Interpretations of the 1965 Indonesian Coup: A Review of the Literature

=== [PDF page 1] === Interpretations of the 1965 Indonesian Coup: A Review of the Literature van der Kroef, Justus M Pacific Affairs; Winter 1970; 43, 4; ProQuest pg. 557 Interpretations of the 1965 Indonesian Coup: A Renew of the Luterature Justus M. van der Kroef O* THE NIGHT OF SEPTEMBER 30, 1965 several hundred dissident military personnel, as well as members and followers of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and its front groups, staged an abortive coup d’état in Djakarta and in a few scattered locations in Central and West Java. Largely quelled within seventy-two hours, the coup marked a major turning point in Indonesia’s post-war history. Its failure was to inaugurate drastic realignments in the country’s domestic and foreign policies, and led directly to former President Sukarno’s fall from power and to the assumption of the presidency by General Suharto who had led the campaign against Gestapu (Gerakan Tiga Puluh September or “Thirty September Movement”), the term commonly given by Indonesians today to the coup.’ Despite a spate of publications on the coup that have appeared both in Indonesia and abroad in the past five years, critically important aspects of it have remained unclear and controversial. No serious student of Gestapu has denied that both the Indonesian Army and the PKI were involved in it. The controversy, rather, has focussed on the degree of involvement of each, particularly with respect to initiative and planning. Professor W. F. Wertheim, of the University of Amsterdam, a leading specialist on modern Indonesia, has regarded it as “highly probable” that the coup was “an internal army affair” reflecting “serious tensions” between certain officers in the Central Java Diponegoro Division, supported by the Air Force, and Army headquarters in Djakarta; not only was the role of the PKI leadership in the events of September 30 “hazy and unclear” but “there is little to prove that it was the PKI which started the whole affair,” whereas there were other indications “disproving” such a possibility.2 Essentially the same view was presented in the pages of the New 1¥For a fuller account of these developments see Justus M, van der Kroef, Indonesia Since Sukarno (Asia Pacific Publishing Company, Singapore, 1971, forthcoming). 2W. EF. Wertheim, “Indonesia Before and After the Untung Coup,” Pacific Affairs, vol. 39 (Spring-Summer 1966), p. 115. One Indonesian legal scholar, Professor Ernst Utrecht, also has asserted that “the initiative” of the Gestapu coup “lay with the military,” although party cadres 557 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 2] === Pacific Affairs Left Review by Lucien Rey, a name that had not up to that point figured in Indonesian studies (and has not appeared since), in a circumstantial account of the coup; his article considered the “mainspring” of the coup to be “dissident officers and troops” of the Diponegoro Division, who had presumably become “disenchanted” with the officers of the top Army command because of corruption, its “decadent and luxurious habits,” and its failure to prosecute Indonesia’s “confrontation” campaign against Malaysia more vigorously.* It may be noted that Wertheim nowhere explains the reasons for the “serious tensions” within the Army, while similarly the reasons advanced by Rey for the internal Army “disenchantment” seem rather unconvincing. While some top Army commanders were corrupt, most were not, and those that were could hardly be considered more so than some field-grade and junior officers, including a few in the Diponegoro Division itself. In any case, it would seem strange to criticize the top Army leadership for practices nearly endemic in all branches of Indonesian government service and commerce* As for the alleged failure to prosecute the anti-Malaysia campaign more vigorously, it must be remembered that Sukarno himself held ultimate responsibility for this campaign, sometimes interfering directly in command decisions, while those Army commanders in the front line of actual “confrontation” operations (e.g. along the Sarawak-Indonesian border) were anti-Malaysia pro-Communists like Brigadier-General Supardjo, himself deeply involved in the coup.® Personal jealousies and conflicts may well exist in the Indonesian armed forces. But those who have argued that in the coup the Communists “were the victims of circumstances, whereas the of the PKI were informed and prepared, and provided “moral assistance” to Untung and his associates. PKI party fronts, like the women’s organization, Gerwani, some of whose members participated in Gestapu, were according to Utrecht “autonomous” groups “merely affiliated with the PKI." Cf£, Utrecht’s interview in De Volkskrant (Amsterdam), August 29, 1970, and Utrecht’s book Indonesié’s Nieuwe Orde: Ontbinding en Herkolonisatie (Van Gennep, Amsterdam, 1970). 8 Lucien Rey, “Dossier of the Indonesian Drama," New Left Review, March-April 1966, No, 36, Pp. 27- £One Indonesian critic of Rey has claimed that the Army generals assassinated by the Gestapu rebels were particularly known for their “simple mode of living” and for their “integrity”; indeed the wives of two of the slain generals (Suprapto and Harjono) were said to have been engaged in couturier work and in the cultivation of orchids “in order to make ends meet,”” Oejeng Soewargana, Voor De Derde Maal Mislukt. De Mislukte Communistische Coup van 1965, 1969, mimeo, p. 22 (essay on “Reconstructie van de Coup”). Such relative penury, it need hardly be argued, scarcely constitutes a defense against corruption, rather the reverse, although in fact there is no evidence that the, slain generals were corrupt. 5 On Supardjo’s involvement in the coup, see his trial record by the special military court: Mahkamah Militer Luar Biasa, Perkara: M.S. Supardjo, Ex. Brigdjen TNI dalam peristiwa Gerakan 30 September. Berkas: No, PTS-19/MLB—H/SPD/1967 tanggal 12 Maret 1067 (Djakarta, mimeo, 1969), I am grateful to Mr, Oejeng Suwargana of Bandung, Indonesia, for making this trial record of Supardjo’s and those of other suspects in the Gestapu affair available to me, 558 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 3] === Interpretations of the 1965 Indonesian Coup coup attempt itself is better explained in terms of military rivalries,”® have yet to explain just what these rivalries were, who was involved in them, and how the Gestapu affair resulted from them. While Wertheim, in three or four sentences, details “a few circumstances which more or less compromised the PKI”—omitting all essentials from the point of view of those persuaded of significant Communist complicity in the Gestapu plot—Rey gives a slightly fuller account of the PKI’s involvement. He admits such things as the participation of members of the Communist youth front Pemuda Rakjat (People’s Youth) in the abduction and killing of three of the six generals assassinated in the coup, the Pemudas’ clandestine training at Halim airforce base in preparation for the coup, and their participation in the Gestapu rebellion in Djokjakarta, Central Java. Contrary to persuasive evidence that Pemudas frightfully mutilated the three captured generals,” Rey, however, denies proof of “disfigurements or other atrocities,” and throughout his treatment of other indications of PKI involvement attempts to put the Communists in as favorable a light as possible. He notes, for example, that the PKI newspaper Harian Rakjat, appearing on October 2, the day after the coup, though “hedging violently” editorially, pledged support for the rebels and that it carried a cartoon depicting a CIA-marked Indonesian general smashed by a fist—labelled “September 30 movement.” One may quarrel as to whether the editorial “hedged violently”—it did mention once that the staging of a coup was “condemnable” and “counter-revolutionary” but went on to praise “the correctness” of the September 30 movement, saying that “the sympathy and support of the People” was “surely on the side” of the movement. However, there is little question that the editorial’s publication, along with the cartoon, provided the PKI’s enemies with strong suspicion of its adhesion to Gestapu. Rey declares that it is “difficult to explain these blunders,” but suggests the possibility that the Army, after seizing the paper’s plant, proceeded to print the editorial “in order to discredit the PKI.” Not only is no proof whatever supplied for this conjecture—indeed available evidence suggests that the Army did not occupy the Harian Rakjat presses before October 2—but Rey seems unwilling even to entertain the possibility that the PKI did, in fact, favor the Gestapu movement, and that its editor (who was a member of the party’s Politburo) or an editorial associate, may have meant every word when he wrote in the editorial that “we the People, fully comprehend” what the leaders of the coup were trying to accomplish with their “patriotic movement,” i.e. “to preserve the Revolution and the People.” 