In Unfinished Nation Max Lane argues that when, in 1998, President Suharto of Indonesia resigned, he did not fall from power but was pushed by a domestic movement. His book therefore takes a close look at the development of the mass political movement in Indonesia, particularly during the repressive Suharto regime, and places that development in a historical perspective.
Lane draws a sharp contrast between the pre-1965 period and the New Order. He describes the period between 1945 and 1965 as one of a flourishing of cultural and political life, aimed at the development of a common national culture. Lane emphasizes particularly the importance of socialist and communist ideas. These ideologies rapidly gained ground in Indonesia, in part through the support of President Sukarno. However, the popularity of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and leftist organizations was a thorn in the flesh of the Indonesian army. In 1965 the army plotted a coup, which was blamed on the PKI and followed by a witch-hunt targeting the leftist movement. Many members, or suspected members, of the PKI and affiliated organizations were killed; others were arrested and incarcerated for years without formal charge or trial. The new government, headed by General Suharto, overhauled Indonesian political and cultural life in a bid to erase the PKI from the country’s history. Lane identifies the idea of the “floating masses” as one of the New Order’s key concepts. This included the depoliticization of society, for example by restricting the number of political parties. All protest was violently suppressed, and human rights violations were a systematic feature of the New Order state.
Lane argues that due to the New Order’s policies, most Indonesians were reluctant to engage in political activity. An exception was the student movement, which was able to escape the ban on mass politics during the first years of the New Order. While initially supportive of the new regime, in the second half of the 1970s the student movement became more critical. It disapproved of the government’s economic policies, its dependency on foreign aid, and the alliance with the military. In 1978, however, the government banned all student councils as part of its “normalization of campus life” policy. For some years, anti-government protests declined, coinciding with a period of rapid economic growth. It was not until the late 1980s and early 1990s that mass protests returned. Another significant development was the establishment in 1994 of the People’s Democratic Union, renamed the People’s Democratic Party (PRD) in 1996. According to Lane the PRD, a socialist party, was the first attempt among activists to organize themselves within a political framework. From 1997, protests against the New Order intensified even more as a consequence of the Asian economic crisis. In May 1998, Suharto finally succumbed to pressure and resigned.
Lane identifies the years between 1945 and 1965 as a national revolution, where political and cultural life was stimulated as part of a process of nation-building. The Suharto years are identified as a counter-revolution, in which the New Order regime attempted to halt earlier developments and blot out Indonesia’s socialist and communist past. Lane argues that, since the resignation of Suharto, Indonesia has come to a point where the national revolution started by Sukarno can be resumed. Lane argues that this involves rewriting history, particularly the events of 1965, and reviving those ideologies (socialism and communism) underlying the initial national revolution. This is a difficult task, as Suharto’s regime presented another version of the events of 1965, and leftist ideas were banned.
A strong aspect of Unfinished Nation is its orientation towards developments in Indonesia at grassroots levels. Lane, a strong supporter of the activist movement, has access to many of the movement’s members and is therefore able to include in his narrative groups often overlooked in political analyses, such as students, workers, and peasants. Similarly, Lane frequently uses the work of Indonesian commentators and academics, as well as organizations, one example being the data collected by the Yayasan Insan Politika (YIP) research institute on student protests between 1989 and 1998. This contributes to a book that not only tells us about Indonesia but is in part also by Indonesians.
Unfortunately, Unfinished Nation has several shortcomings. Some of them are relatively minor, such as the lack of a list of abbreviations, which would have been helpful in a book discussing political groups identified mainly by their acronyms. The book would also have benefited from a more consistent chronology. Chapter 4, for instance, discusses the development of mass politics in the 1980s and early 1990s, but at the end Lane turns to the Wahid presidency (1999–2001), only to return to the mid-1990s in his next chapter. The language style used leaves much to be desired, particularly as regards the frequent use of superlatives such as “huge”, “massive”, and “great’; in most instances they are unnecessary and tend to give an exaggerated impression.
