Maoism in the Developed World

From its defeat by the Soviet Army in 1944 until the end of the Soviet Union, Finland enjoyed a somewhat precarious independence, based on the understanding that it would do nothing in internal policy or international affairs that ‘would seem to be open defiance of the USSR. After 1945, the Communist Party was a relatively minor party, but was in and out of successive Finnish governments. After the Czech invasion by the Warsaw Pact in 1968, which the Finnish Communists mildly rebuked, they were torn by internal conflicts.

The general circumstances of Finland in these decades were certainly not propitious for the development of a Maoist party of any consequence. However, on September 2, 1968 a small Finnish Association of Marxist-Leninists was established, which claimed affiliates in Helsinki, Tampere and Truku. According to Valerie Blum, writing a bit more than a year later, “Its main activities are education and propaganda through its study circles on Marxism-Leninism and Maoist theory. It sent the Chinese Communist Party a message of congratulations in 1969, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Chinese People’s Republic, in which it called the Cultural Revolution an “invincible pillar to the world’s peoples in their struggle against U.S. imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism and all reaction.” This message was published by the New China News Agency. The Association also sent greetings to the Ninth Congress of the Chinese Party, in which it declared that it was “decisively important to the revolutionary workers movement that China remain red and hold high the victorious banner of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung’s Thought.”

The Association issued a bulletin Punakaarti (Red Guard), edited by Tauno Olai Huotari.[439]

In 1971, Valeri Blum noted that the Association “has the endorsement of the Chinese Communist Party, whose media have carried statements of the Finnish group.”[440]

By the later 1970s, the Maoist organization had taken the name of Marxist-Leninist Group of Finland. In August 1977, the Chinese news agency Hsinhua announced that the Executive Committee of that organization had sent a message to the Central Committee of the Chinese Party, congratulating it on the convocation of its 11th National Congress.[441]

Eric S. Einhorn wrote of the Marxist-Leninist Group of Finland in 1979 that “Despite visits to Peking and occasional demonstrations against Soviet ‘social imperialism,’ the group remains without political significance.” However, he also noted that the Finnish Communist Party “is quite critical of the propaganda activities of the Chinese embassy in Helsinki and its Finnish contacts.”[442]

Several years later, Eric S. Einhorn concluded that “Maoism faded quite quickly. The Finns could be pretty tough on political movements that annoyed the Soviets, and by the 1970s that tended to be radical leftists more than non-socialist conservatives.”[443]

Maoism In Iceland

Maoism was quite late in coming to Iceland. It never developed any possibility of rivaling the traditional Communists, who for many years functioned within the so-called People’s Alliance Party, originally a coalition of the Communists and left-wing Socialists, an atypical kind of Communist organization which in the mid-1980s even agreed to admit a Trotskyist group into its ranks.[444] In the 1960s the Communists and People’s Alliance avoided taking a position on the Sino-Soviet dispute.[445]

The first Maoist organization to be established in Iceland was the Communist Organization of Marxist-Leninists, established in August 1973. According to a U.S. State Department source, it specialized in “stressing the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Chairman Mao.”[446]

That group apparently did not persist. In April 1976 another Maoist party was established, the Icelandic Communist Party-Marxist Leninist (ICP-ML). That group emerged from what had been the youth group of the Socialist Party, the Fylkingin (Youth League), which refused to be part of the People’s Alliance, and continued its own separate existence. In 1970, under the name Fylkingin-barattusamtol socialista (Militant Socialist Organization) it constituted itself as a separate political party.

This new party contained within it both Maoist and Trotskyist elements. By late 1975, the Trotskyites had gained control of the group, and the Maoists withdrew.[447]

The first chairman of the new party, Gunnar Andresson “claimed that the new party was the rightful heir to the original ICP.” Eric S. Einhorn reported that “With its warnings against modern revisionism and Soviet ‘social imperialism,’ the ICP-ML has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and is mentioned frequently in the Peking Review.”[448]