Born June 6, 1901, in Surabaya; died June 21, 1970, in Jakarta. Indonesian public and state figure.
The son of a teacher, Sukarno lived from 1915 to 1920 with the family of Tjokroaminoto, a well-known figure of Indonesia’s national liberation movement. In 1925 he graduated from the Bandung Technical College. In 1926 he helped organize the Bandung Study Club, which laid the groundwork for the establishment of the National Party of Indonesia (NPI; founded 1927). Sukarno served as the NPI’s first chairman.
In December 1929, Sukarno was arrested by the Dutch colonial authorities. In 1932, having regained his freedom, he joined the Indonesia Party (from 1931 the successor of the NPI, which had dissolved after Sukarno’s arrest) and was elected its chairman. Again arrested in 1933, he was interned on the island of Flores. In 1938 he was transferred to southern Sumatra, where he remained until the Japanese invasion of Indonesia in 1942.
In his writings, Sukarno formulated the ideology of marhaenism (an Indonesian type of petit bourgeois socialism), which was inseparably linked to the national liberation struggle. During the Japanese occupation of 1942–45, Sukarno remained outwardly loyal to the occupation authorities while actually working in the interest of the liberation movement and maintaining his ties with the country’s patriotic underground organizations. On Aug. 17, 1945, on behalf of the Indonesian people, Sukarno proclaimed the independence of the Netherlands colony known as the Dutch East Indies and the establishment of the Republic of Indonesia and became the republic’s first president. He was one of the organizers of the 1955 Bandung Conference of Asian and African nations and played a leading role in its preparation as well as in the conference itself. In 1960 he was awarded the International Lenin Prize for Strengthening Peace Between Nations.
In the late 1950’s, Sukarno adopted a new system of government—a “guided democracy”—that significantly strengthened the president’s personal powers. The title of “great leader of the revolution” was conferred on Sukarno in 1963 by the Provisional People’s Consultative Congress (PPCC), which also appointed him president for life.
Sukarno’s influence in Indonesia’s political life waned after 1965, when a right-wing military group assumed power as a result of the September 30 Movement. In March 1966, Sukarno was forced to surrender all power to General Suharto, minister in command of ground forces. The PPCC, meeting in July 1966, revoked its appointment of Sukarno to the presidency for life. On Feb. 20,1967, Sukarno officially surrendered presidential authority to General Suharto.
V. A. ZHAROV