Indonesia is an enigma to outside observers, who have never seemed sure just what it is: Islamic, authoritarian, democratic, developing, disintegrating. The largest country in its region, Indonesia holds the key to Southeast Asia’s future, while recent developments—demands for greater regional autonomy, ethnic, political and religious conflict—are making the archipelago significant on the…
Drawing on little known archival sources, this work brings to the fore the salience of a schism in the Indonesian communist movement between pro-Moscow loyalists and “national-communists” reaching back to the 1920s, which survived even the Japanese occupation and surfaced in the throes of the National Revolution (1945–49). At the heart of the rift lay contrasting visions of revolutionary …