oa ‘Volk van Java, de Russische Revolutie houdt ook lessen in voor U’

‘People of Java, the Russian Revolution contains lessons for you too’. Indonesian socialism, Bolshevism, and the spectre of anarchism

The Russian Revolution influenced the burgeoning socialist movement in the Dutch Indies and the late-colonial political landscape of the Indies in general in three ways. First, the revolution and Sneevliet’s article ‘Zegepraal’ escalated tension between a ‘parliamentary’ and a ‘revolutionary’ faction within the socialist association ISDV. Second, the revolutionary faction of the ISDV used events in Russia to argue that socialists had to turn away from the small Dutch community in the colony, and work towards extra-parliamentary organization of the Indonesian peasantry. Finally, developments on the international stage led to a semantic shift in political terms and concepts such as Bolshevism, anarchism, and ‘timeliness of revolt’. The example of Russia led to a re-evaluation of the Indonesian peasantry, seen no longer as a politically immature and anarchist mass but now as a potentially revolutionary force.