President Sukarno: achievements and faults

The article highlights the activities of the first President of independent Indonesia Sukarno in the period after the Second World War. Sukarno played an important role for the immense archipelago, because he contributed to the growth of the liberation movement of Indonesia, to the formation of the state new ideology, independent economy, political system, participation in the Non-Aligned Movement, proclaimed at the Bandung Conference in 1955. The article analyzes the activities of Sukarno in safeguarding the sovereignty of Indonesia, considers the ideological settings of the first President and his famous principles (Pancasila), the phenomenon of «Indonesian socialism». The author touches upon the policy of «guided democracy» proclaimed by president Sukarno, its basic features, elements of subjectivism and authoritarianism. Sukarno offered a new kind of democracy instead of the Western-style bourgeois democracy, the roots of which he found in the depths of Indonesian history. The policy of «guided democracy» was caused by the limited powers of the president under the new constitution and Sukarno’s doubts about the suitability for Indonesia of the Western forms of democracy.