From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka
with perhaps more accuracy, regarding the Partai Murba as it developed in the late 1950s and 1960s by Soedarso, “Indonesia: PKI and Trotskyist.”
99. As well as Reid (discussed below), see for example Howard Jones, Indonesia: The Possible Dream, p. 157; Caldwell and Utrecht, An Alternative History of Indonesia, p. 72, which opts for the description “so-called ‘national communist’ or ‘Trotskyite’”; Penders, note 58, p. 47 of Abu Hanifah’s Tales of a Revolution, and on p. 299 a reference by Abu Hanifah himself to Tan Malaka as “leader of the so-called ‘National Marxists’”; and Suzuki, “Tan Malaka: Perantauan and the Power of Ideas,” in People and Society in Indonesia, p. 31.
100. Nowhere in his writings does Tan Malaka allude to being at the Sixth Congress, nor indeed to returning at all to the Soviet Union after 1923. In interviews with Ruth McVey in 1959, both Semaun and Darsono denied that Tan Malaka attended the congress. From Ruth McVey’s account (Rise, p. 436, n. 18), it appears that Alphonso was actually one Mohammad Tohir (known more widely as Tadjudin according to Harry Poeze [Tan Malaka, p. 407]). “Alphonso” achieved some notoriety at the congress by disagreeing vehemently with Bukharin’s presentation of the theses on the colonial question, claiming that they advocated the same cooperation with bourgeois nationalists that had proved so disastrous in China. Bukharin retorted, in the fashion of Stalinist bureaucrats, by denouncing Alphonso as a “Trotskyite.” Since Tan Malaka had in fact criticized the theses at the Fourth Congress in 1922 and had disagreed sharply with the course of the PKI in 1926, it is easy to understand how people assumed that he was Alphonso and that he had earned the sobriquet. Even after the publication of McVey’s book in 1965, the assumption that Tan Malaka was Alphonso persists. Benedict Anderson, whose Java in a Time of Revolution does more than any other book on the revolution to place Tan Malaka’s role in perspective, simply repeats the assertion (p. 274) without mentioning McVey’s refutation. And Charles McLane, writing in 1966, even cites McVey in his assertion of Tan Malaka’s presence at the Sixth Congress (“Alphonso . . . was beyond much doubt Tan Malaka”), and annotates thus: “Most students of Indonesian Communism so assume—see Kahin and McVey—the only reason for questioning this judgement is Tan Malaka’s own testimony, in an autobiography written in the 1940s, that he did not return to Russia after his departure in 1923. . . . The autobiography, however is not noted for its accuracy” (Soviet Strategies in Southeast Asia, p. 99).
101. Pemberontakan, p. 123.
102. Some indication of the wide range of writers assigning the “Trotskyist” tag to Tan Malaka may be gleaned from the following references: Chaudry, The Indonesian Struggle, pp. 117-18; Kattenburg, “The Indonesian Question in World Politics, August 1945-January 1948,” p. 362 (which introduces Tan Malaka as a “pseudo-trotskyite”); Dahm, History of Indonesia in the Twentieth Century, p. 118; Thompson and Adloff, The Left Wing in South-East Asia, p. 285; Roeder, The Smiling General, p. 106; Caldwell and Utrecht, Alternative, p. 72 (“so-called . . . Trotskyite”). The principal source for these hand-me-down characterizations appears to be Kahin’s Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, long regarded as the most authoritative account of the 1945-1949 period of Indonesian history. Kahin himself does not describe Tan Malaka as a Trotskyist, but refers (p. 85) to the PKI leadership’s use of the label.
103. Peringatan sewindu hilangnja Tan Malaka.
104. PARI Manifesto in Mailrapport 446x/36, quoted in Jarvis, Partai Republik, app. 2, p. 2.
105. I have examined Writings of Leon Trotsky, 14 vols. (New York: Pathfinder, 1969-1979), and have also asked his translator, George Saunders, to check the recently opened “Trotsky Archives” in the Harvard University Library. He has found no reference to Tan Malaka.
