ABSTRACT
This article differentiates between three stages: the immediate reaction within Danish politics, the middle-term echo within the workers’ movement and the long-time memory culture that evolved throughout the 20th century.
In the time just after the revolution, reactions varied from hope to distress: hopes that it might bring about peace and even positive change; and distress and, even for a short time, fear among right-wing politicians that the revolution in Russia and – maybe even more threatening – the revolution in neighbouring Germany would ignite revolutionaries also in Denmark. Even though Denmark had not participated in the Great War, social tensions did exist and syndicalists did provoke riots in early 1918, known as the “storm on the stock exchange”.
The more serious result of the revolution was undoubtedly the split in the labour movement. The growing Danish social democracy, which had originally been cautiously positive towards the changes in Russia, condemned the Bolsheviks’ undemocratic road to power, with the turning point being the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918. Or alternately, the majority of the social democratic leadership and movement refuted the Russian path. Within the party, especially the youth organisation, forces also praised Lenin’s teaching and formed first the “Socialist Workers Party” and, in 1920, the “Danish Communist Party”, and thus drove a wedge between revolutionary and reformist socialists. Essentially, this was going to be one of the most important political battlefields of 20th-century politics.
In the century-long and bitter infighting among different factions of socialists, a litmus test of political sympathies was going to be the celebration of the anniversaries of the October Revolution. To the Moscow-loyal communists this was, of course, a good occasion to rejoice in the Soviet Union. Depending on the popularity of the party and the Soviet Union, either tens of thousands would celebrate, or it would only be a small party for hard-core sympathizers. From the late 1960s onwards, the “New Left” also staked its claim to the memory of the revolution. In 1990, the party ended abruptly, and the question of remembrance was left to historians.
