and PARI refused to take this stand and continued to oppose the Dutch. At the end of the war, as a result of Indonesia’s proclamation of independence, this division deepened into open hostility in the Indonesian exile community in Australia. Positions shifted somewhat, as the Communist party of Australia supported Indonesian independence and built solidarity for that struggle within the Australian trade union movement and labor government. Most ex-PKI members then participated in the Cenkim (Central Committee for Indonesia Merdeka) in Australia, where they worked together with Australians of many political complexions, but with none, it seems, who called themselves Trotskyists.109 Evidently, the small Trotskyist movement in Australia knew nothing of the existence of PARI and its members, who might have been likely to sympathize with their views.
In effect, Tan Malaka’s contacts with the international communist movement, in any of its manifestations, ceased in 1923 as he boarded the train from Moscow to Canton. Up until he left Canton for the Philippines in July 1925 (that is, for the next eighteen months), he had sporadic contact with Comintern representatives such as Heller and Voitinsky, and at the same time with some members of the Chinese Communist party. One might think that he would thus have been kept informed of current debate and developments in the International, but several snippets of information that emerge from his autobiography contradict such an assumption. First, although he spoke reasonable German and some English, he had no command of Chinese and virtually no Russian. Second, he was ill a good deal of the time he was in Canton—one of the major causes for his move to the Philippines. It was during this period that he addressed his request to the governor general of the Netherlands Indies to be allowed to return to Indonesia on compassionate grounds due to his ill health. As if these physical impairments to communication were not sufficient, the few glimpses he gives of his relationship to other Comintern representatives demonstrate that they saw the purpose of such communication as being to pass on instructions, not to discuss, debate, learn, or even to teach. Tan Malaka’s account of the order he received to take on Profintern as well as Comintern business, and to this end to learn English, publish a journal, and organize the Transport Workers of the Pacific, is singularly instructive. Similarly instructive is his demoralizing experience of rushing from Canton to Singapore and then back again when called to meet representatives from Moscow who had left by the time he managed to smuggle himself back across twenty-five hundred kilometers with no legal papers and in less than two weeks. Such cavalier treatment demonstrates more than any formal resolutions or reports what a low priority was assigned to educating and informing the comrades from the East.
On leaving China, Tan Malaka broke even these tenuous links with the International. In the Philippines he was able to maintain some direct if erratic contact with the PKI—and this in the period of its legal status and huge size. Of course after the debacle of 1926-1927 there was no leadership left with which to communicate. And if Moscow made no attempt to communicate with Tan Malaka over the question of the uprisings, as seems the case from all evidence, then it can safely be assumed that there was no contact at all. One can scarcely imagine that they would have communicated on lesser issues while leaving aside this matter of the party’s life and death.
From the establishment of PARI in June 1927 up until 1932, evidently Tan Malaka was able to establish some sporadic contact with PKI members who escaped the onslaught of the Dutch secret police, and it was from this milieu that members of the initial PARI cadre were recruited. But there appear to have been no contacts with Moscow. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Tan Malaka met Alimin in Shanghai in 1931 and that he agreed to work again for the Comintern. Evidently at that time Alimin, or at least the Comintern, had no knowledge of PARI’s existence, indicating a somewhat less than perfect intelligence system and less than perfect candor on Tan Malaka’s side.
Throughout the 1930s until his move to Singapore in 1937, Tan Malaka’s life in China was spent in seclusion, except for a brief period when Djaos visited him in Shanghai and during their imprisonment in Hong Kong in 1932. On his arrival in Singapore Tan Malaka was, as ever, anxious to avoid detection and managed to pass himself off as a Chinese schoolteacher until the Japanese arrived in early 1942. He did manage to make some contact with former comrades in Singapore during this period and to do some reading in the Raffles Museum. It is dubious, however, that any real knowledge of the world communist movement would have reached him through these channels, and certainly the atmosphere during the occupation was such as to preclude developing any such knowledge.
To conclude the picture, one must look at the state of political awareness of international developments at the close of the Japanese occupation in Indonesia, and even up until the time of Tan Malaka’s death in early 1949. In the early months there was virtually no knowledge of developments in the international communist movement. Even the first TASS correspondent to visit Indonesia did not arrive until early 1948.110 Until the exiles from Digul and some who had spent the war in Holland began to return in early 1946, there was probably no contact at all with communists from abroad, and those considered “dangerous” by the Dutch (PKI leaders like Sardjono) were temporarily detained in Timor to delay them from reaching the republic.
Considering the extent and duration of his isolation, it is hardly surprising that Tan Malaka did not fit neatly into one of the Marxist currents of the day. To me what is striking is that he managed to retain his revolutionary zeal and commitment to the task of creating a socialist society. That he maintained this commitment through the intense personal and political demoralization that must surely have accompanied his illness, poverty, and isolation in the thirties; that within a few months of his return to Indonesian political life he emerged as an alternative leader to Sukarno, with a coherent political strategy for the Indonesian revolution winning mass support, is surely remarkable.
The author of this text, Tan Malaka,