6 Michael Leifer, “The Process of Political Change in Indonesia,” Royal Central Asian Journal, vol. 54 (1967), p. 266. 7 Cf, the confession of Mrs, Djamilah, who participated in the butchering of the three generals by means of razor blades. Sinar Harapan (Djakarta), November 5, 1965. 559 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 4] === Pacific Affairs In the same vein Rey describes the highly revealing presence of the PKI chairman, D. N. Aidit, at Halim air base, where the principal plotters, including Sukarno, had congregated, as apparently having occurred against his will. Aidit was “seized” and brought to Halim, Rey says, by “plotters” (not further identified) who “must have calculated” that both Sukarno’s and Aidit’s “backing” were required because the plotters’ military support was so “thin.” Admittedly the circumstances of Aidit’s appearance at Halim base are still not clear. Several plotters subsequently affirmed that Aidit arrived on the night of September 30 about eleven o’clock,® i.e. some ten hours prior to Sukarno’s arrival there, and two hours before even the Communist Pemudas went from Halim (where they had secretly trained and congregated) into the city in order to kill or apprehend the Axmy’s top commanders as the start of the coup. In other words Aidit was at Halim, the informal headquarters of principal coup leaders, several hours before the coup had even begun. This does not prove that, even so, he could not have been “seized” by unnamed plotters. But, again, Rey evidently declines to consider the possibility, which other students of the PKI’s involvement in Gestapu have asserted, that Aidit knew of, and indeed masterminded, the coup from the beginning, and that this accords with his early arrival at Halim. After having flown to Jogjakarta, Central Java, during the night of October 1, Aidit “drove round Central Java,” says Rey, attempting to put down the Gestapu insurgency in the region. Why he should do so is not clear and, in any case, does not accord with other accounts which describe the PKI chairman rather as trying to organize continuing resistance in Central Java after his arrival and until his capture and execution.® It is noteworthy that Wertheim’s and Rey’s attempts to minimize the role of the PKI is in curious contrast with what Indonesian Communists 8 John Hughes, Indonesian Upheaval (David McKay Company, New York 1967), p. 68. Aidit’s appearance at Halim, according to testimony given in the trial of Lt. Col. Untung, one of the principal military leaders of the coup, was part of a plan of the Gestapu plotters to bring a number of prominent personages, including President Sukarno and the PKI cabinet minister Njoto, to relative safety, Questions asked by Aidit during the trip to Halim of the chauffeur who drove him, and of Airforce Major Sujono, one of the Gestapu principals, who accompanied Aidit, clearly indicate the latter’s complete familiarity with the military preparations of the coup, Cf, B, Gunawan, Kudetd, Staatsgreep in Djakarta, De Achtergronden van de 30 September-Beweging in Indonesié (J. A. Boom en Zoon, Meppel, The Netherlands, 1968), p. 155. In Left political circles it appears to be considered axiomatic, however, that an unsuspecting Aidit was somehow lured to Halim base. See, e.g. Vietnam Bulletin/Indonesie Informatie (Sassenheim, Holland), August I, 1970, Pp. 5-7- This is a publication of the so-called Komité Indonesié in the Netherlands, among them a number of leading Dutch scholars on Indonesia, strongly opposed to the present Suharto government in Indonesia. 9 CE. Matinja Aidit Marsekai Lubang Buaja (Diakarta, Hazera publishers, 1967), pp. 31-36 and 53-74, and Boerhan and Soebekti, Fakta dan Latar-Belakang “Gerakan 30 September" (Lembaga Pendidikan IImu Pengetahuan dan Kebudajaan Kosgoro, Djakarta, 1966), pp. 129- 131. According to the Indonesian Army the PKI had planned to make Central Java a principal battle area after the coup was launched (Djakarta Daily Mail, November ro, 1965). 560 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 5] === Interpretations of the 1965 Indonesian Coup themselves, not just in their own trial testimony, but from relative safety outside Indonesia, have been saying about the coup. Early in 1967, for example, a “Marxist-Leninist Group of the PKI” (an organization of PKI émigrés which, despite its name, is from a doctrinal-tactical point of view Moscow-oriented) published an analysis of the party’s past policy, including its relationship to the Gestapu affair. Not only is the PKI’s involvement openly admitted in this analysis, but the purpose of the coup is described as “the establishment of a state power that would be a harbinger of a people’s democracy.”2° An identical explanation appears in the World Marxist Review (Prague), a principal international medium of Moscow-oriented Communist parties; here the coup is described as having in view the establishment of a “Revolutionary Council” composed of “nationalists, Muslims and Communists” as “a preliminary to People’s Democracy.”™* It is difficult to read such pronouncements without concluding that authoritative Communist voices in fact regarded the Gestapu affair as having been intended as a step toward the creation of a Communist state in Indonesia. In the middle of 1968 the journal Tricontinental (published in Havana and describing itself as the “Theoretical Organ of the Executive Secretariat of the Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America”) printed excerpts from the trial of Sudisman, former PKI Politburo member, who had been arrested in December 1966, after having attempted to rally the scattered and shattered PKI in the coup’s aftermath (after a trial in mid-1967 he was executed on October 29, 1968). According to Tricontinental’s version of Sudisman’s testimony, he drafted the decrees and “drew up the plan” for the “revolutionary council” of the Gestapu, and “was present in Halim, Lubang Buaja and Pondok Gede (the AURI or Indonesian Airforce base) at the time the 30th of September Movement began.” Sudisman added that though no responsibility should fall on the PKI as a whole for the coup, “all actions were executed by individuals who happened to be members of the PKI.”?* One may dismiss the last claim as mere grandiioquence, without necessarily impugning the legitimacy of Sudisman’s readiness to involve himself and his party in the coup. 10 To Brothers at Home and Comrades Abroad Fighting Against Imperialism for Independence, Peace, Democracy and Socialism. For a Sound Indonesian Revolution (Tribune Publications, Colombo, 1967), p. 38. 11 Suchahyo, “The ‘New Order’ in Indonesia,” World Marxist Review, October, 1967, p. 47. For other admissions by surviving PKI spokesmen that their party was involved in Gestapu cf. also Uri Ra‘anan, “Indonesia, 1965," in William G, Andrews and Uri Ra’anan, et al., The Politics of the Coup d’Etat (Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1969), pp. 63-64, note 5. Particularly in the PKI’s emigré Moscow-oriented faction the view has now come to prevail that not the PKI as a whole, but a group of PKI leaders afflicted with “Leftist adventurism” and “detached” from the party were responsible for the Gestapu debacle, See, e.g. World Marxist Review, September 1969, p. 33, and June 1970, Pp. 47. 12 “Sudisman Against Treason,” Tricontinental, No. 7, July-August 1968, pp. 18-19. 