Assembling a New Narrative

Now when the lord Chamberlen & these other lordes and knightes were thus behedded & ridde out of the way: then thought the protec- tour, yet while men mused what the mater ment, while the lordes of the realme wer about him out of their owne strenghtis, while no man wist what to thinke nor whome to trust, ere euer they should haue space to dispute & digest the mater & make parties: it wer best hastly to pursue his purpose, & put himself in possession of the crowne. . . . But now was al the study, by what meane thys matter being of it self so heinouse, might be ﬁrst broken to the people, in such wise that it might be wel taken.

Thomas More, The History of Richard III (1513)

The literary theorist Tzvetan Todorov has noted that works of detective fiction combine two different narrative forms: the “story of the investigation” (how the detective comes to know what happened) and the “story of the crime” (what actually happened). 1 The usual pattern of a detective novel, as Slavoj †Zi†zek notes, is to follow the detective in the course of his investigation and then conclude with his reconstruction of the crime. And so this book ends “not when we get the answer to ‘Whodunit?’ but when the detective is finally able to tell ‘the real story’ in the form of a linear narration.” 2 Each of my first four chapters focused on a particular piece of evidence or type of evidence. The chapters progressed according to the logic of a detective’s investigation rather than the chronology of a storyteller’s narration; each proposed a solution to one part of the puzzle after reviewing a limited range of evidence. However, what follows in this chapter should not be considered “the real story.” My only claim here is that events probably happened in this

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way. The limitations of the existing evidence make it impossible for the historian-detective to account for every anomaly, ﬁll in every blank space, and identify the precise role of every person involved.

My investigation began with the Supardjo document, not because Supardjo was the most important figure in the movement but because his document is the richest and most reliable primary source available. Chapter 3 drew a number of narrow conclusions from his text. The most significant concerns the long-standing, unresolved question about the identity of the movement’s leadership: Were the military officers (Un- tung, Latief, and company) or the PKI figures (Sjam, Pono, and the rest) leading the movement? The Supardjo document indicates that, of the five core leaders gathered at Halim air base, the main leader was Sjam. This invalidates the interpretations of Anderson and Crouch (described in chapter 2), which suggest that the military officers played the dominant role. With that conclusion in hand, chapter 4 turned to the question of Sjam’s identity. That chapter, based largely on an oral inter- view with a former PKI leader who knew Sjam, drew another narrow conclusion: Sjam was a loyal subordinate of Aidit’s. This invalidates Wertheim’s hypothesis (also described in chapter 2) that Sjam was an army intelligence operative who was working to frame the PKI. Chapter 5 then focused on Aidit and presented evidence derived from statements by former PKI leaders, either in their courtroom defense statements or in oral interviews with me, that indicate that Aidit col- laborated with Sjam to organize the movement as a preemptive strike against the right-wing army high command. This conclusion is not a confirmation of the interpretation of Suharto’s regime as it points to the culpability of only Aidit and Sjam, not the entire party leadership.

The identity of the people participating in the movement and their reasons for joining were the focus of the investigation in chapters 3 to 5. The sixth chapter turned to a question pertaining to the army’s response to the movement: Why did the army under Suharto’s leadership exag- gerate its significance and turn it into an epochal event? How did the movement become fetishized to the point that it could displace the mass killings of 1965–66 from Indonesia’s social memory? Chapter 6, which draws largely upon declassified U.S. government documents, argued that the upper echelons of the army officer corps were waiting for an opportune moment to attack the PKI and displace President Su- karno. They were prepared to take state power. They turned the movement into their long-awaited pretext. Suharto probably knew before- hand that Latief and Untung were plotting some sort of action, but it is

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difficult to believe that he had a hand in designing the movement, much less masterminding it. The collapse of the movement can be explained without resorting to the hypothesis that Suharto himself, or other army officers, organized it so that it would fail. Suharto’s quick and efficient response to the movement was a result of the army generals’ preparation for such a contingency and his own foreknowledge of the movement.

