The difficulty both Halvorsen and Knutsen are up against is that they discuss the question of revolutionary contra reformist NKP policy on the basis of rather thin and in Knutsen's case local material. Halvorsen, for example, notes the absence, not only of a general account of party policy from 1945 to 1950, but also of a special study of the party's so-called ideology of productivity.(44) Such analyses would seem to be a prerequisite for the kind of far-reaching conclusion that both Halvorsen and Knutsen are aiming at.

Øivind Stenersen

The first big standard work on politics in post-war Norway was Vekst og Velstand (growth and prosperity), Oslo 1977. The article on the NKP from 1945 to 1950 was by Øivind Stenersen. He argues that the party had already gone through its ``ideological right turn'' during the war(45), and became strongly reformist after the war, having become national, constitutional, and in favour of increased productivity and cooperation between the classes. Stenersen also shows that the Communists voted with Labour on a whole string of issues in the Storting. He sticks to the usual division into phases, with the move to the right lasting until 1947. Stenersen argues that the turn to the left was not sudden, but came about gradually as a result of pressure from the Furubotn wing (46), which caused ``bitter fractional strife'' within the party.

Stenersen considers what he sees as the Furubotn wing's leftward pressure a parallel to international Communism's swing to the left, and a tactical move aimed at winning the confidence of Moscow.(47) This was important to Furubotn who, according to Stenersen, had already lost Moscow's confidence before the war. By 1947 his position had grown even less secure, because he had headed the swing to the right since 1941-42. Stenersen also views the opposition between the two wings as arising from a tension between Furubotn's ``theoreticians'' and Løvlien's trade union-based ``pragmatists''(48), an opinion shared by others.(49) Furubotn's opponents were labelling his the ``intellectual'' wing of the NKP as early as 1949. As ``theoreticians'', Stenersen believes, Furubotn's people were readier to respond to signals from the East than the Løvlien ``pragmatists''(50). According to him, Furubotn organised his own fractional centre from 1947 on, carrying on fractional activities (51) which led to intolerable conditions within the party: (52)

It was Furubotn's attempt to turn the NKP into a loyal mouthpiece for the Cominform's slogans which triggered the bitter open fractional struggle in the party in the late 1940s. In its last phase, this developed into a party shoot-out on Eastern European lines, with its final outcome to a large extent determined by the attitude of the international Communist movement.

Stenersen's Master's dissertation was concerned with the production committees and the postwar reconstruction of Norwegian industry. The article on the NKP covers a period he is familiar with, but he bases it to a large extent on earlier studies, Halvorsen's in particular, and less on his own study of sources. The value of his account lies in his synthesising approach to a complex subject area, rather than in any convincing demonstration that it was ''Furubotn's attempt to turn the NKP into a loyal mouthpiece for the Cominform's slogans'' which triggered the party strife within the NKP.