Today marks 101 years since the founding of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in 1920.
The party would, at its height, become the largest in the world outside of China and the Soviet Union ...
but would be eradicated in a CIA-backed political genocide killing up to 2 million communists and other suspected left-wing sympathizers.
The PKI was the oldest communist party in Asia, founded 3 years after the Russian Revolution and before the Chinese Communist Party.
It grew into a diverse, predominantly Muslim native Indonesian workers, peasants and students from the 13,000 islands took up the idea of socialism and made it their own in their struggle against Dutch colonialism and international capitalism.
During the early 20s, the PKI focused on building a workers' movement as and planned to establish a Soviet Republic of Indonesia. This alarmed the Dutch, who stepped up repression & expelled party leaders.
After a failed revolt in 1926, the PKI was forced to go underground.
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