From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 2, “Human Rights,” gives a lightning sketch of the development of class struggles to advance these rights through the English, French, and Russian revolutions. Chapter 3, “The Right to Self-Preservation,” focuses on the struggle for the rights of individuals to survive economically and politically, as illustrated in the destruction of feudalism. Chapter 4, “Laws and Regulations,” deals with individual rights as guaranteed in the democratic states of France, England, and the United States, paying particular attention to rights relating to arrest and detention, trial and punishment. He concludes the chapter by asking what meaning these rights have for the proletariat, who faces structural oppression within capitalist countries, and even more so for the oppressed of the colonies. Only at this point does he feel that the ground has been laid for a discussion of his own life, and chapter 5 begins the autobiography proper, with Tan Malaka returning to Indonesia in November 1919.

      On board the ship as it pulls out of Amsterdam, he looks back at his five years’ teacher training in Holland, his political evolution in the wake of the unfolding Russian revolution and, in passing, he writes a few pages on his childhood and schooling in West Sumatra. In chapters 6 to 11 of Volume I, Tan Malaka continues his story in basically chronological order, through his employment from 1919 to 1921 in Deli, North Sumatra, as a teacher of the children of “coolies” working on the tobacco plantations; his period of political involvement in Java in the union movement, the PKI, and the radical nationalist education system, culminating in his election as PKI chairman in December 1921, his arrest in February 1922, and his deportation to Holland; his candidacy for the Dutch Communist party in the 1922 parliamentary elections and his fifteen-month stay in Moscow, including participation in the Fourth Congress of the Comintern; his dispatch to Canton, from where he was to function as Comintern representative for Southeast Asia; and his activities in this regard during 1923-1925.

      Chapter 12, “The Philippines,” is a forty-page essay on the history of the Philippines, in particular of the nationalist revolution of the 1890s. In this major departure from his own story, Tan Malaka stresses two recurring themes of his autobiography: the common identity of the Malay/Indonesian/Filipino people and cultures; and the need for unity among various political currents, classes, and ethnic groups in the fight for national liberation. The lessons he draws in this section are echoed throughout the rest of the autobiography. The final two chapters of Volume I return to his own story, relating his activities in the Philippines from 1925 to 1927, the events surrounding his arrest and deportation to China in August 1927, and his flight to the tiny village of Sionching in South China, where he lived in seclusion until late 1929. Only in passing in chapter 14 does Tan Malaka discuss his role in opposition to the 1926 PKI-led uprising in Indonesia, the subsequent smashing of the party by the colonial authorities, and the establishment by Tan Malaka of a separate political party, PARI.

      Volume II

      Although one hundred pages longer than Volume I, the second volume contains only six chapters, providing a narrative account of Tan Malaka’s experiences from 1932 to 1945. It opens with Tan Malaka caught in the thick of the Sino-Japanese conflict in Shanghai in January 1932. Chapter 2 describes his arrest and detention in Hong Kong in late 1932 and his second deportation to Amoy. In chapter 3 he discusses in considerable detail his experiences in, and the social structure of, Iwe, another small village in South China, and his move to Amoy, where he established the Foreign Languages School in 1935. Again the Japanese army’s southern advance caught up with him, and Tan Malaka fled to Rangoon. Chapter 4 describes his subsequent journey through the Malay Peninsula, involving a substantial, somewhat romanticised, account of Malay history, again stressing the theme of unity raised in the Philippines chapter. It continues with his five-year period disguised as a Chinese schoolteacher in Singapore. When the Japanese occupied Singapore, once again Tan Malaka moved on, seizing the opportunity the war presented to go “Toward the Republic of Indonesia,” the title of the concluding chapter of Volume II. This chapter discusses his experiences throughout the Japanese occupation, living incognito on the outskirts of Jakarta for one year and then for two years as a clerk in a coal mine in a remote area on the southern coast of West Java.

      Volume III

      Volume III represents a radical departure from the narrative approach dominant in Volumes I and II. The introduction is actually a postscript covering the period March-October 1948 (including the Madiun Affair) and it completely wrenches the reader from the situation of August 1945 and the Proclamation of Independence, with which Volume II closes. Following the Introduction, Tan Malaka launches into a forty-five-page chapter entitled “Weltanschauung,” in which he gives a historical materialist account of the development of human society through primitive communism, slavery, and feudalism, paying particular attention to religious beliefs. He then moves on to discuss the emergence of capitalism and the associated development of philosophy, the ascendancy of science and dialectical materialism, and concludes with a few points of “dialectical materialism as applied to modern Indonesian history.” Chapter 2, “The State,” concentrates on the evolution of state forms and on differing ways in which the state is defined in order to serve different political interests. Chapter 3, “The Rise and Fall of States,” discusses changes in modes of production as the motive force for changes in state forms. Chapter 4, “Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis,” recapitulates much of the preceding three chapters, with an emphasis on the final stage of evolution from class society to communism via the dictatorship of the proletariat.

      With chapter 5 the reader is brought back from abstraction to the historical reality of the proclamation of Indonesian independence in August 1945, the legitimacy of which is defended in terms of the right of self-determination. Chapter 6 elaborates on this right, examining the class forces in Indonesian society both before and after the Dutch occupation, and the effect of the Japanese occupation in accelerating the Indonesian revolution. Chapter 7, “From Engineer Sukarno to President Sukarno,” shifts from discussion of broad social forces to examination of a pivotal individual in historical context. It contains trenchant criticism of the political direction taken by Sukarno and also leaps ahead to a discussion of the surat warisan (testament) in which Tan Malaka was nominated as president should Sukarno and Vice President Hatta be killed or captured.

      In chapter 8 Tan Malaka shifts back to narrative style, picking up the story where he left off at the end of Volume II. A detailed account of the events surrounding the proclamation leads in the ensuing chapters to a discussion of Tan Malaka’s opposition to the policies pursued by the government of the republic and to his establishment of a united front known as Persatuan Perjuangan (Struggle Front) in January 1946. Considerable detail of the Persatuan Perjuangan and its differences from the government is given in chapters 11 to 14. Chapter 15 is a thorough analysis of the two agreements signed with the Dutch (Linggajati and Renville) and why Tan Malaka regarded them as setbacks to the revolution. Chapter 16 recounts the arrest of Tan Malaka and a number of his followers in March 1946 (as the Persatuan Perjuangan challenged the authority of the government) and their experiences in detention. It includes the events surrounding the 3 July Affair (1946), presented by the government as the “coup d’etat of Tan Malaka,” and the subsequent trials in March 1948. From Jail to Jail concludes with the “Official Statement of the Government of the Republic of Indonesia” on the 3 July Affair, which is followed by Tan Malaka’s point-by-point refutation.

      Volume III is distinguished from the earlier volumes by its relative lack of a personal narrative to balance the internal discordances and shifts of perspective. A number of its chapters actually are previously published articles by Tan Malaka, and the volume itself has more of the feel of a manuscript in preparation. The possibility that Volume III was compiled by someone else is countered by the introduction, which is certainly in Tan Malaka’s style, СКАЧАТЬ