The Communist Party of Norway (, NKP) is a Marxist-Leninist party in Norway. It was formed in 1923, following a split in the Norwegian Labour Party.
From its onset the NKP accepted Bolshevization and the Soviet Union's leading role in the Communist International. As such, it followed the official line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and was particularly critical of Trotskyism and Titoism during Joseph Stalin's tenure as the leader of the Soviet Union.
During the Second World War, the NKP initially opposed active resistance to the German occupation, in deference to the non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Once Germany terminated the pact and attacked the Soviet Union, the Communist Party of Norway joined the resistance.
As a result of its role in the anti-Nazi struggle, the NKP experienced a brief surge in popularity immediately after the war, but popular sympathy waned with the onset of the Cold War. The ruling Labour Party took a hard line against the communists, culminating in Prime Minister Einar Gerhardsen's 1948 condemnatory Kråkerøy speech. Norwegian authorities considered the party an extremist organization, and its activities would be closely monitored by the Police Surveillance Agency throughout the Cold War."Myndighetenes trusseloppfatninger," in the Lund Report, Official Document No. 15 (1995–96), pp. 155–189
Ideologically, the NKP has evolved since its founding. It followed Khrushchev's lead by formally denouncing Stalin's rule after his death in 1953, but remained pro-Soviet until the end of the Cold War, despite occasional instances of disagreement. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the party has recognized some of the flaws of the Soviet model. It nonetheless supports traditional Soviet historiography and pro-Russian political views, opposing NATO, the European Union and the United States.
The NKP has been a marginal force in Norwegian politics since the late 1940s. It held a single seat in the parliament as late as 1961, but it has not been represented in any elected bodies in recent decades. In the 2025 parliamentary elections, it received only 50 votes (0.00%).
History
Background, establishment, and pre-war era
The Norwegian Labour Party (DNA) became a member of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1919 under the leadership of Martin Tranmæl. While Tranmæl at first supported the move of becoming a Comintern member, he became increasingly skeptical of it after the proclamation of the twenty-one conditions which stated that members had to enforce democratic centralism and party discipline. Even so, Tranmæl continued to support the Labour Party's membership, even if that meant a future split within the party between the left and the right. A split did occur along factional lines in 1921 and led to the establishment of the Social Democratic Labour Party. A power struggle soon erupted between the Tranmælists and the supporters of Olav Scheflo, the party's parliamentary leader, following Kyrre Grepp's absence due to illness and later death in 1922. The reason for the struggle was Tranmæl's desire to block Grepp from becoming the party's next leader; Grepp was a supporter of the Comintern line.
By the time of the 4th World Congress of the Comintern, in which a policy of strengthening the apparatus of the member parties took place, Tranmæl had had enough of what he saw as the Comintern's meddling in the internal affairs of the Labour Party. He managed to get a majority within the Central Board for a withdrawal of its Comintern membership, but the Comintern's representative, Karl Radek, managed, with a bit of maneuvering, to get the majority of the party's National Board to vote in favour of retaining its Comintern membership. Before the Labour Party conference in February 1921, Tranmæl came up with the Kristiania proposal, a declaration of semi-independence from Comintern. The Kristiania proposal supported retaining membership in the Comintern, if the Labour Party could operate on more independent lines. At the conference a majority, by a margin of two votes, voted in favour of the proposal. The Comintern representative at the party conference, Nikolai Bukharin, grudgingly accepted the vote. The power struggle between the Tranmælists and the Scheflo wing continued, even more aggressively, until the extraordinary party conference of November 1923 which voted in favour of withdrawing the Labour Party from the Comintern. As a reaction, the Scheflo wing left the party and established the Norwegian Communist Party. Organisationally, the Communist Party continued the representation of Norway in the Comintern.
Thirteen of the Labour members of parliament joined the Communist Party, as did large parts of the trade union opposition to the Labour Party. The newly established party elected Sverre Støstad as chairman, Halvard Olsen as deputy chairman, and Peder Furubotn as general secretary. The party managed to gain 6.1 percent of the votes in the 1924 parliamentary election, but its vote share decreased to 4 percent in 1927, and further in 1930 to 1.7 percent. At the same time, its membership slowly decreased, and by the 1930s the party had lost much of its former influence.
The 1924 election was a failure for the party; the party became the third largest left-wing party, behind the Labour Party and the Social Democratic Labour Party. The Communist Party had failed to restrengthen the Comintern organisation in Norway after the 1923 split. The 1925 conference focused on the party's organisational structure; a structural proposed by the Comintern was duly accepted by a majority at the conference.