561 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 6] === Pacific Affairs Perhaps the most elaborate attempt to minimize the PKI’s role in the coup was made in an unpublished analysis by writers said to be associated with the Modern Indonesia Project of Cornell University, and widely known as the “Cornell Report.” The anonymity of the authors and the secrecy surrounding the issuance of this report have not enhanced its credibility, and neither have adverse remarks about the report appearing in the Indonesian press, attributed to the director of Cornell’s Modern Indonesia Project.1? Nevertheless, during the first year and a half or so after Gestapu the report had considerable influence, especially among younger American scholars on Indonesia, and even today some of its hypotheses continue to find sympathetic attention. Its conclusion is that although both the PKI and President Sukarno were “deeply involved” in the coup, “it was after the coup plans were well underway.” Both the President and the Indonesian Communists are said to have been “more the victims than the initiators of the events,” and the PKI in particular “was entangled before it knew what was happening” to it. The Report also sees the conspiracy as originating among dissatisfied officers of the Army’s Central Java Diponegoro Division, and (as in Rey’s analysis) also considers these officers’ dislike for the “metropolitan decadence of Djakarta” and “widespread corruption” (both contrary to their own supposed sense of national revolutionary élan) as among the motives for the attempt to seize power. Moreover, the Report declares that, while some Diponegoro troops were pro-Communist, those involved in the coup could more readily be turned toward some kind of “ Pascism’ of the Japanese type” and that indeed, the “brains” of the coup, among them two high ranking Army officers, including an “Americantrained” Brigadier, “were strongly anti-Communist.” They were, however, apparently prepared to use the PKI, and the latter was kept throughout the coup “completely bamboozled” and under the control of the Army plotters. The notion of “bamboozling” the PKI is in line with other references throughout the Report stressing the ineptness of the Communists; one is reminded here of Rey’s use of the word “blunders” to describe Harian Rakjat’s October 2, 1965 editorial and cartoon (the Report describes the editorial as “foolish hesitant”). Throughout the Report an impression is given of a “confused” PKI, making “the regrettable error of believing that they were so much more intelligent than the military that it would always be they who would use the military and not vice versa.” Party chairman D. N. Aidit is described as a “dupe,” his “party sub- 13 For the circumstances surrounding the publication of the “Cornell Report” see Arnold C. Brackman, The Communist Collapse in Indonesia (W. W. Norton and Company, New York, 1969), pp. 175-189. The Director of Cornell's Modern Indonesia Project was reported to have termed the Report “sarcastic and childish,” and declared that he no longer believed as “in the past” that the Gestape affair was “an internal affair of the Army” (The Djakarta Times, May 10, 1967). 562 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 7] === Interpretations of the 1965 Indonesian Coup ordinates” as “confused, bewildered,” while the Communist-front Pemuda Rakjat killers (as a result of successful scheming by rebellious officers) “were brought into the act entirely without previous knowledge what was in the wind” in order to “incriminate and compromise the PKI.” Little or no evidence is presented for all these assertions. Indeed, the writers of the Report admit on occasion that “We are guessing, of course,” and that in weighing “probabilities” in the writing of their account at some junctures “assumption has not been sharply distinguished from fact for the sake of maintaining coherence.” More important, the writers have not felt it necessary to provide an explanation for their central hypothesis that they advance (the “duping” or “bamboozling” of the PKI, its leaders and fronts) while at the same time well known facts about the Indonesian Communists are ignored in their presentation. One searches in vain among the Report’s intricate attempts at reconstruction of Gestapu for reasons why the largest, most influential political party in Indonesia would permit itself to be inveigled into its own destruction, After all, it was headed by demonstrable pastmasters in manipulating and exploiting every nuance of Indonesian politics during the preceding decade and a half; it had at its disposal an extensive intelligence apparatus of its own, closely meshed with that of leading cabinet ministers, including deputy-premier Subandrio’s Central Intelligence Agency (Badan Pusat Intellidjén, BPI);** and more than any other group in Indonesia it had good cause to suspect any overtures to forge common tactics—let alone a plot to overthrow the government— coming from the direction of the Army. Instead, omitting all evidence of the PKI’s steadily heightening militancy and accelerating drive to power in the months before the coup, the Report rejects the thought that the party had decided to attempt to seize control, either because of such domestic considerations as Sukarno’s rumored illness, or because of possible external persuasion from the People’s Republic of China. Aidit’s open call to the PKI and the Indonesian people in May 1965 to “intensify and further develop the revolutionary situation” not only in Indonesia but in Asia and Africa as well; the party-directed campaign of seizures of land supposedly belonging to landlords (the so-called aksi sepihak or “unilateral action”) and to foreign estates; the ever sharper clashes with the Army and with Muslims; the increasingly tense political atmosphere induced by party demands for stronger measures against kabir (from kapitalis-birokrat, a favorite PKI epithet for Army officers in public service functions) and against “imperialist culture” such as American films and Western books—all these reflected the fact, as one perceptive account put it, 14The permeability of the respective intelligence curtains might be indicated by the fact that the chief of army intelligence was a close relative of a member of the PKI politburo.” Ann Ruth Willner, “The Communist Phoenix and the Indonesian Garuda,” World Politics, April 1967, p. 513, note 14. 563 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 8] === Pacific Affairs that it had become “increasingly apparent to the PKI leadership that none of its other strategic goals could be achieved until the party took effective control of the Indonesian Government.”*® Already at the close of December 1964, reports had appeared in the Malaysian (though not in the censor-ridden Indonesian) press about a recently exposed PKI Central Committee document describing intensified party agitation planned for 1965 in preparation for an eventual coup.’® Neither such data, however, nor reports in the Malaysian and Thai press (at least two weeks before Gestapu occurred) on the covert supply by People’s China of arms and military equipment to the Indonesian Communists “who are getting ready for a showdown with the armed force,” are considered in the Cornell Report, This is not to say that the Report wholly denies Communist complicity in the coup; for example, it admits that “people from PKI-affiliated associations” such as the party’s women’s front Gerwani and the Youth front Pemuda Rakjat “were involved in the killings” of the Army generals at the Halim base on the night of the coup. The point is that such complicity is either minimized or explained as a result of Army trickery and as a desire to “compromise” the party. Never do the writers of the Report (nor Rey or Wertheim) give serious consideration to the evidence, or even to the possibility, that the Gestapu events were a natural culmination of the PKI’s drive to power, the intensifying tactics of which had already been evident for some months. Some Indonesian sources, particularly those close to the official view of the present Indonesian government, not only emphasize PKI leadership in the preparation of the coup, but also view the coup as a planned climax to the PKI’s accelerating thrust to seize the state. One such account, seemingly particularly destined for foreign readers and for those influenced by the Cornell Report, is by Nugroho Notosusanto, director of the Historical Institute of the Indonesian Defence Ministry and a History Lecturer at the University of Indonesia, and Ismail Saleh, of the Army’s Judge Advocate office, an Instructor at the Indonesian Army’s Staff and Command School and a graduate in law.’® They rely heavily on military interrogation and trial records of captured PKI leaders and other coup participants, among 15 John O, Sutter, “Two Faces of Konfrontasi: ‘Crush Malaysia’ and the Gestapu,” Asian Survey, October 1966, p. 534. On the PKI's accelerating militancy see D, N. Aidit’s political report to the fourth plenum of the PKI Central ‘Committee in Harian Rakjat (Djakarta), May 12-15, 1965; also J, M, van der Kroef, “Indonesian Communism’s Drive to Power,” Communist Affairs, March-April, 1965, pp. 3-9, and “Indonesian Communism's ‘Revolutionary Gymnastics’,” Asian Survey, May 1965, pp. 217-232, 16 The Straits Times (Kuala Lumpur), December 24, 1964. 47 Sabah Times (Kota Kinabalu), September 14, 1965. 18 Nugroho Notosusanto and Ismail Saleh, The Coup Attempt of the “September 30 Movement” in Indonesia (P. T. Pembimbing Masa, Djakarta, 1968). 564 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 9] === Interpretations of the 1965 Indonesian Coup them Politburo-member Sudisman, Central Java party-leader Wirjomartono, and former Infantry Major Muljono, of the Diponegoro Division, who on October 1, briefly seized control of Djokjakarta with the Gestapu rebels.?