Johan Beach Johansen

Johan Strand Johansen (born February 3, 1903 in Åfjord , Fylke Sør-Trøndelag ; † February 12, 1970 in Moscow ) was a Norwegian journalist and politician of the Norges Kommunistiske Parti (NKP), who was a member of the central board between 1932 and 1955, 1945 to 1953 party secretary and most recently vice-chairman of the NKP between 1953 and 1955. After the end of the Second World War , he was Labor Minister in the first government of Prime Minister Einar Gerhardsen from June to November 1945 and a member of the Storting from 1945 to 1949 .

After the NKP had lost all seats in the Storting in the election of October 10, 1949 , he settled in October 1949 with the wing around the former party chairman Peder Furubotn (Furubotn-oppgjøret) . In the election of October 12, 1953 , Strand Johansen, who also translated works by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Josef Stalin into Norwegian , was re-elected as a member of the Storting and then withdrew from politics in 1955 due to illness.

Life

Youth official and journalist

Beach Johansen, son of a factory worker Anton Rambek Johansen and his wife, has already participated as a student at the Norwegian Social Democratic Youth Association ( Norges Sosialdemokratiske Ungdomsforbund ) , who in 1921 in Norwegian Communist Youth League NKU (Norges Kommunistiske Ungdomsforbund) renamed, and was chairman of the NKU in Trondheim . After graduating from school in 1923, he became a journalist for the Trondheim daily newspaper Ny Tyd and at the same time became a member of the Norwegian Communist Party NKP (Norges Kommunistiske Parti) , which split off from the Arbeiderpartiet in 1923 . In the following years he was secretary of the NKU in the Trøndelag region .

After a stay in the Soviet Union in the mid-1920s, Strand Johansen became an employee of the press organs of the NKP and in 1930 editor-in-chief of the Odda daily newspaper Hardanger Arbeiderblad , before he succeeded Arvid G. Hansen as editor-in-chief of Arbeideren , the central organ of the NKP , in 1931 .

NKP functionary, World War II and concentration camp

In addition to his journalistic work, Strand Johansen also began his work as a functionary in the NKP in the early 1930s. Because of his leading role in the so-called Menstadslaget , an armed conflict between striking workers from the Norsk Hydro factory in Menstad on the one hand, and police and army personnel on the other, he was arrested for some time on June 8, 1931. In 1932 he was elected a member of the central board of the NKP and belonged to it until 1955.

A short time later he went to the Soviet Union for a few years, where he worked as a teacher at the International Lenin School and translated the works of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Josef Stalin into Norwegian. He returned to Norway at the end of the 1930s, but had no formal leadership position in the NCP when the Second World War broke out .

When the German occupation forces banned the NKP on November 16, 1940 after the German occupation of Norway by the Weser Exercise Company , Strand Johansen, like most of the leading party officials, was first arrested and interrogated, but then released again, although because of his long stay in longest in detention in the Soviet Union. After the German-Soviet war began with Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941 with the attack by the Wehrmacht , he was arrested again with his Soviet- Jewish wife Helene Sterlina. He was then taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp , while his wife was taken to Auschwitz concentration camp , where she died on May 1, 1942.

Minister, Storting member and wing fight in the NCP

After his liberation from concentration camp imprisonment and his return to Norway, Strand Johansen became Minister of Labor ( Labor Minister ) in the first government of Prime Minister Einar Gerhardsen, who had been with him in Sachsenhausen concentration camp on June 25, 1945 . He held this position in the all-party government (Samlingsregjeringen) until November 5, 1945, making him the only minister of the NCP.

In the election of October 8, 1945 , Strand Johansen was elected as a candidate of the NKP to be a member of the Storting and represented the interests of Oslo until the end of the legislative period on January 10, 1950 . Between December 4, 1945 and January 10, 1950, he was vice-chairman of the NKP parliamentary group in Storting.

However, he already lost his mandate in the election of October 10, 1949. The NKP not only lost 6.1 percentage points, but also all eleven seats despite the significant vote share of 5.8 percent due to the current election regulations.

He then accused the former chairman and general secretary Peder Furubotn as the main person responsible for the election defeat, while he supported the incumbent party chairman Emil Løvlien since 1946 . At a party meeting he gave a grand piano speech (oppgjørstale) , which was later published. This dramatic internal party dispute ultimately led to Furubotn and 170 of his supporters being expelled from the NKP. On the other hand, Strand Johansen, who had psychological and physical problems due to his war experiences, suffered a nervous breakdown after the verbal battles at the party meeting.

Re-election as Storting member, vice-party chairman and stay in the Soviet Union

Before the election of October 12, 1953, the electoral law had been modified with the aim of more precisely mapping the votes of the parties to the distribution of seats. In 1945 and 1949, the Labor Party in particular was favored. In 1953, the Labor Party had to surrender mandates despite the increase in votes. However, the overrepresentation was not completely eliminated, so that their absolute majority in parliament remained. The NKP, on the other hand, was able to profit, which despite a slight loss of votes of 0.7 percentage points, returned to parliament after four years of abstinence and with 5.1 percent was now able to have three MPs, including Strand Johansen, who in turn represented the interests of Oslo. At the same time, he was elected vice-chairman of the NKP in 1953 and thus deputy to party chairman Emil Løvlien.

After becoming seriously ill in 1955, he withdrew from politics and went to the Soviet Union for medical treatment and recovery. He did not return to Norway afterwards, but died in Moscow in 1970.

Publications

• Valgets lærdommer og communistenes oppgaver. Et opgjør med the partifiendelige center , 1949

Background literature

• J. Lippe (editor): Norges communistiske partis historie , Volume 1, 1963
• PO Johansen: Menstadkonflikten 1931 , 1977
• A. Nilsen: NKPs rolle på Stortinget 1945–49 , 1980
• L. Vetlesen: October-eksplosjonen i NKP. Årsaker og omstendigheter i forbindelse med sprengningen av Norges communistiske parti i October 1949 , 1980
• T. Halvorsen: NKP i crisis. Om "oppgjøret med det annet sentrum 1949-50" , 1981
• T. Pryser: Klassen og nasjonen, vol. 4 av Arbeiderbevegelsen's historie i Norge , 1988
• HI Kleven: Parti i flammer. Documentation og betraktninger omkring “oppgjøret” i Norges Kommunistiske Parti 1949–50 , 2 volumes, 1990
• T. Titlestad: I Stalins skygge. Om korleis a politisk leiar byggjer and taper makt. Peder Furubotn, NKP and SUKP 1945–49 , Bergen 1997
• A. Pettersen: Hva var was med NKP valid? Om de historiske røtter til Furubotnoppgjøret i NKP 1949–50 , 1999
• L. Borgersrud: Fiendebilde Wollweber. Svart propaganda i kald krig , 2001

Web links

• Biography on the Storting homepage
• Biography in the Norsk biografisk leksikon
• Biography in the store norske leksikon

Individual evidence

1. ^ Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications. Councilor of State 1885 -
2. ^ The NKP politician Kirsten Hansteen was merely an advisory minister for social affairs