When Furubotn resigned as leader of the NKP, the Comintern leaders invited him to Moscow, to work in the Comintern system for six months or so, and then for three months at the party headquarters in Berlin.(69) The Comintern ``demands'', as it says, that as a member of the Executive he make himself available for international assignments. Furubotn declared himself pleased with the arrangement.(70) It would certainly provide a retreat where he could distance himself from party rows and the decline of the NKP.

As early as in the 1920 to 1923 period, he had shown himself to be deeply interested in ideological as well as practical questions, an unusual combination in the Norwegian labour movement, at least among people from working class backgrounds. Leading the party in Oslo from 1923 to 1930, he had had little time to pursue his ideological interests, and such knowledge of ideological questions as he had acquired before 1930 was probably rather superficial and based on a small and narrow selection of texts, principally Russian popularisations of Marxism in Norwegian translation.(71) On his own admission, in 1932, the results of these studies were meagre. The party leadership, including himself, developed ``abstract-sectarian working methods or rather a total absence of methods. What was typical was a panic-ridden day-to-day struggle to keep the party's finances and newspapers afloat...More thought was often given to avoiding deviation than to how to go about the party's practical work...'' (72)

Not knowing foreign languages hindered him in acquiring insight into Marxism. We know he learned reasonable German, but no Russian.(73) By 1930 he had obviously mastered German sufficiently to enable him to visit the German Communist Party in Berlin. German was also necessary for him to function as a member of the Comintern Presidium.

In Moscow, a world of study was opened up to him. As a member of the Executive Committee and of the Comintern's political machine, he had time for thorough studies of classical Marxism and of the Soviet Russian version developed in the years between the wars. He also had plenty of opportunity to keep himself abreast of foreign and Norwegian news, and was assigned among other things to write summaries in German of what Norwegian newspapers were writing about.

As far as work was concerned, he led a life of luxury: he had a number of secretaries at his disposal, to dig out material for him and take dictation.(74) He took part in numerous commissions and meetings and in international congresses. He established personal relations with Communist leaders from various parts of the world,(75) including Maurice Thorez, Kullervo Manner, Palmiro Togliatti, Ernst Thälmann, Georgi Dimitrov, Otto W. Kuusinen, Walter Ulbricht and Sven Linderot. Some of these became his friends, others, such as Kuusinen, his enemies. He also taught at the Lenin school and the so-called Western University.(76) He worked for a couple of years in the secretariat of the Communist trade union international, the Profintern. Between them, all these activities broadened his mind, despite the Stalinist system which was in control of the Soviet Union. At times he had more leisure to study and read than he would ever have had at home in Norway. He was able to develop further his already considerable skill as a theoretical thinker and debater of principles; he had been noticed for it at the Labour Party's February conference in 1923, when he distinguished between those who supported the Russian Revolution out of admiration for the Russian working class, and those - including himself - who did so out of love for ``our own liberation''.(77)