® They contend that the Gestapu affair was in fact planned by a secret Biro Chusus (Special Bureau) in the PKI headed by Aidit, which was used by the party “for special, covert operations” and had a membership operating anonymously or under aliases;?° it was the Biro which sought out and persuaded (if they needed persuading) several dozen Army officers. Two principal party members of the central Biro office in Djakarta were the “guiding spirits” behind Lieutenant-Colonel Untung, battalion commander in the Tjakrabirawa presidential guard and one of the chief Gestapu leaders in the Army. Central and branch officers of the Biro allegedly had close coordination. According to Notosusanto and Saleh, Wirjomartono, who headed the Central Java branch of the Biro, directed Army conspirators in the Diponegoro Division to seize the city of Djokjakarta.** While the existence of the Biro Chusus as early as November 1964, and its role in contacting “certain officers who had shown the greatest receptivity to the party’s advances,” have been accepted by other students of Indonesian Communism,”” the fact remains that all evidence for the existence of the Biro thus far has come from sources (such as the interrogation reports and trial testimony elicited by the Army or otherwise) under the Army’s control, If this fact in itself is not already enough to raise questions about the reliability of such evidence, there is also the fact that the Army since the coup has been engaged in a continuous, and often indiscriminate and bloody, anti-Communist pogrom and that, even if due allowance is 19 Muljono’s testimony and trial record provide one of the few available sources on the still obscure Gestapn movement in Djokjakarta. See Hasil Sidang Mahmillub Ke HW dalam Pemeriksaan Perkara Terdakwa/Terhukum Ex, Major Moeljono Soerjowardojo di Jogjakarta, Tgl. 20 Notosusanto and Saleh, op, cit., p. 1x. On the operations of the Biro Chusus see the testimony during the trial of PKI Central Committee member Sjam alias Kamarusaman who played a major role in the Béro’s operations in Djakarta: Mahkamah Militer Luar Biasa, Putusan Nomor: PTS-027/MLB-1/K 1968 Perkara Kamarusaman bin Ahmad Mubaidah (mimeo, Djakarta, 1969), pp. 17-19, 41, 77-78, 83, 87 and passim, According to an unpublished analysis by Professor Victor Fic, the Biro Chusus may have been established by Aidit about the time of the latter’s return from China in the Fall of 1963. See Jerome R. Bass, ‘The PKI and the Attempted Coup,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 1 (March 1970), pp. 98-99. 21 On the basis of his own trial testimony and as well as that of other witnesses Wirjomartono’s centrally directing role in the Djokjakarta Gestaptes movement and in the establishment there of a local “revolutionary council” similar to the one formed by the Gestapu rebels in Djakarta seems overwhelmingly substantiated. See Mahkamah Militér Luar Biasa, Staf Oditur, Berkas Perkara Terdakwara; Wirjomartono alias Sujono alias Sumarsono alias Umar (mimeo, 1968, 22 Douglas Hindley, “Indonesian Politics 1965-7, The September Movement and the Fall of Sukarno,” The World Today, August 1968, p. 348. 565 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 10] === Pacific Affairs made for the persistence of an underground PKI organization (the party itself was formally outlawed in March 1966), the Army and the Suharto government today appear to depend, to some degree at least, on a “Red scare” to justify their policies.2? A survey of the publications on the Gestapu affair that have appeared thus far in Indonesia leaves one with an impression of a heavy and frequently uncritical emphasis on the role of the PKI in preparing for the coup, while, in turn, the participation of Army dissidents, though admitted, is subjected to much less analysis and attention. This is true for the spate of popular and journalistic accounts no less than for publications by such prominent Indonesian figures as former Defense Minister (now Consultative Assembly chairman) General A, H. Nasution, or for political figures such as Sutomo (Bung Tomo).** This point is worth stressing because even now the available evidence suggests, according to the comprehensive and balanced account of the coup by the American journalist John Hughes, that while “There is no question of course that the Indonesian Communist Party was up to its neck in the coup attempt,” it is still “open to debate” whether the PKI actually planned the entire affair “and gave the actual signal to jump” or whether the Communists “jumped at somebody else’s beckoning.”** Hughes believes that several different elements participated in the coup (Army dissidents, Communists, and Sukarno), each acting for different motives. He does not mention the Biro Chusus, but makes the important point that PKI leaders and military plotters “enjoyed close liaison;” thus it was the Communists who signaled the previously named Brigadier Supardjo to leave his post (without authorization) in Menggaian, West Kalimantan, and come to Djakarta on September 28 in order to assume his sphere of responsibility 28 Cf, Justus M. van der Kroef, “Indonesian Communism Since the 1965 Coup,” Pacific Affairs, Spring 1970, pp. 34-60. 24 Sutomo (Bung Tomo), Sesudah “Madiun” dan “Gestapu” lantas Apa? (Penerbit Balapan, Djakarta, 1966), and A. H. Nasution, Proloog, Peristiwa dan Epiloog G-j0-S/PKI (Tjandra Kartika, Djakarta, 1967). Among other popular Indonesian accounts see e.g. Dharmawan Tjondronegoro Ledakan Fitnah Subversi G-z3o-S (P. T. Matoa, Djakarta, 1965); Susilomurti and S. Etjip, Teror Subuh, Fakta-Fakta Penghianatan G 30 S /PRKI (Jajasan Dharma Sedjahtera, 1966), and Redaksi “Merdeka,” Masalah Pembubaran PKI (Merdeka Press, Djakarta, 1966). These are often little more than chronologies of the coup, drawn from the daily press and interspersed with highly colored comments, though they are occasionally also of some documentary value, The trial of former deputy premier Subandrio produced a spate of inflammatory popular publications; see c.g. Redaksi “Analisa,"” Kisah dan Nasib Hadji Dr. Subandrio (Pustaka Penerbit “Analisa,” Djakarta 1966), and Bodarutaman Akasah, ed., 25 Oktober 1966: Subandrio Mati (Pertjetakan “Badar,” Bandung, 19667), What Indonesians have been reading about Gestapu thus far is likely, in retrospect, to be more valuable as an index to the manipulation of their opinion and feelings concerning the September 30 events than as a contribution to an understanding of the coup itself, The same must be said of the semi-official, semi-hagiographiec biography by O. G. Roeder, The Smiling General. President Socharto of Indonesia (Gunung Agung, Djakarta, 1969), whose brief account of the September 30 affair (pp. 7-20) brings nothing new. 25 John Hughes, op. cit., p. 114- 566 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 11] === Interpretations of the 1965 Indonesian Coup in the forthcoming coup.2* And there is evidence, Hughes notes, that Airforce Major Sujono, commander of Halim base’s security force, who from the start closely collaborated with the PKI and who may well have been a party member himself, “had been deputed by the Communists” to tutor Lieutenant-Colonel Untung in Communist ideology. Supardjo and the Airforce Chief, Vice Marshal Omar Dhani, whose pro-Communist sympathies were well known, also assisted Aidit’s escape to Central Java, when the coup in Djakarta had evidently failed, by providing him with a plane. But if the PKI’s “close liaison” with Army plotters, no less than the presumed existence of the party’s Biro Chusus, gravely undermines the theory that the Communists became involved only “after the coup plans were well underway” and that they were “duped” and “entangled” by the Army before they “knew what was happening,” there still remains the unanswered question of the exact extent of the Armed Forces’ (particularly the Army’s) involvement in Gestapu. Official (including Army-inspired) accounts carefully enumerate the handful of units, such as Untung’s first battalion of the Tjakrabirawa palace guard regiment, and the 454th battalion of the Diponegoro Division and the 530th battalion of the Brawidjaja Division, that were involved in the conspiracy, as well as the two dozen or so field-grade and general officers who took an active part.?? The problem is that, particularly since 1967, arrests of military in all service branches, but especially in the Army, and accusations of participation in the Gestapz affair or in subsequent underground PKI activities (little distinction is made in the reports) have greatly accelerated. On September 21, 1968, for example, the then Djakarta military commander Amir Mahmud, declared that recently some 350 Army personnel, including a number of generals and colonels, had been arrested for involvement in the Gestapu affair, while as recently as the end of January 1970, the Indonesian Airforce announced that a total of 800 of its members, “including four senior officers,” had been detained over the past four years on charges of involvement in Gestapu.”