The failing of most earlier investigations of the movement was their starting point: the assumption that there must have been a mastermind behind it. I am suggesting that there was no central “mind,” whether one person or a tight cluster of people organized according to a clear di- vision of labor and a hierarchy of powers. The movement was mysteri- ous precisely because it lacked a single decision-making center. The one person closest to the core organizers at the time of the action, Supardjo, was mystified as to who the real leader of the movement was. As Su- pardjo noted, the central figure in the movement, to the extent it had one, was Sjam. Yet Sjam served as the connection between Aidit and the progressive officers. He was the center by virtue of being in the middle, not by virtue of being in control of all the forces of the movement. Aidit was in charge of the PKI personnel involved in the movement, whereas Untung, Latief, and Soejono were in charge of the military personnel. The two groups committed themselves to an action that, by default, turned their go-between into the leader. Sjam was a vanishing medi- ator: he brought the two groups together to stage the action but was in no position to command them once the action commenced. He was not like a military general who could lead a coup plot from start to finish in the way that Colonel Qasim did in Iraq in 1958 or Colonel Boume- dienne did in Algeria in 1965. Once the action deviated from the plan and the participants had to improvise, they pulled in separate directions. The movement’s disarray and indecision wound up paralyzing it in the face of Suharto’s unexpected counterattack. The absence of a center confused the participants at the time and has continued to confuse his- torians trying to make sense of the movement.

It is now time to put together these separate ﬁndings and recon- struct the events of 1965. In this ﬁnal chapter I present a brief chrono- logical narrative that provides resolutions to many of the anomalies that

I pointed out in the ﬁrst two chapters. While doubling back to the starting point and closing the circle of this text, I will mark the gray areas of uncertainty that prevent this solution to the puzzle from being considered ﬁnal.

Assembling a New Narrative t 205 The Triangular Conﬁguration of Power

Imagine the following scene in Jakarta on May 23, 1965. The main stadium, which is not far from the presidential palace and the legislature, is overflowing with people. Tens of thousands are in the stands that circle the field, while thousands more stand in the field below. Outside in the parking lot and nearby streets more than 100,000 are milling about. It is a sea of humans. The occasion is the forty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the PKI. Judging by the size of the crowd, the party has never been healthier. To allow more people to gather around the stadium and prevent traffic jams, the party has discouraged people from driving there. Carrying small bundles of homemade food to eat for lunch, people have walked into the city from outlying villages. Red flags and big billboards with portraits of the party’s heroes, such as Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin, line the city streets. A massive wood-framed, canvas- covered monument of the number 45 (painted red of course) stands on one of the main thoroughfares, dwarfing everything around it. Those marching to the stadium acquire the name “red ants” in popular dis- course: countless in number, orderly, disciplined, and self-sacrificing but militant, and capable of stinging if disturbed. This army of red ants is, for President Sukarno, a glorious sight to behold. He graces the occasion and delivers a rousing speech from the podium, full of praise for the party’s patriotism and spirit of resistance to the world’s colonial and neocolonial powers. This May 23 celebration is almost a replay of the May Day celebration held in the same stadium only three weeks earlier. With two large-scale rallies in May the PKI has demonstrated in irre- futable fashion what many in Indonesia already suspect, that it is the largest and best-organized political party in the country. No other political party can hope to organize rallies of such scale. The New York Times reporter on the scene notes that the anniversary celebrations are “the

most lavish ever staged by a political party here.” 3 The party enjoys a rare combination of money, mass membership, and presidential favor. This spectacular strength of the PKI was a central fact influencing the entire configuration of power in the country. A good portion of the army’s officer corps looked upon the red ants with alarm. The party posed a threat to the army’s own power in domestic politics and its profits from state-owned businesses, where army managers often faced workers organized by PKI-affiliated unions. Many officers were from privileged families. In their hometowns and villages their relatives

