Indonesian Political Exiles in the USSR

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Indonesian Political Exiles in the USSRDavid T. HillPublished online: 02 Oct 2014.

To cite this article: David T. Hill (2014) Indonesian Political Exiles in the USSR, Critical Asian Studies, 46:4, 621-648, DOI:10.1080/14672715.2014.960710

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Hill / Indonesian Political Exiles

INDONESIAN POLITICAL EXILES

IN THE USSR

David T. Hill

ABSTRACT: This article examines political exile as a particular form of migration, withreference to Indonesians living in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)when the military regime came to power in their homeland. With the rise in Jakartaof the New Order under Major-General Suharto after 1 October 1965, thousands ofIndonesians in socialist and communist states abroad were effectively isolated.Faced with detention or execution if they returned home, Indonesian leftists andother dissidents who were scattered across some dozen states spanning theSino–Soviet divide became unwilling exiles. Several thousand Indonesians werethen studying in the USSR, where they were one of the largest foreign nationalitiesin Soviet universities and military academies. Many spent nearly half a century as ex-iles, struggling to survive first the vicissitudes of the cold war and then the globaltransformations that came with the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. Themost influential grouping of Indonesians who remained in the USSR after 1965 wasknown as the Overseas Committee of the Indonesian Communist Party. In China, aseparate party leadership emerged, known as the Delegation of the IndonesianCommunist Party. Mirroring Sino–Soviet rivalries, the Delegation urged Indonesianleftists in the USSR to join them in China. Hundreds did so. These rival factions wereseparated by mutual distrust until they each disbanded toward the close of the coldwar. This article analyzes the changing fate of Indonesians caught in the contradic-tory relationship between New Order Indonesia and the USSR and in the tensionsbetween the USSR and China as these unwilling exiles were buffeted by geopoliticaltransformations well beyond their influence.

Since the fall of President Suharto in May 1998, there has been increasing de-bate about, and analysis of, Indonesia’s previously hidden past, particularly themass killings and detentions that accompanied the rise to power of Major-Gen-eral Suharto and his New Order after 1 October 1965. Quite appropriately, theoverwhelming focus has been on the suffering of domestic victims, slaughteredor detained without trial in their countless thousands. In this article, however, Iexamine another community of victims who, while not facing execution, en-

Critical Asian Studies

46:4 (2014), 621–648

ISSN 1467-2715 print/1472-6033 online / 04 / 000621–28 ©2014 BCAS, Inc. DOI:10.1080/14672715.2014.960710

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dured another life sentence. They were Indonesians living—mainly studying—in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) when the New Order cameto power and relegated them against their will to a life of exile.

Caught up in a dynamic bilateral political relationship within which they heldlittle influence, they were stripped of their citizenship, their residency, and theirrights of free passage in a struggle that continues despite the collapse of theUSSR in 1991 and the resignation from the presidency of their nemesis in Ja-karta in 1998. As exiles, their destinies have been determined more by thedecisions of Jakarta and Moscow than by their individual or collective rights ascitizens. Their story illustrates the geopolitics of the cold war and the changingtenor of the Soviet–Indonesian bilateral relationship over more than half a cen-tury. As political exiles, they were, and mostly remain, unwilling migrants.

In exploring their collective history, I begin with the political circumstancesthat enabled thousands of young Indonesians to take up studies in the USSR. Ithen examine the fracturing of the USSR’s Indonesian community following thepolitical rupture in Jakarta in 1965, as the community buckled under Sino–So-viet pressures. I ask how these unwilling exiles have renegotiated their futurethrough the changes brought about by the waning of the cold war, as they havestruggled to maintain their identity through half a century of isolation fromtheir homeland.1

Establishing Bilateral Relations

Russia’s initial contact with Indonesia may be dated from 1873 when anthropol-ogist Nikolay Mikhlukho-Maclay (1846–1888) traveled to Batavia, Ternate, andelsewhere in the archipelago on a scientific mission. The diplomatic relation-ship may have its beginnings in the fortnight Crown Prince NikolaiAlexandrovich, the future Csar Nicholas, spent in Batavia in February–March1890. But the connections became more politically strategic with the protectionthe Soviet Union provided to communist leaders Munawar Musso and Semaunwhen they fled their homeland during a colonial crackdown on the IndonesianCommunist Party (PKI) in the 1920s. The two found work in Moscow with theCommunist International organization (known as the Comintern, or Third In-ternational, 1919–1943). Together with Tan Malaka who attended the 4th

Comintern Congress in Moscow in 1922, Musso and Semaun spent decades inexile, much of the time in Moscow, where, amongst other activities, they taughtIndonesian and published about Indonesia, thereby laying the foundations foran academic tradition of Indonesian Studies in the USSR.2

Having such long familiarity with the anticolonialist struggle in Indonesia,

622 Critical Asian Studies 46:4 (2014)

1. In researching the experience of Indonesian political exiles after 1965 I have interviewed morethan fifty Indonesian exiles in seven countries. Most were interviewed singly, but in a few casesI met with small groups. Their perspectives were complemented by interviews with seven In-donesians who had returned to Indonesia after studying overseas (and were subsequentlydetained). Some informants were interviewed on several occasions. Interviews commonlylasted for about three hours. Most were recorded with the permission of the informant withsome requesting anonymity.

2. Lebang 2010, 1–9.

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the Soviet Union provided strong support for Indonesian independence in fo-rums such as the United Nations, giving de facto recognition to the new state in1948 and opening diplomatic relations on 3 February 1950.3 State relationswere not always smooth. Not invited to the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandungin April 1955, the Soviet leadership was divided over the wisdom of Indonesia’sinitiative in hosting the event, at which, along with the United States, the USSRwas criticized for its behavior as a cold war superpower. However, a state visit toRussia by President Sukarno in August–September 1956 flagged what was to behis increasingly close strategic relationship with the USSR.

For most of the next decade, the Soviet Union provided funds, developmentproject support, and substantial arms to the Republic. Between 1956 and 1964,Indonesia was second only to Egypt as the largest Third World recipient of So-viet largesse, amounting to more than US$1.5 billion in Soviet credits.4 In thebuildup to Jakarta’s campaign to incorporate West Papua into the Republic(known as Trikora [Three Commands of the People]) the USSR suppliedUS$600 million worth of aid in the form of naval vessels (including subma-rines), amphibious tanks, and MiG fighter jets.5 Included also was intensivemilitary training in the USSR for thousands of Indonesian officers and crew inSoviet military colleges and training facilities in places like Kiev, Odessa,Dushanbe, Vladivostok, and Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg).6

The Student Deluge

Sukarno’s 1956 visit also opened the possibility of Indonesian civilians studyingin the Soviet Union, with seven young Indonesians—including filmmakersSyumanjaya and Ami Priyono and Akbar Moedigdo, brother-in-law of Indone-sian Communist Party chairperson D.N. Aidit—commencing the following year.In addition, at the beginning of 1958 Professor Intoyo arrived in Moscow withhis family to begin teaching Indonesian at Lomonosov Moscow State Univer-sity.7 Amongst other early arrivals was D.N. Aidit’s wife, Dr. Soetanti Aidit, wholanded in Moscow on 7 October 1958 to undertake advanced medical study. Ac-companying her was their eldest child, eight-year-old daughter Ibarruri who,along with younger sister Ilya (who joined them a year later), was enrolled inschool there. The two sisters continued their education there after their motherreturned to Indonesia in June 1960. Apart from three months in Indonesia dur-ing school holidays, the girls were to spend the rest of their lives in exile, withIbarruri a disciplined and devoted supporter of the pro-Beijing PKI-in-exile and

Hill / Indonesian Political Exiles 623

3. The most comprehensive study of Indonesia-USSR relations is Singh 1994.4. Singh 1994, 172.5. Lebang 2010, 15.6. Among military officers undergoing such training were General Suhario Padmodiwiryo, who

was at the Suvorov War College (Padmodiwiryo 2005, 49) and Admiral R.P. Poernomo, who wasstudying in the General Staff Academy in Moscow (Poernomo 10 October 2012). See alsoLebang 2010, 103.

7. Alam 2006, 62. The official name of the university was Moscow State University, named afterM.V. Lomonosov (abbreviated to MGU). Intoyo was later joined by Saleh Iskandar Puradisastra(better known as Buyung Saleh) who was an exchange professor at Lomonosov University in1962–1964.

