Volume 6, Number 9 · May 26, 1966
In Search of Indonesia
By Herbert Luethy
Indonesian Communism: A History
by Arnold C. Brackman
Praeger, 336 pp., $6.50
An Autobiography by Sukarno,
as told to Cindy Adams
Bobbs-Merrill, 324 pp., $6.00
Five Journeys from Jakarta
by Maslyn Williams
Morrow, 376 pp., $6.00
An Introduction to Indonesian Historiography
edited by Soedjatmoko, Mohammad Ali, G.J. Resnik and G. McT. Kahin
Cornell, 612 pp., $9.75
It has become ever more evident since last autumn just how unknown a country Indonesia is. For many years, practically all political analysis of the Indonesian scene has centered on the delicate balance between the inexorably mounting power of the Communist Party under Aidit and the army which was itself gradually being infiltrated under the uncertain leadership of Nasution. Between these two shifting forces an ailing Sukarno was poised. On September 30, an unknown lieutenant colonel of Sukarno's personal guard named Untung ('untung' means 'destiny') allegedly tried to prevent a Putsch of 'the generals' by taking power himself and butchering a number of military commanders, but he failed to kill them all and was himself crushed by the survivors. This 'episode of our Revolution,' as Sukarno called it, resulted in the wholesale massacre of the Communist leaders and at least a hundred thousand, and perhaps as many as half a million, of their followers by elite divisions of the army and militant Moslems. Since then, many things, all highly contradictory, have happened, and nobody has yet been able to explain the September 30 'Gestapu' coup which has brought down the whole fictitious structure of Sukarno's state philosophy and balance of power.
Review, 3429 words
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