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belonged to anti-Communist political parties. The highest command- ers, Nasution and Yani, deeply antagonistic to the PKI, had been ma- neuvering to check its growth for years. They indoctrinated the ofﬁcer corps in anticommunism and ensured that the army functioned as a protective patron of the civilian politicians who opposed the party. The American scholar Daniel Lev noted that the non-Communist civilians in the early 1960s “remained deeply afraid and resentful of the radical threat which the PKI posed to their social, economic, and political interests. They looked to the army, which frightened them less than the PKI, for ultimate protection.” 4 It was widely understood that the army high command would never allow the Communist Party to take state power, either by the ballot or the bullet. The two institutions were stale- mated by 1965: The PKI dominated civilian politics, while the army controlled more than 300,000 armed soldiers.

Between these two opposing forces stood President Sukarno. Ever since Sukarno had dismissed the elected parliament in 1959 and concen- trated power in the presidency, he had served as a buffer between the two. Many anti-Communist military officers and politicians supported his acquisition of dictatorial powers in the hope that he would block the PKI. Sukarno himself had been no great fan of the party; he had supported the repression of it in 1948 (in the Madiun affair). The anti- Communists were content with Sukarno’s strong presidential system, what he called Guided Democracy, because it was not based on elections. All observers believed at the time that the Communist Party would win the plurality of votes if elections were held again. The party had come out of the 1957 elections for provincial legislatures as the first- ranked party in Central Java and the second-ranked in East and West Java. For the anti-PKI elements Sukarno’s handpicked national legislature was better than a democratically elected one controlled by the PKI. 5 Anti-Communist elements sponsored the motion in the legislature in 1963 naming Sukarno “President for Life” to guarantee that a Communist would never occupy the office.

The oddity of Indonesian politics under Guided Democracy from 1959 to 1965 was that Sukarno simultaneously served as a shield for the anti-Communists and the Communists. 6 The PKI had been able to grow during that period because it enjoyed Sukarno’s protection. When the army banned the party’s provincial branches in 1960 and harassed the leadership in Jakarta, Sukarno intervened. The army ofﬁcers respon- sible for the repression, such as Colonel Sukendro, were punished. 7 The president needed the Communist Party as a mass base for popularizing

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his agenda, especially his battle against what he called the “old estab- lished forces” and the nekolim (neocolonial, colonial, and imperialist powers). The foreign policy of the president and the PKI were in har- mony. Sukarno also needed the PKI as a bargaining chip in his dealings with the army. The party was his guarantee that the army would not be able to easily overthrow him.

By the time of the large rallies of red ants in Jakarta, the triangular balance of power—the PKI, the army, and Sukarno—was breaking apart. As the PKI grew ever larger, Sukarno was leaning more to the left than the right. The anti-Communists’ attempt to woo him with a “Body for the Promotion of Sukarnoism” in December 1964 had failed. The putative beneﬁciary banned the body soon after it formed. He then banned the political party behind it (Murba) and reduced the powers of one of his deputy prime ministers, Chairul Saleh, who was afﬁliated with that party. The anti-Communist groups became more apprehen- sive in 1965, closed ranks behind the army, and believed that Sukarno had outlived his usefulness as a check on the Communist Party. The right side of the triangle began contemplating a political system beyond Sukarno, one without his mediating, all-pervasive presence.

Meanwhile, the PKI began chafing under the constraints imposed by this triangular configuration. It was boxed in. By 1965 it had grown to become the largest political party, yet it could not come to power by the ballot—there was no national election to contest. The parliamentary road to power had been blocked since 1959 and appeared as if it might never open again. Neither could the PKI come to power by the bullet. The party had no armed wing and had no intention of fighting a war against the government. All its members were civilians. The party had mass support but little to show for it. Despite their hard work in cam- paigning for Sukarno’s policies, especially the Confrontation against Malaysia begun in 1963, Communist Party leaders had trouble acquir- ing positions in his cabinet. Only a few were appointed as ministers and none was given a position with real authority: Aidit and Njoto were ministers with only a coordinating or advisory role. To appease the anti- Communists, Sukarno handed all the key ministries that controlled large budgets or large numbers of state personnel (such as defense, home affairs, finance, industry, and plantations) to non-PKI figures. The PKI’s influence at the uppermost level of the government was hardly commensurate with its influence in the society.

