How can an underdeveloped country like Indonesia draw on outside resources for its national development without sacrificing its independence? Approaching the problem from the vantage point of the Indonesian elite, this important work explores the complex interactions between domestic political factors and the shaping of foreign policy. To illustrate the ways in which underdevelopment has affected Indonesia's international participation, Professor Weinstein presents a graphic picture of what Indonesia's leaders see when they view the outside world, and he systematically seeks out the sources of their perceptions. He shows that most of the elite see the international system as dominated by exploitative powers that cannot be relied on to assist Indonesia's development. He examines the relationship between perceptions and politics under both Sukarno and Soeharto and offers an illuminating comparison of the bases of foreign policy under each leader, revealing dramatic changes and surprising continuities. His cogent analysis helps to explain the sharp reversal of policy in 1966, and his conclusions form a convincing hypothesis that can be tested in other Third World countries. This book, now brought back to life as a member of Equinox Publishing's Classic Indonesia series, will attract specialists in Southeast Asia, as well as readers with a broader interest in the politics and economics of underdeveloped countries. FRANKLIN B. WEINSTEIN was Director of the Project on United States-Japan Relations at Stanford University, where he also taught in the Department of Political Science. A graduate of Yale University, he received his PhD from Cornell University.

Although in recent years there have been an increasing number of studies of the Indonesian Communist Party and of the Indonesian revolution (1945-49), there has been relatively little attention paid specifically to the role of the party in the revolutionary period and its relationship during that period with the Soviet Union. Furthermore, virtually no studies have been made of the perceptions of the Soviet Union of the character of the Indonesian revolution and the level of sophistication and understanding which its Indonesian specialists brought to the study of Indonesian affairs of this period. We believe that with this Interim Report Ruth McVey has made an important beginning in overcoming our ignorance of this most important subject. Her study makes a significant contribution both to our understanding of Indonesian Communism and of Soviet relations with Asian Communist parties in the critical period after World War II. From 1954 to 1956, Miss McVey undertook intensive research on Soviet materials available in the United States and Western Europe and on Dutch Communist and Indonesian Communist publications available in the Netherlands and at Cornell. This study, first published in 1957, is based on her analysis of these documents and covers the period 1945-1950. About the Author Miss McVey received her M.A. in 1954 from the Harvard Soviet Area Program. Subsequently under the auspices of the Cornell Modern Indonesia Project she carried on research for fifteen months in the Netherlands and England, and it was following this that she wrote this Interim Report. After further graduate work at Cornell, Miss McVey was awarded a Ford Foundation fellowship for additional research in the Netherlands and Indonesia. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1961.