* On March 20, 1970, the official Indonesian news agency Antara announced that Colonel Kistam, regimental commander in West Kalimantan had been arrested for Communist activity and had admitted that he had been a Com- 26 During Supardjo’s trial testimony was offered that the telegram received by him on September 28, summoning him to Djakarta ostensibly because his child was ill, was in reality a code agreed on earlier by Biro Chusus leader Sjam and Supardijo. Cf. the testimony of Sujono Pradigdo in Mahkamah Militer Luar Biasa, Berkas: Berita Atjara Persidangan Sidang Ke-I s/a Ke-XVI, Perkara: M.S. Supardjo Ex. Brigdjen T. N. 1. dalam Peristiwa Gerakan 30 September (mimeo, Djakarta, 1968), Vol. I, p. 149, and Vol. HI, pp. 598-599. 27 See e.g, Staf Pertahanan-Keamanan, Lembaga Sedjarah, go Hari Kegagalan G-30-S (Lembaga Sedjarah, Djakarta, 1966, 2nd, ed.), pp. 23-29, and Fakta-Fakta Persoalan Sekitar “Gerakan 30 September” (Pusat Penerangan Angkatan Darat, P, N. Balai Pustaka, Djakarta, 1966). 28 Kompas (Djakarta), August 9, 12, and September 23, 1968; also Antara Daily News Bulletin, Vol. 22, No. 691, January 27, 1970. 567 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 12] === Pacific Affairs munist since 1960, The problem of non-PKI and non-Armed Forces involvement in Gestapu also remains: may many more civilians have been involved in the plot than was originally believed? What is one to think, for example, of the announcement early in March 1970 by an Indonesian Police Inspector- General that a recent “rescreening” of the Public Works and Electricity Department revealed that “8,549 of the total of 20,000 officials of the department throughout the country are communist elements”??° Related to these questions has been the problem of “Army provocation” of the PKI, specifically the question of the existence of a Dewan Djenderal (Council of Generals) supposedly formed to seize power from Sukarno. Communist sources, from the editorial on October 2, 1965, in Harian Rakjat and the alleged confession of PKI chairman Aidit made shortly before his execution on November 23, 1965, to the trial testimony of such Politburo members as Njono and subsequent analyses of the coup by Indonesian Communist émigrés, are all agreed that the Gestapu plotters came together and acted in order to forestall a supposed take-over of the government by a “Council of Generals.’°° Military and other official Indonesian sources, on the other hand, have consistently denied that there was such a council, and such denials cannot altogether be ignored. The public trials of such principal Army plotters as Supardjo or Untung, or the available records on the interrogation of Communists involved, have yielded little persuasive evidence of the Council’s existence.24 And if top Army commanders, 29 Antara Daily News Bulletin, Vol, 22, No. 721, March 4, 1970, There appears to be no discernible end to the campaign of discovering new Communists or Gestapu sympathizers, On May 2, 1970 Antara reported that some 80 members of the armed forces had been arrested recently for allegedly secret “Communist activities.” Late in September 1970 the Chief of Staff of the Sixth Military Region, Brigadier Somali, was suspended from his duties while an investigation was proceeding into the extent of his alleged involvement with the Gestapu affair. Suspicion of Somali, according to his superiors, was at least partly founded on a report that before the Gestapu affair one of the principal coup leaders (the earlier mentioned Brigadier Supardjo) had visited Somali to ask for gasoline, and had left him a copy of one of Sukarno’s speeches in exchange! Kompas, September 30, 1970. 40 For Aidit’s confession see Arthur J. Dommen, “The Attempted Coup in Indonesia,” The China Quarterly, January-March 1966, pp, 168-170. On Njono’s discussion of the Dewan Djenderal see G-30-S. Dihadapan Mahmillub I (Perkara Nyono) (P. T. Pembingbing Masa, Djakarta, 1966), pp. 33-36, 40, 42-43, For a PKI émigré explanation see To Brothers at Home and Comrades Abroad..., Op. Cit., p. 38. 81 There are two sources of evidence for the alleged existence of the Council of Generals. One consists entirely of statements by, and hearsay evidence all ultimately traceable to, PKI leaders and cadres, including party chairman Aidit and PKI parliamentary deputy Hardjowisastro, The fatter informed BPI staff chief Sutarto, who in turn informed Subandrio, The second source is a telegram, supposed to have been written by the British Ambassador to Indonesia, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, to Sir Harold Caccia in the British Foreign Office. This telegram (dated March 24, 1965) which presumably fell into Subandrio’s hands two months later, refers to some kind of “enterprise” to be carried out by “our local army friends” and also suggests an American awareness of the scheme. At his trial Subandrio was unable or unwilling to indicate the authenticity of the purported telegram, the contents of which he said he communicated to Sukarno. The latter discussed the matter with the Army Chief, General Ahmad Yani, who, 568 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 13] === Interpretations of the 1965 Indonesian Coup particularly those killed on the night of September 30, were in fact involved in a conspiracy, they were remarkably negligent in providing for their own security, or for that of the capital, by permitting entry into Djakarta of such units as the above-mentioned 454th and 530th battalions from Central Java which had been effectively subverted and were to be part of the Gestapu main force. Yet, as Hughest notes, “It is difficult to believe that Indonesia’s top generals did not, in fact, have some plan laid to assume power. In the atmosphere of those days, they would have been remarkably naive if they had not made some preparations.” Did such a plan come to the attention of the PKI leaders and provoke them to action? One person who could have helped to provide an answer, and whose own role in the coup is likely to remain controversial for years to come, is Indonesia’s deposed President, Sukarno, kept in well guarded seclusion, until his death on June 21, 1970. There is little doubt that Sukarno knew a plot of dissident Army officers and PKI leaders was afoot—Brigadier- General Sugandhi in fact warned him the day before the coup that the conspirators were about to strike, but Sukarno turned him aside, berating Sugandhi for “anti-Communist phobia.” Moreover, U. S. officials are reported to have evidence that Sukarno, through the coup, had intended to turn Indonesia into an Indonesian version of a Communist “People’s Democracy.”** Certainly the secret contacts which Sukarno maintained after the coup’s disastrous failure with principal plotters like Supardjo and Aidit, and the protection he tried to extend to them and to the Communist Party generally through his personal prestige and office, are in keeping with his silent knowledge of, if not acquiescence in the Gestapu conspiracy. As the perceptive account by the American journalist Robert Shaplen has sumi according to one witness at the Subandrio trial, said that the only “Council of Generals” in existence dealt with promotions of higher Army officers, not with affairs of state, The existence of the “Gilchrist telegram” has not, to the author's knowledge, been formally denied by Gilchrist himself. See, e.g. G-30-S. Dihadapan Mahmillub 1 (Perkara Njona), op. cit., pp. 131-133, and the Subandrio trial record Mahkamah Militer Luar Biasa. Berkas No. PTS-013/MLB-X1/ BDR/1966 Tanggal 23 Oktober 1966. Perkara: Hadji Dr. Subandrio (mimeo, Djakarta, 1968), Vol. I, p. 360 and Vol. II, pp. 24-30, 257-290, See also Oejeng Suwargana and Nugroho Notosusanto, Rentjana Peladjaran Terurat tentang Komunisme (Bandung, 1967), p. 111. The Dutch journalist Willem Oltmans, already in July 1962, reported the existence of a “Council of Generals” purportedly designed as a military junta to take over power from President Sukarno. Oltmans claims information about the Council came from highly placed Indonesian sources, close to the Army’s leadership. An Indonesian Army spokesman officially denied the existence of the “Council” and its alleged plan of action. See Willem L, Oltmans, De Verraders (P. R, van Amelrooij, Utrecht, 1968), pp. 205-206, 82 Cf, the report of Chalmers M. Roberts in The Washington Post, October 13, 1965. On Sugandhi’s conversation with Sukarno see also Keterangan-Keterangan Bekas Menko/Hankam Berhubung dengan PEL-Nawaksara (Penerbit “Tjandra-Kartika,” Djakarta, 1967), pp. 16-17. But see also Donald E, Weatherbee, “Interpretations of Gestapu, the 1965 Indonesian Coup,” World Affairs, March 1970, p. 312: “At Halim, Sukarno refused to give his blessings to the coup-maker’s Revolutionary Council and ordered General Supardjo, the highest ranking member of the military coup group, to stop the movement.” 