34 Facts About Karl Kilbom

Karl Kilbom was a Swedish politician and one of the founders of the Communist Party of Sweden.

However, company spies had been present at the meeting and soon Kilbom was told he would not only lose his job, but that his family, who lived in a house owned by the company, would be evicted, if he didn't quit political activism.

In 1903, Karl Kilbom moved to Sandviken where he joined a socialist club.

The conditions for the workers on the boat were wretched and the pay was low, but Karl Kilbom saw this as a great opportunity to explore the world, although, according to his autobiography, he had severe problems with seasickness.

Karl Kilbom soon moved to Krylbo and Avesta to work for the party there.

Karl Kilbom became more and more active in the Swedish Social Democratic Party and started to study Marxism.

Karl Kilbom 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.

In 1910, Karl Kilbom moved to Halmstad to do work for the Social Democratic party there.

In 1917 the party split in two and Karl Kilbom joined its Left-leaning faction, which supported the Bolsheviks in Russia and was called the Social Democratic Left 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 Petrograd Karl Kilbom was taken to see a debate between Alexander Kerensky and Vladimir Lenin in front of a huge crowd of workers and soldiers.

Karl Kilbom did not understand what the speakers said, but afterwards Kollontay told him Lenin had spoken about the importance of making peace with Germany, while Kerensky had been speaking of continuing the war.

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

In 1919, Kilbom was approached in Stockholm by the American diplomats William C Bullitt and Lincoln Steffens, who asked him if he could help them get to Russia and into contact with the Bolshevik government.

Karl Kilbom took the Americans to meet Lenin in Moscow and he greeted them as they said they wanted establish diplomatic relations between the United States and Soviet Russia.

In 1921, Karl Kilbom was the head of the Swedish delegation at the Profintern congress held in Moscow.

One morning, Zoia didn't show up, and Karl Kilbom later found out that she had been arrested by the Soviet Secret Police as one of many suspects in a counterrevolutionary conspiracy.

Zoia was freed, and when she said she didn't want to stay in the Soviet Union, Karl Kilbom decided to marry the young girl so she could come with him to Sweden, where she helped the party working as a translator of Russian and became known as an artist.

In 1921, Sweden held its first democratic election where workers and women could vote, and Karl Kilbom was elected to the Lower House of the Riksdag.

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

Karl Kilbom had been to Germany on political missions several times and the German police had started to recognize him.

Karl Kilbom decided to take the train to Copenhagen, where he made a new attempt at the German embassy in Denmark.

Karl Kilbom was denied a visa , but instead he managed to get help from some sailors and was smuggled on board a boat that took him to Germany.

Karl Kilbom spent over three months in Germany and Austria, working to eliminate the ultra-leftist factions within the Communist parties.

Back in Moscow in 1926, Karl Kilbom reported to Joseph Stalin about his work in Germany and expressed his concern about Ernst Thalmann not being a capable leader for the Communist Party of Germany.

In 1927, Karl Kilbom tried to work within the Comintern on how to develop strategies to combat fascism and to defend the Soviet Union against attacks from the Capitalist world.

Karl Kilbom advocated the creation of a popular front suggested that communists should try to collaborate with radical social democrats.

That same year, Karl Kilbom launched a new Communist Party of Sweden, one that would be independent from Moscow, and became more critical of Stalin and the Soviet Union.

The first couple of years, the Karl Kilbom-Party was much bigger than the official Communist Party.

Karl Kilbom managed to keep control over the communist daily Folkets Dagblad Politiken.

Karl Kilbom wrote in Folkets Dagblad Politiken, calling the Swedish conservative government of Carl Gustaf Ekman a murder regime.

In 1937, Karl Kilbom was expelled from the Socialist Party, as the leadership was taken over by Nils Flyg.

In 1938, Karl Kilbom rejoined the Swedish Social Democratic Party.

Karl Kilbom became very active as a leader within the Folkets hus movement.