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frank chronicler of exilic life.8

Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s return visit to Indonesia in February-March1960 really opened up study opportunities for Indonesians in Russia. Khrush-chev offered hundreds of scholarships to Indonesians wanting to study at thenewly established Patrice Lumumba People’s Friendship University.9 While theFriendship University and Lomonosov University welcomed the largest enroll-ments of Indonesians, others scattered across a variety of institutes such as theMoscow Power/Energy Institute, Moscow Stalin Steel Institute, and the Cinema-tography Institute, as well as military academies and special Communist Partytraining schools. Metallurgy student Djoko Sri Moeljono wrote that it was “im-possible to know all the Indonesian students [in Moscow during 1960–1964]who numbered in their hundreds across separate [institutional] dormitories.”10

By 1965 Indonesians were the largest foreign student population in the USSR,numbering around two thousand.11

Amongst the first group of Indonesian students to arrive after Khrushchev’sexhortation was Koesalah Soebagyo Toer (brother of the well-known Indone-sian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer). Koesalah had been unable to pay his waythrough his initial studies at the University of Indonesia so had dropped out,though continuing with an evening Russian language course. After hearingKhrushchev’s offer, he applied directly to the Friendship University and was ad-mitted. He then obtained the requisite letter of permission to study abroadfrom the Indonesian Ministry for Education, Training and Culture (PPK) and avisa from the Russian Embassy before departing in late October 1960.

Although such Indonesian students were fully funded by the Soviet govern-


8. I discuss the autobiographies of Ibarruri Putri Alam (Alam 2006) and Asahan Aidit (A. Aidit[2006?]; A. A. Aidit 2006) in Hill 2012. Ibarruri and her sister were studying at a special highschool in Moscow, while their mother Tanti had studied at Lomonosov University but returnedto Jakarta prior to the 1965 military putsch. In addition, another brother of D.N. Aidit, Murad,graduated with a master’s degree in economics from Lumumba Friendship University, Mos-cow, but returned to Indonesia prior to October 1965. Ali (1967) provides a valuablecontemporaneous account of this period by an anticommunist student.

9. Patrice Lumumba People’s Friendship University was initially named after Patrice Lumumba,the Congolese independence leader. (The university’s name was abbreviated in Latin-script toUDN, the acronym Indonesian students used.) After perestroika, it became the People’sFriendship University of Russia. For its history, visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples’_Friend-ship_University_of_Russia.

10. Moeljono 2013, 213.11. Lebang 2010, 21. I do not have official statistics for the number of Indonesians in the USSR dur-

ing the period discussed in this article. The figures quoted in this article are, therefore,estimates drawn from the various sources cited. Koesalah Soebagyo Toer (2003, 124) esti-mated there were more than 700 Indonesian (civilian) students in the Soviet Union in 1963.Waruno Mahdi (personal communication, 26 January 2014) estimated there were somewhatmore than 800 Indonesian (civilian) students in the USSR in 1965, of whom more than 600were in Moscow. Djamhari’s five-volume history of Communism in Indonesia, published bythe Centre for Armed Forces’ History and Traditions, notes only about 120 Indonesian Com-munist and Marhaenist students (2009, Vol. 5, 211), but this is likely to be a majorunderestimate for political reasons. Communist Party discipline means (former) cadre remainreluctant to disclose details, even decades later. For example, of the number who went to Viet-nam to “study revolution,” Asahan Aidit (2006, 148–49) writes evasively: “How many of uswere there in total? Secret or not, it is not important to give precise figures. Clearly, it wasn’ttwo or three, but it was certainly not hundreds. Perhaps it was under or up to dozens.” Thus, ininterviews, informants frequently provided only rough estimates.

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ment they nevertheless had to sign a predeparture agreement to work for theIndonesian government upon graduation for twice the duration of their schol-arship, plus an additional four years, usually totaling fourteen to fifteen years.12

They had to sign an eight-point pledge that included loyalty to the Indonesianhead of state, the government, the state ideology of Pancasila, and PresidentSukarno’s political philosophy.13 They also had to promise to complete theirstudies on time, to work for the government on their return, to refrain from be-smirching the name of Indonesia, and to accept any government-imposedpenalties for breeching this agreement.14

Estimates of the Indonesian population in the USSR prior to the September1965 putsch in Jakarta suggested that the military trainees and civilian studentswere of roughly equal numbers. Virtually all the civilian students were on vari-ous kinds of Soviet government or party scholarships. Many applying foroverseas scholarships through the Indonesian Government’s Department ofHigher Education and Science (Perguruan Tinggi dan Ilmu Pengetahuan, PTIP)for overseas scholarships had no significant left-wing connections and werewilling to study in whichever country provided admission and financial sup-port. However, more commonly for those in the Soviet Union, the studentswere affiliated with broad left-wing organizations such as the Pemuda Rakyat(People’s Youth), IPPI (Ikatan Pemuda Pelajar Indonesia, Indonesian Youth Stu-dent League), and CGMI (Consentrasi Gerakan Mahasiswa Indonesia, UnifiedMovement of Indonesian Students) or they were cadres of the PKI itself. One ex-plicitly anticommunist student estimated that of the students who arrived in1960–1961, 90 percent had been sent by left-wing organizations such as CGMI,IPPI, or Lekra (Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat, Institute for People’s Culture).15

Some of the Indonesians enrolling in Russian universities had prior interna-tional experience, having been members of various youth or culturalorganizations. Before being admitted to Lomonosov University in September1961, Suar Suroso, for example, had been involved in the IPPI since the 1940sand was a member of Pemuda Rakyat’s central organizing board in the 1950s. Inthis capacity he had traveled widely, representing Indonesia in numerous inter-national youth fora, including the World Federation of Democratic Youth inHungary.16 For the majority of the newly arriving Indonesians, however, study-ing in the USSR was their first overseas experience. The journey was long andtiring. Asahan Aidit, for example, describes how the group of about thirty in


12. Koesalah’s account of his time in the USSR is given in his memoir (Toer 2003, esp. xii).13. Sukarno’s political philosophy was referred to as “Manipol/USDEK,” an acronym for his Politi-

cal Manifesto, the 1945 Constitution, Indonesian Socialism, Guided Democracy, GuidedEconomy, and Indonesian Identity.

14. Toer (2003, xiii) provides full details of this agreement.15. Ali 1967, 24. Mahdi (personal communication, 24 January 2014) regards this figure as “grossly

exaggerated” even if (as is presumably the case) Ali is including the Marhaenists and left-wingNationalists in this category.

16. As a youth delegate, Suroso had visited Chile, Korea, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Morocco,Guinea, Mali, Senegal, Ghana, Germany, Romania, Denmark, Finland, Poland, and Albania,representing the Pemuda Rakyat as Vice President of the World Federation of DemocraticYouth (WFDY), established in 1945 and headquartered in Budapest, Hungary (Nurdiana 2008,177–78).

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which he was traveling left Jakarta on30 August 1961, stopped first in Sin-gapore, stayed overnight in Bangkok,then overnight again in New Delhi,before proceeding to Tashkent and fi-nally to Moscow, arriving in themiddle of a wintery September night.They were initially struck by the cold,then the unfamiliarity of the diet, lan-guage, and scenery.

Most adapted successfully, findingthe Russian education challengingbut deeply rewarding. They were ac-

commodated in student hostels where they mixed with students from the USSRand across the Third World. Indonesian recipients of Soviet government schol-arships like Asahan Aidit received ninety rubles per month, which Asahanregarded as generous compared to a doctor’s salary of only fifty rubles.17 Theirscholarships were sufficient to enable them to save up (about one-third of theirmonthly allowance) to travel in Europe during their annual holidays. KoesalahToer, for example, traveled to Romania, Czechoslovakia, and East and West Ger-many in the summer of 1962; to France and West Germany, the following year;and to England and the Netherlands in 1964. Along the way he frequently stayedwith Indonesian friends or international students he met at university.

The Indonesians established a variety student organizations, and culturaland performing groups. Their choral activities and musical performances be-came sought-after events, and some students toured around the country byinvitation during study breaks. Indonesian culture became quite popular. SomeIndonesian songs, such as Ismail Marzuki’s Rayuan Pulau Kelapa (Coconut Is-land Seduction) and the popular favorite Ayo Mama (Come on, Mum), wereeven translated into Russian.18 Such Indonesian popular songs became so wellknown that even decades later a Russian taxi driver or librarian, when casuallyasked about their knowledge of Indonesia, could sing a few bars (as depicted inthe documentary video Gerimis Kenangan dari Sahabat Terlupakan [Drizzlingmemories of a forgotten friend]).19 They also published their own media. To-gether with several friends, for example, Koesalah Toer published a “wallnewspaper,” The Voice of Indonesia (Suara Indonesia), in 1963 to “not only re-flect the revolutionary stance of the Indonesian people for the foreign


17. Asahan Aidit describes his time in the USSR in A.A. Aidit 2006. On his scholarship, see p.11.Tutuka (2003, 106–7) compares his ninety ruble scholarship with the monthly wages of a law-yer (sixty-five rubles) and mining workers (seventy to eighty rubles).

18. Toer 2003, 61.19. On 21 December 2006 the film Gerimis Kenangan dari Sahabat Terlupakan (Suyono 2006),

which presents interviews with more than a dozen Russian Indonesianists about the bilateralrelationship, received the Indonesian Film Festival jury’s award for best documentary film.The film can be viewed online at vod.kompas.com/read/2009/12/24/104200/Film.Dokumen-ter.Gerimis.Kenangan.dari.Sahabat.Terlupakan.bagian.1.

