Boeroeh dan Tani pergoenakanlah persatoeanmoe oentoek membasmi moesoeh. Mari kita berdjoeang (Workers and Peasants, Use Your Unity to Wipe Out the Enemy. Let Us Struggle)

A hand-painted poster shows a peasant bent over a hoe beside a tree and a bare-chested smith with a sledgehammer at an anvil, with a hammer-and-sickle star in the lower right corner. The Indonesian text calls on workers and peasants to use their unity 'to wipe out the enemy' and ends 'Let us struggle'. The tell: 'the enemy' is never named and 'unity' is never given a programme, so the virtue words carry the whole appeal.

Date: September 1947
Period: Cold War
Made by: Indonesian communist party poster (attribution by the Dutch army contact service, which filed it under 'communist propaganda'); artist's initials 'LNW'
Region: Southeast Asia
Country: Republic of Indonesia
Medium: Poster
Issuer type: Party
Regime: Republic of Indonesia
Leader: Sukarno
Audience: Domestic public
Purpose: Mobilize or secure compliance
Themes: Labor, War and the military
Event: Indonesian National Revolution
Techniques: Glittering generalities
Source: Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source: Wikimedia Commons (Nationaal Archief, Fotocollectie Dienst voor Legercontacten Indonesie, 2.24.04.03, no. 12107), retrieved October 2, 2026
Rights: CC0 1.0 (Nationaal Archief, stated on the Commons file page)
Nationaal Archief, Fotocollectie Dienst voor Legercontacten Indonesie (2.24.04.03), no. 12107, September 1947, CC0.

Text on the object

Original (Indonesian) · read from the image, not independently checked

Boeroeh dan Tani pergoe-
nakanlah persa-
toeanmoe
oentoek
membasmi
moesoeh.

mari kita berdjoeang.

[initials, lower left of the drawing:] LNW
[round stamp, lower left:] [illegible]

English translation (machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader)

Workers and Peasants, make use of your unity to wipe out the enemy.

Let us struggle.

Read from the 1280 px Commons rendering. The archive's own annotation gives the text as 'Boeroeh dan Tani pergoenakanlah persategnmoe oentoek membasmi moesoeh'; the poster reads 'persatoeanmoe' (your unity). Spelling is the pre-1947 orthography (oe for u, dj for j). Translation is FRAME's own literal rendering, machine-assisted and not verified by a fluent reader.