As Lenin was quoted here in 1944, distinguishing national characteristics was not only important to a Communist Party on its home ground, but also an important objective for the international Communist workers' movement. This gave Furubotn general authority to claim that the study of specific Norwegian traits on the part of the NKP was important internationalist work. He also emphasised that the quote in question -- from Lenin, not Stalin -- was one of the best for stating ``in a nutshell'' what the theoretical basis was to be for what he called the tactics of the proletarian class struggle in each individual country.(7) In this connection a study of Norway's cultural heritage was important to Furubotn, in other words ``all the spiritual values which in the course of our historical development have been created by the work and struggle of the people to develop, to advance themselves''.(8) Furubotn was not the alone in this endeavour, and after 1945 he had the benefit of close cooperation with Svale Solheim, who later in 1956 became Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oslo.(9) Furubotn's great interest in this matter is clear from his having made it the chief item of the political agenda at the first ordinary party conference after the war: ``The aims of our cultural policy''. Introducing the item himself, he said that the study of Norway's cultural heritage was a field which the NKP had so far left unploughed.(10)

In Furubotn's view, the national cultural heritage contained both reactionary and progressive elements. He was looking for those elements which could help to promote the change-over to socialism on Norwegian soil. He told the conference that the study of the cultural inheritance would increase the insight of the working class and the people into the process of Norway's historical development, creating in them an ``urgent understanding'' of the laws governing the development of Norwegian society. He used illustrations from Norwegian history, and drew special attention to the fact that feudalism had not set its stamp on Norway, and that for the most part the Norwegian farmer had been a free man. That tradition of freedom had played a big part in the formulation of the Constitution at Eidsvoll in 1814: ``In this way, an extremely strong democratic tradition was established, which is still playing a major part...''.(11) He pointed out that the democratic tradition had links with a popular form of Christianity which in modern times had ``proved to have positive potential''. He had the war in mind, and suggested that it had renewed and reinforced religious traditions.(12)

Furubotn went on to consider the Norwegian bourgeoisie in relation to the cultural heritage, claiming that it had played a progressive part up to the introduction of ministerial responsibility towards the end of the nineteenth century. At that time a change took place in Norwegian capitalism, he said, which abandoned free competition in favour of a monopolistic phase.(13) The bourgeoisie stagnated as a source of political renewal, and the time was ripe for the working class to take over the further development of the cultural heritage.(14) This heritage must be made to come to life for the people and the working class. Cultural policy must become indissolubly linked with general political activity. It would be a source of renewal not only for the NKP but for the whole working class. As he saw it, the task would be burdensome and complicated for the NKP, because ``the cultural degeneration of the old society has also infected...our party...''.(15) Contempt for the cultural heritage, and for anything smacking of so-called bourgeois intellectual life, was a party characteristic: ``We must rid ourselves of this negative attitude''.