Aksel Larsen - Back in Denmark

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 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.