Transcribed for the Internet by Per I. Matheson
[References from original translation removed]
By Leon Trotsky, “Socialist” Norway
Leon Trotsky
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All this notwithstanding, we carried away with us warm remembrances of the marvelous land of forests and fjords, of the snow beneath the January sun, of skis and sleighs, of children with china-blue eyes, corn-colored hair, and of the slightly morose and slow-moving but serious and honest people. Norway, goodbye!
December 1936
My wife and I spent about eighteen months, from June 1935 to September 1936, in Weksal, a village thirty-five miles from Oslo. We lived in the home of Konrad Knudsen, editor of a working class paper. This residence had been designated for us by the Norwegian government. Our life there was completely peaceful and well ordered – one might even say petty bourgeios. The household soon became used to us, and an almost silent but very friendly relationship was established between us and the people around us. Once a week we went to the cinema with the Knudsens to see two-year-old Hollywood productions. From time to time, mainly during the summer, we received visitors, mostly people who belonged to the left wing of the working class movement. The radio kept us abreast of what was going on in the world; we had begun to use this magical, and unbearable, invention three years earlier. We were especially amazed at hearing the official pronouncements of the Soviet bureaucrats. These individuals feel just as much at home over the airwaves as they do in their own offices. They give orders, threaten, and quarrel among themselves – neglecting the most elementary rules of prudence regarding state secrets. Without any doubt, enemy general staffs glean priceless information from the intemperate language of Soviet “chiefs” – big and small. All this goes on in a country where even being suspected of opposition carries the risk of immediately being accused of spionage!
Peace and Justice Post 
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