1 Early Attempts to Gain Asylum in
Scandinavia
I hope the time is not distant when the working class also can welcome those persons it wants as its guests. . . . We must hope that Trotsky lives until we obtain a government which overturns the resolution adopted by the present government.
—Olav Scheflo, Storting debate, April 22, 1929
From the time he began his Turkish exile, Trotsky longed to escape. He wished to find a haven in Western Europe that would allow him direct contact with the mainstream of European and world politics. Instead, he was confined to an island in the Sea of Marmara, Prinkipo.* It was here Byzantine emperors used to send princes who were out of favor, frequently after having blinded them.1 Although Stalin most likely had no knowledge of this morbid historical fact, he would have relished it since his primary purpose for sending Trotsky into exile was to keep him isolated politically.
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* Prinkipo is the Greek name for the island. The Turkish name is Buyuk Ada, or Great Island.
Contrary to what he had expected, Trotsky was destined to spend four and a half years in Turkey, interrupted by only one brief excursion out of the country. This period of seclusion in a distant corner of Europe was not due to restrictions from his host country. The Turkish government treated him with utmost consideration. What prevented him from obtaining residence in Western Europe in 1929 and during the following years was his notorious reputation. He inspired both fear and loathing among the European bourgeoisie, who felt threatened by the successful communist takeover in Russia, a seizure of power that Trotsky, next to Lenin, had come to symbolize, despite Stalin’s best efforts already to rewrite history. Even in major Western countries with socialist prime ministers, such as England and Germany, the antipathy created by Trotsky made it impossible for him to secure political refuge. Both nations rejected Trotsky’s application for asylum out of hand.2 That the British government in particular felt compelled to do so was revealing. As the champion of the right of asylum prior to World War I, England had harbored a wide variety of European radicals, including socialists, anarchists, and nationalists. The war and the ensuing Russian Revolution changed this forever. In the twentieth century European states would adopt a much more restricted and self-serving viewpoint concerning this principle.
It was only after his application had been rejected by the German government that Trotsky considered smaller states, including Norway, as an alternative. He did not apply personally but allowed his supporters to take the initiative. They appealed to the socialist Labor Party (Arbeiderpartiet) and the National Federation of Unions (Landsorganisasjonen—L.O.), asking them to intercede and obtain a residence permit for Trotsky. However, while he was not personally involved, he followed the effort with considerable interest.3
The Labor Party sought at first to approach the government privately because of the delicate nature of this mission. Its vice-chairman, Professor Edvard Bull, discussed the subject on April 4, 1929, with Prime Minister Johan Ludwig Mowinckel, whose Liberal (Venstre) minority government was dependent on support from other nonsocialist parties, the Conservatives (Høire) and the Agrarian Party (Bondepartiet). Mowinckel promised he would bring the matter up for discussion with his cabinet, which he did on the tenth. When Bull phoned the prime minister the following morning to learn of its decision, he received the disappointing news that the ministers had unanimously rejected Trotsky’s admission on the grounds that they could not take responsibility for ensuring his safety.4
Since his contact with Bull had been confidential, Mowinckel hoped that the matter had been concluded. He discovered, however, that the socialists had no intention of abandoning Trotsky’s case. A number of their top figures were favorably disposed, having known him when the party belonged to the Communist International. Furthermore, the Labor Party believed that the act of refusing him asylum might prove embarrassing for the government. Indicating the importance that they attached to the question, the party’s chairman, Oscar Torp, and L. O. chairman Halvard Olsen met with the prime minister on April 16. Mowinckel was handed a written request that Trotsky be granted residence. As basis for this formal appeal, the labor movement insisted that this concerned the right of asylum—whether Norway should offer haven to persons who were persecuted for their political beliefs.5
The government thereby was forced to take a public stand on this controversial question. Its response came quickly in the form of a press release on the following day. In a brief, one-sentence statement it declared that the cabinet, despite favoring the right of asylum, could not accede to the request because “of the difficulties associated with the necessary maintenance of Trotsky’s security.”6
The refusal set off a bitter polemical debate in both the party press and in the parliament, the Storting. The Labor Party quickly demolished the pretext that Trotsky could not be granted entry because of the expense of providing for his security. Mowinckel himself later admitted that sufficient resources were available to guarantee Trotsky’s safety if the cabinet had agreed to allow him asylum. The nonsocialist representatives and their press, however, were by no means on the defensive in the debate but sought to turn the controversy to their advantage. They charged that socialism in general was an evil, as the example of Trotsky clearly showed. Their press emphasized in particular the lack of freedom in the U.S.S.R., the excesses committed by Trotsky during the Russian Revolution and Civil War, and the Labor Party’s alleged hypocrisy in championing only political asylum for persons who shared its convictions.7 Some nonsocialists furthermore pointed out that the issue of Trotsky’s asylum was being utilized by the Labor Party not only against its bourgeois opponents but also against the communists.