Asahan Aidit in his home in The Nether-lands, 9 November 2008. (Credit: David Hill)

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community, but also uniteIndonesians, teaching themto become ‘Indonesian so-cialists’.”20

Most, if not all, Europeancountries with Indonesianstudent populations had anational Indonesian Stu-dents’ Association (PPI),with the national associa-t ions coming togetherunder an umbrella Indone-sian Students’ Association ofEurope (PPI se-Eropah).These PPI were notionallyunder the authority of theIndonesian Embassy in eachcountry and generally re-ceived some financial andinstitutional support fromthe diplomatic representa-tions. In addition, in theUSSR, universities orga-nized foreign students intocountry-specific “associa-

tions of fellow- countrymen” (Zemlyachestvo), each with at least one “seniorteacher” as liaison (known as a Starshiy Prepodavatyel).21 These home-countryassociations provided efficient mechanisms to manage student problems andcomplaints and to serve as an effective means of communication between theuniversity administration and the various foreign student communities. As theideological tensions abroad reflected the heightened struggle between Left andRight within Indonesia, however, the Indonesian student boards were onestage on which this played out in public. According to one account, while therelevant Indonesian association (Zemlyachestvo) was dominated by PKI–aligned members prior to 1965, the Indonesian Embassy–sponsored PPI in theUSSR functioned as a countervailing noncommunist organization.22 Otherparty-aligned associations existed, too, such as the Sukarnoist IKM (IkatanKeluarga Marhaenis, Marhaenist Family Association), members of which playedsignificant roles in the local PPI, particularly under the pro–Nationalist Party(PNI) ambassador Manai Sophiaan (1964–1967).


20. Toer 2003, 147.21. In the case of the Indonesian Zemlyachestvo at Lumumba Friendship University, the “senior

teacher” was a fluent Indonesian speaker who had worked formerly in the Soviet Embassy inJakarta and the Consulate in Surabaya (Ali 1967, 52).

22. Ibid., 25–26.

Koesalah Soebagyo Toer’s memoir of student life inthe early 1960s in Moscow, Kampus Kabelnaya.

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But for a minority of students, such as Zainur Ali, the presence of substantialnumbers of Indonesian leftists, whether PKI members, sympathizers, or radicalnationalists, together with an undercurrent of Soviet indoctrination, rankled.He balked at the host’s constant attempts, whether explicit or implicit, to con-vince the foreign students of the benefits of the Soviet economic and politicalsystem, through formal studies in history, economics, and politics, excursions,speeches, student competitions, cultural events, and the like. Ali’s 1967 mem-oirs, which are unusual for having been written and published so soon after theevents they describe, reveal a deep antagonism for the politics and practices ofhis host university. From his anticommunist perspective, “Marxist-Leninist in-doctrination is even more intensive, especially in the Lumumba [Friendship]University’s Departments of International Law and Economics” to the extentthat “all of those who graduated in 1965 and 1966 from these departments werePKI cadre and people who had crossed over to become PKI or were, at the veryleast, inconsistent [plin-plan],” he complained.23 For Djoko Sri Moeljono, how-ever, whose account was not published until nearly five decades later due to hispolitical detention in Indonesia, the situation in Moscow was more complex for“it was not clear whether the Indonesian students who were studying at(Lumumba) Friendship University were sent by the government or by organiza-tions.”24

Initial Reactions to the Jakarta Coup

The Indonesian population in the USSR was reasonably diverse and widely dis-persed. Consequently, varied also was their access to information in the wake ofthe killing of six generals in Jakarta on 1 October 1965 by a military forcedubbed the “30th September movement.” What all experienced in common,however, was the difficulty in confirming details and getting a clear sense ofwhat was happening in their homeland. Particularly well connected was Gen-eral Suhario Padmodiwiryo (known as “Hario Kecik”), the former WestKalimantan regional military commander who was in Moscow on the personalinstructions of President Sukarno to undertake studies at a leading Soviet warcollege. On 1 October, Suhario happened to be visiting the office of the Indone-sian military attaché, General Harun Sohar, who was completing his tour of dutyand in the process of being replaced by his successor. Suhario heard from theattaché’s secretary that “something, possibly serious, had occurred in Jakarta,because…[General] Yani and several generals had disappeared.”25 Suhario’swife, out visiting Indonesian friends, heard from foreign radio news reportsabout “the disappearance of several generals.”

Less well informed were the civilian students living in dormitories wheresources of information were primarily local. According to Zainur Ali’s account,

on the evening of 1 October 1965 Radio Moscow mentioned briefly in itsnews bulletin that there had been an uprising [pemberontakan] in Indo-


23. Ibid., 13.24. Moeljono 2013, 213.25. Padmodiwiryo 2005, 80.

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nesia. On hearing that, all the Indonesian students in Moscow becameanxious and began asking themselves, “What’s going on in Indonesia?”The following day, we heard news from BBC and Hilversum radio thatGeneral Suharto was in control of the situation in Indonesia and that sev-eral generals had disappeared or been kidnapped. When the IndonesianEmbassy was contacted, they said they had not yet received any definitenews from Jakarta.26

Anwar Dharma, the Moscow correspondent for the PKI’s Harian Rakyat

(People’s Daily) and—according to some informants—the head of the PKI’sMoscow Committee,27 was sought out by some students for information, butwithin three days, Pravda reported that Harian Rakyat (along with variousother papers) had been banned in Indonesia and so that source of informationceased. A new group of students arriving from Indonesia about a week after thetakeover described the dramatic circumstances in the capital as they were de-parting. Muslim students held a prayer meeting at the Embassy for the deceasedmilitary officers seven days after the killings in Jakarta.

The weeks and months after the Jakarta putsch were traumatic. Studentsfound it painfully difficult to find out exactly what was unfolding in Jakarta anddetermine what the implications would be for their personal circumstances.They continued to rely primarily on foreign news broadcasts and press reports.It was not until 17 October that the high-circulation daily Izvestia, regarded aspresenting the views of the Soviet government, published an initial detailedanalysis of the coup, with the emphasis being on the anticommunist crack-down.28 Communication with friends and family in Indonesia was via the postand thus slow. Phone calls were virtually impossible. Rumors were more com-mon than reliable information. Reflecting in his memoirs on the tense weeksthat followed, General Suhario wrote that it was “odd that our ambassador [for-mer PNI leader Manai Sophiaan] never called us for a briefing on the situationback home.”29 The Indonesian Embassy was itself caught in a vacuum and wasnot a reliable source for information about the situation in Indonesia. The am-bassador was politically cautious, but the new military attaché, Brigadier-General Muhammad Jasin, was a staunch defender of the New Order.30 One stu-dent, Waruno Mahdi, noted, “In an attempt to expose sympathizers of the 30September Movement [G30S], a declaration of loyalty to Bung Karno wasdrawn up [by the embassy] to be signed by all students. The calculation was thatG30S sympathizers would refuse to sign and be found out. In fact, all Indone-sian students in the Soviet Union (including myself) signed the declaration”31


26. Ali 1967, 33.27. Tri Tunggal 2009.28. Singh 1994, 224.29. Ali 1967; Padmodiwiryo 2005, 83.30. After his return to Indonesia, Jasin became commander of the Indonesian Army’s Brawijaya Di-

vision in East Java for the infamous “Trisula” (Trident) operation, when the military routedcommunist remnants in South Blitar during June–September 1968 (Hearman 2010, 66). Herecounts his experiences in Jassin 1998.

31. Mahdi 2001, 57.

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(fig. 1 below).In the wake of the un-

folding political crisis athome, Indonesian stu-dents in the USSR weretold to return home imme-diately. Some willinglycomplied. Given the likeli-hood that uncompleteddegrees would not be rec-ognized and prior studieswould be wasted, most stu-dents—whatever theirpolitical persuasion—de-clined to go back, seekingfirst to complete theirstudy programs. Studentswere aware also that somereturned graduates fromthe USSR had been ar-rested. Djoko Sri Moeljono,for example, who had re-turned from Moscow witha master of science degreein metallurgy in October1964, was detained at his work site, the Soviet-funded Cilegon steel plant, on 11October 1965. He was held until 1978.32

The polarization of students along ideological lines was reflected in a strug-gle to control the All- Europe PPI organization, which had been largely underthe influence of Sukarnoists. Conscious of the changing politics in Jakarta, thepro–New Order USSR branch of the PPI backed a call from the PPI in France,supported by other PPI branches across Western Europe, to convene an emer-gency meeting of the All-Europe PPI. Their intention was to mobilize New Ordersupport to reverse various pro-Sukarnoist policies adopted in August 1965 atthe organization’s meeting in Bucharest, Romania. Incumbent chair of the Co-ordinating Board of the All-Europe PPI, Tahir Pakuwibowo, who was studying inPrague, reportedly rejected the call. However, buoyed by (then lieutenant-gen-eral) Suharto’s strengthened position following the president’s signing inMarch 1966 of an executive order for Suharto to restore order and security(known as Supersemar), the pro–New Order PPI forces nonetheless convenedin Paris in April 1966. In this, they had the support of their Indonesian embas-sies to purge Sukarnoists and take control of a new All-Europe PPI.33


32. Moeljono 2013, 28. Moeljono notes in his diary some of the many other Indonesian graduatesfrom Soviet universities who were also swept up in the detentions (ibid., 213).

