The Comintern, naturally with the agreement of Zinoviev and Radek, instructed me to write a book on Indonesia. Its forms and content were left up to me, and the necessary material was ordered from the Netherlands. I decided to confine the book to the history and statistics of the area, and the population, industry, agriculture, and government of Indonesia. I felt I should let the comrades from that cold country construct their own theories and draw their own conclusions on the basis of the facts. Such was my attitude.33
It would take too long to describe the people of Russia, let alone all my other observations. In the year I spent there I was able to mix with different groups-not only the Comintern leaders, but also the youth, who at that time still considered me to be one of them. With them I often visited factories, villages, plays, and selamatan, getting to know soldiers, workers, peasants, and students.34 My room in a former hotel was open night and day for my friends and for students. Even when I was sleeping at night it was usually available for two or three students who were anxious to pass their exams, since the room was spacious and quiet enough for studying. In fact, I had been given this large, quiet room so that I could write my book.
I am not going to describe the Russian people of today. The new generation has grown up in a politico-economic atmosphere as different from the one when I was there as night is from day. I shall just make a few observations about the people at the time when Russia was economically and socially at the crossroads of feudalism and capitalism and was being led toward socialism by the revolutionary proletariat.
[103] We can see how the efficiency of Russian industry compared with that of Western Europe at the time by contrasting the steel factory in the city of Nizhni with the Spandau machine factory in Berlin. We would not get a clear picture through a simple comparison of labor concentrations, for with 10,000 workers at Nizhni Novgorod and 30,000 workers at Spandau the ratio is only one to three. But as regards the overall efficiency, I would not be afraid to say that a comparison of Russian workers (including the 450,000 industrial workers of pre-war Petersburg) with German workers would show the productivity ratio was more nearly one to eight. In terms of scientific and technical progress, organization of enterprises, and the methods and skills of workers, Russia is still far behind the country that had written on its paper money, at that time deteriorating in value daily, the words “Arbeiten können wir besser als andere Völker.” [We can work better than other peoples.]35
In the organization of political parties and trade unions, Germany was also superior to Russia. This did not mean that the Russian people were left behind by the West in every respect. Prior to 1917 people such as Pavlov in psychology, Minkovsky in mathematics, Mendeliev in chemistry, and Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gorky, and Pushkin in literature, were giants of world stature in their time and their respective fields. Above all in their ability to assess the revolutionary spirit of the proletariat, to lead them toward open or clandestine actions, to draw up demands and slogans able to captivate and move the masses, even today the Germans have a lot to learn from the “old Bolsheviks,” leaders of the November 1917 revolution.
There was no difference between leaders like Lenin, Stalin, Bukharin, Kalinin, or Tomsky, and Petroff, a worker in an iron factory. The leaders felt themselves and the people to be equals or placed themselves on a par in their daily contacts. And neither did the workers feel hesitant or afraid to confront their leaders, even Stalin or Lenin. Titles like “your excellency” or similar honorifics were never heard at that time. Everyone was called comrade, tovarich. Naturally the way workers would say tovarich Lenin differed from the way they would say tovarich Petroff, for Petroff was a forger of steel, while Lenin was a forger of a revolutionary party, the Bolshevik party. Respect for one’s fellow human beings will remain as long as there is human interaction. But real respect grows out of, and is in accordance with, services a person has rendered to that human interaction. And genuine respect does not rest on obeisance or on utterances, but rather on one’s inner feelings.
[104] We Asians from colonial countries could not see any difference between the attitudes towards us of Petroff, the steelworker, and Lenin, the revolutionary worker. Perhaps because of a mixture of some Asian blood, or because they lived in a semi-feudal, semi-capitalist atmosphere as in Asia, the movements, voices, and faces of the Russians were generally more in tune with ours than were those of the West Europeans. The Russians still had a sense of equality and camaraderie in their behavior as we do. There was as yet no trace of uppishness, setting oneself apart, and acting in a “businesslike” manner (for one’s own advantage). Unrestrained laughter still prevailed, welcomes were warm and were reflected in the face, and joy and sadness were clearly expressed and not hidden or feigned.
This was what made me sad to part from the Russian people of that time. I say “of that time,” since I cannot know whether the technical, political, and economic changes over the past quarter century have not brought changes in the behavior of the Russian people as well. Today’s generation never knew the knout, the wooden stick of the Tsar. They live in the atmosphere of socialism, albeit still at the first stage, experiencing many deficiencies and surrounded by capitalism. They are no longer under the same political pressure as the old Bolsheviks, who could regard our wounds as their own, since they themselves were experiencing the blows of the oppressor. The old Bolsheviks could also share our hopes for the future, since they too had long hoped for the dawn to break on their darkness.
Finally, in mid-1923, the Comintern entrusted me with the supervision of existing Communist parties and those which were to be formed in the area that we knew as the “south” during the Japanese period and that I have termed ASLIA—Burma, Siam, Annam, the Philippines, and Indonesia.36 So it was that one and a half years after leaving Indonesia, I had traveled through the Netherlands, Germany, Russia, and China and was returning to my home base.
But long after I returned to Asia I carried with me a clear picture of the climate and landscape of Russia, and of its people: peasants, workers, students and, last but not least, the Old Bolsheviks.
Chapter 10
EN ROUTE TO THE PHILIPPINES AND CANTON
[105] In December 1923 I arrived in Canton. The journey from Moscow to Canton gave rise to many different impressions and led to all kinds of adventures, too many to write about, particularly at this time of paper shortage. And I had just as many impressions and adventures in my innumerable journeys from Canton to Nanyang, ASLIA.1 I use the term ASLIA to refer to the area that covers Annam, Siam, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
On several different occasions, had I made one false step, been a minute late, or put a word out of place in my answers, I would have fallen into an imperialist jail. The paper shortage forces me to omit the story of these adventures too. But there is another reason, one of no less importance: Western imperialism, which has held Asia in its grasp, is now divided. Since the Japanese defeat, one section—Britain and America—has already returned to its former places of occupation, although doing so in new forms. The other section—France and the Netherlands—is now struggling to return by force to the territories it held before being kicked out by the Japanese. Who knows how long we and our descendants will have to struggle to achieve 100 percent independence? In the meantime we have to preserve all the “strategies” used to carry on our work and overcome the traps set by imperialist agents to obstruct our efforts. It is best that I keep to myself both the “strategies” and the adventures that made them necessary. If there are pemuda [youth] who have a right to be given hints or “strategies” so as to evade this or that, I am prepared to impart the information privately.2
[106] It was quite normal to meet great revolutionaries in Russia, but it was quite something else to meet such people in Asia, since real revolutionaries were still hard to come by. I met Dr. Sun Yat-sen through one of his comrades in arms, the late T’an P’ing-shan, leader of the Communist party’s Canton branch.3 The father of the Chinese republic was then president of the Republic of South China whose area covered only the provinces of Yunan and Kwantung, his birthplace.4 Our meeting took place in December 1923 in Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s house beside the Pearl River, which flows through the center of Canton.
Dr.