569 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 14] === Pacific Affairs marized it: “Whatever role Sukarno played in the actual execution of the coup, he clearly demonstrated a sense of responsibility, even of concern, for those who had been involved in it, and he also continued afterward to defend its proclaimed revolutionary goals.”** In accordance with the Suharto government’s policy, which kept Sukarno isolated and discredited but denied him the limelight of a trial with specific accusations which might provoke unforeseen consequences in Indonesia’s unstable domestic political condition, official Indonesian accounts today of the Gestapu affair limit mention of Sukarno to an indispensible minimum, taking care to leave unanswered the formal question of his involvement. This does not matter much, since there is no serious disagreement among students of the period that Sukarno was heavily compromised by his conduct before, during, and after the Gestapu affair, But another incident may be mentioned here, as it has thus far not received adequate attention. In the two years or so preceding Gestapu, and as his flirtation with the PKI seemed to grow warmer while he steered Indonesia ever closer into the diplomatic orbit of People’s China, Sukarno had begun to adopt some of the standard Communist vocabulary, a practice which in turn had permitted Indonesian Communist leaders to identify their party’s program with Sukarno’s own revolutionary rhetoric. Thus, he had begun to use the Communist concept of a two-stage revolutionary process, in which a “national democratic” phase, during which the Communists and _ their allies battle against the remnants of “imperialism” and “feudalism,” precedes a “Socialist” phase in which genuine collectivist policies can be implemented. In line with similar earlier pronouncements he had made on this point, Sukarno declared in his August 17, 1965, national independence day address to the nation that “Indonesia states positively that its revolution is still at the national democratic stage, although in this stage a number of important gains have already been achieved.”** Yet five weeks later, and only hours before the coup, Sukarno suddenly declared that the Indonesian Revolution has now “almost finished its first stage of national democracy” and was presently “about to enter its second stage of implemen- 33 Robert Shaplen, Time Out of Hand. Revolution and Reaction in Southeast Asia, (Harper and Row, New York and London, 1969), pp. 113-114. On July 8, 1970, a spokesman for the Indonesian “Security Restoration Command” in Djakarta, declared that interrogation of Sukarno had revealed that “he was involved" in the 1965 coup, but that the record of interrogation would not be made public because with Sukarno's death his case had “lapsed.” Far Eastern Economic Review, July 16, 1970, p. 4. 84 The Djakarta Mail, August 21, 1965. For Sukarno’s earlier adoption of this two-stage revolutionary concept sce also his August 17, 1964, national independence day address Tahun “Vivere Pericoloso” Pidato 17 August 1964, Presiden Sukarno (Jajasan Pembaruan, Djakarta, 1964), p. 14, and for the Communist origins and application of the concept see Justus M, van der Krocf, “The Communist Concept of ‘National Democracy’,” Studies on the Soviet Union, Vol. 4 (1964), pp. 39-63. 579 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 15] === wid es & Interpretations of the 1965 Indonesian Coup tation of socialism.”®5 What had happened in the intervening weeks that would prompt this new prophesy by one who always preferred to quote his own past speeches in order to legitimize current or coming events? As Arnold Brackman has noted, Sukarno, in other speeches and remarks just before the coup, “confirmed the deepening suspicion of many that he had decided to cast his lot with the PKI.’%° But neither Brackman, nor Shaplen, nor indeed any of the students of Gestapu persuaded of Sukarno’s foreknowledge of, or acquiescence in, the coup, have linked the ideological climate fostered by Sukarno (such as the adoption of the Communist theory of a two-stage revolutionary development, or the progressive inclusion of Communists in a coalition government and in the implementation of national policy) to the actual strategy of the Gestapu conspirators, particularly to the formation of the so-called Dewan Revolusi (Revolutionary Council). In every one of the four announcements read over the Djakarta radio by Gestapu spokesmen in the morning and early afternoon of October 1, 1965, reference was made to such a Council as being in effect the new government of Indonesia established by the rebel movement. The third broadcast listed forty-five persons who had been named as members of the Council.8* Brackman describes the group as “a politically incoherent hodgepodge of civilian and military personalities,” thus echoing Hughes’ earlier reference to the “hodgepodge composition” of the Council and Shaplen’s similar characterization. Such statements overlook the rationale of the Gestapu plotters, however, and it is noteworthy that thus far the substance of the rebels’ radio announcements (and particularly their ideological flavor) have not been adequately scrutinized. For example, in the first rebel radio statement, read by Untung himself about 7:15 a.m. on October 1, ideological identification (or was it protective coloration?) was sought with the Sukarnoist ideology, particularly as expressed in Sukarno’s many acronyms, such as Sukarno’s so-called Ampera (Message of the People’s Suffering, Amanat Penderitaan Rakjat), the Pantja Azimat Revolusi (Five Revolutionary Talismans), the struggle against the so-called Nekolim and support of Conefo, and so on.* As for 85 The Dijakarta Daily Mail, September 28, 1965. 86 Brackman, The Communist Collapse in Indonesia, op. cit., p. 70, One Indian specialist is also persuaded that “Undoubtedly, during the heyday of Guided Democracy, President Sukarno’s partiality towards the communists was a leading fact.” J. C,. Johari, “The Fall of Sukarno and the Suppression of Communism in Indonesia,” Journal of African and Asian Studies, Spring, 1969, p. 180. 87 Bor the text of these four Gestap# announcements and other relevant documents sce “Selected Documents Relating to the September 30th Movement and its Epilogue,” Indonesia, No, 1, April 1966, pp. 132-204, a most useful compilation. 88 Ampera, first drafted in the mid-twenties, contains the essence of Sukarno’s anti-colonial economic and reform program. Pantja Azimat consist of five other Sukarnoist ideological acronyms, among them Panzjasila (the “five pillars” of the Indonesian state, of 1945) and the Manipol (Political Manifesto) of 1959. Nekolim is a Sukarnoist term for ‘neo-colonialism, 57! Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 16] === Pacific Affairs the membership of the Dewan Revolusi, it was not so much its “hodgepodge” heterogeneity that was remarkable. It included a bevy of military (most of them not very well known, and only some of them actually involved in the plot), leading as well as relatively obscure politicians (e.g. someone like deputy-premier Subandrio side by side with Siradjuddin Abbas, the leader of a very minor Muslim party), and no prominent PKI figures (indeed only four Council members could be said to be fellow-travellers or could even reasonably be considered as party-members). What was striking was precisely its comparative lack of distinction, combined with a vague impression of political “progressiveness” in the sense that its members were more or less known as advocates of the current and more militant phase of Sukarnoism, As I have attempted to show elsewhere, the purpose of the coup was not to establish a full fledged “People’s Democracy” but rather to turn the wheel of policy another thirty or forty degrees toward it? As a matter of fact, this is what current PKI émigré analyses also say: the coup was a preliminary step toward establishment of a “People’s Democracy” in Indonesia*°—i.e, tactically and ideologically it marked another phase in the transition from “national democracy” to socialism. The publication of the names of the Dewan Revolusi members, no less than the ideological