33. Ali 1967, 37.

Fig. 1. A scan of Waruno Mahdi’s signed declarationprepared by the Indonesian Embassy’s military attaché.(Source: www.waruno.de/JPGs/pro PBR.jpg)

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Anticommunist students from the USSR PPI branch proudly declared that ontheir return to Moscow they then implemented the Paris policies, ousting com-munist sympathizers from the local PPI and forming a USSR unit of theanti-Sukarno Indonesian Student Action Front (KAMI), known as Kamus.34

Role of the Indonesian Embassy

While General Suhario was somewhat aloof from the lot of the average Indone-sian student, he was conscious that “the conditions of the Indonesiancommunity [in Moscow] had declined. The people working in the IndonesianEmbassy appeared more nervous, as if they were emotionally afraid.”35 In effect,the struggle for power inside the embassy mirrored that in Jakarta. According toSuhario, the Indonesian Embassy employed pro-Suharto students as “localstaff ” and even involved them in the “screening committee” that vetted Indone-sians in the USSR, including military officers studying there, to determine whoopposed Suharto’s assumption of power.36 Anticommunist students like ZainurAli regarded the screening committee as “a collaboration between the militaryattaché, the Indonesian Embassy and the Soviet Union PPI.” These studentsclaimed to have “cleaned up the Moscow Indonesian Embassy in an orderly andregulated manner by securing [mengamankan] thirteen people, namely, sevenhome staff and six local staff.”37 Amongst the local staff sacked by the embassywas Akbar Moedigdo, D.N. Aidit’s brother-in-law.38 For those being screened,one of the grave concerns was that they were being asked to divulge detailed in-formation not only about themselves but also about their families in Indonesiaat a time when their contact with their families had been effectively cut. Theywere deeply suspicious about how the authorities might use this information.39

Students critical of the New Order regarded entering the gates of the Indone-sian Embassy as “like going into the lair of a tiger.”40

The response from the embassy, largely driven by the military attaché butover the signature of Ambassador Manai Sophiaan, was a written announce-ment on 1 August 1966 informing the Indonesian community that the passportsof twenty-five named individuals had been canceled because “of their question-able loyalty to the Government of the Republic of Indonesia.”41 The community


34. Ibid., 38.35. Padmodiwiryo 2005, 104.36. Ibid., 112.37. Ali 1967, 38. Zainur Ali does not indicate whether he was a member of this “screening commit-

tee,” but his account is clearly sympathetic to, and well-informed by, the pro-New Ordergrouping in Moscow at that time. The term “mengamankan” (making safe, securing) in NewOrder parlance came to mean “arresting,” although the actual legalities of this in the USSR con-text are unclear in this source.

38. Alam 2006, 121.39. Interviewees spoke of their suspicions that any information provided to the authorities could

be used against others (e.g., MD Kartaprawira, Den Haag, 23 May 2009).40. Tutuka 2003, 121.41. I would like to thank Sulistyo Dewi, whose name also appears on the document and who is the

widow of Thomas Sinuraya, for permitting me to copy this document (Pengumuman No. Peng.852/R/1966) during our interview at her home in the Netherlands (Sinuraya, 28 September2012). Regarding the internal tension within the embassy, Mahdi, for example, wrote “the In-donesian Embassy Military Attaché forced the Ambassador to declare our passports invalid”

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was asked to refrain from giving any moral or material assistance to them. LocalPKI figures Anwar Dharma, Akbar Moedigdo, and Thomas Sinuraya topped a listthat included three former locally employed staff of the Indonesian Embassy.Students on the list were from a variety of educational institutions: ten fromLumumba University; four each from Lomonosov University and the Institutefor Cooperatives; two from Kiev University; and one from the Metallurgy Insti-tute. As an example, one named on the list was Sudaryanto, a graduate ofDiponegoro University’s Economics Faculty, who had been studying on scholar-ship in Moscow since 1964. Sudaryanto was from a committed PNI family, whichhad been close to Sukarno’s family. His PNI connections were insufficient toprotect him and because he refused to return to Indonesia before completinghis degree, his passport was canceled. With the support of his university, he waseventually able to complete his academic qualifications and find employment inthe USSR.42 Other Indonesians received similar treatment, with additional pass-ports canceled by the Moscow Embassy.43 In 1966 at least thirty-seven studentswho had completed their studies but who refused to return to Indonesia hadtheir passports canceled. In the case of 115 others, the ambassador initially de-layed signing off on the cancellation of their passports (until at least early 1967)against the recommendation of the right-wing “screening committee.”44

In September 1966, following the first wave of passport cancellations in Au-gust, leftists in Lumumba Friendship University (who numbered about 150 andconstituted about 90 percent of that university’s Indonesian student popula-tion) established a “Revolutionary Students’ Movement” (Gerakan MahasiswaRevolusioner), known as “Gemarev,” and a “Movement of the Defenders ofSukarno’s Teachings” (Gerakan Pembela Ajaran Sukarno, GPAS). Together theypublished wall posters, periodicals, pamphlets, and bulletins in Russian, Eng-lish, and Indonesian critical of the local PPI, the military attaché, and the NewOrder. Similarly, at the Sokol student dormitory, leftists established an anti–NewOrder group called Gepari. Such groups were behind the airport demonstra-tions that greeted the former Indonesian ambassador to Moscow (1960–1964),Adam Malik, when he visited the USSR in October.45

Adam Malik, as minister for foreign affairs, returned to Moscow on 18 Octo-ber 1966 to negotiate the deferral of US$40 million loan repayments due to theUSSR in 1966–1967.46 His arrival highlighted the ideological rift within the stu-dent population. Anti–New Order organizations demonstrated at the airportwhile pro–New Order organizations rallied at the embassy.47 General Suhario’simpeccable nationalist credentials enabled him to meet and discuss develop-ments with Malik.48 In those private discussions a military friend of Suhario,


(Mahdi 2001, 58).42. Surya 2012, 14–19.43. The Indonesian Embassy circulated these lists to other diplomatic representations in the USSR

in an attempt to prevent any use of their passports by Indonesian exiles. Mahdi 2001, 58.44. Ali 1967, 44.45. Ibid., 40–41.46. Walters 1970, 208.47. Ibid., 41–42.48. Suharto, Adam Malik, and Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX effectively functioned as a triumvirate

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General Suprayogi, who was with Malik in Moscow negotiating this debt re-scheduling (much of which related to military hardware), warned Suhario thathe was being regarded back in Jakarta as a communist. Suprayogi advised him toremain in the USSR with his family “for the present, with the status of politicalrefugees.”49

The difficult choices Suhario faced—return home or remain in exile—wereones Indonesians throughout the diaspora community had to consider as theyresponded to the political conflict in their homeland. The splits within the Indo-nesian community in the USSR were not simply between pro– and anti–NewOrder groups. Within the PKI itself, the rift between China and the Soviet Unionwas polarizing party cadre.50 Prior to 30 September 1965, the PKI had been be-coming more sympathetic to China than the USSR; in the wake of Suharto’s rise,this trend was strengthening even amongst Indonesian leftists in the USSR. Apivotal polarizing issue was whether the most appropriate stance for the belea-guered remnants of the PKI was the Maoist line of armed struggle or the Sovietline of peaceful resistance.51 For example, Indonesian exiles who acknowledgedthe leadership of the PKI Delegation in China—like D.N. Aidit’s daughterIbarruri or his brother, Asahan—were readying themselves to return to Indone-sia eventually to wage armed struggle, with some (albeit probably only severaldozen) even going to “study revolution” in Vietnam or Burma.52 By contrast,those in the Soviet Union concentrated on anti-Suharto propaganda and inter-national lobbying rather than emphasizing militant resistance to the NewOrder.

Indonesian exiles in the USSR became embroiled in a vitriolic factionalstoush. The September 1966 expulsion from the USSR of Anwar Dharma, Mos-cow correspondent for the PKI’s newspaper Harian Rakyat, for example,prompted the pro-Beijing Politburo of the Central Committee of the PKI to con-demn the “hypocritical attitude of the [Soviet] modern revisionists” who voicedempty support for the Indonesian Left while “openly collaborating with the im-perialists, in particular the U.S. imperialists and all their flunkeys and running-dogs.”53 Hundreds heeded a call from the PKI leadership under Jusuf Adjitorop


in ousting President Sukarno, with the presence of the civilians legitimizing the military take-over. For Malik’s interpretation, see Malik 1980, 252.

49. Padmodiwiryo 2005, 92. General Suprayogi served as the minister of public works and man-power in the final Sukarno cabinet known as the Dwikora Cabinet (August 1964–February1966); then as Suharto was strengthening his control over power, Suprayogi continued aschairman of the State Supervision Body in the second Revised Dwikora Cabinet (March–July1966).

