The dictator of Indonesia, Suharto, resigned on 21 May 1998. As Alan Woods and Ted Grant wrote at the time, this bloody tyrant ruled Indonesia with a rod of iron, having come to power over the corpses of over a million people. But he was blown away like a dead leaf in the wind by a mass movement of the students and workers. This momentous event opened up a revolutionary opportunity in Asia, one that was sadly never grasped. Nevertheless, the collapse of Suharto's regime was a tremendous victory for the Indonesian masses.

Confused reports of Officers' plots, coups and countercoups which filtered through to the Western press a week ago were the first indication of a major revolutionary upheaval in Indonesia. The recent events unfolded against a now familiar background of social and economic crisis in a backward country. The regime of Sukarno - despite the superficial appearance of stability - has been exposed as rotten to the core