106. Max Perthus, Henk Sneevliet: revolutionair-socialist in Europa en Asie; Fritjof Tichelman, Henk Sneevliet: een politieke biografie.
Indeed, without the apparatus of the Comintern, from which Sneevliet split in 1927, how was he to go about tracking down Tan Malaka, hidden in a remote village in southern China? Sneevliet himself was to split with Trotsky in 1938, and was executed on 13 April 1942 after leading the famous February 1941 strike of Dutch workers against the Nazis. The Fourth International, not formally founded until 1938, would have been in no position to launch such a search. Small in size, and in an isolated position during the rise of fascism and World War II, only the barest and most sporadic contact was maintained between Trotskyists of different countries until after the war.
107. See for example Wout Tieleman, “The Main Political Tendencies in Indonesia.” This article, written in July 1946, contained the following (p. 253): “About the beginning of February, we received the first reports in the Netherlands of the formation of a ‘People’s Front’ in Indonesia under the leadership of the ‘Trotskyist’ Tan Malakka. Despite the restrictions on communications from the interior of Java the report has now taken on more concrete form. The exact composition of this ‘People’s Front’ is not yet known. It was reported, however, that this ‘People’s Front’ included 140 different parties and groups. It is also not fully clear whether the ‘People’s Front’ is a coalition of the exploited classes with some of the owning classes as was the case with the People’s Front in Spain and France. However in view of the demands of this ‘People’s Front’, it seems sure that what was involved was a united front of the exploited masses. . . . According to latest reports, the ‘People’s Front’ also carried on propaganda for a change in the social structure of Indonesia, including the abolition of the Indonesian nobility and the division of the big estates.” This positive view of Tan Malaka in the Fourth International press continued, as in the following article written when rumors of his death reached Europe: “If confirmed, the assassination of Tan Malakka by the Indonesian republican government will take its place on a par with such political crimes perpetrated against the revolution as the assassination of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in 1919 and Leon Trotsky in 1940. . . . Although documentary material on the political history of the Indonesian Republic from 1945 to 1949 is still extremely inadequate, and although we only know of the activity of Tan Malakka through notes, letters and articles in periodicals which are often garbled, we can nevertheless retrace the essential states of his activity from the revolutionary leadership of the Indonesian People’s Front Organization, through the constitution of the People’s Revolutionary Movement to the formation of the Proletarian Party. The very names of these three organizations clearly illustrate the political evolution of Tan Malakka and the whole Indonesian revolutionary vanguard from the beginning of the Indonesian revolution to the present day” (Steen, “Tan Malakka—Revolutionary Hero,” pp. 274-75).
In September 1951, believing that Tan Malaka had not been killed, Fourth International published the first English translation of Gerpolek, with an introduction by Maurice Ferarez, who said (pp. 139-40), “After his break with the Comintern in 1927, Tan Malakka stood alone in establishing his line of conduct on the basis of revolutionary Marxist convictions. On many questions he arrived at conclusions approaching, or identical with, those of the Fourth International. . . . If the news [that he was not killed] is correct, we can hope to see the reappearance of Tan Malakka, the greatest and ablest of the Indonesian revolutionists in the struggle for complete Merdeka (Freedom) for the Indonesian people.” A French translation also appeared in Quatrième International, 9, no. 5-7 (Mai-Juillet 1951), and 10, no. 1 (Janvier 1952).
108. In 1967 Les Evans of the U.S. Socialist Workers party gave the following summary assessment: “Tan Malakka had never formally been a member of any Trotskyist organization, although certainly he was an outstanding revolutionary whose politics were ‘Trotskyist,’ i.e. revolutionary socialist, in the broad sense” (“Who Is Adam Malik?” p. 177). This assessment was reiterated in a fascinating article written by a member of the cadre of the PKI who took refuge in Europe following the 1965-1966 destruction of the party by the Indonesian military (Soedarso, “Indonesia”).
109. On the activities of the Indonesian exiles in Australia, and the support movement for the Indonesian revolution built in Australia, see Bondan, Genderang proklamasi di luar negeri; and Lockwood, Black Armada. An interesting illustration of the depth of feeling among the PARI exiles