50. For a succinct explanation of the Sino–Soviet split, see Gill 2013.51. Sedjati 2013 (202) provides a summary of these positions.52. As examples, Asahan Aidit went to Vietnam (Aidit 2006), while Ibarruri Aidit spent a year prac-

ticing medicine with the Burmese People’s Army (Alam 2006, 223–59). On the secrecyregarding the number of Indonesians in Vietnam, see note 11 above and Asahan Aidit 2006,148–49). The Indonesians sent to Burma traveled in separate small groups, rarely meeting up,making it impossible to determine precise numbers. Syarkawi Manap, for example, who livedin Burma longer than most Indonesian exiles, staying six years, entered in a group of eleven,and only encountered other small groups of Indonesians (2009, 144, 149, and 165).

53. “On the Expulsion by the Soviet Government of Comrade Anwar Dharma, Harian Rakjat cor-respondent, from Moscow: Statement of the Political Bureau of the CC-PKI,” Indonesian

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in Beijing to regroup in China.54 While some key cadre were formally expelledby the Soviets, most who decided to leave for China went willingly. Asahan Aidit,for example, who felt Soviet attitudes to the Indonesian communist studentswere cooling distinctly, decided to depart at the end of 1966, initially to Chinabut with the ultimate destination of Vietnam, then embroiled in a war of survivalagainst the United States of America. He was part of a much larger phenomenonthat Suhario described as “a student exodus to the PRC.”55

Maintaining Bilateral Diplomatic Relations

The consummate diplomat and urbane foreign minister Adam Malik describedIndonesia’s relations with the USSR as “cool for several years” after 1965.56 Un-like with China this cooling did not totally freeze diplomatic relations. InIndonesia, however, the Soviet–Indonesia Friendship Institute was disbandedand Soviet experts were withdrawn from aid and development programs. TheIndonesian government effectively wound back all forms of cooperation withthe USSR. Student links with their dispatching institutions were terminated. YetJakarta’s diplomatic representation in Moscow continued uninterrupted.

For its part, the Soviet Union responded cautiously to the changed situationin Indonesia after 1 October 1965, maintaining formal relations with the gov-ernment while endeavoring to assess the situation regarding the PKI. Precisedetails remain sketchy. Based on her reading of declassified Russian archives,Ragna Boden notes that the declassified files of the Soviet foreign ministry con-tain “very few documents for the critical period between 23 June and 29December 1965,” with one possible explanation being that “contacts with thePKI might indeed have been interrupted completely.”57 She concludes that “inthe turbulent weeks of October, the Soviets seem to have lost contact with thePKI.”58

Meanwhile, in Indonesia, the anticommunist surge was disrupting the livesof Soviet citizens, who became subject to demonstrations. “In three reportedcases up to the end of 1965,” Boden writes, “the houses and personal belong-ings of Soviet specialists were searched, probably in order to find evidenceabout Indonesian communists.”59 Soviet consulates in Indonesia were underguard or being observed. As Boden noted, “Soviet diplomats and politicianslent the Indonesian communists their support both publicly and in internal dis-cussions with the [New Order] leadership. But they did not go so far as to


Tribune (Tirana) 1 (3): 30. January 1967.54. Ali 1967, 39–40. Ali (1967, 44) estimated that by December 1966 about twenty-four graduates

had left Moscow for Beijing, but multiple interviewees had the impression ultimately more re-located to China than remained in the USSR (e.g., Sudibyo, Moscow, 14 September 2012;Anonymous, Moscow 21 September 2012; Waruno Mahdi, Berlin, 25 September 2012; ArmanAnwar, Amsterdam, 27 September 2012).

55. Padmodiwiryo 2005, 111.56. Malik 1980, 288.57. Boden 2007, 518.58. Ibid., 520.59. Ibid., 520–21.

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openly give the comrades asylum in their embassies.”60 Nonetheless, the SovietEmbassy willingly secreted letters out of Indonesia from Dr. Soetanti Aidit to herdaughters, Ibarruri and Ilya, still in school in the USSR.61

In addition, the Soviets did issue numerous statements condemning thetreatment of the PKI. On 24 February 1966, for example, three days after an In-donesian military tribunal had sentenced Njono, a senior PKI leader, to death,Pravda published a statement by the Central Committee of the CommunistParty of the Soviet Union (CC–CPSU) “angrily condemning” the verdict, withSecretary-General Brezhnev subsequently calling on Sukarno to repeal the sen-tence.62 On 29 March 1966, at the CPSU’s 23rd Party Congress, Brezhnevdeclared, “The whole of our Party and all our nation condemn the anticommunistterror in Indonesia” and demanded “that the criminal butchery of Communists…be stopped at once.”63 According to internal documents, Alexei Kosygin, chairof the Council of Ministers and one of the three most powerful office-bearers inthe USSR, also bluntly denounced the persecution of the communists in discus-sions with Adam Malik during his visit to Moscow in October 1966. As Bodennoted, “from the murder of the generals until the execution of PKI leadersSudisman, Njono and Wirjomartono in October 1968, there were enough pub-lic statements from Soviet state and party officials in the media to fill twovolumes.”64

In effect, the Soviets were balancing two fundamental, and seemingly contra-dictory, concerns: their ideological opposition to the New Order’s crackdownon a fraternal Communist Party, on the one hand, and their self-interest in en-suring the repayment of Indonesia’s debt to the USSR (incurred by Sukarno), onthe other. As Rodolfo Severino Jr. concluded in 1971, “the overriding objective[for the Soviets] in Indonesia is to retain as much as they can of whatever influ-ence they still have…and to keep Western influence down to the lowestpossible level.... [The] way to do this is not by a clear-cut alignment with the in-effectual and unreliable Indonesian Communists but by showing goodwilltoward the regime in power.”65 As Pravda expressed it on 24 November 1966,“The fact that the Soviet Union supports proper state contacts with Indonesia inno way signifies that the Soviet Socialist State can remain indifferent to acts ofterror against the Communists, to the persecution of Marxist-Leninist ideol-ogy.”66 The Indonesian government’s rejection of the Soviet plea for clemencyfor Njono and Sudisman in October 1968, for example, caused strongly wordedcriticism in the Soviet media.67

Of this early New Order period, Singh has argued that “there was always thethreat that Moscow would support the revival of the PKI as an alternative gov-


60. Ibid., 522.61. Alam 2006, 107.62. Singh 1994, 229.63. Quoted in ibid., 230–31.64. Boden 2007, 514.65. Severino Jr. 1971, quoted in Singh 1994, 9.66. Quoted in Singh 1994, 235.67. Singh 1994, 251.

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ernment in exile in Moscow. While Moscow did not deny this, it, however, didnot openly support this.”68 Instead, it kept its options open. By 1970, whenAdam Malik made three visits to Moscow, relationships were warmer, as the So-viets sought to counterbalance growing U.S. influence in Indonesia andSoutheast Asia more generally. Some limited technical and training agreementsfor Indonesians in the USSR did re-commence, but even these struck problems.In February 1970, three Indonesian Air Force cadets reportedly defected in theUSSR (with another reported defection by a naval medical officer). In response,the remaining seventy-eight Air Force cadets were recalled home.69

Relations with the Soviet Host

For many PKI members and sympathizers, the USSR’s willingness to maintaindiplomatic relations with Indonesia under President Suharto in order to securethe repayment of its substantial debt amounted to a betrayal. It proved a tippingpoint in the Sino–Soviet tussle for loyalties. For example, in early 1967, the Sovi-ets declared local PKI leader Suar Suroso persona non grata because of hisprotests against the Soviet government’s ongoing collaboration with the NewOrder. In February he left Moscow for China with his wife and two children.70

Similarly, Ibarruri Aidit, who completed school and gained admission as a stu-dent to the Physics Department at Lomonosov University in June 1967, hadobserved the Soviets expel various pro-Beijing PKI leaders—first Anwar Dhar-ma, then Suar Suroso—leading her to choose also to relocate to China.According to Ibarruri’s account, the Soviets placed considerable pressure uponher to remain, offering her various facilities, including an apartment, but de-spite having already lived half her life in the USSR and being a fluent Russianspeaker, she believed party discipline required her to follow the instructions ofthe PKI Delegation in Beijing.71

In 1966 the USSR had to deal with several hundred Indonesians who were re-sisting pressure from the Indonesian Embassy to return to Indonesia or whosepassports had been canceled and who were consequently reliant on the Sovietsfor all support. Ultimately the majority responded to the call of the party leader-ship-in-exile in China, and made the long journey to Beijing or sought refugeelsewhere. When the former Indonesian ambassador to Sri Lanka M. AliChanafiah arrived from Colombo to commence his exile in Moscow in June1966, he estimated that the Indonesian student population in the USSR hadfallen to approximately one-tenth of its peak in 1965 when estimates reachedtwo thousand. Most had returned home (before or after completing their stud-


68. Ibid., 263–64.69. Singh (1994, 265) cites the Indonesian Observer, 7 February 1970, as the source of this infor-

mation.70. He remains in China today. Nurdiana 2008, 178.71. Alam 2006, 124–28. It should be noted that the recollections of Alexey Drugov, the CC–CPSU’s

liaison officer with the Indonesians, regarding his dealings with Ibarruri in this period varyconsiderably from Ibarruri’s published account. He depicts himself as prioritizing Ibarruri’sown interests, with the Soviets offering greater stability and better welfare for her than avail-able in China (Drugov 2012).

