From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу From Jail to Jail - Tan Malaka страница 40
![From Jail to Jail - Tan Malaka From Jail to Jail - Tan Malaka Research in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series](/cover_pre683684.jpg)
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 against the Trotskyist tag assigned them by the PKI exiles is the strident letter by Djamaluddin Tamim (“J. Tamin”) on 13 February 1946 to the editor of Tribune, the CPA’s new newspaper, asking, “I sincerely hope you will be good enough to write in your organ the real standing of Tan Malacca and clearing him of that Trotskyite accusation.”
110. Brackman, Indonesian, p. 72.
Postscript
1. See Volume III, chapter 15.
2. See, for example, Kreutzer, The Madiun Affair, pp. 1-7.
3. On the Madiun Affair see Kreutzer, Madiun; Aidit, Aidit menggugat; David Anderson, “The Military Aspects of the Madiun Affair”; Kahin, Nationalism, chapter 9; and Nasution, Sekitar, vol. 8.
4. While Kahin (Nationalism, p. 266) gives June 1948 as the date of the establishment of the GRR and Nasution (Sekitar, vol. 7, p. 111) gives April