Aksel Larsen
Encyclopedia
Aksel Larsen was a Danish politician
who was chairman of the Communist Party of Denmark
and chairman and founder of the Socialist People's Party
. Larsen became leader of the Communist Party in 1932, and was elected to the Danish Parliament (Rigsdag
en) in 1932. Together with other Danish communists Larsen had to go into hiding in 1941 when the Danish police began arresting all party members.
After the liberation in 1945 Larsen served as a minister in the interim government, and subsequently led his party to its best-ever result in the October 1945 election
, in which it took 10% of the vote. The election, however, brought a Liberal
government into office, and Larsen's party was mostly shunned by the other party leaders.
Following the rising in Hungary in 1956, Larsen condemned the Soviet Union
's action. This led him into conflict with the members of the party leadership who were more loyal to Moscow; a conflict that ended with his being expelled in November 1958.
Larsen's reaction was to form the Socialist People's Party (Socialistisk Folkeparti), which, thanks to Larsen's personal popularity, entered parliament at the 1960 election at the expense of the Communists, who from then on played only a very peripheral role in Danish politics.
Aksel Larsen, who was especially in later years highly respected among politicians, even if his party was seen as somewhat irresponsible, remained as leader of the Socialists until 1968, when he handed over to Sigurd Ømann
. He remained an MP until his death in 1972.
The Danish Institute for International Studies, concluded in 2005, that Larsen held a secret working relationship between 1958 and 1964 with one of Denmark's allied partners in the Cold War
, stating that "Larsen... obviously was an agent of a Western intelligence service."
(now part of Odense Municipality
) in 1897. Since his family was poor and had six children to support it was only due to several scholarships that he got a lower secondary school
exam.
When he had finished school he was hired as an apprentice at the Sydfyenske Jernbaner railway company who also hired him as a railway worker in 1917 when he had finished his apprenticeship.
However Larsen wanted to go to larger city so in 1918 he moved to Copenhagen
.
he moved into an attic and got a job as a bicycle delivery man. He joined the Social Democratic Party
, the party his parents had been members of for many years, and the Delivery Men’s Union where he became shop steward. Through his political and union work he learned about syndicalism
and the growing opposition to the Social Democratic Party in the labour movement.
His views grew more radical and he took part in violent riots on the vegetable market in 1918. The Easter Crisis of 1920
when king Christian X dismissed the cabinet of Carl Theodor Zahle
became a turning point for Larsen. During the crisis Larsen spoke in public on the city hall square of Copenhagen
. While parts of the Social DemocraticParty supported the abolishment of the monarchy the social democrats and the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions
accepted a compromise and the crisis was called off.
This compromise disappointed Larsen and the month after he left the Social Democratic party and joined the newly-formed Left Socialist Party
.
He campaigned for the Left Socialist Party as a public speaker in the 1920 parliamentary election
but the election result of only 5.160 votes was a disappointment to Larsen.
he supported the decision of the Left Socialist Party to join the Comintern
in November 1920 and the decision to re-name the party “The Communist Party of Denmark – section of the Communist Internationale”. He gained a reputation for being a good agitator and organiser and rose in party ranks. He became chairman of the inner city branch of the Copenhagen part of the party and member of the party leadership for greater Copenhagen
.
In 1922 the party split in two due to internal faction struggles. Larsen was party secretary of one of the two parties, the so-called “Blågårdsgade party”. However he left the party leadership when the two parties merged back together in 1923.
During the 1924 election
his campaigning made him so well-known that he got a secret offer to go back to the Social Democrats. He refused the offer and continued to campaign for the communists who suffered a defeat in the election.
got an offer from Comintern in 1925 to send a party member to Moscow to attend the new Lenin courses Larsen was chosen to go. The courses were created to educate loyal leaders to the international branches of the Comintern and was planned to last for eight months. The courses were in German, English, Russian or French so the student the party was to send to Moscow had to have good language skills. His secondary education gave Larsen a head start and in September 1925 he left Denmark for Moscow.
In Moscow Larsen was enrolled at the West University for students from the Baltics, Poland, and Belarus. After six months in Moscow he was transferred to the International Lenin School
where the courses had been expanded to last for two years.
During that time Joseph Stalin
’s purges of Leon Trotsky
and the left opposition in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU) were at their height. Larsen became a member of the CPSU and sided with the opposition to Stalin. Larsen was prompted for a repudiation of his previous views after Stalin’s victory at the 1927 party congress and the subsequent banishment of Trotsky to Alma Ata but it was only after severe pressure that he complied. However the repudiation did not prevent Larsen from being expelled from the International Lenin School
in April 1928 and banished to Nizhniy Novgorod.
However the Communist Party of Denmark requested that Larsen was to be allowed to go back to Denmark and on 1 February 1929 Larsen left the Soviet Union.
The party was torn by internal struggles and the parliamentary election of 1929
was a historic defeat for the communists. They only received 3.656 votes equal to 0,2 % of the total votes.
The internal disagreements were only worsened by the Comintern’s decision in the start of 1930 to send a German representative of its executive committee to Denmark to reconcile the factions of the party. The Comintern demanded that the Danish party were to follow the militant ultra-left line decided at the sixth Comintern congress and a crackdown on the “danger from the right”.
The two main combatants of the internal struggle were Aksel Larsen and Thøger Thøgersen but Larsen gained superiority by leading and organising the rapidly growing movement of the unemployed. In March 1930 Larsen was elected chairman of the National Committee of the Unemployed by more than 100.000 unemployed who had gathered in Copenhagen. He became famous for holding a speech in October that year from a rowing boat in the canals around the seat of parliament while evading the police’s attempts to arrest him.
The movement of the unemployed was the greatest mass movement in the party’s history. Party membership increased as did circulation of the party newspaper. In the 1932 election the communists got 1,1 % of the vote and Aksel Larsen and Arne Munch-Petersen became the first two communist members of parliament. Although the Comintern still mistrusted Larsen for his Trotskyist
past, the success of the movement of the unemployed and the electoral success prevented them from blocking the election of Larsen as party chairman at the 1932 party congress.
He did not keep to translating the Comintern policies but also modified them. The ultra-left line was softened and contrary to the directions from Moscow he warned his party members of seeing the Social Democrats as the main enemy.
Larsen wanted to develop a Danish variant of communism and these sentiments grew after the seventh Comintern congress had adopted the popular front
strategy aiming for a close cooperation with social democrats. While he did not want to make the Social Democrats the main enemy their unsympathetic views towards the communists made Larsen doubt that cooperation was possible. Instead Larsen was in favour of developing a popular front with the Social Liberal Party. With the exception of Arne Munch-Petersen who had become the Danish representative of the executive committee of Comintern after losing his seat in parliament in 1935 the party leadership supported this course.
