Fifty years ago, the Indonesian military began a savage counterrevolutionary campaign against the country's Communist Party, leading to the murder of hundreds of thousands in a country that had, until that point, had the largest non-ruling Communist Party in the world, with more than 1 million members. The genocidal war on the communists was carried out with support of the U.S. government and its allies, amid the Cold War conflict with the former USSR. The slaughter of the communists also led to the downfall of Indonesian President Sukarno and the beginning of the rule of the military dictator Suharto.