Sven Olof Joachim Palme (; ; 30 January 1927 – 28 February 1986) was a Swedish politician and statesman who served as Prime Minister of Sweden from 1969 to 1976 and 1982 to 1986. Palme led the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1969 until his assassination in 1986.
A longtime protégé of Prime Minister Tage Erlander, he became Prime Minister of Sweden and Chairman of the Social Democratic Party in 1969. He left office after failing to form a government after the 1976 general election, which ended 40 years of unbroken rule by the Social Democratic Party. While he served as a Leader of the Opposition, he also served as special mediator of the United Nations in the Iran–Iraq War, and was President of the Nordic Council in 1979. He faced a second defeat in 1979, but he returned as prime minister after electoral victories in 1982 and 1985, and served until his death.
Palme was a pivotal and polarizing figure domestically as well as in international politics from the 1960s onward. Domestically, Palme pursued a left-wing and social democratic agenda for the country, including switching to unicameralism in the constitution, expanding the welfare state, advocating for womens' rights, and pushing for nuclear power, although his last term was more moderate due to Sweden's economic troubles. Many of his economic views were opposed by Sweden's business community. Materially, his reforms resulted in a reduction in infant mortality,Castro an increase in the basic old-age pension replacement rate, and an increase in minimum replacement rate in healthcare earnings, among other improvements.
He followed a policy of non-alignment towards the superpowers, frequently criticising both Soviet and American foreign policy. He supported numerous liberation movements and Third World governments. He was the first Western head of government to visit communist Cuba after its revolution. He publicly opposed numerous authoritarian regimes, including those of Francisco Franco of Spain, Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union, António de Oliveira Salazar of Portugal, Gustáv Husák of Czechoslovakia, and South Africa's apartheid system. His 1972 condemnation of American bombings in Hanoi resulted in a temporary freeze in Sweden–United States relations.
Palme's assassination on a Stockholm street on 28 February 1986 was the first murder of a national leader in Sweden since Gustav III in 1792, and had a great impact across Scandinavia.Nordstrom, Byron (2000). Scandinavia Since 1500. University of Minnesota Press, p. 347. "The February 1986 murder of Sweden's Prime Minister Olof Palme near Sergelstorget in the middle of Stockholm's downtown shocked the nation and region. Political assassinations were virtually unheard-of in Scandinavia." Local convict and addict Christer Pettersson was originally convicted of the murder in Stockholm District Court but was unanimously acquitted by the Svea Court of Appeal. On 10 June 2020, Swedish prosecutors announced that there was "reasonable evidence" that Stig Engström had killed Palme. As Engström had killed himself in 2000, the authorities announced that the investigation into Palme's death was to be closed. The 2020 conclusion has faced widespread criticism from lawyers, police officers and journalists, decrying the evidence as only circumstantial, and – by the prosecutors' own admission – too weak to ensure a trial had the suspect been alive. The true identity of his assassin remains unknown.
Early life Sven Olof Joachim Palme was born on 30 January 1927 into an upper class, conservative Lutheran family in the Östermalm district of Stockholm. He grew up in the building on which in 1970 was converted into the Embassy of Romania.
The progenitor of the Palme family was skipper Palme Lydert of Ystad of either Dutch or German ancestry. His sons adopted the surname Palme. Many of the early Palmes were vicars and judges in Scania. One branch of the family, of which Olof Palme was part, and which became more affluent, relocated to Kalmar; that branch is related to several other prominent Swedish families such as the Kreugers, von Sydows and the Wallenbergs. His father, (1886–1934), was a businessman, son of (1854–1934) and Swedish-speaking Finnish Baroness , née von Born (1861–1959). Through her, Olof Palme claimed ancestry from King Johan III of Sweden, his father King Gustav Vasa of Sweden and King Frederick I of Denmark and Norway. His mother, Elisabeth von Knieriem (1890–1972),Olof Ruin: Olof Palme. In: David Wilsford: Political Leaders of Contemporary Western Europe: A Biographical Dictionary. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT 1995 of the Knieriem family who originated from Quedlinburg, descended from Baltic German burghers and clergy and had arrived in Sweden from Russia as a refugee in 1915. Elisabeth's great-great-great grandfather Johann Melchior von Knieriem (1758–1817) had been ennobled by the Emperor Alexander I of Russia in 1814. The von Knieriem family does not count as members of any of the Baltic knighthoods. Palme's father died when he was seven years old. Despite his background, his political orientation came to be influenced by Social Democratic attitudes. His travels in the Third World, as well as the United States, where he saw deep economic inequality and racial segregation, helped to develop these views.
A sickly child, Olof Palme received his education from private tutors. Even as a child he gained knowledge of two foreign languages — German and English. He studied at Sigtunaskolan Humanistiska Läroverket, one of Sweden's few residential high schools, and passed the university entrance examination with high marks at the age of 17. He was called up into the Army in January 1945 and did his compulsory military service at Svea Artillery Regiment between 1945 and 1947, becoming in 1956 a reserve officer with the rank of Captain in the Artillery. After he was discharged from military service in March 1947, he enrolled at Stockholm University.
On a scholarship, he studied at Kenyon College, a small liberal arts school in central Ohio from 1947 to 1948, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree; extensive academic credit from Sweden enabled him to finish at Kenyon in such a short time. Bill Mayr: Remembering Olof Palme. In: Kenyon College Alumni Bulletin Vol. 34, No. 2, Winter 2012. Inspired by radical debate in the student community, he wrote a critical essay on Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. Palme wrote his senior honour thesis on the United Auto Workers union, led at the time by Walter Reuther. After graduation, he traveled throughout the country and eventually ended up in Detroit, where his hero Reuther agreed to an interview which lasted several hours. In later years, Palme regularly remarked during his many subsequent American visits, that the United States had made him a socialist, a remark that often has caused confusion. Within the context of his American experience, it was not that Palme was repelled by what he found in America, but rather that he was inspired by it.Hendrik Hertzberg, "Death of a Patriot", in: Idem: Politics. Observations and Arguments, 1966–2004 (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004) pp. 263–266, there 264
After hitchhiking through the U.S. and Mexico, he returned to Sweden to study law at Stockholm University. In 1949 he became a member of the Swedish Social Democratic Party. During his time at university, Palme became involved in student politics, working with the Swedish National Union of Students. In 1951, he became a member of the social democratic student association in Stockholm, although it is asserted he did not attend their political meetings at the time. The following year he was elected President of the Swedish National Union of Students. As a student politician, he concentrated on international affairs and travelled across Europe.
Palme attributed his becoming a social democrat to three major influences: In 1947, he attended a debate on taxes between the Social Democrat Ernst Wigforss, the conservative Jarl Hjalmarson and the liberal Elon Andersson. The time he spent in the United States in the 1940s made him realise how wide the class divide was in America, and the extent of racism against black people. A trip to Asia, specifically India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, and Japan in 1953 had opened his eyes to the consequences of colonialism and imperialism.
Between 1949 and 1952, Palme was married to Jelena Rennerová, a student whom he met in Prague, in a marriage of convenience. The arrangement was intended to enable her to leave Czechoslovakia following the 1948 coup d'état. After she reached Paris and later moved to Sweden, the marriage was dissolved. She later married the pediatrician Rolf Zetterström.
In 1956, Palme married children's psychologist Lisbeth Beck-Friis, and together they had three sons: Joakim, Mårten, and Mattias Palme.
Palme was an atheist."He was an atheist and saw war as the greatest threat to mankind. The popularity of the Swedish model society probably peaked in the early seventies, but Olof Palme tirelessly continued his development toward a society as he saw it." Jens Moe, My America: The Culture of Giving, page 155.
Early political career
In 1953, Palme was recruited by social democratic prime minister Tage Erlander to work as his personal secretary, becoming the first of Erlander's large personal staff, a group of young aides such as Ingvar Carlsson and Bengt K. Å. Johansson, a group that became known as "the boys". From 1955 he was a board member of the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League and lectured at the Youth League College Bommersvik. He also was a member of the Worker's Educational Association.
In 1957, he was elected as a member of parliament (Swedish: riksdagsledamot) representing Jönköping County in the directly elected Second Chamber of the Riksdag. In the early 1960s Palme became a member of the and was in charge of inquiries into assistance to the developing countries and educational aid. In 1963, he became a member of the Cabinet as minister without portfolio in the Cabinet Office, and retained his duties as a close political adviser to Prime Minister Tage Erlander. In 1965, he became Minister of Communications. One issue of special interest to him was the further development of radio and television, while ensuring their independence from commercial interests. In 1967 he became Minister of Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs, and the following year, he became Minister for Education and was the target of strong criticism from left-wing students protesting against the government's plans for university reform. The protests culminated with the occupation of the Student Union Building in Stockholm; Palme came there and tried to comfort the students, urging them to use democratic methods for the pursuit of their cause.Olof Palme – En levande vilja: Tal och intervjuer On 21 February 1968, Palme participated in a protest in Stockholm against U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam together with the North Vietnamese ambassador to the Soviet Union, Nguyễn Thọ Chân. The protest was organized by the Swedish Committee for Vietnam and Palme and Nguyen were both invited as speakers. As a result of this, the U.S. recalled its Ambassador from Sweden and Palme was fiercely criticised by the opposition for his participation in the protest.