Karl Kilbom

Karl Kilbom (8 May 1885 – 24 December 1961) was a Swedish politician and one of the founders of the Communist Party of Sweden.

Youth

As the son of a blacksmith, Karl Kilbom grew up in a working class family of Walloon origin in the small town of Österbybruk outside Uppsala, where he started working in the steel mills at an early age.

In the year 1900, a socialist agitator visited Österbybruk to talk to the workers of the mills. Karl Kilbom, only 15 years old, was one of the 7 people who stayed after the meeting to participate in the formation of a socialist club in Österbybruk with the goal to establish a union. However, company spies had been present at the meeting and soon Kilbom was told he would not only lose his job, but also that his family, who lived in a house owned by the company, would be evicted, if he didn't quit political activism. This time, Kilbom gave in to the threats.

Becoming a Socialist

In 1903, Kilbom moved to Sandviken where he joined a socialist club. However, he didn't remain active there for long when he soon found job on a ship named Thetis, embarking from Gävle shipping lumber from Sweden to England and other places. The conditions for the workers on the boat were wretched and the pay was low, but Kilbom saw this as a great opportunity to explore the world, although, according to his autobiography, he had severe problems with seasickness.

In 1905, Kilbom disembarked the Thetis in Gävle. Unemployed, he joined the Social Democratic youth organization in the city, and he was schooled by the prominent socialist Fabian Månsson to be an agitator. Kilbom soon moved to Krylbo and Avesta to work for the party there.

In 1907, Kilbom was conscripted to do military service in the Swedish Navy and he soon found himself on the navy base of Skeppsholmen in Stockholm, and stationed on the coastal defense ship HMS Svea. While in the navy, Kilbom got in trouble with the commanders for spreading, what they called, "illegal" Social Democratic papers with anti-militarist messages.

After military service, Kilbom moved to Gothenburg and started working at a plant manufacturing safes, and became a leader of the union there. He also became more and more active in the Swedish Social Democratic Party and started to study Marxism. He was asked by the party to go on national speaking tours to spread the word of socialism to the workers in every corner of Sweden, and for many years Kilbom was without a home, always on the road.

Becoming a Communist

In 1910, Karl Kilbom moved to Halmstad to do work for the Social Democratic party there. Within the party, Kilbom sided with the Left Opposition led by Zeth Höglund against the reformist party leader Hjalmar Branting. In 1917 the party split in two and Kilbom joined its Left-leaning faction, which supported the Bolsheviks in Russia and was called the Social Democratic Left Party of Sweden. It soon evolved into the Communist Party of Sweden. Already in 1915, Karl Kilbom had been made one of the main Swedish contacts with the Russian Bolsheviks and worked closely with Nikolai Bukharin who lived in Sweden during the war.

In the spring of 1917, Kilbom was sent to Finland on behalf of the Swedish Left-Socialist to persuade the Finnish Social Democrats to turn left too, but he soon realized that the Finnish socialists were already further to the left than himself, and in less than a year Finland would experience its own workers revolution.

From Finland, Kilbom traveled to

Back in Sweden, Kilbom started working for the newly launched Left Party paper Politiken.

Revolutionary work

In December 1917, a month after the October Revolution, Kilbom, together with Zeth Höglund, went to Soviet Russia to spend the New Years and show their support for the Bolsheviks. At the Smolny the Swedes met with their Finnish Comrades, who were very happy after Finland finally having been given independence from Russia by the Bolshevik Government.

In 1919, Kilbom was approached in Stockholm by the American diplomats

In August 1924, Zeth Höglund was expelled from the Swedish Communist Party, after having begun criticizing the development of the Comintern. Kilbom now took over as leader of the party.

In 1925, Karl Kilbom headed a delegation of 300 Swedish workers on a several weeks long visit to the Soviet Union. The tour ended with a parade on the

The same year, Kilbom was asked by Bukharin to go to Germany as a representative of the Communist International to overlook the development of the Communist Party of Germany. Kilbom had been to Germany on political missions several times and the German police had started to recognize him. Because of this, Kilbom was now denied a

Back in Moscow in 1926, Kilbom reported to Joseph Stalin about his work in Germany and expressed his concern about Ernst Thälmann not being a capable leader for the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Stalin met the allegations against Thälmann with silence, and Kilbom would soon find out that Thälmann would be one of Stalin's closest allies in the unfolding internal struggle of the world communist movement.

Grigory Zinoviev wanted to send Kilbom on new missions for the Comintern to China and France, but Stalin objected. In 1927, Zinoviev together with Leon Trotsky were expelled from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

In 1927, Karl Kilbom tried to work within the Comintern on how to develop strategies to combat

In 1937, Karl Kilbom was expelled from the Socialist Party, as the leadership was taken over by Nils Flyg. Later, during World War II, Nils Flyg turned the remnants of the party into a pro-Nazi organization as he sided with Hitler in the war against Stalin. But by then, most members of the party had already left together with Kilbom.

In 1938, Karl Kilbom rejoined the Swedish Social Democratic Party. Kilbom became very active as a leader within the

During World War II, Kilbom fully supported the Swedish coalition government under the leadership of Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson.

Works

• Karl Kilbom wrote many political pamphlets and a huge number of articles in different papers.
• Kilbom's three volume autobiography, published 1953–1955, is called:

Ur mitt livs äventyr (My Life’s Adventure)

I hemligt uppdrag (On Secrete Mission)

Cirkeln slutes (The Circle is Completed)

• Kilbom has also written many books on the history of the Walloon People's immigration to Sweden and their typical trades.

References