Parallel to its decreasing electoral influence, the party was ravaged by internal strife. Halvard Olsen and other trade union leaders left the party in 1924, in protest over the trade union policy of the Communist Party. Sverre Støstad, Fredrik Monsen, and Olav Larssen were excluded from the party in 1927 because of disagreements surrounding the reunification of the Labour Party (which merged with the Social Democratic Labour Party). Jeanette Olsen, Emil Stang Jr., and Scheflo left the party in 1928 due to their disappointment with how the Communist Party reacted towards the first DNA government, Hornsrud's Cabinet. In 1927, the Mot Dag group, a circle of leftwing intellectuals, joined the party. They would leave the following year, as the Communist Party took an 'ultra-left turn'.
The Comintern demanded in the summer of 1927 that the Communist Party move further to the left. The move to the left was characterised by a more open "class against class politics, in which the social democrats were designated as the primary enemy" of communism. At the 9th Plenum of the Central Committee in 1928, they denounced the right-wing faction for supporting the Labour government of Christopher Hornsrud. The 9th Plenum led to a further reduction of party members, but Furobotn and the Communist Party continued to be loyal to the line set by the Comintern. There was no significant dissent within the party against the Comintern line, and the party became vehemently loyal to it; it began to accuse the Labour Party of being social fascist, and further claimed that the Labour Party had stopped being a workers party. This policy led to further marginalisation of the party by the 1930s. In 1930 the Comintern directly interfered into the affairs of the NKP, when it ordered Furubotn, the party chairman, to visit the Soviet Union. In 1933 the party took the initiative to propose a collaboration with the Labour in the 1933 parliamentary election in correlation with the Comintern's policy of a Popular Front. The proposal was rejected, but the Communist Party continued to propose a collaboration of sorts to the Labour Party in 1935, 1936, and in 1937. The Labour Party continued to be interested in such a proposal as long as the Communist Party and itself were unified organisationally. From 1938 onwards, the Communists' relations with other parties reached an all-time low, and by the time of the German invasion of Norway in 1940, the party was in a crisis. The Norwegian public had begun to see the NKP as a tool of Moscow.
Second World War At the onset of the Second World War, the NKP subscribed to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union. The DNA government, on the other hand, aligned with the United Kingdom. During the Finnish Winter War, NKP supported the Soviet war effort, whereas DNA supported the opposing side. DNA-NKP relations deteriorated further, reaching a historic low.
Germany invaded Norway on 9 April 1940. The NKP publication ("The Worker") proclaimed that the war was an imperialist war, and that Germany and the Western powers were equally responsible for its outbreak. According to that analysis the party should not take sides for one of the imperialist powers, a policy that was in clear opposition to the (then exiled) DNA government.
However, local Communist Party cells in northern Norway began (without the consent of the party leadership) to mobilize resistance activities.
In August 1940, NKP was the first Norwegian political party to be banned by the German occupation authorities. The publication of Arbeideren ceased. The party then went underground. However, it was poorly prepared for underground functioning. In the ongoing confusion within the party, Furubotn began to call for more active NKP resistance against the occupation. Furubotn had spent several years in Moscow, but returned to Norway just before the war. Now he was the leader of the party in Vestlandet. On 31 December 1941, the party held a clandestine national conference, which adopted Furubotn's 'active war policy'.
The NKP came to play a leading role in the resistance movement, organizing sabotage and guerrilla activities. Although different sectors of the resistance showed a united front towards the occupants, the relation between NKP and the Home Front, the government-in-exile, and the clandestine trade union movement were not always smooth as the government advocated only peaceful resistance, such as media and intelligence support for the allies, until the last years of the war, when these elements of resistance were to join actively. Generally, the NKP wanted to adopt more offensive tactics against the occupants. It also created an illegal newspaper, Friheten, or "Liberty", which is still in print.
Postwar resurgence After the war, NKP enjoyed a strong increase in popularity for its role in resistance struggle. The role the Soviet Union had played in defeating Germany, and in particular the Soviet liberation of Finnmark in northern Norway, also contributed to the popularity of the party.
In the national unity government formed after the war, two communists were included: Johan Strand Johansen and Kirsten Hansteen. Hansteen was the first female minister in Norwegian history. The party organ, Friheten, would reach a readership of approximately 100,000 directly after the war. In the new postwar atmosphere of tolerance, discussions were raised over a possible reunification between DNA and NKP. During the war, discussions had taken place in the Grini concentration camp between captured DNA and NKP leaders (including Einar Gerhardsen from DNA and Jørgen Vogt from NKP). However, these plans were discarded by Furubotn.
In the 1945 parliamentary election, the NKP vote share reached its historical peak. NKP received 176,535 votes (11.89%) and won eleven seats in the Storting. In 1946 Furubotn was elected general secretary of the NKP.
Onset of the Cold War However, the growth of the party proved to be brief. The Cold War began, and the Norwegian government aligned itself with the Western powers. In the 1949 parliamentary election the NKP lost many voters. The party received 102,722 votes (5.83%).