The Comintern grew worried about the Danish party and the Trotskyist
past of its chairman and as more and more disagreements arose correspondence between Larsen and Moscow grew increasingly harsh. The Comintern lost its patience with Larsen and called him to Moscow for negotiations after he had published two articles against increased military spending.
Not only had he published the articles without clearing them with Moscow. He had also expressed views in contradiction to Soviet interests. Because of its position Denmark is the gate to the Baltic Sea
and a strong Danish defence would prevent Nazi Germany
for using Denmark as a bridgehead for an attack on the Soviet Union.
and the Soviet Union. Although they affected many of his former friends from his stay in the 1920s and even though he did not believe in all the accusations he defended the purges and the Moscow trials
.
On 20 May 1937 Larsen arrived to a Moscow marked by fear, anti-Trotskyist propaganda and mass hysteria. A lot of his old acquaintances had either disappeared or did not dare to meet him.
The negotiations with the Comintern developed into a political trial against Larsen who had still not been forgiven for his Trotskyist past. Although he defended the Danish party line he was pressured into signing a declaration that the Danish party would follow the popular front strategy. He was not allowed to leave Moscow before he convinced the Comintern that he had to go home to look after his wife who was sick with cancer and to tend to his work in parliament.
His seat in parliament is likely to have saved his life. It is suggested that the NKVD
had planned to arrest Larsen but general secretary Georgi Dimitrov
of the Comintern did not want to arrest a member of a foreign parliament and intervened.
Arne Munch-Petersen who had been part of the negotiations with Larsen did not have that protection and was arrested on 26 July 1937. After three weeks of torture and interrogations he confessed to Trotskyist activity and was imprisoned. In 1940 he died of tuberculosis
in a Soviet prison.
Aksel Larsen and the leadership of the Communist Party got the news about Arne Munch-Petersen’s arrest in January 1938. Although they were shocked they saw no way of helping him without seriously damaging the relationship with Moscow. Because of this they concealed their knowledge not only to the public but also to his wife and family.
’s takeover of Austria in the Anschluss
Larsen held a speech in which he used a more patriotic rhetoric than before and warned that Denmark could suffer the same fate. After the speech the communists urged the Social Democrats and the Social Liberal Party to join the communists in a popular front. In a letter to the Social Democratic leader and prime minister Thorvald Stauning
Larsen promised “the most unconditional and loyal support”.
The new party line culminated on the 1938 party congress where Larsen held one of his most important speeches. He declared that the communist party was both a Danish and a democratic party and put great emphasis on his party’s wishes for unity in the labour movement.
The popular front policy won supporters outside traditional communist constituencies and since the communists used the charismatic Larsen to personify their policies he became increasingly popular. However the Social Democrats refused to cooperate with the communists.
In spite of the popularity of Larsen and the popular front voter support for the party was small. Although the communists got 40,983 votes in the 1939 election
and went from two to three seats in parliament the increase was much smaller than they had hoped for which was a great disappointment to Larsen. The communists were further disappointed by the 1939 constitutional referendum
where they had campaigned in favour of the new constitution which was not passed.
on 23 August 1939. Despite being confused about the pact Larsen defended Stalin’s decision. The German invasion of Poland on 1 September and Stalin’s invasion of Poland on 17 September and the following partition of Poland between Hitler and Stalin caused more confusion in the communist movement as the former image of the Soviet Union as a bulwark against fascism
now fell.
The situation was difficult but Larsen did his best to defend the Soviet Union. This put Larsen under a lot of stress and in September he asked the party secretariat and later the Comintern for permission to resign as chairman. However his requests were denied as it was feared that a change in leadership would increase the strain on the party. Larsen raised the issue again when the Soviet Union laid pressure on Finland to evacuate Karelia
but was turned down once more.
The Soviet attack on Finland on 30 November 1939 and the Winter War
created great public sympathy for Finland in the Danish public. Contrary the communists were despised for their support of the Soviet Union and Aksel Larsen became the target of public disdain. Shortly after the beginning of the war the entire Folketing
walked out in protest when Larsen mounted the podium.
The peace between Finland and the Soviet Union removed some of the stress on the party but on 9 April 1940 Denmark was occupied by Germany. At the time Larsen were in Moscow but on 22 April he managed to get back to Copenhagen with instructions for how to deal with the situation. At that time the Communist Party of Denmark was still legal but the Comintern as well as Danish party leadership was expecting that the party would soon be banned. The communists were to try to remain a legal party for as long as possible and use the time to prepare to go underground. In spite of these expectations the Danish police took the communists by surprise when leading communists were arrested on 22 June 1941 and the party as well as the communist ideology was banned.
Larsen managed to avoid capture and went into hiding. He and the party continued the political work with an illegal publication against the ban on communism and an open letter to prime minister Thorvald Stauning
on 20 August 1941. In January 1942 Larsen was a co-founder of the resistance organisation “Frit Danmark” (lit. “A Free Denmark”) which circulated an illegal publication of the same name.
The month later Larsen chaired a party leadership meeting where it was decided that the communists were to take part in sabotage against the German occupiers. However Larsen did not get the possibility to be a part of the sabotage work as he was arrested by Danish police on 5 November 1942 and incarcerated at Vestre Fængsel
. There he was given over to the Germans who transferred him to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp
on 28 August 1943. There he was confined to a solitary cell isolated from the rest of the camp by a high wall with electrified barbed wire.
's White Buses
. On 5 May he returned to Denmark and was hailed as a hero of the resistance. The war had turned the public image of the communist movement upside down with the Soviet Union being credited for its efforts in the war and the Communist Party of Denmark being credited for its involvement in the resistance movement.
In the months after the liberation Aksel Larsen who was marked by his stay in the concentration camp did not play a great political role. The communists were given seats in the liberation cabinet
and Larsen got a cabinet seat although without portfolio. While he recovered from his stay in Sachsenhausen he let Alfred Jensen
lead the party.
The election of 1945
on 15 September was the best ever for the communists. They got 12.5% of the vote and 18 seats in parliament. With 27,497 votes Larsen himself was the candidate who received most personal votes.
The friendly relations between Social Democrats and communists that had existed right after the liberation soon disappeared and the old fronts from before the war started to re-emerge.
The Danish communists became the target of public disdain once more with the onset of the Cold War and the communist coup
in Prague in 1948 combined with new purges and trials in Moscow and Eastern Europe. Larsen once more showed himself to be a defender of the Soviet Union.
Although the Comintern had been disbanded in 1943 he frequently sought the advice of the Soviet embassy in Copenhagen and the CPSU. His loyalty to Moscow was without conditions and he gained a reputation for being “one of Scandinavia’s most reliable and trusted Stalinists” after he helped to purge Norwegian communist leader Peter Furobotn.
