Olav Scheflo was a Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 Communist politician and journalist.

Olav Scheflo was a member of the Norwegian Labour Party

Norwegian Labour Party

The Labour Party is a social-democratic political party in Norway. It is the senior partner in the current Norwegian government as part of the Red-Green Coalition, and its leader, Jens Stoltenberg, is the current Prime Minister of Norway....

 from 1905. After the October Revolution

October Revolution

The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...

 he fought hard to convince the Labor Party to join the Communist International and Scheflo was a Norwegian representative at the second congress of the Comintern in 1920 and was member of the Comintern Executive Committee from 1921 to 1927. Critical towards Stalinism

Stalinism

Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...

, he left the Norwegian Communist Party in 1928 and rejoined the Norwegian Labor Party in 1929.

When the Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 Communist leader Zeth Höglund

Zeth Höglund

Carl Zeth "Zäta" Konstantin Höglund was a leading Swedish communist politician, anti-militarist, author, journalist and mayor of Stockholm ....

 in 1918 was offered to be made honorable corporal in the Red Army

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

 but declined, the offer instead went to Olav Scheflo who gladly accepted the position.

When Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....

 lived in exile in Norway in 1935 and 1936, Scheflo strongly defended him against the attacks of the Stalinists and the Norwegian bourgeoisie, although he would never become a real Trotskyists, since he was closer to the Soviet Right Opposition

Right Opposition

The Right Opposition was the name given to the tendency made up of Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Mikhail Tomsky and their supporters within the Soviet Union in the late 1920s...

.

Scheflo's autobiography is entitled Den røde tråd i Norges historie (English: The Red Thread in Norwegian History).