of diplomasi, arguing, especially in the 1945-1946 period, for more reliance on perjuangan and popular resistance. Indeed, as shown in Volume III of the autobiography, even Supreme Commander General Sudirman had been a militant supporter of the Persatuan Perjuangan. (Colonel A. H. Nasution provides considerable information on the perjuangan perspectives of the army high command in his history of the revolution, Sekitar perang Kemerdekaan Indonesia.)
While continuing the negotiations right up until the end, the government did make some preparations for the contingency of a second Dutch attack. In November, Minister of Finance Sjafruddin Prawiranegara was dispatched to Bukit Tinggi, West Sumatra, carrying with him the authority to head the republican government from there, should the president and vice president be unable to function.28 (Although the surat warisan [testament] had not formally been revoked, no one regarded it as still in effect in 1948.)29 Further, several days before the actual attack, the republican representative in Washington, Dr. Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, was quoted by the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Handelsblad as saying that the republic was prepared to establish a government-in-exile in the event of an attack.30
Tan Malaka decided to leave Yogyakarta, both in the interest of self-defense and of following his own prescription to build up a resistance and an infrastructure outside the capital. He had been pressed, ever since he had been released from jail in September, to retreat to the security of West Java under the protection of the Lasykar Rakyat Jawa Barat (West Java People’s Militia), which had long been one of the strongest supporters of his policies of perjuangan.31 Pressures came from many sides, however, and eventually he decided to go to East Java—to the Solo River Valley, which he had identified in 1924 as the center of the revolution, necessary for its survival.32 On 12 November he left Tugu station, Yogyakarta, bound for Kediri. He was accompanied by thirty-five guerrilla fighters—twenty from the Lasykar Rakyat Jawa Barat and fifteen from the Barisan Banteng (Wild Buffalo Force).33 The group was escorted by his old PARI comrade, Djamaluddin Tamim, and Abdul Muluk Djalil from West Java, who had been close to him since September 1945. The group’s military commander was Captain Dimin, from Serang, West Java. They set up headquarters in Kediri and began discussing coordination of regular and irregular troops sympathetic to their politics.34
This small group, which considered itself a personal bodyguard for Tan Malaka, was attached to Battalion 38/Sabaruddin, which had on 25 October 1948 been made part of the Kediri-based Brigade S/Surachmad of the East Java Brawijaya Division.35 Evidently, it was this offer of protection by a part of the regular military forces that swayed Tan Malaka in deciding exactly where to go on leaving Yogyakarta. Sabaruddin, an Acehnese who had grown up in East Java, had a reputation for ferocity, some say brutality. Known as “the lion of Sidoarjo” in the early days of the revolution, he was dismissed from the military police in early 1946 for insubordination. He was readmitted, together with his militia, into the regular army only after “proving himself” in the rout of Madiun.36 One source has it that he met Tan Malaka in 1946 in Wirogunan jail, Yogyakarta,37 while others say they met only in the period leading up to the foundation congress of Partai Murba.38 In any event, Sabaruddin apparently admired Tan Malaka, agreed with his politics of perjuangan, and offered him protection. On Tan Malaka’s part, while association with such a man may not have been politically advantageous, after the experience of the 1946 arrests and in the certainty of a Dutch attack, one can imagine that he would have given military security a high priority. Ironically, it may well have been this association with Sabaruddin that brought about his death.
On Tan Malaka’s initiative, a conference was held on 14 December in Blitar, East Java, in which leaders of the various pro-perjuangan militias discussed coordination of resistance to the anticipated Dutch attack and established a body known as the GPP (Gabungan Pembela Proklamasi-Group in Defense of the Proclamation; after the Dutch attack it was renamed Gerilya Pembela Proklamasi—Guerrillas in Defense of the Proclamation).39 A number of militias were involved, including “Sabaruddin’s battalion, Isman’s TRIP, Warouw’s 16th Brigade, Abdullah’s TLRI. Tan Malaka was the GPP’s nominal leader, and others involved included Abidin Effendi, Sjamsu Harya Udaya, and Djokosutopo.”40 A sympathetic biographical sketch of Tan Malaka describes the GPP as “the strongest and best organised resistance force facing the Dutch in East Java. At that time the GPP had possession of a radio transmitter, but this instrument was later sabotaged and destroyed by another armed group.”41
Djamaluddin Tamim relates that he was dispatched by the conference to seek parts for a printing press that the GPP was to set up in Blitar. On 18 December he was making his way to Yogyakarta by train. Along the route the train was stopped by streams of refugees heading out of Yogyakarta—the Dutch had attacked.42
The Dutch concentrated their initial attack on the airport, starting at about 5:30 A.M. Almost the entire government leadership was taken into custody when the troops entered the city proper and occupied the palace in the midafternoon. The government’s disarray and unpreparedness are described most graphically in the first-hand report of Deputy Chief-of-Staff T. B. Simatupang.43 The ministers gathered at the palace at about 10:00 A.M. to draft speeches to the population urging resistance, but they did not manage to broadcast these addresses before the radio station was seized by the advancing Dutch.44 The government did send a message to Sjafruddin Prawiranegara in Bukit Tinggi, formally handing over governmental power, but this message was apparently never received. Sjafruddin established the emergency government on his own initiative when he heard of the Dutch seizure of the main government.45 Simatupang states that government leaders did discuss the possibility of fleeing Yogyakarta with the army, but that Sukarno adamantly opposed such a move, convinced they could not hold out for long and would soon be captured. He held the view, which he defended also after the event, that a president under Dutch arrest was of greater propaganda value than a guerrilla leader in the jungle.46 Whatever the merits of this strategy, it did not preclude the proper organization of the rest of the government to carry on in his absence and under occupation of the capital.
Five ministers did decide to join the guerrilla troops, and they managed to hold out and establish the rudiments of a civil administration, which functioned throughout the occupation in the immediate vicinity of Yogyakarta. At first they considered themselves to be the emergency government but, on hearing of Sjafruddin’s government and the decisions of the final cabinet meeting, they abandoned that role and settled on functioning as the regional commissariat when finally, in May 1949, they established contact with Sjafruddin.47
Even the military evacuation of the capital was conducted in a haphazard and ad hoc manner. Simatupang, who was at the negotiation site of Kaliurang at the time of the attack, did not know where army headquarters had moved themselves and was not able to establish contact with the army command until 12 January. No radio link was made with the emergency government on Sumatra until the end of January.48
It was under such circumstances, with a virtual collapse of the republican government in the face of the long-expected Dutch attack, that Tan Malaka made a speech on Radio Kediri on 21 December 1948. While the alleged contents of the speech were used, both at the time and subsequently, by his opponents as another example of his attempting to seize power,49 most of the evidence suggests otherwise. Prorepublican newspapers are scarce from this period when the capital was occupied and the Dutch led forays into other republican-held territory, and I have found no contemporary report of the speech from the republican side. However, the U.S. consul, Charles A. Livengood, quoted a press statement from the republican delegation in Jakarta in a report transmitted to Washington on 23 December 1948:
Tan Malaka strongly condemned the policy of negotiations pursued respectively by Sjahrir—resulting in the conclusion of the Linggardjati Agreement which eventually led to colonial war I which started on July 21, 1947; by Sjarifuddin—of which the outcome was the Renville Agreement—and by Hatta who continued Amir’s inheritance and the ultimate result of which was colonial war II.
He further