Although he had abandoned his idea of a Danish variant of communism he still managed to translate the Soviet party line to Danish realities. His skills as an orator and public debater helped slow down the decline in voter support but was not able to stop it. However as the Cold War worsened the Communist Party of Denmark became increasingly isolated.
Controversy arose in March 1949 when Gestapo
protocols from the interrogations of him during the war was printed by the conservative newspaper “Nationaltidende”. He was accused of having given the Germans too much information and for having betrayed his comrades in the resistance. He was defended by his party and by veterans of the resistance but the interrogation protocols was used against him by his political opponents for many years after.
During a 1951 stay in Moscow Larsen learned that Arne Munch-Pedersen had died in 1940. Although the case continued to emerge in the media and in parliament Larsen kept silent and denied any knowledge of Arne Munch-Pedersen’s fate.
Although the Cold War was a stressful period to Larsen he kept to his communist creed. The first traces of doubt came shortly after Stalin’s death when all defendants of the Doctors’ Plot trials were rehabilitated because their confessions had been made under torture. Larsen’s doubt was however short-lived and he was only strengthened in his views by Nikita Khrushchev
’s thaw both inside the Soviet Union and internationally. A strike at a Philips
plant and an increase in party membership combined with a stronger communist presence in the trade unions convinced Larsen that the party had a bright future.
”. He first learned about it when it was reported by the New York Times on 16 March. Larsen read the speech at the Soviet embassy and proposed a party line more independent of Moscow.
The collective bargaining negotiations of 1956 and a general strike had strengthened the party and Larsen got his party’s support to pursue a more independent line. However his plans reached farther and he persuaded Mogens Fog
to re-join the party to help transform it to a “broad, national, socialistic party”.
The positive situation for the Danish communists changed dramatically with the Soviet invasion of Hungary in October 1956. Once again the communists were disdained in public opinion and isolated politically. Internally Larsen had to balance between the inner circle of the party who were in favour of the invasion and the party members and intellectuals who were against. Internal tension grew and resulted in an extraordinary party congress in January 1957 where Aksel Larsen for the first time since 1932 delivered his annual report in his own name and not in the name of the central committee. The congress elected a new central committee and executive committee with a strong majority against Larsen’s line.
The party was sitting on a powder keg of internal disagreement which could go off at any moment. The situation was triggered when the League of Communists of Yugoslavia
invited a delegation from the Communist Party of Denmark to go to its 1958 congress. The CPSU and other communist parties had also accepted the invitation but suddenly the CPSU decided to boycott the congress and pressured other communist parties not to send delegations either. Although Larsen's decision to go anyway was supported by the Danish executive committee, it was decided that Knud Jespersen and Børge Houmann were to go to Yugoslavia instead of Larsen.
Internal disagreements continued after the Yugoslav party congress and on 8 July 1958 Larsen revived his ideas from the 1930s about a distinct Danish form of communism and urged the party leadership to change to a more independent course. Larsen now also thought that the Danish party should not necessarily support and defend the acts of the Soviet Union and the CPSU.
Fierce faction struggle arose and Larsen lost the party congress in October 1958. On 16 November 1958 it was announced in the communist newspaper “Land og Folk” that he had been expelled from the party.
In the 2005 book Firmaets største bedrift historian Peer Henrik Hansen argues that Aksel Larsen was recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA). According to Hansen Larsen had his first meetings with American agents in November 1958 in his own home. According to the newspaper Information
Larsen was offered information on sentiments among the party hard-liners if he would cause a split in the party. For years the CIA had a bugging device in the apartment of Alfred Jensen the vice-chairman of the Communist Party of Denmark. From there they knew about the tensions in the party leadership.
According to Hansen Aksel Larsen was at the time afraid of retaliations from the KGB
and Larsen, suspecting the American agent of being a KGB assassin, brought a friend with a gun to the first meeting to act as bodyguard. Poul Dam a party colleague of Larsen has reported that he had made preparations to go into hiding in the case of a Soviet invasion. Hansen speculates that Aksel Larsen's cooperation with the CIA was part of a trade-off where the CIA got information on communists and Larsen in return would be protected from the KGB.
Over ten years Larsen had several meetings with the CIA where he gave information on the relationship between the Soviet Union
and communist parties in other countries. He was asked if the Communist Party of Denmark was doing espionage work for the Soviet bloc or if the party was preparing an illegal party apparatus. He denied direct knowledge about this but told the agent that the party had turned down Soviet and East German
requests for aid with espionage. According to some of Hansen's sources Larsen was rewarded with vacations, dinners and money for his co-operation.
Larsen met with a CIA agent with connections to Radio Liberty. He told the Americans much about international communism but were less keen to tell about Danish communists especially how Moscow funded them. He stated several times that he would like to destroy his former party and others who did the Soviet Union's bidding.
According to Hansen the Russians knew about Larsen's cooperation with the CIA as did Danish intelligence agencies who learned about the connections between Larsen and the CIA as soon as 1958. Although the CIA operation was illegal according to Danish law the Danish intelligence agencies promised not to intervene in return for transcripts of the debriefings.
. Ideas for a new political party was made public on 20 November 1958 and a preparatory committee with Larsen as its leader was created the day after. The Socialist People’s Party
was registered with parliament on 24 November and the party held its founding congress on 15 February 1959 in Copenhagen. Like the Communist Party of Denmark it was “founded on the idea of Marxism” but contrary to the communists the new party declared its loyalty to Danish parliamentary democracy and the peaceful path to socialism
.
Leading up to the 1960 election
the Gallup polls were not in favour of the Socialist People’s Party but Larsen showed his command of the then-new television media when he spoke to the viewers from a hospital bed with a broken leg. The new party gained 6,4% of the vote and 11 seats in parliament while the communists lost all their seats.
As many of the members of the new party were former communists the party were believed to be communists in disguise by other parties, especially the Social Democrats. However those suspicions cooled and the party gradually became accepted. In the 1966 election
the Socialist People’s Party and the Social Democrats got a majority and there were talks about forming a coalition cabinet. However the Socialist People’s Party could not accept the demands made by the Social Democrats. Instead Jens Otto Krag
of the Social Democrats formed a cabinet supported by the socialists and a joint contact committee between the two parties was formed. This committee was soon dubbed “The Red Cabinet”.
The Red Cabinet lasted until December 1967 when six of the 20 Socialist People’s Party members voted against the Krag administration’s proposal to freeze a threshold payment. An extraordinary party congress was held and although Larsen gained a majority for his political line he had to resign from his posts as party leader and leader of the parliamentary group. However a split could not be avoided and on 17 December the minority founded the new party the Left Socialists
.
Aksel Larsen died on 10 January 1972 and is interred at Fredens Kirkegård in Odense
.
Larsens attempts to develop “third way” form of communism independent of the Soviet Union is viewed by some to be one of the forerunners of eurocommunism
.