orientation of the rebels’ radio statements, show an acute awareness by Untung, Sjam, and their associates that the purpose of a coup should be conveyed not in terms of a particular political party, faction, or personality, but rather in terms of a more general “political attitude” which in “form” must reflect what are—or are calculated to be—the political beliefs of the majority.4°* This, then, was the essence of the Gestapu and its tactics: a calculation that the steady radicalization of the domestic political temper under the aegis of the PKI and Sukarno had gone so far in the previous three years as to warrant establishment, in effect, of soviets as a new form of government, not only in Djakarta but also in other areas where similar regional, district, and village “revolutionary councils” were promised, according to the rebel radio broadcasts of October 1. From this point of view an analysis of the coup might well concentrate not so much (as most analyses do) on the hour-by-hour foiling of the rebels’ plans (such as the “counter coup” led by Suharto in Djakarta) but rather on the question of the relative correctness of the rebels’ calculation colonialism, imperialism,” the triad at the head of Sukarno’s demonology. Conefo refers to the “Conference of New Emerging Forces,” the collective designation of Communist and African, Asian, and Latin American nations whose radical nationalism Sukarno approved of, and which he hoped would replace the United Nations, 39 Justus M, van der Kroef, “ ‘Gestapu’ in Indonesia,” Orbis, Summer 1966, p. 471. 40 Cf, note 11 supra. 40° For a general statement of these concepts see Edward Luttwak, Coup d’Etat, A Practical Handbook (Fawcett paperback, New York, 1969), p. 89. 572 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 17] === Interpretations of the 1965 Indonesian Coup that the climate was right for a new turn toward “People’s Democracy.” From the very considerable resistance which the PKI had aroused in the year or so before the coup by its aksi sepihak and other militant campaigns, especially among Muslim groups, PKI leaders should have had good grounds for doubt, as well as some reason for encouragement.** Few available studies of Gestapu really focus on this problem however. One analysis that does, by Professor Donald Hindley, appears to have difficulty in assigning the PKI a direct role in the coup, and although it concentrates on the three-way struggle for power between Sukarno, the Army and the Communists directly prior to the coup, it does not really concern itself with the question as to whether the coup was a natural culmination of that powerstruggle and of the PKI’s tactics in it. Another “background” analysis, by Professor Uri Ra’anan, attempts to see the coup primarily in the context of Sino-Soviet rivalry for influence in Indonesia, particularly over Sukarno, Foreign Minister Subandrio, and the PKI. Ra’anan has performed a very useful service in carefully describing the steady ascendancy of Peking, especially as of October 1964, when Sukarno’s declining health, Khruschev’s ouster, and China’s explosion of a nuclear device, had a significant combined impact on the Indonesian government’s policies, and may well have set the stage for a projected Sino- Indonesian cooperation in the nuclear field.*® Was Gestapu, then, a natural culmination of this increasing Indonesian orientation upon Peking? Ra’anan does not say so, and in any case his analysis does not consider the mechanics of the PKI’s accelerating domestic campaign of militancy in the months before the coup, nor Communist plotting with such Army dissidents as Untung and Supardjo. But his presentation does commend itself, however, to those, such as Wertheim and the writers of the Cornell Report, who are inclined to dismiss Peking’s influence in the Gestapu events. Perhaps the most complete discussion that has thus far appeared of Gestapu’s political environment is that by an Indonesian sociologist writing in Dutch, Dr. Basuki Gunawan.** He sees the roots of Gestapu as essentially 41 One observer of the PKI’s campaign of militancy in East Java and the conflict it brought, particularly with Muslims, became ‘convinced that the PKI strength in East Java was vastly overrated” and that its election advances in 1957 had created a “myth" of the party’s “overwhelming” power. See Jacob Walkin, “The Moslem-Communist Confrontation in East Java, 1964-65,” Orbis, Fall 1969, p. 822. 42 Donald Hindley, “Political Power and the October 1965 Coup in Indonesia,” Journal of Asian Studies, February, 1967, pp. 237-249. In a later essay, “Indonesian Politics 1965-67, The September 30 Movement and the Fall of Sukarno,” The World Today, August 1968, pp. 345- 356, Hindley appears more fully persuaded that the PKI was, in fact, directly involved in the coup. 43 Urj Ra’anan, “The Coup that Failed: A Background Analysis,” Problems of Communism, March-April, 1966, pp. 37-43. 44 Basuki Gunawan, Kudetd. Staatsgreep in Djakarta. De Achtergronden van de 30 September-Beweging in Indonesié (J. A. Boom en Zoon, Meppel, Netherlands, 1968). 573 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 18] === Pacific Affairs in the failure of Indonesian constitutional democracy during the nineteenfifties and in the increasing experimentation by Sukarno, as well as the Army, with authoritarian constructs of political control in the capital and the provinces. In trying to maintain his own position of authority, as constitutional procedures were eroded, Sukarno alternately encouraged the PKI and the Army, permitting the former, though not without reverses, steadily to radicalize public opinion, particularly in such contexts as the national “confrontation” campaigns against the Dutch in order to acquire West Irian (West New Guinea), and later against the “neo-colonialist” Malaysian Federation. In the end, as Gunawan puts it, “there can be no doubt that Sukarno’s ideas and those of the Indonesian Communists were increasingly more difficult to distinguish from each other.” It is curious, however, that, having sharply delineated the atmosphere of rising revolutionary tensions before the coup, as well as the dominant role of the Communists in it, and although apparently having had access to the trial records of Untung, Njono, and Subandrio, Gunawan is seemingly unwilling or unable to delve in any depth into the question of a possible Communist plot, or even into why Untung, Latief, and their military associates, were led specifically to prepare a coup, and how and why they began meeting for this purpose with Aidit’s emissaries, Sjam and Pono, Rather, Gunawan appears to prefer to concentrate on the “Council of Generals,” and on the so-called “Gilchrist telegram” (note 31), even though his account makes it clear that reports on the Council originated with PKI spokesmen, and that during his trial Subandrio was unable to explain the supposed authenticity of the telegram. Was the existence of the Council the real reason for the Gestapu plot? Or was it but a pretext for an earlier PKI decision to seize power with the aid of military dissidents? Gunawan does not say, omitting to evaluate the trial testimonies he has cited on these points, and so when it comes to the coup period itself the continuity of his analysis appears rather badly broken and the reader must remember other trial testimony (such as that of Sjam, not cited here) to provide essential linkages. Contrary to the view of Gunawan, Brackman, Hughes, and, indeed, of most students of Gestapu, that the period before the coup saw a steady deployment of PKI influence under the protection of Sukarno whose own increasingly militant rhetoric and radical policies created a favorable atmosphere for militant Communist tactics, one Dutch specialist on Indonesia, Dr. J. M. Pluvier, has contended that Gestapu did not bring any significant alteration at all in the country’s élite dominance and power structure: “The generals on October 1, 1965 did not seize power from Sukarno and the PKI, but rather expanded their already vast powers” by liquidating “their only real opponents, the Communists” and by neutralizing the President who, Pluvier says, differed from the generals only in the methods to be employed 574 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 19] === Interpretations of the 1965 Indonesian Coup in eliminating the Communists and obtaining political control;*® for Sukarno feared the PKI’s electoral successes and his own concept of “guided democracy” was in effect designed to check these successes. The characterization of Sukarno as a “left-wing” political figure is incorrect, Pluvier asserts, for the President did not basically differ from Indonesian generals, landlords and orthodox Muslim leaders in opposing an alteration in the “social structure” and in “keeping distance from a social revolution” in the country.