was the precursor of the militant 1960s movements in Germany, France, America, Japan, the UK and many other countries. The Provos included left intellectuals, students, bohemians, anarchists, the homeless and a few bombers, and they were famous for mocking the government, the monarchy, the police and the big capitalists. For example, they sent a big helium balloon, marked with insults to the powerful, to the top of the vast central railway station. The police had only two options: either climb awkwardly up high firemenâs ladders or shoot the balloon. Either way the crowds coming to work would laugh their heads off. When not doing research, Ifollowed the activities and manifestos of the Provos with interest.
I returned to Cornell in August, just as President Johnson was exploiting the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incident as an excuse for a massive assault on Vietnam in February 1965. From then on, the anti-war movement spread throughout the universities. At Cornell, Kahin himself was a powerful critic of Johnsonâs foreign policy, and most of his graduate students followed his path.
Meantime the political and economic situation in Indonesia was rapidly degenerating. The generals controlled the big companies and plantations, and were organizing all the anti-communist groups. The Communist Party was strong, but since 1950 it had been committed to electoral politics and had no armed capacity. Soekarno continued to protect the party, but he was getting weaker. In the early hours of October 1, believing that a coup dâétat against Soekarno was near, soldiers led by angry officers killed five top generals, denouncing the top brass as corrupt, sexually immoral and ignorant of the life of ordinary soldiers.
General Suharto took charge of the army and crushed the rebels late the same day. The next day all newspapers and television channels were shut down except those controlled by the military. On October 3, Suharto announced that the killings were the work of the communists. There followed massacres of anyone who was a party member or a suspected sympathizer. The killings went on for three months, carried out by the military but also by thousands of armed Muslims. At least 500,000 leftists died, and manyothers were tortured and sent to Suhartoâs gulags, which covered the whole country.
Three of us Cornellians decided to work together to analyze what had happened. Ruth McVey had been an expert on the Soviet Union before turning to study the history of the Indonesian Communist Party, the oldest in Asia. She had known many communists while doing field-work in Indonesia. Fred Bunnell and I were still graduate students. We were lucky in that Cornellâs library had a mass of Indonesian newspapers and magazines published right up to September 30. We dropped everything else for three months to work on a confidential âPreliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965, Coup in Indonesiaâ, and completed it in the first week of 1966.
Since our analysis provisionally argued that the cause of the âattempted coupâ could be traced to internal conflicts in the Indonesian military â and not, as Suharto and his cohorts insisted, the Communist Party â we tried to keep the document secret, except for a few scholars whom we trusted, for fear that Indonesian Cornell graduates or known Indonesian friends of ours would be arrested, tortured, even killed â despite the fact that none of these people knew what we were doing. But the âPreliminary Analysisâ leaked out after two months, and both Suhartoâs men and the US State Department (who were actively supporting Suharto and delighted by the destruction of the communists) were furious.
It so happened that in the summer of 1965, Ruth, Fred and I had had the idea of creating of a biannual journal about Indonesia. Kahin was very supportive of the project.We used the first issue (April 1966) to publish a long series of documents from all kinds of
I returned to Cornell in August, just as President Johnson was exploiting the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incident as an excuse for a massive assault on Vietnam in February 1965. From then on, the anti-war movement spread throughout the universities. At Cornell, Kahin himself was a powerful critic of Johnsonâs foreign policy, and most of his graduate students followed his path.
Meantime the political and economic situation in Indonesia was rapidly degenerating. The generals controlled the big companies and plantations, and were organizing all the anti-communist groups. The Communist Party was strong, but since 1950 it had been committed to electoral politics and had no armed capacity. Soekarno continued to protect the party, but he was getting weaker. In the early hours of October 1, believing that a coup dâétat against Soekarno was near, soldiers led by angry officers killed five top generals, denouncing the top brass as corrupt, sexually immoral and ignorant of the life of ordinary soldiers.
General Suharto took charge of the army and crushed the rebels late the same day. The next day all newspapers and television channels were shut down except those controlled by the military. On October 3, Suharto announced that the killings were the work of the communists. There followed massacres of anyone who was a party member or a suspected sympathizer. The killings went on for three months, carried out by the military but also by thousands of armed Muslims. At least 500,000 leftists died, and manyothers were tortured and sent to Suhartoâs gulags, which covered the whole country.
Three of us Cornellians decided to work together to analyze what had happened. Ruth McVey had been an expert on the Soviet Union before turning to study the history of the Indonesian Communist Party, the oldest in Asia. She had known many communists while doing field-work in Indonesia. Fred Bunnell and I were still graduate students. We were lucky in that Cornellâs library had a mass of Indonesian newspapers and magazines published right up to September 30. We dropped everything else for three months to work on a confidential âPreliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965, Coup in Indonesiaâ, and completed it in the first week of 1966.
Since our analysis provisionally argued that the cause of the âattempted coupâ could be traced to internal conflicts in the Indonesian military â and not, as Suharto and his cohorts insisted, the Communist Party â we tried to keep the document secret, except for a few scholars whom we trusted, for fear that Indonesian Cornell graduates or known Indonesian friends of ours would be arrested, tortured, even killed â despite the fact that none of these people knew what we were doing. But the âPreliminary Analysisâ leaked out after two months, and both Suhartoâs men and the US State Department (who were actively supporting Suharto and delighted by the destruction of the communists) were furious.
It so happened that in the summer of 1965, Ruth, Fred and I had had the idea of creating of a biannual journal about Indonesia. Kahin was very supportive of the project.We used the first issue (April 1966) to publish a long series of documents from all kinds of
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