He is one of the parliamentarians who has been commemorated by having his bust placed in the hallways of the Danish parliament
.
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
who was chairman of the Communist Party of Denmark
Communist Party of Denmark
Communist Party of Denmark is a communist political party in Denmark which was founded as Venstresocialistiske Parti in 1919. VSP was a split from the Danish Social Democratic Party. The party assumed its present name in 1920...
and chairman and founder of the Socialist People's Party
Socialist People's Party (Denmark)
The Socialist People's Party is a green and socialist political party in Denmark.-1959–69:The SF was founded on 15 February 1959 by Aksel Larsen, a former leader of the Communist Party of Denmark and CIA agent. Larsen was removed from the ranks of the DKP for his criticism over the Soviet...
. Larsen became leader of the Communist Party in 1932, and was elected to the Danish Parliament (Rigsdag
Rigsdag
Rigsdagen was the name of the Parliament of Denmark from 1849 to 1953.Rigsdagen was Denmark's first parliament, and it was incorporated in the Constitution of 1849. It was a bicameral legislature, consisting of two houses, the Folketing and the Landsting. The distinction between the two houses was...
en) in 1932. Together with other Danish communists Larsen had to go into hiding in 1941 when the Danish police began arresting all party members.
After the liberation in 1945 Larsen served as a minister in the interim government, and subsequently led his party to its best-ever result in the October 1945 election
Danish Folketing election, 1945
Folketing elections were held alongside Landsting elections in Denmark on 30 October 1945, except in the Faroe Islands where they were held on 20 November. The Social Democratic Party remained the largest in the Folketing, with 48 of the 149 seats. Voter turnout was 86.3% in Denmark proper and...
, in which it took 10% of the vote. The election, however, brought a Liberal
Venstre (Denmark)
VenstreThe party name is officially not translated into any other language, but is in English often referred to as the Liberal Party. Similar rules apply for the name of the party's youth wing Venstres Ungdom. , full name Venstre, Danmarks Liberale Parti , is the largest political party in Denmark...
government into office, and Larsen's party was mostly shunned by the other party leaders.
Following the rising in Hungary in 1956, Larsen condemned the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
's action. This led him into conflict with the members of the party leadership who were more loyal to Moscow; a conflict that ended with his being expelled in November 1958.
Larsen's reaction was to form the Socialist People's Party (Socialistisk Folkeparti), which, thanks to Larsen's personal popularity, entered parliament at the 1960 election at the expense of the Communists, who from then on played only a very peripheral role in Danish politics.
Aksel Larsen, who was especially in later years highly respected among politicians, even if his party was seen as somewhat irresponsible, remained as leader of the Socialists until 1968, when he handed over to Sigurd Ømann
Sigurd Ømann
Sigurd Ømann was chairman of the Socialist People's Party of Denmark in the period 1968-1974. Before he joined to Socialist People's Party he was a member of the Communist Party of Denmark from 1953 to 1958. He was a member of parliament for the Socialist People's Party in the period 1966-1977...
. He remained an MP until his death in 1972.
The Danish Institute for International Studies, concluded in 2005, that Larsen held a secret working relationship between 1958 and 1964 with one of Denmark's allied partners in the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, stating that "Larsen... obviously was an agent of a Western intelligence service."
Early life
Aksel Larsen was born as the fourth child of a clog maker in BrændekildeOdense Municipality
Odense Municipality, is a Danish municipality in Region of Southern Denmark on the island of Funen in central Denmark. The municipality covers an area of , and has a total population of 190,245...
(now part of Odense Municipality
Odense Municipality
Odense Municipality, is a Danish municipality in Region of Southern Denmark on the island of Funen in central Denmark. The municipality covers an area of , and has a total population of 190,245...
) in 1897. Since his family was poor and had six children to support it was only due to several scholarships that he got a lower secondary school
Education in Denmark
Education in Denmark is compulsory for children below 15 or 16. The school years up to the age of fifteen/sixteen are known as Folkeskole . About 82% of young people take further education in addition to this. Government-funded education is usually free of charge and open to all...
exam.
When he had finished school he was hired as an apprentice at the Sydfyenske Jernbaner railway company who also hired him as a railway worker in 1917 when he had finished his apprenticeship.
However Larsen wanted to go to larger city so in 1918 he moved to Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
.
Time as a Social Democrat
When he arrived in CopenhagenCopenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
he moved into an attic and got a job as a bicycle delivery man. He joined the Social Democratic Party
Social Democrats (Denmark)
The Social Democrats , is a Danish political party committed to the political ideology of social democracy. It is the major coalition partner in Denmark's government since the 2011 parliamentary election, and party leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt is the current Prime Minister of Denmark...
, the party his parents had been members of for many years, and the Delivery Men’s Union where he became shop steward. Through his political and union work he learned about syndicalism
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
and the growing opposition to the Social Democratic Party in the labour movement.
His views grew more radical and he took part in violent riots on the vegetable market in 1918. The Easter Crisis of 1920
Easter Crisis of 1920
The Easter Crisis of 1920 was a constitutional crisis and a significant event in the development of constitutional monarchy in Denmark. It began with the dismissal of the elected government by the reigning monarch, King Christian X, a reserve power which was granted to him by the Danish constitution...
when king Christian X dismissed the cabinet of Carl Theodor Zahle
Carl Theodor Zahle
Carl Theodor Zahle , Danish lawyer and politician; prime minister of Denmark 1909-1910, 1913-1920. In 1895 he was elected member of the lower chamber of the Danish parliament, Folketinget, for Venstrereformpartiet...
became a turning point for Larsen. During the crisis Larsen spoke in public on the city hall square of Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
. While parts of the Social DemocraticParty supported the abolishment of the monarchy the social democrats and the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions
Danish Confederation of Trade Unions
LO, The Danish Confederation of Trade Unions was founded in 1898 and is an umbrella organisation for 18 Danish trade unions....
accepted a compromise and the crisis was called off.
This compromise disappointed Larsen and the month after he left the Social Democratic party and joined the newly-formed Left Socialist Party
Communist Party of Denmark
Communist Party of Denmark is a communist political party in Denmark which was founded as Venstresocialistiske Parti in 1919. VSP was a split from the Danish Social Democratic Party. The party assumed its present name in 1920...
.
He campaigned for the Left Socialist Party as a public speaker in the 1920 parliamentary election
Danish Folketing election, 1920
The Danish Folketing election of 1920 may refer to:*Danish Folketing election, 1920 held on 26 April 1920*Danish Folketing election, 1920 held on 6 July 1920*Danish Folketing election, 1920 held on 21 September 1920...
but the election result of only 5.160 votes was a disappointment to Larsen.