This observation was quite accurate. The controversy presented the Labor Party with an excellent opportunity to strike a blow against its enemy on the left. Although the Norwegian Communist Party was in decline, it still retained some political influence within the working class, having gained four percent of the popular vote and three parliamentary seats in the 1927 election. Olav Scheflo was the Labor Party’s chief advocate in favor of admitting Trotsky. He had earlier been a prominent communist leader when the party was formed but later rejoined the Labor Party. Not surprisingly, the communists bitterly attacked him, charging Scheflo and Sverre Støstad, another Labor representative and former leading communist, with being “renegades” when they spoke in favor of Trotsky during the debate.8 The Labor Party, however, occupied the best position in this encounter. It drove home the point that the communists, when opposing Trotsky’s entry, were allied with the bourgeoisie, or as the Labor Party put it, “with the most reactionary parties.”9
At the heart of the disagreement, however, was neither the issue of Trotsky’s past nor the fact that competing political parties wished to turn the question of his admission to their advantage, although both were important. The nonsocialists were also in opposition because they believed that Trotsky not only could create internal political instability but, even more importantly, because his asylum could have a negative impact on Norway’s foreign relations. Although there is no direct evidence indicating Soviet pressure at this time, political leaders, including the prime minister, were fully aware of possible negative repercussions should Stalin’s sworn enemy be granted refuge.10
The Labor Party, on the other hand, insisted that the principle of the right of political asylum should take precedent over all other considerations. As a result, the Mowinckel administration found itself in an embarrassing predicament because, as a liberal government, it could not openly repudiate the right of asylum. Mowinckel attempted to argue that the issue really did not involve this principle but rather the threat to order and stability that Trotsky’s admittance might pose. Scheflo tellingly countered by pointing out that if Mowinckel’s definition of granting political asylum was adhered to, only noncontroversial persons would be eligible to receive asylum.11
Because the moral advantage rested with the Labor Party, and also because the dispute exacerbated the highly emotional ideological, political, and personal divisions that separated the socialists from their bourgeois and communist opponents, the debate about Trotsky’s asylum occurred in a charged atmosphere created by strong, at times intemperate, language that exceeded the norms of even the ordinary level of inflammatory partisan oratory that was standard in the Storting during the 1920s. However, the fiery language, not unexpectedly, failed to persuade almost anyone to deviate from their fixed positions. As expected, when the vote was taken on April 22, the two communist representatives joined sixty-nine nonsocialists in voting against the resolution that the government reconsider its decision. The fifty-one Labor members were joined by only one nonsocialist in favor of the motion.12
This outcome made it clear that Trotsky had no chance of finding asylum in Norway as long as a nonsocialist government held office. However, this did not end the matter. The Labor Party’s commitment meant that if it ever came to power, the possibility of Trotsky being granted admission was very much a reality. As Scheflo declared in the Storting: “I hope the time is not distant when the working class also can welcome those persons it wants as its guests. . . . We must hope that Trotsky lives until we obtain a government which overturns the resolution adopted by the present government.”13 Scheflo’s hope would be realized in 1935, when Trotsky was given admission by a Labor government. But contrary to what the Labor representatives expounded in 1929, their socialist government, when faced with serious problems created by Trotsky’s presence, would act in much the same way that Mowinckel’s Liberal government had done some seven years earlier.
Despite the disappointments he experienced during his first year at Prinkipo, Trotsky did not abandon hope that he might be able to move. In 1930 he sought to gain admission to a Western European country on the grounds of alleged ill health. A press release from Prinkipo, dated March 19, declared that his physical condition had deteriorated during the last two- or three-month period. In addition to his old maladies, referring to his chronic health problems in the Soviet Union, he now supposedly had developed heart trouble. Added “acute sufferings from gout” made it necessary for him to undergo a cure at a mineral spring, and the press statement indicated that he intended to seek a visa for the summer season.14
Showing that the Labor Party had by no means lost interest in his fate, its main Oslo paper, Arbeiderbladet (The Labor Paper) editorialized two days later, stressing that he suffered from a lung inflammation. But while it alleged that the need for him to receive medical attention was obvious, Arbeiderbladet indicated that he unquestionably would face difficulties. The Soviet government and the communists on one side and the forces of reaction and cowardice in Western Europe on the other, including the Norwegian government, would join together in this case.15 While this editorial had no more immediate results than had the fruitless effort to help Trotsky get out of Turkey in 1929, it nevertheless had some significance for the future. When he later gained admission to Norway, a major justification provided by the Labor government was that he and Natalia were both ill, needing rest and a period of convalescence.
Furthermore, in 1930 his sympathizers, led by Scheflo, had by no means given up on the idea of getting Trotsky into the country. Having been unsuccessful when attempting to apply the principle of the right of asylum, their next move was to try to arrange a lecture series in Norway for the world-renowned exile, making use of the Norwegian Student Association (Studentersamfundet) in their quest.
During much of the 1930s, the Student Association created considerable furor because its board was controlled by a radical socialist group, Mot Dag (Toward Day). Although it lacked a mass following, being restricted almost entirely to persons with an academic background, the organization enjoyed both attention and notoriety because of its influence at the University, a major center of Norwegian culture and political debate.* Earlier, in the 1920s, Mot Dag had been affiliated at different times with both the Labor Party and the communists,...