Lacking direct control of the levers of the state, the party used its mass following to push the state toward the left in 1965. Anti-American

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demonstrations led by the party and its affiliated organizations forced the closure of U.S. consulates outside Jakarta and the withdrawal of the Peace Corps. Actions by workers and party activists in Sumatra against U.S.-owned oil companies and plantations prompted the government to move toward nationalizing their assets. The PKI was mobilizing vol- unteers for the campaign against Malaysia and arranging to have them receive military training. Sukarno was toying with the PKI’s idea of creating a “fifth force”—an armed militia outside the four existing military services (army, navy, air force, police)—and introducing “political commissars” into the army. Some party activists, feeling emboldened by their frequent demonstrations, which faced little resistance from the armed forces, imagined ever larger, more militant actions against “capi- talist bureaucrats”—a term that included army officers because they owned so many businesses and occupied positions in the bureaucracy.

The momentum of events favored the PKI. Some non-Communist politicians, thinking the party’s ascendance inevitable, softened their “Communist phobia” (Sukarno’s term of opprobrium) and hoped that the party would remain willing to cooperate with other parties and downplay class struggle. The ofﬁcial line of the party was support for a “united front” of all anti-imperialist and patriotic forces. But some feared that the party remained a fundamentally sectarian organization bent on the seizure of state power.

Sukarno’s buffering role was wearing thin. He remained, neverthe- less, an unshakeable symbol of patriotism and national unity. He could not be easily removed by either side since both had spent the previous six years competing to be recognized as more Sukarnoist than the other. The PKI and anti-PKI forces had built up his popularity; neither could quickly reverse course. Sukarno retained an image of purity amid the economic crisis and administrative chaos. Those problems were not usually blamed on him but rather on elements of the government below him. Sukarno’s direct and open manner of communication with the public and his long record as a leader in the anticolonial struggle made it difﬁcult for anyone to doubt his sincerity. His cosmopolitan ﬂair and courage to defy advanced, wealthy nations such as the United States made many citizens of this newly decolonized nation feel proud to be Indonesian. During the years of Guided Democracy, a cult was built around Sukarno to the point that he was capable of commanding wide- spread, unconditional loyalty.

The army high command, though frustrated by Sukarno’s tilt toward the PKI in 1965, realized that he was too popular to be overthrown

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by a direct coup d’état. Such a coup would not guarantee a stable political order when many people, including junior officers of the army, were still passionate Sukarnoists. Experienced officers, such as Nasution, in- sisted that the army bide its time. By itself, overthrowing Sukarno was a simple task; establishing army rule for the long term was the more difficult proposition. The army high command did not want to win an easy battle only to lose the war. Under Yani’s command the army spent 1965 resisting the PKI’s demands for a civilian militia (the “fifth force”) and the introduction of political commissars. Yani did not allow the army to

be provoked into a rash action against Sukarno. Regardless of Yani’s strategy of patience, much of the Indonesian public believed by mid-1965 that the army would eventually stage a coup and put a violent halt to the ascendance of the PKI. The rumors were persistent, especially after Soebandrio, the number two man in the government (simultaneously first deputy prime minister and foreign minister), released in late May a copy of a confidential telegram that the Brit- ish ambassador had sent to the Foreign Office in London. The telegram referred to “our local army friends” who were working on some unspec- ified, covert “enterprise.” 8 The document may have been forged. None- theless, it was believed to be authentic at the time because it confirmed suspicions in Sukarnoist circles that the United States and the Britain were plotting a coup with the army’s high command.

Assembling a New Narrative