About the Author

Semaoen was born in East Java (1915). At the age of sixteen, he was elected to be one of the first Indonesian members of the Union of Train and Tramway Personnel (VSTP). In 1915, he was elected vice-chairman of the Indies Social Democratic Association (ISDV) in their Surabaya office, which was to become the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). He also studied at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East for a time. Semaoen moved to Jakarta, where from 1959 to 1961 he served as a government administrator and taught economics at Universitas Padjadjaran in Bandung.