Furubotn spent eight years in Moscow. It seems unlikely that any other Western European Communist leader can have spent as long there without even paying the briefest of visits to his home country. Nor was he sent as a travelling instructor to other Communist parties, as leaders at his level often were. These facts support the hypothesis that he was more or less in political custody in Moscow.(88) But this was not entirely due to critical assessments of him on the part of the Russians and the Comintern. Before he came to Moscow, he had been looked upon as the ``iron man'' of the NKP.(89) When he was re-elected Chairman of the party in 1929, the Comintern representative Hermann Remmele described him as one of three NKP leaders (the others being Arvid G. Hansen and Haavard Langseth) of international calibre as Communist leaders (Norges Kommunistblad, 19 and 20 April 1929). According to Kai Moltke, the Comintern leadership regarded him as ``a personality and politically gifted'',(90) and this has been confirmed by Just Lippe(91) and Arvid G. Hansen(92). Admittedly he possessed some character traits which made him less than perfectly fitted for a streamlined Communist movement but the Comintern clung to the hope that as a dynamic and gifted proletarian, he would choose the ``right course''. If he had, they would have found Furubotn exceptionally useful. When he failed to the ``right course'', they saw the danger that they had been nourishing a viper in their bosom - in fearful response, no doubt, they accused him of being an imperialist agent.

In the autumn of 1938, at the age of 48, Furubotn returned to Norway, without any official position, but with experience of international politics which was rare among Norwegian politicians. He was not only returning to one of the country's smallest parties, but was also being banished(93) to a job as political secretary to the Western Norway district party, which was in rapid decline. The Comintern had sent word that he was not to be given any leading position in the party.(94) This was quite an anti-climax: the Norwegian Communist with the longest experience of high posts in the Comintern being sent back to where he had started his national political career in 1923. Furubotn was well aware that this was a form of party punishment, but was not unhappy to have an opportunity to start building from the bottom up again: he embarked on a creative period, as can be seen from the absence of any drinking problem until after the liberation in 1945 - almost seven years on the wagon.

In Bergen Furubotn had a high reputation for his work in the labour movement up to 1923; he could build himself a platform there practically regardless of the permanent petty intrigues in Oslo. Although the Bergen party was in decline, it had won 9% of the votes in the 1937 local government elections(95) and held almost half of the offices in the Bergen trade union congress.(96) The Bergen area was still the NKP's largest local party. (97)

Furubotn returned to Norwegian politics at a time when the international climate was turning stormy. It was the time of the Munich agreement and Hitler Germany's take-over of Czechoslovakia. The danger of a world war was becoming more and more apparent. In this situation, the Comintern increased its efforts to establish cooperation even with non-Socialist parties in order to block the advance of Fascism.(98) As early as in 1935 it had urged the adoption of an anti-fascist Popular Front policy. One result was that in Norway in February 1939 the NKP launched the slogan ``Defend the country against Fascism''. The idea was to adopt Norway's national Independence Day, the 17th of May, as a rallying day against Fascism in Norway. Attempts to do so were made in a number of places, but the only success was in Western Norway.(99) Appointed Secretary for Western Norway by the Central Committee, Furubotn was responsible for the arrangement, and again showed his organising talents. Through the local trade union congress he established close cooperation with the Labour Party, which decided once again to join in the 17th of May celebrations from which it had withdrawn in the early l920s. Getting the unions back into the traditional procession was no easy task. In this respect Bergen stood a little apart from contemporary national trends. On the one hand, people in the city who had been raised in the class struggle were opposed to cooperation with the social democrats and the bourgeoisie. On the other hand, some of the conservatives on the 17th of May committee tried to prevent the labour movement from turning the national day in 1939 to a day of opposition to Fascism.(100) Furubotn succeeded in manoeuvring through these difficult waters. A new trait was emerging in him: he was leaving behind the traditional sectarianism which both he and the Communist Party had been so marked by at times, not least during the years from 1929 to 1935. At the end of that period, he had written an article criticising the Labour Party for using the national flag in its May Day celebrations in 1935.(101) It may be remarked, however, that the way in which he brought about the cooperation in Bergen in 1939 was not altogether new to Furubotn: the methods were very reminiscent of those used in the common class struggle of workers in Bergen around 1920.