The Indonesian Left in the Twentieth Century

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Beyond the Rise and Fall of a Party

Editor: Lin Hongxuan, Klaas Stutje & Rianne Subijanto

About this book

This edited volume highlights the work of a new generation of scholars who have reignited the study of the Indonesian Left, particularly the PKI, across continents and disciplines. It reinterprets the Indonesian Left and its associated organisations not simply as a local and national phenomenon but as a force of global relevance. Historically, the Left has always been constructed in conversation and contestation with, on the one hand, the colonial and postcolonial state and, on the other, the communist epicentres of Moscow and Beijing. Moving beyond party-centred narratives, the chapters in this volume demonstrate how diverse global networks and ideologies were translated and transformed within very local, situation-specific environments. In doing so, they foreground the contributions of people and organizations often relegated to the margins of the PKI, illuminating the Indonesian Left as a dynamic site of transnational and local interaction.

Lin Hongxuan is an assistant professor in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. His first monograph, Ummah Yet Proletariat: Islam, Marxism, and the Making of the Indonesian Republic, was published by Oxford University Press in 2023.

Klaas Stutje is a senior researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. In 2019, he published Campaigning in Europe for a Free Indonesia: Indonesian Nationalism and the Worldwide Anticolonial Movement, 1917-1931 (NIAS Press), recently translated under the title Di Balik Bendera Persatuan: Kalangan Nasionalis Indonesia dan Gerakan Antikolonial Dunia 1917-1931 (Marjin Kiri, 2024).

Rianne Subijanto is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of The City University of New York. She is the author of Communication against Capital: Red Enlightenment at the Dawn of Indonesia (Cornell University Press, 2025).