Finland finally having been given independence from Russia by the Bolshevik Government. 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. 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. However, soon, President Woodrow Wilson repudiated the project and Bullitt resigned from Wilson's staff. In 1921, Karl Kilbom was the head of the Swedish delegation at the Profintern congress (Red International of Labor Unions) held in Moscow. Their interpreter was a 17-year-old girl named Zoia Korvin-Krukovsky, and they soon became good friends. One morning, Zoia didn't show up, and Kilbom later found out that she had been arrested by the Soviet Secret Police as one of many suspects in a counterrevolutionary conspiracy. Kilbom refused to believe these allegations were true and spoke to high ranked Soviet officials like Karl Radek and Alexandra Kollontay to have the young girl released. 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. Leader of the Swedish Communist Party In August 1924, Zeth Höglund was expelled from the Swedish Communist Party, after having begun criticizing the development of the Comintern. Kilbom now took over as leader of the party. In 1925, Karl Kilbom headed a delegation of 300 Swedish workers on a several weeks long visit to the Soviet Union. The tour ended with a parade on the Red Square in Moscow, where Kilbom, together with Bukharin and Rykov, held a speech from atop the Lenin Mausoleum. The same year, Kilbom was asked by Bukharin to go to Germany as a representative of the Communist International to overlook the development of the Communist Party of Germany. Kilbom had been to Germany on political missions several times and the German police had started to recognize him. Because of this, Kilbom was now denied a visa