Early political career
As Larsen had been enthusiastic about the revolutions in Russia in 1917 and Germany in 1918German Revolution
The German Revolution was the politically-driven civil conflict in Germany at the end of World War I, which resulted in the replacement of Germany's imperial government with a republic...
he supported the decision of the Left Socialist Party to join the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
in November 1920 and the decision to re-name the party “The Communist Party of Denmark – section of the Communist Internationale”. He gained a reputation for being a good agitator and organiser and rose in party ranks. He became chairman of the inner city branch of the Copenhagen part of the party and member of the party leadership for greater Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
.
In 1922 the party split in two due to internal faction struggles. Larsen was party secretary of one of the two parties, the so-called “Blågårdsgade party”. However he left the party leadership when the two parties merged back together in 1923.
During the 1924 election
Danish Folketing election, 1924
Folketing elections were held in Denmark on 11 April 1924. The result was a victory for the Social Democratic Party, which won 55 of the 149 seats. Voter turnout was 78.6% in Denmark proper. In the Faroe Islands constituency there was only one candidate, who was returned unopposed.-Denmark:-Faroe...
his campaigning made him so well-known that he got a secret offer to go back to the Social Democrats. He refused the offer and continued to campaign for the communists who suffered a defeat in the election.
The International Lenin School
When the Communist Party of DenmarkCommunist Party of Denmark
Communist Party of Denmark is a communist political party in Denmark which was founded as Venstresocialistiske Parti in 1919. VSP was a split from the Danish Social Democratic Party. The party assumed its present name in 1920...
got an offer from Comintern in 1925 to send a party member to Moscow to attend the new Lenin courses Larsen was chosen to go. The courses were created to educate loyal leaders to the international branches of the Comintern and was planned to last for eight months. The courses were in German, English, Russian or French so the student the party was to send to Moscow had to have good language skills. His secondary education gave Larsen a head start and in September 1925 he left Denmark for Moscow.
In Moscow Larsen was enrolled at the West University for students from the Baltics, Poland, and Belarus. After six months in Moscow he was transferred to the International Lenin School
International Lenin School
Situated in Moscow and shrouded in secrecy, the International Lenin School was founded in 1926 as an instrument for the "Bolshevisation" of the Communist International and its national sections, following the resolutions of the fifth Congress of the Comintern. Between 1926 and 1938 the school...
where the courses had been expanded to last for two years.
During that time Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
’s purges of Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
and the left opposition in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
(CPSU) were at their height. Larsen became a member of the CPSU and sided with the opposition to Stalin. Larsen was prompted for a repudiation of his previous views after Stalin’s victory at the 1927 party congress and the subsequent banishment of Trotsky to Alma Ata but it was only after severe pressure that he complied. However the repudiation did not prevent Larsen from being expelled from the International Lenin School
International Lenin School
Situated in Moscow and shrouded in secrecy, the International Lenin School was founded in 1926 as an instrument for the "Bolshevisation" of the Communist International and its national sections, following the resolutions of the fifth Congress of the Comintern. Between 1926 and 1938 the school...
in April 1928 and banished to Nizhniy Novgorod.
However the Communist Party of Denmark requested that Larsen was to be allowed to go back to Denmark and on 1 February 1929 Larsen left the Soviet Union.
Back in Denmark
Aksel Larsen had become unpopular both in the Communist Party of Denmark and in Moscow due to his opposition to Stalin. In spite of that and in spite of the Comintern’s recommendations that Larsen should not be allowed to hold any office for the time being Larsen was elected party secretary for Copenhagen because of a lack of talented people in the party.The party was torn by internal struggles and the parliamentary election of 1929
Danish Folketing election, 1929
Folketing elections were held in Denmark on 24 April 1929, except in the Faroe Islands where they were held on 29 May. The Social Democratic Party remained the largest in the Folketing, with 61 of the 149 seats. Voter turnout was 79.7% in Denmark proper and 58.0% in the Faroes.-Denmark:-Faroe...
was a historic defeat for the communists. They only received 3.656 votes equal to 0,2 % of the total votes.
The internal disagreements were only worsened by the Comintern’s decision in the start of 1930 to send a German representative of its executive committee to Denmark to reconcile the factions of the party. The Comintern demanded that the Danish party were to follow the militant ultra-left line decided at the sixth Comintern congress and a crackdown on the “danger from the right”.
The two main combatants of the internal struggle were Aksel Larsen and Thøger Thøgersen but Larsen gained superiority by leading and organising the rapidly growing movement of the unemployed. In March 1930 Larsen was elected chairman of the National Committee of the Unemployed by more than 100.000 unemployed who had gathered in Copenhagen. He became famous for holding a speech in October that year from a rowing boat in the canals around the seat of parliament while evading the police’s attempts to arrest him.
The movement of the unemployed was the greatest mass movement in the party’s history. Party membership increased as did circulation of the party newspaper. In the 1932 election the communists got 1,1 % of the vote and Aksel Larsen and Arne Munch-Petersen became the first two communist members of parliament. Although the Comintern still mistrusted Larsen for his Trotskyist
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
past, the success of the movement of the unemployed and the electoral success prevented them from blocking the election of Larsen as party chairman at the 1932 party congress.
Opposition to Moscow
Larsen had an ability to translate the strange and alien paroles of the Comintern to Danish conditions and his oratorical skills contributed greatly to the successes in organising the unemployed and gaining seats in parliament. In parliament he became known as a great orator.He did not keep to translating the Comintern policies but also modified them. The ultra-left line was softened and contrary to the directions from Moscow he warned his party members of seeing the Social Democrats as the main enemy.
Larsen wanted to develop a Danish variant of communism and these sentiments grew after the seventh Comintern congress had adopted the popular front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
strategy aiming for a close cooperation with social democrats. While he did not want to make the Social Democrats the main enemy their unsympathetic views towards the communists made Larsen doubt that cooperation was possible. Instead Larsen was in favour of developing a popular front with the Social Liberal Party. With the exception of Arne Munch-Petersen who had become the Danish representative of the executive committee of Comintern after losing his seat in parliament in 1935 the party leadership supported this course.
The Comintern grew worried about the Danish party and the Trotskyist
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
past of its chairman and as more and more disagreements arose correspondence between Larsen and Moscow grew increasingly harsh. The Comintern lost its patience with Larsen and called him to Moscow for negotiations after he had published two articles against increased military spending.
Not only had he published the articles without clearing them with Moscow. He had also expressed views in contradiction to Soviet interests. Because of its position Denmark is the gate to the Baltic Sea
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
and a strong Danish defence would prevent Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
for using Denmark as a bridgehead for an attack on the Soviet Union.
Surviving Stalin’s purges
Although Larsen wanted more independence in developing policies he was not critical of the Soviet Union. He was a loyal defender of Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
and the Soviet Union. Although they affected many of his former friends from his stay in the 1920s and even though he did not believe in all the accusations he defended the purges and the Moscow trials
Moscow Trials
The Moscow Trials were a series of show trials conducted in the Soviet Union and orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge of the 1930s. The victims included most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, as well as the leadership of the Soviet secret police...
