1 - Introduction

Summary

It is both too soon and too late to write a political biography of General Ne Win. Too soon for several reasons: one is that his name still stirs political passions, though not as strongly as two or three decades ago. Another reason is that a number of diplomatic records necessary for a full account are not yet available. Under the thirty-year rule that applies in many archives, most of Ne Win's final decade in power is still under a blanket and this book is weaker for that. Moreover, the Myanmar archives and the archives of other countries crucial for a complete account are partially or totally unavailable. If I had more time, more money, and an even more tolerant publisher, the book would be substantially longer than it is now.

A political biography of General Ne Win is also too late in that many people who might have been interviewed and provided first-hand accounts of events and circumstances are no longer here. The Grim Reaper reached them before I did. Especially, the subject of the volume, General Ne Win, whom I never met, has been gone for more than a decade as I write. He does not have the chance to rebut and refute what I have written about him. However, given his lack of interest in what others said about him, and his unwillingness to encourage a cult of personality around himself, other than in the reflected glory of General Aung San, it is unlikely that he would do so even if he were alive.

A question that readers might ask is why have I bothered to write this book? I do not need to do so as I am under no obligation to a university to drive it up the league tables or a funding council to demonstrate that I deserve my noodles and potatoes.1 There are, however, reasons which grew out of my academic career.I lived in Myanmar in 1978 and in 1982 for periods of six months each, and visited the country almost every year between 1975 and 1987, the year before Ne Win stepped down from formal office. Though I was unable to travel widely before 1989, and never reached the furthest regions of the country until this century, I did experience a little of what life in socialist Myanmar was like.