Communist Party of Indonesia - The 1926 Revolt

The 1926 Revolt

In May 1925, the Exec Committee of Comintern in a plenary session ordered communists in Indonesia to form a united anti-imperialist front with non-communist nationalist organizations, but extremist elements dominated by Alimin & Musso called for a revolution to overthrow the Dutch colonial government. At a conference in Prambanan, Central Java, communist-controlled trades unions decided the revolution would start with a strike by railroad workers that would signal a general strike and then a revolution would start. This would lead to the PKI replacing the colonial government.

The plan was for the revolution to begin in Padang, Indonesia, Sumatra, but a government security clampdown at the beginning of 1926 that saw the end of the right to assembly and the arrests of PKI members forced the party to go deeper underground. Splits among PKI leaders as to the timing and course of the revolution resulted in poor planning. Tan Malaka, at the time Comintern's agent for Southeast Asia and Australia did not agree with the plot, partly because he believed the PKI had insufficient mass support. As a result of these divisions, in June 1926, the revolution was postponed.

However, there was a limited revolt in Batavia (as Jakarta was then known), which broke out on 12 November. Similar actions took place in Padang, Bantam and Surabaya. In Batavia, the revolt was crushed within a day or two, and after a few weeks it had been comprehensively defeated throughout the country.

As a result of the failed revolution, 13,000 people were arrested, 4,500 imprisoned, 1,308 interned, and 823 exiled to Digul, West New Guinea. Several died while in captivity. Many non-communist political activists were also targeted by the colonial authorities, under the pretext of suppressing the communist rebellion. The party was outlawed by the Dutch East Indies government in 1927. The PKI went underground and Dutch, and later Japanese, surveillance ensured that it was never a disciplined or coherent organisation for the remainder of the pre-war period.

During the initial period of illegality PKI kept a somewhat lower profile, with much of its leadership imprisoned. In 1935 the PKI leader Musso returned from his exile in Moscow to reorganize the underground, or "illegal" PKI. His stay in Indonesia was however rather brief. The party now worked within various fronts, such as Gerindo and trade unions. In Holland PKI started working amongst Indonesian students within the nationalist organization Perhimpunan Indonesia, an organization which was soon to be under the control of the PKI.