the various Indonesian governments from 1945 to the present day have shared at least one attitude—outright opposition to the ideas and methods of Tan Malaka. There has, in consequence, been little incentive within Indonesia for a careful and reasoned analysis of the man. Half-truths, inaccuracies, slander, and calumny have ruled the day. A subdued counterpoint to this approach has been the slight body of panegyrics written by his supporters and a series of romantic novels woven around his saga. Tan Malaka’s long disappearances and the reports and rumors of his spectacular appearances proved to be the right mix for the genre of romantic adventure stories popular in Indonesia in the immediate prewar period.5
Just as it has provided grist for the mill of romantic fiction, Tan Malaka’s colorful and adventurous life story has led also to rampant confusion regarding facts, let alone analysis, by many serious observers of recent Indonesia history, Indonesians and foreigners alike. In an example of art imitating nature the reader will note that the mystery/adventure genre may also have influenced Tan Malaka’s own perception of his exploits, as recounted in the pages of his autobiography.6
From Jail to Jail reveals much about the man who has remained one of the greatest enigmas in modern Indonesian history. But it also leaves a lot unsaid. At times Tan Malaka concentrates on extreme detail when recounting the narrative side of his autobiography: the layout of Canton in 1923, the social structure of a South China village in the late 1920s, or the history of the Philippines nationalist movement. But on the really burning political issues, more often than not he slides off into allusion and evasion. Time and again he states his reluctance to reveal the course of political events, citing as his reason the continued strength of Western imperialism and its efforts to push back the colonial revolution and the readiness of his enemies to use his words against him. However, he did not live to see the end of the physical struggle for independence and the relative peace of the 1950s, when he could have filled in some of those gaps, such as the identity of his contacts and protectors in China in the 1920s and 1930s, the activities of Partai Republik Indonesia (PARI), and details of his supposed rapprochement with the Comintern in 1931.7 The autobiography is, above all, a tantalizing work, leaving the reader with more questions than answers, but with the exhilarated feeling that comes from putting down a good detective novel; and this is appropriate too, for Tan Malaka was always on the run.
From Jail to Jail is an apt title for the manuscript although, apart from his two-and-a-half-year imprisonment by the republican government, his actual periods in jail were not lengthy, consisting of brief detentions prior to deportation by the Dutch East Indies government in 1922, by the United States administration of the Philippines in 1927, and by the British government of Hong Kong in 1932. The intervening periods were dominated, however, by the threat of detection and arrest and by the overwhelming difficulties of survival. The weight of this struggle, combined with the specters of sickness and poverty that haunted him continuously, form the backdrop to Tan Malaka’s life story, itself written in jail.
The text of From Jail to Jail is on the whole an honest account. Tan Malaka indicates where he is holding back (for instance Volume I, pp. 88 and 99, and Volume II, pp. 77 and 108) and cannot fairly be accused of deceiving or misleading the reader. My investigations in archives, newspapers, and other contemporary accounts, and my interviews with Tan Malaka’s family, friends, comrades, and political opponents, have thrown up few factual inaccuracies in the manuscript. This reliability is remarkable considering the circumstances under which it was written, when Tan Malaka was in jail, without access to books or files.
Bibliographic History of the Text
From Jail to Jail is itself a product of jails. The text was written entirely in various jails of the republic (with the exception of the introduction to Volume III, written in Yogyakarta, October 1948). Tan Malaka commenced the work in Magelang jail, where he was detained from March to July 1947, and continued working on it after his moves to Ponorogo and Madiun.
From what I have been able to ascertain, the text was written by hand: Tan Malaka himself refers to obtaining pencil and paper for the work. Section by section, it was collected by visitors and taken to Yogyakarta for safekeeping and transcription.8 The irregularity in the flow of the narrative, omissions, and overlapping of sequences can be explained principally by this fragmented approach, which was occasioned by changing political and physical conditions. Moved to different jails, sometimes held alone, sometimes with his comrades, sometimes under threat of physical attack, sometimes suffering extreme cold and recurring bouts of illness, Tan Malaka produced a text that retains a surprising coherence. The less coherent nature of Volume III may well stem from the fact that he had no chance to develop the manuscript after the initial theoretical chapters beyond merely assembling existing articles intended for further elaboration.
Writing a book of this magnitude in jail without access to a library or to personal files created its own problems. Although the text is scattered with references to a wealth of sources, particularly in the fields of history and Marxism, few are in the form of exact quotations. Visitors were able to bring him some books and maps, and the quotations reveal the nature of these publications: the Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indie, John Gunther’s Inside Asia, Hallet Abend’s The Pacific Charter, and Stalin’s History of the CPSU.9 Other references such as those to Hegel, Marx, Engels, and Lenin are quoted from memory, an ability for which Tan Malaka was well known during his days in Holland.
A major problem with the text concerns a possible chapter missing between Volumes I and II: Volume I ends in late 1929, with Tan Malaka leaving the village of Sionching, and Volume II opens in early 1932, with Tan Malaka in the middle of the Japanese attack on Shanghai. There is no explanation of how he found himself there nor of his activities over the previous two years. It seems likely to me that a section was lost in the process of transfer and transcription. Considerable political significance attaches to this period, however, and a missing section is not the only explanation of the lacuna. Harry A. Poeze, who has written a biography of Tan Malaka up to 1945, is of the opinion that Tan Malaka has deliberately omitted a discussion of this period of his life in order to conceal a reconciliation in August 1931 with the PKI leader Alimin, representing the Comintern, and his agreement to work for the Comintern again.10
In view of the fact that Tan Malaka does refer to the “obligation I had to discharge in India” (Volume II, p. 30) and that elsewhere he states “that in 1932 I still had the confidence of the Comintern” (Thesis, p. 63), it is hard to believe that he wanted to cover up this reconciliation. Poeze maintains that his aim in writing From Jail to Jail was to distance himself from the PKI, while at the time of Thesis he wanted to draw closer.11 While this argument may reflect his intentions at the time he wrote Volume I (late 1947), by the time the volume was published in mid-1948, Tan Malaka was hoping to establish close relations with the PKI. Above all, however, in my view it is highly unlikely that Tan Malaka would attempt to cover up in such a clumsy fashion by dropping two years from his life story and leaving such a break between Volumes I and II. If the omission was deliberate, and done with political intentions, perhaps it was someone else along the way from writing to publishing who took the action.
From Jail to Jail has appeared in a number of different editions, each covering only a part of the work and none bearing its date of publication. Untangling the resultant bibliographic confusion has been a process based on deduction from reports of publication, hazy recollections of people involved, and internal evidence from the manuscripts themselves.
On 18 June 1948 the Solo newspaper Moerba announced the recent publication of Dari pendjara ke pendjara. This edition is almost certainly the ninety-nine page stencilled edition of Volume I. Although it bears no imprint whatsoever, its foreword is dated Solo, 17 April 1948. Subsequently, Tan Malaka’s longtime friend Anwar Sutan Saidi of Bukit Tinggi (West Sumatra) published a printed version of Volume I and the first part of Volume II as four separate parts (numbered I, II, III, and IV). This edition, published by the Wakaf Republik Press, could have appeared later in 1948 or
