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supporters, and by the mid-1950s the DKP had been reduced to a hard core of Moscow-line Communists. In 1958 the party was racked by internal dissension as an argument over the degree of the party's subservience to Moscow came to a head. Long term chairman Aksel Larsen was branded a "Titoist" and expelled. The following year he weaned away a portion of the party membership from the Moscow-oriented leadership and set up a nationalist-minded Communist party, the Socialist People's Party. In the 1960 election the SFP displaced the DKP in the Folketing as the representative of the radical left. While the orthodox DKP stagnated, Larsen's forces thrived. Following the 1966 election, in which the SFP won 20 parliamentary seats and 10.9% of the voter, it gained a status bordering on respectability, particularly after striking an agreement with Prime Minister Krag's minority Social Democratic Government to consult on domestic legislative proposals.
Late in 1967 a feud between Larsen and a group which objected to the SFP's close cooperation with the governing SDP came to a head. Six of the 20-man parliamentary delegation voted against a government-sponsored wage restraint bill, thereby bringing down the Krag regime. In a subsequent party convention, Larsen and his followers outvoted the dissidents, who quickly founded their own party, the Left Socialist Party (VS), dedicated to a pure leftist ideology and dominated by the former youth/intellectual wing of the SFP. In the 1968 national election the SFP won 11 seats, the Left Socialists won 4, and the Communists none. By 1971, however, Larsen's group had won over many of the dissidents and gained 17 seats. The VS and the Communists failed to win any seats. The gain is particularly significant as an indicator of continuing SFP viability. It has retained its leftists clientele, notwithstanding both the transfer of its leadership in 1970 from the vivid Larsen to the relatively pallid Sigurd Omann, and the leftward movement of the SDP in an attempt to co-opt SFP votes.
The three far-left factions, true to the tradition of schismatics, have been bitter enemies. Organizationally and ideologically, however, they have much in common. They draw support from industrial workers, farm laborers, and left-leaning intellectuals. They advocate total socialization, rail against NATO, were opposed to EC membership, vie in their anti-Americanism and anti-Germanism, and propose to return Denmark to complete neutrality. They are secretive about their basic strength.
The success of the Socialist People's Party in its early years was attributable chiefly to Aksel Larsen himself, a colorful and magnetic political with a sizable following. As the party grew, the Larsen personality cult was supplemented by a philosophical attraction the SFP began to have for the left element of the Social Democratic Party, particularly those who felt that Danish social democracy was losing its dynamism and was following the road to middle-class conservatism and respectability. The SFP has sought with some evident success to project the image of a reputable Danish political party, completely independent of Moscow's control and influence. It has mapped a program designed to eliminate some of the nation's remaining social ills and has insinuated into the Danish political consciousness the thought that it is no less dedicated to parliamentary processes than the openly democratic parties. Thus, it succeeded in 1971 again forming an informal alliance with the SDP, providing the pivotal strength to keep the Social Democrats in office. Notwithstanding the SDP role in leading Denmark into the EC, for which it had to rely on Liberal and Conservative support because of the strong opposition of the SFP, and the SDP's acceding to Liberal and Conservative pressures in the matter of some continued NATO commitment, still anathema to the SFP, the latter continues to support the government on other issues, acting as a quid pro quo the prior review of all SDP proposed domestic legislation.
The VS claims to have recaptured the leftist unity of the original SFP before the Larsen forces were "corrupted" by their cooperation with the Krag and then the Jorgensen government. It fosters an image more radical than that of either the DKP or the SFP, and yet assets that it is more democratically run than either rival. By proclaiming its disinterest in a governing role, it has drawn to its banner students and intellectuals dedicated to an "anti-establishment" creed.
The regular Communist Party of Denmark is imprisoned by the bonds of Marxist orthodoxy and is tainted by association with recent Communist history. It is clearly an appendage of the Kremlin, even to the point of parroting the official Soviet interpretation of events in the People's Republic of China. It ostensibly advocates the conversion of the people to communism through peaceful means, but its image remains that of a heavy-loaded authoritarian party. Evens such as the crushing of the Hungarian revolt in 1956, the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and the Soviet rejection in 1970 of an integrated Nordic customs and economic unit (NORDEK) by refusing to permit the participation of tethered Finland have all redounded to the public discredit of the DKP. The Communist and far left press has a negligible influence, accounting for only 0.4% of total newspaper
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110016-6
