In normal Norwegian party life, the chairman would wield the most power. But the Communist movement had adopted different practices and traditions, according to which the post of general secretary, often referred to as the political leader, conferred the most power. The practice can be traced back to the days of Stalin's complete supremacy in the Soviet party. Originally the secretary general of the Soviet party was a leading party administrator, responsible for seeing that the party organisation observed central party resolutions. He gradually acquired though more and more power, and gave the post of secretary general functions which made it the leading party office. Given the Soviet party's dominance over other Communist parties, they followed the same pattern. Formal power was vested in the central committees, but the real power was wielded by the general secretary. That made it relatively easy for the Soviet party (Stalin) to control the activities of individual Communist parties. Formally that was done through the Comintern, to which they belonged. The Comintern had strict laws empowering the top leadership in Moscow to change resolutions adopted by national units.(78) That also applied to changes of general secretaries. Whether or not Lenin originally conceived of Communist Party centralism as other than a means of creating an efficient party organisation is open to question but under Stalin it also became a means of securing Soviet control of other Communist parties.

This is a schematic and general description of what can be termed the chains of command of the Communist parties. They did not prevent occasional disagreements, harsh exchanges or power struggles, but they did constitute the bounds to which participation in party life was subject. Exclusion was the sanction if one over-stepped them, the party's means of getting rid of undesirable elements.

The General Secretaryship of the NKP

Up to 1945 NKP history reveals a less traditional version of the post of general secretary than in international Communism in general. Furubotn was general secretary from 1923 to 1925, after which he became chairman. For him, that was a promotion: from 1925 to 1930, the chairmanship was the most important office - not least because Furubotn was a strong leader. From 1930 to 1934, Henry W. Kristiansen was chairman and Ottar Lie secretary.(79) The chairman continued to have the leading role until Emil Løvlien became general secretary in 1934. That was when Adam Egede-Nissen became chairman, but he was too old to be much more than a figurehead. During the war the chairman did not function at all, the office was dead, whereas the general secretaryship evidently became the NKP's leading office. Just after the war it was still regarded as the centre of party power. Furubotn was spoken of as the NKP's political leader, in accordance with Communist tradition. The party statutes, on the other hand, contained no explicit division of powers between the chairman and the general secretary: the laws in force were unwritten.

Summary of the NKP'S post-war chain of command; Furubotn's role

The NKP's 1946 statutes show that the party structure was still based on the main organisational principles inherited from the Comintern, and summed up in the label democratic centralism. Admittedly some of the statutes were made less rigid and more Norwegian in 1946, but the central executive remained the most powerful body, as the central committee had been previously. Formally the party chairmanship may have appeared the most important single office, but Communist tradition tells us that the general secretary was the party's political leader. He was in charge of the central administration and the party organisation's day to day operations, and had contacts all over the country. The chairmanship seems rather to have had parliamentary functions, chairing the central executive and the secretariat. Although in the light of tradition the general secretary must be said to have been the party's key individual, his role would depend on the authority he brought to it on the basis of his own position in the party and his relations with the international Communist movement, etc. In the event of a power struggle within the party, the unclear division of powers could jeopardise party unity.