ABSTRACT

The story of Scandinavian communism is fairly familiar to any student of western European communism. Scandinavian political tradition was vastly different. During the first few years after the Russian revolution, socio-economic and political conditions in Europe were relatively favourable for left-wing radicalism. The emphasis on Marxist humanism was an important element in the Scandinavian endorsement of the Russian revolution, and it exhibited a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Bolshevism and the main elements of the 'later', as opposed to the 'earlier', Marx. The cultural and historical differences between the Nordic countries on the one hand, and Russia on the other, had profound implications for the development of communism in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland. The combination of nationalism and radicalism, which had strong support among the farmers and fishermen of the island, was further enhanced by the centuries-old tradition of 'individualism in a collective society'.