In the 1960s, the PKI had increasingly moved closer to China’s side in the Sino-Soviet split, partly because Beijing was more supportive of Indonesia in its territorial conflicts. But technically the PKI was still ideologically committed to the Soviet Union’s anti-Stalinist line. These were the years in which Mao was sidelined as a result of the disastrous Great Leap Forward, launched in 1958. Suspicious that the Soviets were trying to hold him back, he ignored their agricultural advice and launched a wildly utopian farming program. Millions died in the resulting famine, and the other leaders
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