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Some Often Overlooked Sources for CPGB and Comintern Research
In his book Nikolai Bucharin und die skandinavische Arbeiterbewegung (Mainz 1993), a translation and updating of the original Swedish edition (Uppsala 1991), Alexander Kan points out that Bukharin's biographers, excepting Löwy (Zürich-Vienna 1969), even though only slightly, have ignored the Nordic primary sources and Bukharin's activity in the Comintern. This is all the more strange, in that Bukharin, during his stay in Scandinavia, from August 1915 to October 1916, wrote for the mainstream, youth and left-socialist press, moreover, he developed there some of his major theoretical ideas on both imperialism and the question of the State. Bukharin not only assisted the Bolshevik faction in its revolutionary activity, but contributed towards strengthening the left-wing of the Zimmerwald movement, whose centre would move from Berne to Stockholm, thus placing the Swedish capital at the centre of the nascent Communist International. Anyway, Kan's book compensates for the earlier failures and provides much useful information of a specific and general nature.
In his essay 'Der bolschevistische "Revolutionsexport" im Jahre 1920 und die schwedische Linkssozialisten', in the 1994 Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung (Berlin, pp 88-103), Kan again remarks on the lack of attention paid to Sweden in western research on communism (it is not mentioned in the index of E.H. Carr's prestigious work, he says), and while the other western European centres of the CI have been researched, Stockholm has been neglected, although it played a central role during the period until 1921, when Soviet Russia was encircled and fighting for its life.
The sources available are, in Kan's words, in part unique. The left-socialist press of the time can be consulted, but also the documents of the Foreign Ministry and the Swedish police in the National Archive, plus the priceless literary remains of Frederik Ström (1880-1948), deposited in the Manuscript Department of the University Library of Gothenberg, and in accordance with his will only accessible since 1987. Apart from the record of Ström's connection with the Soviet Consulate in Stockholm, which comprises two files, mainly covering 1919 and 1920 respectively, the greatest part of the documents concern his voluminous correspondence with the Soviet diplomat and old-Bolshevik Litvinov (in Copenhagen from November 1919 to September 1920). Of course, the memoirs of such key figures as Zeth Höglund, Karl Kilbom and Ture Nerman, have long been available. The libraries and archives of the labour movements in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo contain, among other items, papers and correspondence of many leading personalities. As the mass workers party, the norske Arbeiderparti (DnA or NAP), was affiliated to the CI from 1920-23, one finds in Norwegian a considerable literature useful for research into communism.
One can see in Ström's correspondence his centrality to the effecting of European working class solidarity with Soviet Russia in its fight for survival, as well as his provision of funding for the nascent communist parties, through jewellery, valuables, precious metals and monies, all sent from Russia for that purpose. For example, with Soviet money, Ström could provide Lansbury with newsprint for the 'Herald'. And somebody code-named 'Mozart', representing an important part of the British labour movement in regard to the prevention of intervention on Poland's behalf against Soviet Russia, received monthly payments from a fund set up by selling valuables worth 100,000 Crowns delivered by a female Finnish comrade.
When accessibility to the Moscow archives is problematic it is surely worth the while of British researchers examining the sources available in Scandinavia which, in any case, might enlighten us more in regard to the first few years of the Russian Revolution and the movement it inspired.
