Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences - Institute of Asian and African Studies

Talk by Jaroslaw Suchoples: "Poland and the crisis in Indonesia in 1965-1967"

  • What Nusantara Study Group
  • When Jan 14, 2015 from 06:15 to 07:45
  • Where IAAW, Invalidenstraße 118, Raum 117
  • iCal

Abstract:


On the 30th September of 1965, an abortive coup in Indonesia triggered the sequence of events which resulted in the annihilation of the Indonesian Communist Party, ousting the pro-Communist President Sukarno and coming in power the military, pro-western government of General Suharto. The problem of the attitude of foreign countries towards the attempted coup in Indonesia and the subsequent slaughter of the Communists and their sympathizers as well as the power takeover by General Suharto was already studied by many authors (see for instance, Bernd Schaefer / Baskara T. Wardaya (eds.), 1965. Indonesia and the World / Indonesia dan dunia, Jakarta: Kompas Gramedia 2013). Nevertheless, researchers omitted totally the problem of the attitude of the Communist countries, e.g. Soviet dependent European states towards Indonesian events from 1965-1976. We know little about the attitude of diplomats representing smaller Communist countries in Jakarta as well as the position taken by leaderships these powers in Bucharest, Budapest, East Berlin, Prague, Sofia or Warsaw. The same concerns the presentation of the Indonesian crisis in the press published in Communist countries at that time. An example of such still unexplored materials about the Indonesian crisis in 1965-1967 is a collection of documents from the Archive of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and articles printed in main Polish newspapers. Contents of these documents allows analysing reactions of Polish diplomats from the embassy in Jakarta and their superiors from Warsaw towards events which led to the destruction of the third biggest Communist party in the world and to study how the Polish public opinion was informed about the abortive coup of the 30th September of 1965, physical extermination of Indonesian Communists, the end of long lasting rules of President Sukarno and creation of the military dominated government under General Suharto.

 

By Jarosław Suchoples
Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS)
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM)

Biodata
Dr Jarosław Suchoples took his PhD from the Institute of History of the University of Helsinki (‘Finland and the United States, 1917-1919. Early Years of Mutual Relations’) in 2000. From 1996 to 1998, he lectured at the Renvall Institute of the University of Helsinki and was the head of a project at the Library of the Parliament of Finland (Helsinki). In 2000-2001, he worked as an analyst of the Polish Institute of International Affairs in Warsaw (Poland). From 2001 to 2003, he was a visiting researcher at the Department of Political Science of the University of California, Berkeley (USA). Between 2003 and 2006, he lectured at the Willy Brandt Centre for German and European Studies in Wrocław (Poland), Nordeuropa-Institut of the Humboldt University in Berlin at the Free University Berlin. In 2000-2013, he was an assistant professor at the University in Olsztyn and in Szczecin (Poland). In 2008-2009, he co-operated with the Centre of Historical Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Berlin. In 2013, he was appointed as an associate professor at IKMAS (UKM). He is a scholarship and grant holder of many foundations from Finland, Germany, Poland and the USA.
Email: jsuchoples[at]hotmail.com