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ies) or had relocated to Beijingas “instructed by their party ortheir organisation.”72 Whenmedical graduate WaloejoSedjati made it to Moscowfrom Pyongyang four yearslater he observed that no Indo-nesians were studying at theFriendship University, whichhad hosted hundreds in 1965,and he estimated the numberof former student exiles re-maining in the Soviet Union tohave dwindled to “severaldozen” (beberapa puluh).73

According to the accountsof some cadre, the PKI Delega-tion in Beijing had sent writteninstructions to party membersin Moscow, which includedlists with the specific names ofthose who had been called to China.74 Some PKI cadre whose names were noton the lists and who had bid farewell to groups of departing comrades at theMoscow train station became disheartened. Decades later, one recounted how,having grown tired of waiting for his name to be listed, he felt rejected by theDelegation, as if he had “lost my shepherd.”75 According to other recollections,the “call” was not a personalized but a general one, open to party members,sympathizers, and anyone opposed to the New Order, to come to China underthe protection of the Delegation to regroup and work for the overthrow of theSuharto regime.76

The flow of exiles was not a one-way street from the Soviet Union to China.Perhaps most notable amongst those who became disillusioned with China andmoved in the opposite direction—to the USSR—was the group that includedthe well-known author Utuy Tatang Sontani, theater set designer Kuslan Budi-man, Rusdi Hermain (son of the former Indonesian ambassador to Cuba, A.M.Hanafi), Harian Rakyat journalist Soerjana, and poet Agam Wispi, who arrivedin Moscow in 1971 after seven days on the trans-Siberian railway.77 With the ex-ception of Agam Wispi, who continued on to East Germany to study, the others


72. Chanafiah and Pane 2010, 315. Chanafiah was one of several Indonesian ambassadors, includ-ing Djawoto (China and Mongolia), A.M. Hanafi (Cuba), and S. Tahsin Sandjasudirdja (Mali),appointed by President Sukarno who chose exile rather than alignment with the New Order.

73. Sedjati 2013, 201 and 209.74. Discussion with four exiles, Amsterdam, 28 September 2012.75. Tri Tunggal 2009.76. Sudibyo 2012; and Gasch 2012.77. Lebang 2010, 112; and Supartono and Rachman 2001.

Waloejo Sedjati, in his apartment in Paris, 18 June2009. (Credit: David Hill)

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settled in Moscow, where Utuy Tatang Sontani and Kuslan Budiman found workteaching Indonesian.

Waloejo Sedjati wrote of his arrival in Moscow in 1970 that he immediatelysensed “the aroma of division” [aroma perpecahan] within the Indonesian ex-ile community, which was riddled with internal feuding and factionalism,notably along the Sino–Soviet rift.78 Those who remained in the USSR included amixture of PKI cadres who were following the Soviet Marxist-Leninist “parlia-mentary road,” together with nonparty Leftists, Sukarnoist nationalists, otherswho simply opposed the New Order, and even those who were merely ren-dered stateless because they had refused to truncate their studies and returnimmediately to Indonesia. Of those remaining, the temptation gradually grewfor them to seek refuge in other countries, and so began the trickle of Indone-sian refugees into Western Europe.

Exile Factions

Emerging to lead the pro-Moscow Marxist-Leninist faction of the PKI wasThomas Sinuraya, who with several dozen like-minded Indonesians—somecoming from Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and East Germany—banded together to form an organization they ultimately called the OverseasCommittee of the Indonesian Communist Party (Comite Luar Negeri PKI, orCL–PKI).79 Till the fall of the Soviet Union, the CC–CPSU recognized this Over-seas Committee as the primary—some would say, the sole—interlocutor onbehalf of Indonesian exiles in the USSR. The PKI Delegation in China con-demned the Overseas Committee, claiming that the China Delegation was theonly leadership of the PKI in exile that had been endorsed by the Politburo in In-donesia.

Some exiles who were familiar with the workings of the Overseas Committeerecalled that Thomas Sinuraya was never formally elected to its leadership but,as the initiator of the organization, was accepted spontaneously as its head. AKaro Batak and former general chairperson of the North Sumatran branch ofIPPI, Sinuraya (born Singga Manik, 6 April 1933; died Velserbroek, 6 June 2000)had been studying in the USSR since 1961 and had established a reputation as adetermined, energetic organizer and impressive public speaker. When the callcame from Jusuf Adjitorop for PKI cadre to gather in China, according to a closefriend’s funeral oration, Sinuraya rejected the instruction for two reasons: first,“at a time when we were being beaten it was precisely when we needed to seekout friends and comrades, not the reverse”; and second, “the decision [to con-


78. Sedjati 2013, 201–5.79. I would like to thank Timur Sinuraya, the son of Thomas Sinuraya, for his wide-ranging discus-

sions with me regarding his recollections of his father and the Overseas Committee, both inMoscow and in the Netherlands in September 2012 and for providing me with documents andphotographs. Needless to say, he would not agree with many of the criticisms made of his fa-ther by other sources used in this analysis. According to one informant involved, the groupoperated for several years from at least 1967 without a formal name. They formalized the term“Comite Luar Negeri” only on 23 May 1969, the Party’s forty-ninth anniversary (Tri Tunggal, 19May 2009).

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solidate in Beijing] did not come from our homeland, but was rather thedecision of leaders who were already in Beijing.”80 Several other key PKI cadre,including Sudibyo, the younger brother of PKI Politburo member Sudisman,also rejected the call to relocate to Beijing. At that time, already well settled inMoscow with an apartment, a Russian wife, and work with the publisher Prog-ress, Sudibyo believed there was still much to learn from the Soviet Union. Yet,though he occasionally attended Overseas Committee meetings, Sudibyo neverjoined the organization, and he believed the best interests of the PKI would beserved by striking a neutral stance in the Sino–Soviet competition for commu-nist parties’ allegiances.81

The Beijing faction regarded Sinuraya and his Overseas Committee col-leagues as party traitors for deviating from the instructions of the PKIDelegation in Beijing and setting up the Overseas Committee as a countervail-ing representation that claimed to speak for the PKI. In the words of onelong-time Russian observer of the Indonesian community, “a traitor is hatedmore than an enemy.”82 The two factions remained at loggerheads for decades,often directing greater vitriol at each other than at their common enemy, theSuharto regime. Those cadres, such as Ibarruri, who chose to move to China, re-garded the Overseas Committee as a puppet creation of the CPSU, which theyresented bitterly for having fractured party unity and as lacking legitimacy fromthe Politburo.83 However, the Overseas Committee continued to respect D.N.


80. Included in the documents collected for Sinuraya’s funeral was a speech written by Suhaemi“In Memoriam Thomas Sinuraya,” in which these remarks appear.

81. Sudibyo 2012. Sudisman was one of five members of the Politburo Working Committee(Dewan Harian Politbiro) (Roosa 2006, 147). He was captured in the aftermath of 1 October1965, tried by a special military court, sentenced to death, and summarily executed in 1967.His defense speech became a major PKI position statement. See Sudisman 2000 and 1975.

82. Drugov, 19 September 2012.83. Alam 2006, 107–28.

Members of the Overseas Committee of the PKI in the USSR at a gathering near Moscow.(Courtesy Timur Sinuraya)

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Aidit as party chair, sym-bolized by the painting ofAidit given pride of placein the Committee’s office,alongside those of Marxand Lenin.84

Pravda, simi-larly, on 30 June 1968, theforty-fifth anniversary ofAidit’s birth, acknowl-edged that “the name ofComrade Aidit—distin-guished revolutionary—islinked forever with thehistory of the national-lib-eration movement, withthe struggle of the Com-munist Party.”85

Clearly, the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee supported the Over-seas Committee in various ways from the latter’s inception. The formerIndonesian ambassador to Sri Lanka, M. Ali Chanafiah, who served initially onthe Overseas Committee as head of the International Section, gave a frank ac-count of the founding of the organization in his memoirs. “The SovietCommunist Party,” he wrote, “provided all facilities and funds required so thatthe Overseas Committee could undertake its activities and pay its functionar-ies.”86 The Soviets placed at the disposal of the Overseas Committee a centralMoscow flat on prestigious Gorki Street for its headquarters, sufficient for a li-brary, small printing facility, and for meetings. Chanafiah, who later fell out withthe Overseas Committee, recalls the Soviets providing “a small sedan forThomas and a pick-up truck for the organization.”87 The Soviet Central Commit-tee supported Sinuraya, who used the designation “secretary” of the OverseasCommittee, to attend a variety of international events and conferences wherehe appeared as a spokesperson for the PKI. Officially recognized as political ref-ugees, the Overseas Committee’s small staff of four or five received livingallowances paid through the Red Cross or were found jobs by Soviet supporters(such as translating for Progress, the publishing house), which enabled them tohave sufficient time to run the Committee’s modest operations.

