especially as he would no longer be living in the electoral area that he had represented. Communist views Egede-Nissen was elected to the Stavanger municipal council in 1913, and in 1915 he was elected mayor, a post he retained until 1919. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, though, Egede-Nissen became sympathetic to the Bolshevik cause. Having been elected to leadership of the labour Party in 1918, he went to the new Soviet Russia, where he met with Lenin and participated in a meeting that led to the establishment of the Comintern, although he did not attend the founding meeting in March 1919; the only Norwegian attending was Emil Stang, supposedly to represent the Norwegian Labour Party. The Soviets had invited the Labour Party to join the Communist International, a goal that Egede-Nissen shared, but his party eventually repudiated the principles of Lenin and remained social democratic. During his mayoralty, Egede-Nissen was fined for his leading role in organizing a general strike held on 21 June 1919 in support of the Russian Revolution. In 1921 he was once again elected to the Storting, this time representing Stavanger for the Labour Party. In 1923 the tensions could no longer be papered over, and the Labour Party formally split into two factions; the smaller group organized itself as the Communist Party of Norway, and Egede-Nissen become a founding member of the nascent Communist Party, serving as party chairman from 1934 to 1946; another Labour Party member who joined at this time was Peder Furubotn, who served as Communist Party chairman from 1925 to 1930. At their 1946 congress the party replaced Egede-Nissen with Emil Løvlien as chairman. Nazi occupation of Norway During the Nazi occupation of Norway in World War II, Egede-Nissen fled to Canada aboard a whaling ship. In Toronto he enlisted in the anti-Nazi struggle and was sent first to Reykjavík and later to New York City. The ship taking him to the U.S. was torpedoed, and although some sailors were killed, Egede-Nissen and many others were rescued by the crew of an American ship. In the autumn of 1944 he returned to Finnmark in northern Norway, where he participated in the struggle against Nazi occupation by serving as one of the translators for the Red Army, which had begun to drive the occupying German troops out of the country. Family Egede-Nissen was married to Georga ("Goggi") Wilhelma Ellertsen (1871–1959); they