Maritime Communists Against Fascism and in Defense of the USSR

Even though a lot of documents and some central archives are still classified, the opening of Russian archives in the 1990s altered the study of communist history of the twentieth century. New and more solid knowledge about the activities of communists, including the illegal parties, has supplemented, and corrected earlier studies based on open sources, memoirs, court records, and the like. In a Danish perspective, a pioneering effort was made by journalist Erik Nørgaard in the 1970s and 1980s; his book remains useful in spite of the absence of footnotes. ¹ The Norwegian historian Lars Borgersrud, the leading expert on communist ship sabotage in Northern Europe in the 1930s, has described this work as “interesting” and historically correct concerning the main episodes. Nonetheless, Borgersrud has criticized the book for its narrow national (Danish) approach, its failure to make use of closed sources, and its journalistic perspective. ²