Thomas Sinuraya was indisputably the Committee’s head. He was assisted bya core group, the precise membership of which shifted over the years, but attimes included Rahardjo Sudiman (who was later sent to Czechoslovakia to


84. Tri Tunggal 2009.85. Singh 1994 (249) quotes P. Afanasyev, “Valiant Son of the Indonesian People,” Pravda 30 June

1968.86. Chanafiah and Pane 2010, 322.87. Ibid.88. Problems of Peace and Socialism (1958–1990) was often referred to by the name of its Eng-

lish-language edition World Marxist Review (WMR). For a summary background, visit en.

Thomas Sinuraya addressing an international conferencein Berlin in 1983. (Courtesy Timur Sinuraya)

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work with the publication Peace and Socialism88), Pardede Salengkat, and Dar-

win Hutajulu (who severed his ties after a falling out with Sinuraya). Permanentstaff of the office included Memed Surachman, Arman Khadyr, ZakirmanSulaiman, and Pratikto.89 The group had links with PKI exiles in Czechoslovakia,Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, East Germany, Vietnam, and North Korea.90 TheCommittee was instrumental, for example, in assisting one of only a tiny hand-ful of Indonesian exiles in North Korea to leave their isolated situation byarranging both an air ticket and Soviet visa through the USSR Embassy in Pyong-yang.91

It was a measure of the Soviets’ regard for Thomas Sinuraya that on 12 May1983 he was awarded the Star of Friendship by decree of the Soviet Union Su-preme Council Presidium. The Soviets routinely accorded him the honor ofappearing alongside the representatives of other fraternal parties at formal stateevents such as the military parades through Red Square each May Day. The Over-seas Committee took the place of the PKI at pro-Soviet international events. Forexample, Thomas Sinuraya and Committee member Setiajaya Sudiman (asRahardjo Sudiman was also known) attended a science conference in EastBerlin in April 1983 commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of thedeath of Karl Marx. Sinuraya’s address on 13 April (delivered in English) washighly critical of the Indonesian government and was reported in the East Ger-man press and broadcast in part on GDR television. One week after the address,the Indonesian Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Jakarta summoned the GDR am-bassador to express the government’s regret over this incident.92 While theCPSU facilitated such appearances by Sinuraya, equally it had an interest in en-suring the Overseas Committee’s tactics did not rupture diplomatic relationswith the Suharto government.

The most significant liaison between the Indonesian community and the So-viet authorities was Alexey Drugov, who worked in the Foreign Affairsdepartment of the CC–CPSU from early 1966 until the collapse of the USSR in1991. Drugov’s responsibilities in the Foreign Affairs Department included liais-ing with political émigrés and assisting them with problems such asemployment and welfare.93 Previously, as an interpreter assisting with the train-ing of an Indonesian submarine crew in Vladivostok, Drugov had been given therank of lieutenant; between 1962 and 1964 he served as interpreter to the So-viet military contingent in Indonesia to support President Sukarno’s Trikora


wikipedia.org/wiki/Problems_of_Peace_and_Socialism.89. Others active within the Overseas Committee included Muntoha, Munir Shahrul, Yukhadi,

Zubir Leylo, and Kodrat Sunarto. I would like to thank Timur Sinuraya for providing these de-tails in an email dated 28 September 2013.

90. Sulaiman 2012.91. Sedjati, 2013, 203.92. Joint Publications Research Service 1983, 1–2, which translates “East German Publicity Given

to PKI Protested,” Merdeka, 24 June 1983, 1, 11.93. I would like to thank Professor Alexey Drugov for his willingness to discuss this period with me

in an interview in Moscow, 19 September 2012. Ali Chanafiah, former Indonesian ambassadorto Sri Lanka, who sought asylum in the USSR, mentions Drugov specifically as greeting him atthe airport on his arrival in Moscow (Chanafiah and Pane 2010, 310).

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campaign over West Papua. It was Drugov, for example, who was entrusted withthe task of liaising with the Aidit daughters in their school in the USSR, includinginforming them that their father had been murdered by the Indonesian military.He had assured them they could remain in Moscow with full support for as longas they wished (an offer they rejected, both opting to move to China).94 Re-flecting the depth of suspicion at the time, several surviving Indonesian exileswho were not aligned with the Overseas Committee told decades later of theirassumptions that Drugov had been a member of the KGB, something he explic-itly denied.95

Life for the exiles in the USSR settled into a routine, most eking out a living inthe Soviet workforce, a handful keeping alive their vision of the party embodiedin the Overseas Committee. The Committee’s links with the CPSU assisted thegroup in maintaining the faction’s connections with the outside world by, forexample, funding its attendance at high-level international events. The Com-mittee was able to monitor international news about Indonesia and receivedcopies of Indonesian newspapers, but there appears to have been no contact ofany verifiable kind with the PKI in Indonesia. In his 1974 study of the PKI, RexMortimer wrote that this Moscow-based Marxist-Leninist stream of the party“seems to have had little if any organized following inside Indonesia itself ” dur-ing the pivotal years of 1966–1967.96 One core member of the Committeerecalled meeting a PKI representative from Vietnam who came to Moscow, butessentially contact with the party in Indonesia was nonexistent.97

The exiles’ battle of ideas and loyalties was evident in their range of alterna-tive periodicals. From 1966 until 1991, the Overseas Committee published aperiodical called Tekad Rakyat (The People’s Will) that for a period in the 1980sat least camouflaged its true origin by printing a Helsinki address on its backcover. Through its connections with the Communist Party of India, the OverseasCommittee was able to publish in India a “document prepared by the under-ground Marxist-Leninist Group of the Communist Party of Indonesia inFebruary 1969,” Urgent Tasks of the Communist Movement in Indonesia.98

Other publications produced by the exiles included a simple stenciled bulletincalled Marhaen Menang (Victory of the Working Classes), published by thePerwakilan PNI/FM (Representatives of the PNI and Marhaen Front), a collec-tion of PNI and radical-nationalist students in Moscow. Another more nebulouspro-Sukarno group produced publications under changing titles, but since itlacked the Overseas Committee’s connections to the Soviet apparatus, it oper-ated somewhat clandestinely. Stencil materials and paper were difficult toobtain and the group had to dismantle and hide the roneo-machine, which pro-duced the documents, to avoid detection. At other times, publications werecrudely produced using multiple carbon copies. The group’s ability to publish


94. Alam 2006, 107.95. Anonymous 2012 (12 September); Anonymous 2012 (21 September); Drugov 2012.96. Mortimer 1974, 395.97. Sulaiman 2012.98. Indonesia 1969.

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diminished as its members were initially isolated in other cities outside of Mos-cow and later drifted abroad.99

As the years passed, the Indonesian exile community in the Soviet Union ex-perienced several painful and enduring conflicts and splits. Indonesians notaligned with the Overseas Committee at the time felt the proximity of the Over-seas Committee to the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee meant thatits membership gained privileges not available to those outside the circle, forwhom surviving as an individual refugee in the Soviet state was a serious chal-lenge.100 Some Indonesian exiles in Russia but outside the Overseas Committeecamp blamed the Committee for hardships they experienced, for example, infinding suitable employment in the capital and securing suitable accommoda-tion. In some cases, these resentments remained deeply held well beyond thecollapse of the Committee and the Soviet Union.

Institutionally, communication between the Overseas Committee and theCC–CPSU remained smooth, with Thomas Sinuraya meeting when necessarywith Drugov and other CPSU staff until the late 1980s. Since the CPSU regardedthe Overseas Committee as the legitimate representative of the Indonesianexilic community it well may have been that participation in the Committeebenefited supporters. Whether there was an explicit policy of favoritism or notis not possible to say with certainty. Those within, or close to, the Overseas Com-mittee deny it. Outsiders were suspicious that the Overseas Committee didshow favoritism in allocating facilities and in interceding with the CC–CPSU tobenefit its supporters. In Amsterdam in 1990, for example, Suparna Sastra-diredja noted after a conversation with a recently arrived exile from the SovietUnion that “internal disputes within the PKI, especially in the Soviet Union,should be written about,” for there were rumors that the Overseas Committeehad been “edging out some comrades and treating other comrades like gold.There are examples. Thomas elevated comrades he trusted into particular postsand particular East European countries.”101

The Soviet state certainly had ways of rewarding those regarded as faithful,for example, by funding holidays, domestically or abroad. By contrast, thosewho were out of favor and “stateless” faced constraints such as restrictions ontravel beyond a forty-kilometer radius of Moscow (or their town of residence)unless they obtained a specific police pass. The Soviets had also tried corrallingIndonesians who remained in the USSR into an Overseas Committee–alignedumbrella Indonesian Youth Organization (OPI, Organisasi Pemuda Indone-sia)—an effort resisted by those who sought to maintain their neutrality anddistance from the host state. According to the avowedly politically neutral


99. I would like to thank Waruno Mahdi for information on his involvement in such publications(email, 26 June 2013) and for numerous comments and corrections he made on earlier draftsof this article.

