The merger negotiations attracted attention all over Europe, where there was little to compare with them. Prime Minister Gerhardsen said in 1945 that Norway was the first country in the world to initiate unification. Other countries, like Denmark, Finland and France, would follow. Norway would show other countries the way, he said.(54) Similar notions were voiced at Scandinavian Communist meetings.(55) During the Danish merger negotiations, the Communist leader Aksel Larsen pointed to the joint programme of the Norwegian Labour and Communist Parties as a pattern to be followed for Denmark.(56)

One by one, merger negotiations came to nothing in Western Europe. Writing in 1970 about the Norwegian breakdown, Gerhardsen wondered whether the attempt was frustrated by Moscow or Furubotn: ``Probably it was both Moscow and Furubotn''.(57) Gerhardsen's question was not without foundation. The Swedish party leader Sven Linderot had given notice that the Russians were opposed to an organisational union.(58) But Furubotn needed no such message: for once his and the Russians' interests coincided. No foreign directives were needed to see that the Labour Party conditions would trap the NKP. These are also the views held by Tore Pryser in volume 4 of the new history of the Federation of Trade Unions. (59) For Furubotn to have Moscow behind him and not in opposition strengthened his position in relation to the old guard of the NKP. Strand Johansen, for instance, was reported in Friheten as having said on 23 July 1945 that he was convinced that there would be an organisational union by the end of the year. On this important issue, the Russians had nothing they could hold against Furubotn. He had proved himself to be a firm leader of a Marxist-Leninist party, with firmer principles than several of the leading party veterans. But in the long run, that might be questionable enough -- from the Russian point of view.

Consequences for NKP strategy

Furubotn's determined opposition to the Labour Party approach to the question of unification had saved the NKP from dissolution; but he paid a high price. Any gathering of the working class, a prerequisite for peaceful transition to socialism, had to be indefinitely postponed. The NKP lost the tactical game over the merger, and the Labour Party had managed to erect a fence between Communists and Social Democrats at the grass roots. That was a first step towards isolating the Communists from the many in the Labour Party rank and file who had been viewing the NKP with sympathy.