.
On 20 May 1937 Larsen arrived to a Moscow marked by fear, anti-Trotskyist propaganda and mass hysteria. A lot of his old acquaintances had either disappeared or did not dare to meet him.
The negotiations with the Comintern developed into a political trial against Larsen who had still not been forgiven for his Trotskyist past. Although he defended the Danish party line he was pressured into signing a declaration that the Danish party would follow the popular front strategy. He was not allowed to leave Moscow before he convinced the Comintern that he had to go home to look after his wife who was sick with cancer and to tend to his work in parliament.
His seat in parliament is likely to have saved his life. It is suggested that the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
had planned to arrest Larsen but general secretary Georgi Dimitrov
Georgi Dimitrov
Georgi Dimitrov Mikhaylov , also known as Georgi Mikhaylovich Dimitrov , was a Bulgarian Communist politician...
of the Comintern did not want to arrest a member of a foreign parliament and intervened.
Arne Munch-Petersen who had been part of the negotiations with Larsen did not have that protection and was arrested on 26 July 1937. After three weeks of torture and interrogations he confessed to Trotskyist activity and was imprisoned. In 1940 he died of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
in a Soviet prison.
Aksel Larsen and the leadership of the Communist Party got the news about Arne Munch-Petersen’s arrest in January 1938. Although they were shocked they saw no way of helping him without seriously damaging the relationship with Moscow. Because of this they concealed their knowledge not only to the public but also to his wife and family.
Enacting the popular front policy
Larsen and the Communist Party complied with the orders from Moscow and began working for the popular front policy. In March 1938 following Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
’s takeover of Austria in the Anschluss
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
Larsen held a speech in which he used a more patriotic rhetoric than before and warned that Denmark could suffer the same fate. After the speech the communists urged the Social Democrats and the Social Liberal Party to join the communists in a popular front. In a letter to the Social Democratic leader and prime minister Thorvald Stauning
Thorvald Stauning
Thorvald August Marinus Stauning was the first social democratic Prime Minister of Denmark. He served as Prime Minister from 1924 to 1926 and again from 1929 until his death in 1942....
Larsen promised “the most unconditional and loyal support”.
The new party line culminated on the 1938 party congress where Larsen held one of his most important speeches. He declared that the communist party was both a Danish and a democratic party and put great emphasis on his party’s wishes for unity in the labour movement.
The popular front policy won supporters outside traditional communist constituencies and since the communists used the charismatic Larsen to personify their policies he became increasingly popular. However the Social Democrats refused to cooperate with the communists.
In spite of the popularity of Larsen and the popular front voter support for the party was small. Although the communists got 40,983 votes in the 1939 election
Danish Folketing election, 1939
Folketing elections were held in Denmark on 3 April 1939, except in the Faroe Islands where they were held on 19 April. They followed a dissolution of both chambers in order to call a referendum on changing the constitution. The referendum was held on 23 May but failed due to a low voter turnout...
and went from two to three seats in parliament the increase was much smaller than they had hoped for which was a great disappointment to Larsen. The communists were further disappointed by the 1939 constitutional referendum
Danish constitutional referendum, 1939
A constitutional referendum was held in Denmark on 23 May 1939. Voters were asked whether they approved of a new constitution. Although it was approved by 91.9% of those who voted, a turnout of only 48.9% meant that the percentage of eligible voters approving it was only 44.46%, below the 45%...
where they had campaigned in favour of the new constitution which was not passed.
World War II and Sachsenhausen
The popular front policy crumbled with the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pactMolotov-Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939...
on 23 August 1939. Despite being confused about the pact Larsen defended Stalin’s decision. The German invasion of Poland on 1 September and Stalin’s invasion of Poland on 17 September and the following partition of Poland between Hitler and Stalin caused more confusion in the communist movement as the former image of the Soviet Union as a bulwark against fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
now fell.
The situation was difficult but Larsen did his best to defend the Soviet Union. This put Larsen under a lot of stress and in September he asked the party secretariat and later the Comintern for permission to resign as chairman. However his requests were denied as it was feared that a change in leadership would increase the strain on the party. Larsen raised the issue again when the Soviet Union laid pressure on Finland to evacuate Karelia
Karelia
Karelia , the land of the Karelian peoples, is an area in Northern Europe of historical significance for Finland, Russia, and Sweden...
but was turned down once more.
The Soviet attack on Finland on 30 November 1939 and the Winter War
Winter War
The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland – and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...
created great public sympathy for Finland in the Danish public. Contrary the communists were despised for their support of the Soviet Union and Aksel Larsen became the target of public disdain. Shortly after the beginning of the war the entire Folketing
Folketing
The Folketing , is the national parliament of Denmark. The name literally means "People's thing"—that is, the people's governing assembly. It is located in Christiansborg Palace, on the islet of Slotsholmen in central Copenhagen....
walked out in protest when Larsen mounted the podium.
The peace between Finland and the Soviet Union removed some of the stress on the party but on 9 April 1940 Denmark was occupied by Germany. At the time Larsen were in Moscow but on 22 April he managed to get back to Copenhagen with instructions for how to deal with the situation. At that time the Communist Party of Denmark was still legal but the Comintern as well as Danish party leadership was expecting that the party would soon be banned. The communists were to try to remain a legal party for as long as possible and use the time to prepare to go underground. In spite of these expectations the Danish police took the communists by surprise when leading communists were arrested on 22 June 1941 and the party as well as the communist ideology was banned.
Larsen managed to avoid capture and went into hiding. He and the party continued the political work with an illegal publication against the ban on communism and an open letter to prime minister Thorvald Stauning
Thorvald Stauning
Thorvald August Marinus Stauning was the first social democratic Prime Minister of Denmark. He served as Prime Minister from 1924 to 1926 and again from 1929 until his death in 1942....
on 20 August 1941. In January 1942 Larsen was a co-founder of the resistance organisation “Frit Danmark” (lit. “A Free Denmark”) which circulated an illegal publication of the same name.
The month later Larsen chaired a party leadership meeting where it was decided that the communists were to take part in sabotage against the German occupiers. However Larsen did not get the possibility to be a part of the sabotage work as he was arrested by Danish police on 5 November 1942 and incarcerated at Vestre Fængsel
Vestre Fængsel
Vestre Fængsel is the main jail of the Danish capital, Copenhagen. Erected in 1895, it is Denmark's largest prison with a total capacity of 530 inmates...
. There he was given over to the Germans who transferred him to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD...
on 28 August 1943. There he was confined to a solitary cell isolated from the rest of the camp by a high wall with electrified barbed wire.