The book’s more serious shortcomings are caused by Lane’s partisanship in his analysis of the political movement (p. 3), which prevents him from examining developments critically. In chapter 4, for instance, Lane argues that developments in the 1980s, such as the establishment of rights-oriented NGOs and a growing interest among students in Indonesian history, were influenced by the publication of Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s novels by the Hasta Mitra publishing house: “Without the emergence of Hasta Mitra […] aspects of history would have remained totally lost” (p. 101). This claim, which is not sufficiently proved by Lane, lacks nuance. If the development of the Indonesian activist and student movement was dependent on Pramoedya and Hasta Mitra, then what explained the student protests in the 1970s, when Pramoedya was still being detained on Buru Island and students had no access to his works?
Likewise, Lane’s conclusion implies that no others were speaking out on Indonesian history and politics. On page 92, he claims that former political prisoners “did not become involved in any political activity […]. However, there was one important exception. The activities of just three revolutionary Soekarnoists [Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Joesoef Isak, and Hasyim Rachman, the founders of Hasta Mitra]”. Here, Lane ignores the many commentaries on Indonesian politics, literature, and history written by both former members of the leftist movement and foreign sympathizers and academics supportive of their plight in magazines such as Feiten en Meningen (Amsterdam), Inside Indonesia (Melbourne), and Tapol (London). Furthermore, Lane fails to mention that in the 1980s students and activists belonged to another generation: one that had not directly experienced the horrors of 1965. Due to Indonesia’s economic growth in the 1970s, many of them were highly educated, some of them abroad even, where they were exposed to the many freedoms Indonesia had yet to attain. Without doubt, Pramoedya was (and will remain) one of Indonesia’s leading authors and his books were (and are) important. But it is an oversimplification to claim that only his books influenced the student and activist movement.
Similarly, in most instances Lane relates significant events or developments in Indonesia to the groups belonging to the mass political movement. As such, he refrains from including the influence of some government policies. In chapter 6, for instance, Lane notes that between 1988 and 1994 the Indonesian political climate changed rapidly (p. 140). Only from late 1993 did the New Order regime start to respond more aggressively to protests and criticism, resorting to violence as well as press censorship, of which the banning of popular magazines such as Tempo, Editor, and Detik in 1994 is probably the best-known example. Lane identifies this period as one of “radicalization”. However, those years are more commonly thought of as a brief period of liberalization, of Keterbukaan (openness). During Keterbukaan, issues such as human rights and democratization increasingly became part of the public debate, and, naturally, more protests emerged. It was therefore influenced not only by the mass movement, as Lane suggests; it was primarily a consequence of government policy. A comparable example is the resignation of Suharto himself. Lane attributes this solely to Indonesia’s mass political movement. While it is most likely that this was the deciding factor in forcing Suharto’s downfall, some qualification would have been appropriate here. One could, for instance, point to the influence of foreign criticism on the New Order, as well as to the role of new media, particularly the Internet, in exposing the regime’s abuses and mobilizing resistance.
Another example of Lane’s partisanship is the role he ascribes to the PRD, identified as the only significant political party with a strong ideological orientation (p. 244). As such, Lane argues that the PRD will play an important role in the future. And yet the PRD is currently only a marginal political force. Inevitably, the question arises as to why this happened and why it has not produced new political leadership. Lane presents various explanations, such as the political elite’s lack of support for mass mobilization (a characteristic of the PRD) and the “ideologicide” that occurred in Indonesia during the New Order, making it difficult for most people to identify with the PRD’s ideas. However, those are all external reasons, and a more critical commentary on the PRD itself, particularly its internal dynamics and the availability of a tangible plan for post-Suharto Indonesia, would have been appropriate. Only in the last few pages of his book does Lane mention that several PRD leaders left the party, sometimes joining other political groups. This evokes questions regarding the leadership of the PRD and its ideological orientation, but this too is not addressed.
At its best, Unfinished Nation sheds light on the development of the mass political movement in Indonesia, particularly that at the grassroots level. This is an interesting topic, certainly one deserving more scholarly attention. However, Max Lane’s work is negatively influenced by his partisanship, and in many instances it lacks accuracy, subtlety, and an unbiased critical examination.
