Karl Kilbom (8 May 1885 – 24 December 1961) was a Swedish politician and one of the founders of the Communist Party of Sweden.
Youth
As the son of a blacksmith, Karl Kilbom grew up in a working class family of Walloon origin in the small town of Österbybruk outside Uppsala, where he started working in the steel mills at an early age.
In the year 1900, a socialist agitator visited Österbybruk to talk to the workers of the mills. Karl Kilbom, only 15 years old, was one of the 7 people who stayed after the meeting to participate in the formation of a socialist club in Österbybruk with the goal to establish a union. However, company spies had been present at the meeting and soon Kilbom was told he would not only lose his job, but also that his family, who lived in a house owned by the company, would be evicted, if he didn't quit political activism. This time, Kilbom gave in to the threats.
Becoming a Socialist
In 1903, Kilbom moved to Sandviken where he joined a socialist club. However, he didn't remain active there for long when he soon found job on a ship named Thetis, embarking from Gävle shipping lumber from Sweden to England and other places. The conditions for the workers on the boat were wretched and the pay was low, but Kilbom saw this as a great opportunity to explore the world, although, according to his autobiography, he had severe problems with seasickness.
In 1905, Kilbom disembarked the Thetis in Gävle. Unemployed, he joined the Social Democratic youth organization in the city, and he was schooled by the prominent socialist Fabian Månsson to be an agitator. Kilbom soon moved to Krylbo and Avesta to work for the party there.
In 1907, Kilbom was conscripted to do military service in the Swedish Navy and he soon found himself on the navy base of Skeppsholmen in Stockholm, and stationed on the coastal defense ship HMS Svea. While in the navy, Kilbom got in trouble with the commanders for spreading, what they called, "illegal" Social Democratic papers with anti-militarist messages.
After military service, Kilbom moved to Gothenburg and started working at a plant manufacturing safes, and became a leader of the union there. He also became more and more active in the Swedish Social Democratic Party and started to study Marxism. He 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.
Becoming a Communist
In 1910, Karl Kilbom moved to Halmstad to do work for the Social Democratic party there. Within the party, Kilbom sided with the Left Opposition led by Zeth Höglund against the reformist party leader Hjalmar Branting. In 1917 the party split in two and Kilbom joined its Left-leaning faction, which supported the Bolsheviks in Russia and was called the Social Democratic Left Party of Sweden. It soon evolved into the Communist 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 the spring of 1917, Kilbom was sent to Finland on behalf of the Swedish Left-Socialist to persuade the Finnish Social Democrats to turn left too, but he soon realized that the Finnish socialists were already further to the left than himself, and in less than a year Finland would experience its own workers revolution.
From Finland, Kilbom traveled to Russia together with his Finland-Swedish comrade Karl H. Wiik, and after some difficulties at the border, they arrived in Petrograd and were greeted by Alexandra Kollontay. 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. 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. The same evening, Kilbom had a chance to talk to Lenin briefly. They had met once before in Stockholm, and the Bolshevik leader now told him that a new revolution, in which the communists would take power, was imminent, and that he hoped the Swedish comrades would be prepared for the same.
Back in Sweden, Kilbom started working for the newly launched Left Party paper Politiken.