For nearly forty-five years, the momentous events of 1965–66 in Indonesia—a murky attempted purge, putsch, or coup (or successful military coup); the destruction of Indonesia's Communist Party (PKI), involving the deaths of hundreds of thousands; and the beginning of a generation of governance dominated by the military—have eluded adequate explanation by scholars and public commentators, Indonesian or otherwise. It is an exaggeration to pronounce these events collectively “one of modern history's great mysteries” (Stephen Drakeley, The History of Indonesia [Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005], 111), but they have indeed posed serious questions and given rise to remarkably acrimonious, ideologically polarized, and conspiracy-soaked debates that have affected the study of all of twentieth-century Indonesia. It is also rather an exaggeration to claim, as some persist in doing, that the events of 1965–66 have been hidden, ignored, covered up, untold, or forgotten. There does exist, after all, a large international literature on...
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