*® To prevent the PKI from being driven into opposition, however, the party was, as far as possible, “integrated into government policy,” a move which to a considerable degree suited the Communists to be sure, particularly so where it concerned such “external” agitational tactics as the campaign against Dutch-held West New Guinea and later against Malaysia. Thus the party was in a way “neutralized” by the existing power structure, but in the long run, Pluvier argues, these “diversionary tactics” could not prevent forever a “social revolution” and, presumably, the Army leadership realized this. What Pluvier terms “a small internal uprising within the Army,” in which elements of Communist youth and women’s front-groups were implicated, thus afforded the opportunity to the Army to destroy the PKI, to change from “a covert to an openly anti-Communist course” and launch an intensive “counter-revolution” dominated by a “humorless, boots-and-kepi mentality.” Pluvier’s analysis seems to some extent but a variant of the Rey, Wertheim, and Cornell Report interpretations of the PKI as a kind of “dupe,” and is thus open to the criticism of that interpretation already made in this article. But Pluvier goes farther: his analysis hinges, essentially, on a particular interpretation of Sukarno’s role in the pattern of Indonesian politics before Gestapu. Sukarno is depicted as, in effect, in league with the Army, the landlords, and “counter-revolutionary” elements in Indonesian society, and as in fact as readily prepared as they to ward off a “social revolution” and to suppress or destroy the PKI, though he presumably differed about “methods,” including the desirability of an anti-Communist bloodbath. Pluvier’s contentions, however, do not explain why Sukarno, to all intents and purposes, had decided to make himself the prisoner of the “boots-andkepi” mentality, why all during the fifties and early sixties he kept on trying to balance or play off the Army against the PKI, and indeed why he protected the PKI against Army attempts to suppress its operations. If Sukarno 45 Jan M. Pluvier, ‘Revolutie en Contrarevolutie in Indonesié,” De Niesswe Stem (Amsterdam), vol. 22 (December 1967), No. 12, pp. 652-660. 46 For a similar view of Sukarno’s policy of “flirtation with the Communists and the pretence that Indonesia was a socialist country” see the analysis of Gestapt by Christer Hogstedt in Tidsignal (Stockholm), June 15-21, 1966, pp. 4-5; June 22-28, 1966, pp. 12, 13-14; and July 5, 1966, pp. 4-5 (Joint Publications Research Service translation, Washington, D, C., JPRS 37,363). 575 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 20] === Pacific Affairs was basically in agreement with the Army that the PKI needed to be neutralized if not destroyed, why did he do all in his power to keep the party from being banned throughout the country as Army commanders were trying to accomplish in the wake of the public outcry over the PKI’s sharply critical “evaluation” of the government in July 1960 P47 Why did he actively promote the increasing inclusion of the PKI in all levels of government, including the cabinet, or raise no objections to the successful penetration of the party in the Marine Corps (KKO) or the higher echelons of the Airforce? If Sukarno was bent on preventing a social revolution why did he encourage the PKI, over strong objections of the Army, to develop an armed “people’s militia” composed of “peasants and workers” as a so-called “Fifth Force,” alongside (and clearly to counteract) the power of the Army, Navy, Airforce and Police?** These are but a few of the questions that should be raised against the Pluvier analysis, quite apart from the problem, already discussed, of seeing the coup primarily as an “internal” Army matter with seemingly peripheral Communist involvement. For years to come the long-term effects, no less than the internal dynamics, of the Gestapu affair are likely to be debated. One perceptive Australian specialist on Southeast Asia has even asserted that the collapse of the Peking- Djakarta axis, and the destruction of Communist power following the coup, initiated the kind of thinking in American diplomatic circles which were ultimately to culminate in the present “Nixon Doctrine and the new low-posture American policy in Asia and far beyond.”*® Other estimates concerned with the more immediate developments, however, stress that the coup resulted in a bloodbath of some 300,000 Communists who were but “marginally” involved in the plot, while still others raise doubts about a continuing alleged lack of connection (as established “by any Western rule of evidence”) of the “critical links” between the Army conspirators like Untung and the PKI.° There is no doubt that the coup opened the way 47 For details see Justus M. van der Kroef, The Communist Party of Indonesia, Its History, Program and Tactics (University of British Columbia Publications Centre, Vancouver, 1965), PP. 229-243. 42.QO, G. Roeder, “Fifth Force,” Far Eastern Economic Review, July 29, 1965, pp. 207-210. 49 Denis Warner, “The Day that Turned the Tide of History,” The Province (Vancouver), February 7, 1970. 80 te Nouvel Observateur (Paris), March 2, 1966 and Frederick Bunnell, “Indonesia’s Quasi-Military Regime,” Current History, January 1967, Pp. 23. Bunnell appears to be unfamiliar with the trial procedures followed in the trials of Njono, Sjam, Untung, and other Gestapu figures, and with the evidence produced by them. Curious also is a judgement such as that made by Bass, op. cit., p. 102, who criticizes “extreme” interpretations of the PKI’s involvement in, the coup, among which are presumably those which assign the PKI a principal role in the planning and execution of Gestapu. Bass speaks of “traces of an historical determinism” in such interpretations, which “a positivist age” presumably has long since “laid to rest.” The point surely is that, given the nature of Indonesian Communism, by early 1965 Gestapu became a likely culmination of the party's tactical dynamics; the “historical determinism” is located less in the interpretations of Gestape as in these PKI dynamics. See, e.g., my “Indonesian Communism’s ‘Revolutionary Gymnastics,” Asian Survey, May 1965, pp. 217-232. 576 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 21] === Interpretations of the 1965 Indonesian Coup not only to Sukarno’s accelerating slide from power, but also revealed how deep the dissatisfaction, especially among the young, with Sukarno’s guided democracy system had actually grown—a dissatisfaction clearly not anticipated among some Western observers of modern Indonesia.°* The Gestapu story—its antecedents as well as its consequences—will continue to unfold. University of Bridgeport, October 1970 51 The sudden spectacular rise of student resistance to Sukarno’s regime that became evident immediately after Gestapu suggests how far out of touch Sukarno’s “Guided Democracy” really was with important segments of the Indonesian community. “Guided Democracy”’ has been interpreted as a return to a distinctively Indonesian political style (“the Indonesian river is flowing more and more in an Indonesian bed; the game being played is, once again, Indonesian,” according to Harry J. Benda, “Decolonization in Indonesia; the Problem of Continuity and Change,” The American Historical Review, July 1965, p. 1073), The fact is that Sukarno’s presumably more “Indonesian” political system alienated numerous Indonesians, particularly the young, whose aspirations could hardly be considered less “Indonesian” than Sukarno’s. See e.g. Gunawan Mohammad and Ivan Kats, ‘“The Indonesian Student Movement: How it Helped Topple the Sukarno Regime,” Solidarity (Manila), July 1969, pp. 28-51. CORRECTION Dr. J. L. S. Girling of the Australian National University has requested publication of the following correction and comment on his article “Laos: Falling Domino?” in the Fall 1970 issue of Pacific Affairs—Editor. Having visited Phnom-Penh recently, I now believe that, unlike the situation in Laos and South Vietnam, there are few elements of civil war in Cambodia. Moreover, practically all educated Cambodians (not just “Rightists”) have renounced Sihanouk, and for good reason, Opinion in the countryside, especially in the occupied areas, is of course far more difficult to assess, I must admit that, as regards Cambodia, I have fallen into the same trap that I accused the domino theorists of stumbling into: of being too much influenced by preconceived ideas; of generalising from insufficient evidence; and of ignoring the local factors, 577 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia