Book Description
Olof Palme, Sweden's prime minister 1969-76, 1982-86, was Scandinavia's leading statesman during the Cold War. His chilling assassination in 1986 in a dark street in Stockholm is still unsolved. In his lifetime, he was much loved in Scandinavia and beyond, especially among progressives, for his anti-colonialist stance against the British and the French, his strong stand against Apartheid, his vocal opposition to American bombings and other human rights violations during the Vietnam war and finally for his opposition to both Margaret Thatcher's and Ronald Reagan's policies of neoliberalism at home and aggressive nuclear confrontation abroad. For many, he stood alone and bravely against injustices and aggressions committed by the powerful in our time. To British and American policymakers, however, diplomatic archives show, he was frequently seen as an annoying meddler from a small, self-regarding country that had stayed neutral in world 2 and was easily manipulated by leftist African dictators and Soviet leaders into betraying his own country's basically pro-Western orientation. This is the first book in English about a man who, while still missed in Sweden, for his liberal domestic reforms as much as his high moral stance in international affairs, has disappeared down the memory hole in the West's consciousness. Was he really killed by a lone, crazed Swedish petty criminal, as the Swedish police still maintain? Or was death on a snowy night strolling home from the cinema a brutal political assassination by powerful international interests? Were the Soviets really lying when they claimed that the trail of the assassins led to points West? This must-read non-fiction book for people interested in Sweden works on several levels: as a true journalistic inquiry into a still unsolved murder, as a biography of a charismatic but controversial statesman, and as a detailed political and cultural history of Sweden in the second half of the twentieth century.