After the war
Aksel Larsen survived the concentration camp and was saved by Sweden in April 1945 by count Folke BernadotteFolke Bernadotte
Folke Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg was a Swedish diplomat and nobleman noted for his negotiation of the release of about 31,000 prisoners from German concentration camps during World War II, including 450 Danish Jews from Theresienstadt released on 14 April 1945...
's White Buses
White Buses
"White Buses" refers to a program undertaken by the Swedish Red Cross and the Danish government in the spring of 1945 to rescue concentration camp inmates in areas under Nazi control and transport them to Sweden, a neutral country...
. On 5 May he returned to Denmark and was hailed as a hero of the resistance. The war had turned the public image of the communist movement upside down with the Soviet Union being credited for its efforts in the war and the Communist Party of Denmark being credited for its involvement in the resistance movement.
In the months after the liberation Aksel Larsen who was marked by his stay in the concentration camp did not play a great political role. The communists were given seats in the liberation cabinet
Cabinet of Vilhelm Buhl II
The Cabinet of Vilhelm Buhl II was the government of Denmark from May 5, 1945 until November 7 same year. The cabinet was popularly called "the Liberation Cabinet" since it was the first government after the liberation from the German occupation during World War II.It comprised 18 ministers, about...
and Larsen got a cabinet seat although without portfolio. While he recovered from his stay in Sachsenhausen he let Alfred Jensen
Alfred Jensen
Peter Alfred Jensen was a Danish politician and government minister. He was a member of the Danish Communist Party ....
lead the party.
The election of 1945
Danish Folketing election, 1945
Folketing elections were held alongside Landsting elections in Denmark on 30 October 1945, except in the Faroe Islands where they were held on 20 November. The Social Democratic Party remained the largest in the Folketing, with 48 of the 149 seats. Voter turnout was 86.3% in Denmark proper and...
on 15 September was the best ever for the communists. They got 12.5% of the vote and 18 seats in parliament. With 27,497 votes Larsen himself was the candidate who received most personal votes.
The friendly relations between Social Democrats and communists that had existed right after the liberation soon disappeared and the old fronts from before the war started to re-emerge.
The Danish communists became the target of public disdain once more with the onset of the Cold War and the communist coup
Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948
The Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948 – in Communist historiography known as "Victorious February" – was an event late that February in which the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, with Soviet backing, assumed undisputed control over the government of Czechoslovakia, ushering in over four decades...
in Prague in 1948 combined with new purges and trials in Moscow and Eastern Europe. Larsen once more showed himself to be a defender of the Soviet Union.
Although the Comintern had been disbanded in 1943 he frequently sought the advice of the Soviet embassy in Copenhagen and the CPSU. His loyalty to Moscow was without conditions and he gained a reputation for being “one of Scandinavia’s most reliable and trusted Stalinists” after he helped to purge Norwegian communist leader Peter Furobotn.
Although he had abandoned his idea of a Danish variant of communism he still managed to translate the Soviet party line to Danish realities. His skills as an orator and public debater helped slow down the decline in voter support but was not able to stop it. However as the Cold War worsened the Communist Party of Denmark became increasingly isolated.
Controversy arose in March 1949 when Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
protocols from the interrogations of him during the war was printed by the conservative newspaper “Nationaltidende”. He was accused of having given the Germans too much information and for having betrayed his comrades in the resistance. He was defended by his party and by veterans of the resistance but the interrogation protocols was used against him by his political opponents for many years after.
During a 1951 stay in Moscow Larsen learned that Arne Munch-Pedersen had died in 1940. Although the case continued to emerge in the media and in parliament Larsen kept silent and denied any knowledge of Arne Munch-Pedersen’s fate.
Although the Cold War was a stressful period to Larsen he kept to his communist creed. The first traces of doubt came shortly after Stalin’s death when all defendants of the Doctors’ Plot trials were rehabilitated because their confessions had been made under torture. Larsen’s doubt was however short-lived and he was only strengthened in his views by Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
’s thaw both inside the Soviet Union and internationally. A strike at a Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
plant and an increase in party membership combined with a stronger communist presence in the trade unions convinced Larsen that the party had a bright future.
The last years as a communist
Although he attended the 20th congress of the CPSU in 1956 Larsen did not hear Khrushchev’s “secret speechOn the Personality Cult and its Consequences
On the Personality Cult and its Consequences was a report, critical of Joseph Stalin, made to the Twentieth Party Congress on February 25, 1956 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. It is more commonly known as the Secret Speech or the Khrushchev Report...
”. He first learned about it when it was reported by the New York Times on 16 March. Larsen read the speech at the Soviet embassy and proposed a party line more independent of Moscow.
The collective bargaining negotiations of 1956 and a general strike had strengthened the party and Larsen got his party’s support to pursue a more independent line. However his plans reached farther and he persuaded Mogens Fog
Mogens Fog
Mogens Ludolf Fog was a Danish physician, politician and resistance fighter. In the 1930s, he headed the Socialistiske Læger who opposed Fascism....
to re-join the party to help transform it to a “broad, national, socialistic party”.
The positive situation for the Danish communists changed dramatically with the Soviet invasion of Hungary in October 1956. Once again the communists were disdained in public opinion and isolated politically. Internally Larsen had to balance between the inner circle of the party who were in favour of the invasion and the party members and intellectuals who were against. Internal tension grew and resulted in an extraordinary party congress in January 1957 where Aksel Larsen for the first time since 1932 delivered his annual report in his own name and not in the name of the central committee. The congress elected a new central committee and executive committee with a strong majority against Larsen’s line.
The party was sitting on a powder keg of internal disagreement which could go off at any moment. The situation was triggered when the League of Communists of Yugoslavia
League of Communists of Yugoslavia
League of Communists of Yugoslavia , before 1952 the Communist Party of Yugoslavia League of Communists of Yugoslavia (Serbo-Croatian: Savez komunista Jugoslavije/Савез комуниста Југославије, Slovene: Zveza komunistov Jugoslavije, Macedonian: Сојуз на комунистите на Југославија, Sojuz na...
invited a delegation from the Communist Party of Denmark to go to its 1958 congress. The CPSU and other communist parties had also accepted the invitation but suddenly the CPSU decided to boycott the congress and pressured other communist parties not to send delegations either. Although Larsen's decision to go anyway was supported by the Danish executive committee, it was decided that Knud Jespersen and Børge Houmann were to go to Yugoslavia instead of Larsen.
Internal disagreements continued after the Yugoslav party congress and on 8 July 1958 Larsen revived his ideas from the 1930s about a distinct Danish form of communism and urged the party leadership to change to a more independent course. Larsen now also thought that the Danish party should not necessarily support and defend the acts of the Soviet Union and the CPSU.
Fierce faction struggle arose and Larsen lost the party congress in October 1958. On 16 November 1958 it was announced in the communist newspaper “Land og Folk” that he had been expelled from the party.
