Finally some mention should be made of what international surveys have had to say about Norwegian Communism between 1945 and 1950. In Der euopäische Kommunismus, 1952, Franz Borkenau concentrates on what he calls the purge in the NKP in 1949.(61) He thinks the reason for it is to be found in Furubotn's emergence as leader in 1941, when he showed himself to be a ``strong but completely undisciplined man'' who acted ``independently''. Borkenau asserts that the NKP was in a ``permanent state of inner war'' from the day when Furubotn became its wartime leader, and until Løvlien, ``thanks to a subsequent change in Cominform policy succeeded in excluding Furubotn ... and placing himself once more in the saddle''.(62) In The Communist Parties of Scandinavia and Finland, London 1973, the chapter about the NKP is by Peter F. Rhode. He writes a certain amount about the party after the war, but mostly in the light of the events of 1949. His comment on the shoot-out is rather superficial:(63)

The Norwegian purge must be seen in connection with the purges which took place about the same time in all the Eastern European countries at the instigation of Stalin and Beria.

Beyond believing, like Borkenau, that the showdown was a climax to internal dissension dating back to the war(64), this is as close as Rhode gets to considering what brought the events about.

Neil McInnes touches on the 1949 clash in the NKP in the course of a general European survey of the purges in the Communist Party at the time, The Communist Parties of Western Europe, London 1975. He writes that the victims of the purges in the 1950s did not know what hit them, and that they tried to explain away any notion of Moscow origins to their fate (65). In McInnes's words: (66)

Curiously, Furubotn, like Marty and Tillon, remained a devoted admirer of Stalin for years after his expulsion.

Like McInnes, R. Neal Tannahill believes that the NKP purges were the result of Russian interference. Going like McInnes into little detail, he bases his conclusion on a generalisation: (67)

It is no accident that a number of West European Communist party leaders who went underground during the Nazi Occupation rather than fleeing to Moscow later were purged or split with the party. While underground they were generally cut off from instructions from Moscow and cultivated the talent of making policy decisions on their own with little outside guidance. Furthermore, the resistance experience taught them skills in bargaining and cooperation with other political groups, thus giving them closer ties with their own political systems...Peder Furubotn, who led the Norwegian resistance against the Germans, was purged from leadership in the NKP in 1949 as a ``Titoist''.

Stéphane Courtois

In the large and authoritative Le PCF dans la guerre, Paris 1980, Stéphane Courtois devotes more space to Furubotn than is usual in European works on Communism. Courtois depicts him as one of the most successful oppositional international Communists, both during the period of the non-aggression pact from 1940 to 1941 and during the rest of the war. He compares a number of French Communists to Furubotn:(68)

Where oppositional individuals like Pen, Haver, Tillon or Guingouin are concerned, we have no reason to believe that they constituted an organized opposition at the heart of the PCF, an organized opposition that might prove capable of assuming the party leadership, as Furubotn did in Norway in 1942.