100. This view was expressed in interviews with various exiles who had been in Moscow duringthese years, most emphatically in a confidential interview in Moscow, 21 September 2012.

101. Comments made in Suparna Sastradiredja’s handwritten notes, dated 29 August 1990, regard-ing his conversation with Isak Dharmawan and held in the International Institute for SocialHistory (IISG), Amsterdam.

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Waruno Mahdi, “ultimately, the Soviets obliged the majority of us to leave Mos-cow, to be isolated singly or in groups of two in various distant cities. I wasisolated in Voronezh, about 600 kilometers to the south of Moscow.”102 He re-mained the only Indonesian there from 1969 till 1976 (after which he gainedrefuge in West Berlin).

At the close of the 1970s, the Overseas Committee had only about ten activemembers. Apart from these stalwarts, the rest of the Indonesian community inthe USSR had by then become absorbed with family activities rather than seek-ing to foment revolution to facilitate their return to Indonesia. Yet the OverseasCommittee remained an ongoing irritation to Jakarta. For example, when thePKI’s birthday message to Brezhnev was reported on Moscow Radio on 19 De-cember 1981, Jakarta responded by summoning the Soviet ambassador tocomplain and by strongly condemning the broadcast in Parliament. But suchformulaic anniversary broadcasts, small circulation anti–New Order publica-tions, and occasional appearances by Overseas Committee leaders at Soviet-supported international events were diminishing, as most exiles headed Westand the Soviets recognized that maintaining cordial relations with Jakarta bettersuited their interests in Southeast Asia.

Collapse of the USSR

By the mid 1980s the Soviet Union was in decay. Mikhail Gorbachev was imple-menting a policy of government transparency (glasnost) and restructuring ofthe Soviet political and economic system (perestroika). Even the core membersof the Overseas Committee were aware that they could no longer rely on theCPSU umbrella to shelter them indefinitely. Bilateral relations between Jakartaand Moscow had been warming for some years. In September 1989 PresidentSuharto visited the USSR, after attending the Non-Aligned Meeting in Belgrade,and signed a declaration on the “Foundations of the Friendship and Coopera-tive Relations between the Republic of Indonesia and the Union of SovietSocialist Republics.”103 Any residual irritation that the presence of the OverseasCommittee and the exiled leftists might have caused to the bilateral relationshad clearly dissipated.

About a year and a half before the USSR was disestablished in December1991, Thomas Sinuraya and his family migrated to the Netherlands. Just prior toSinuraya’s departure, Sudibyo recalls being invited to a meeting of the OverseasCommittee to disband the Committee. Others, however, such as Sinuraya’swife, Sulistyo Dewi, do not recall there being any formal disestablishment of theorganization.104 Son Timur Sinuraya recalls the emptying out of the Commit-tee’s office and the shredding of at least some of the materials within.105 Whetheror not the Committee officially disbanded itself, what is clear is that with the fall


102. Mahdi 2001, 61.103. Singh 1994, 303.104. Sinuraya 2012.105. I was unable to track down any remaining archive of Overseas Committee materials, despite

raising this question in numerous interviews with those formerly involved.

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of the Soviet Union state support forthe Committee evaporated and its re-maining now-aged leadershipmigrated to the Netherlands. By May1990 Overseas Committee activitieshad ceased. There appears to havebeen no attempt to carry the name orthe organizational structure out ofRussia to the Netherlands.

By the time the Soviet Union col-lapsed only about fifteen Indonesianexiles remained, mainly those mar-ried to Russians, with long-standingfamily links to Russia. The remainderof the many hundreds of Indonesianswho were there in the initial years af-ter 1965 had long since migrated toWestern Europe, primarily the Neth-erlands, France, Sweden, and

Germany. Despite the changed circumstances and the huge challenges in ad-justing to post-Soviet Russia, those Indonesian exiles who remained weredisinterested in moving and having to start afresh in another country with a dif-ferent language.106 Gaining citizenship was easy in the new Russian Federation;most did. The former PNI activist Sudaryanto, for example, who had married alocal, took Russian citizenship in 1992, and with his doctoral degree built a re-spected university career as professor of international economics. After the fallof Suharto, he has also helped link Russian and Indonesian universities. Hisdaughter Tatiana is a very successful fashion designer, whose presence on theinternet (he says proudly) far exceeds his own!107 Similarly, the daughter of Dr.Sukirno, another former Indonesian student who remained in Moscow,achieved prominence as a national tennis champion in Russia.108

Conclusion

Yossi Shain has observed that the opportunities available to exilic communitiesto maintain internal cohesion and loyalty to core ideals—including, for exam-ple, the overthrow of an antagonistic regime in their home country and thepossibility of an eventual return home—are substantially determined by thehost state, particularly by the relationship of the host state to the home state.109

The Soviet state had an interest in maintaining relations with the New Order to


106. Interviews with several of the Indonesians who chose to remain in Russia, including Sudar-yanto (12 September 2012), Sudibyo (14 September 2012), and Sukirno (19 September 2012).

107. Sudaryanto 2012, and Surya 2012, 14–19. On Tatiana Sudaryanto, see, for example, www.sudar-yanto.ru/en/about.html and indonesia.rbth.com/discover_russia/2014/01/10/sudaryanto_made_in_russia_22997.html.

108. Lebang 2010, 122.109. Shain 1990.

Professor Sudaryanto, Moscow, September2012. (Credit: David Hill)

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ensure the repayment of Indonesia’s debts and a desire to demonstrate that itcommanded greater loyalty from communist parties around the world than didits ideological rival, China. The capacity of the Overseas Committee to pursueits activities was largely determined by the facilities provided by the Soviet state,which had the capacity to facilitate or impede such activities. Indonesian exilesin the USSR who endeavored to mobilize without the support of the state foundthis extremely difficult. Those who decided to leave the Soviet Union were seek-ing a haven that was more sympathetic to their political beliefs or that offeredthem greater personal opportunities.

The drawn-out fate of Indonesian political exiles who had been in the SovietUnion in 1965 was largely determined by Indonesia’s bilateral relations with theUSSR for most of the second half of the twentieth century. For those who foundthemselves unable to return to Indonesia, yet sufficiently incorporated intoRussian society, the support of the Soviet Union and then the Russian Federa-tion has, over ensuing decades, transformed unwilling exile into permanentmigration. About fifteen Indonesian exiles still live with their families in Russia,where the next generation is achieving some success.110 These remaining Indo-nesian exiles are Russian citizens, and simultaneously part of a growingIndonesian diaspora, now recognized—and valued—as such by post-authori-tarian governments in Jakarta.111

For the majority of those Indonesian exiles who were in the USSR in 1965,however, the Soviet Union ultimately proved an unsuitable refuge, and they re-located, the greater part settling in Western Europe. For most of those initiallyexiled in the USSR, it was their political identity that determined their quest forfinal refuge. They either remained in the USSR to represent the party for as longas the host state provided for them or they sought the protection of other states(such as China) from which to agitate for regime change in their homeland.Their political identity set their loyalties and affiliations within the greatertrans-border diasporic Indonesian community and aligned them to a particularfaction—and thus to a particular host state and ideology—in a world of ideolog-ical polarities.

Only with the dissolution of superpower rivalry and the slow melting of thecold war did these political loyalties fade as useful identifiers. For many theirlives only moved beyond exile to acceptance of their migrated selves when coldwar rivalries no longer influenced the relationships between states. The strug-


110. Lebang 2010, 35.111. It is not appropriate here to venture into the burgeoning literature on the somewhat vexed

concept of “diaspora.” For a general introduction to the issues, see Cohen 1997; Braziel andMannur, eds. 2003; Tölölyan 2012, and more generally Diaspora: A Journal of TransnationalStudies.

112. Some exiles I interviewed in Russia and the Netherlands remain critical of the opposing factionin the pro-Beijing versus pro-Moscow split within the PKI or are still bitter about their treat-ment by the party leadership. More commonly, exiles from the former party factions have cometogether in broader Indonesian community organizations in the countries of final settlement,for example, Persaudaraan (Fraternity) in the Netherlands (Gurning 2011, 57–59).

113. In February 2010, 422 Indonesian citizens were living in Russia (Lebang 2010, 75), of whomabout 200 were Indonesians studying in Russian universities (Pudjiastuti 2013).

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gles against the New Order, like the internal animosities between the pro-Moscow and pro-Beijing factions, have ceased (in all but a handful of stalwarts),giving way to an acceptance of their stronger affiliations within their host com-munities.112 Now, the Indonesian Embassy invites former exiles like Sudaryantoto play an important bridging role by helping settle a new generation ofpost–New Order Indonesians who have come to Russia to study.113

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The research upon which this article is based was funded by an Aus-tralian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP0881132). An earlier version of this articlewas presented at the 7th EuroSEAS Conference, Lisbon, 2–5 July 2013, in the panel on“Migration and Identity.” I would like to thank various (anonymous) readers and Indone-sian exiles for their valuable comments and suggestions on earlier drafts.

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Documents

Indonesian Political Exiles in the USSR