As CIA agent
The Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), concluded in 2005, that Larsen held a secret working relationship between 1958 and 1964 with one of Denmark's allied partners in the Cold War, stating that "Larsen... obviously was an agent of a Western intelligence service."In the 2005 book Firmaets største bedrift historian Peer Henrik Hansen argues that Aksel Larsen was recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA). According to Hansen Larsen had his first meetings with American agents in November 1958 in his own home. According to the newspaper Information
Dagbladet Information
Information , full name: Dagbladet Information , is a Danish newspaper published Monday through Saturday.Originally established and edited by Børge Outze and published during the World War II by the Danish resistance movement. Information was illegal during the war as it was not regulated by the...
Larsen was offered information on sentiments among the party hard-liners if he would cause a split in the party. For years the CIA had a bugging device in the apartment of Alfred Jensen the vice-chairman of the Communist Party of Denmark. From there they knew about the tensions in the party leadership.
According to Hansen Aksel Larsen was at the time afraid of retaliations from the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
and Larsen, suspecting the American agent of being a KGB assassin, brought a friend with a gun to the first meeting to act as bodyguard. Poul Dam a party colleague of Larsen has reported that he had made preparations to go into hiding in the case of a Soviet invasion. Hansen speculates that Aksel Larsen's cooperation with the CIA was part of a trade-off where the CIA got information on communists and Larsen in return would be protected from the KGB.
Over ten years Larsen had several meetings with the CIA where he gave information on the relationship between the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and communist parties in other countries. He was asked if the Communist Party of Denmark was doing espionage work for the Soviet bloc or if the party was preparing an illegal party apparatus. He denied direct knowledge about this but told the agent that the party had turned down Soviet and East German
German Democratic Republic
The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...
requests for aid with espionage. According to some of Hansen's sources Larsen was rewarded with vacations, dinners and money for his co-operation.
Larsen met with a CIA agent with connections to Radio Liberty. He told the Americans much about international communism but were less keen to tell about Danish communists especially how Moscow funded them. He stated several times that he would like to destroy his former party and others who did the Soviet Union's bidding.
According to Hansen the Russians knew about Larsen's cooperation with the CIA as did Danish intelligence agencies who learned about the connections between Larsen and the CIA as soon as 1958. Although the CIA operation was illegal according to Danish law the Danish intelligence agencies promised not to intervene in return for transcripts of the debriefings.
Founding a new party
Although no longer a communist Larsen was still a socialistSocialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
. Ideas for a new political party was made public on 20 November 1958 and a preparatory committee with Larsen as its leader was created the day after. The Socialist People’s Party
Socialist People's Party (Denmark)
The Socialist People's Party is a green and socialist political party in Denmark.-1959–69:The SF was founded on 15 February 1959 by Aksel Larsen, a former leader of the Communist Party of Denmark and CIA agent. Larsen was removed from the ranks of the DKP for his criticism over the Soviet...
was registered with parliament on 24 November and the party held its founding congress on 15 February 1959 in Copenhagen. Like the Communist Party of Denmark it was “founded on the idea of Marxism” but contrary to the communists the new party declared its loyalty to Danish parliamentary democracy and the peaceful path to socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
.
Leading up to the 1960 election
Danish parliamentary election, 1960
Parliamentary elections were held in Denmark on 15 November 1960. The Social Democratic Party remained the largest in the Folketing, with 76 of the 179 seats. Voter turnout was 85.8% in Denmark proper, 57.1% in the Faroe Islands and 65.8% in Greenland....
the Gallup polls were not in favour of the Socialist People’s Party but Larsen showed his command of the then-new television media when he spoke to the viewers from a hospital bed with a broken leg. The new party gained 6,4% of the vote and 11 seats in parliament while the communists lost all their seats.
As many of the members of the new party were former communists the party were believed to be communists in disguise by other parties, especially the Social Democrats. However those suspicions cooled and the party gradually became accepted. In the 1966 election
Danish parliamentary election, 1966
Parliamentary elections were held in Denmark on 23 January 1966. The Social Democratic Party remained the largest in the Folketing, with 69 of the 179 seats. Voter turnout was 88.6% in Denmark proper, 48.8% in the Faroe Islands and 59.0% in Greenland .-Results:...
the Socialist People’s Party and the Social Democrats got a majority and there were talks about forming a coalition cabinet. However the Socialist People’s Party could not accept the demands made by the Social Democrats. Instead Jens Otto Krag
Jens Otto Krag
Jens Otto Krag was a Danish politician. He was Prime Minister from 1962 to 1968 and again from 1971 to 1972....
of the Social Democrats formed a cabinet supported by the socialists and a joint contact committee between the two parties was formed. This committee was soon dubbed “The Red Cabinet”.
The Red Cabinet lasted until December 1967 when six of the 20 Socialist People’s Party members voted against the Krag administration’s proposal to freeze a threshold payment. An extraordinary party congress was held and although Larsen gained a majority for his political line he had to resign from his posts as party leader and leader of the parliamentary group. However a split could not be avoided and on 17 December the minority founded the new party the Left Socialists
Left Socialists
Left Socialists , a political party in Denmark. VS works on what it calls a 'undogmatic revolutionary and Marxist basis'.It was formed in 1967 as a split from the Socialist People's Party . VS was represented by the letter "Y" on the electoral ballots. VS members of parliament were respected and...
.
Later years
Larsen had just turned 70 when he resigned as party chairman and had reached the end of his political career. He was recognized by his long service in the Communist Party of Denmark and his time as a concentration camp inmate.Aksel Larsen died on 10 January 1972 and is interred at Fredens Kirkegård in Odense
Odense
The city of Odense is the third largest city in Denmark.Odense City has a population of 167,615 and is the main city of the island of Funen...
.
Legacy
To his death Larsen stayed a controversial figure. Although he had gained acceptance with his new party and although his supporters revered him and spoke about a special kind of “Larsenism” he was also accused of having betrayed his principles. He was criticised for having been one of the fiercest supporters of the Soviet Union and for his concealment of Arne Munch-Petersen’s fate. However he was a respected parliamentarian and one of Denmark’s most popular politicians.Larsens attempts to develop “third way” form of communism independent of the Soviet Union is viewed by some to be one of the forerunners of eurocommunism
Eurocommunism
Eurocommunism was a trend in the 1970s and 1980s within various Western European communist parties to develop a theory and practice of social transformation that was more relevant in a Western European democracy and less aligned to the influence or control of the Communist Party of the Soviet...
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He is one of the parliamentarians who has been commemorated by having his bust placed in the hallways of the Danish parliament
Folketing
The Folketing , is the national parliament of Denmark. The name literally means "People's thing"—that is, the people's governing assembly. It is located in Christiansborg Palace, on the islet of Slotsholmen in central Copenhagen....
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