Sweden Bloody Blow to an Open Society

By Michael S. Serrill

It had been a relaxing evening for Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, 59, and his wife Lisbeth. They had just been to an evening showing of the new Swedish film The Brothers Mozart in a downtown Stockholm cinema and had decided to take a walk afterward. For the slight, hawk-nosed Swedish politician with a ready smile, it had always been a matter of pride that he sometimes permitted himself to wander freely about the capital, unencumbered by the phalanx of bodyguards that protect other European heads of government. As the Palmes walked along Sveavagen, Stockholm's well-lighted main thoroughfare, a dark- haired man wearing a blue ski jacket walked briskly up to the couple, pulled out a handgun and fired two shots at close range. A bullet struck the Prime Minister in the back, and he crumpled to the snow-covered pavement.

A taxi driver heard the shots and immediately called for help. When police arrived, Mrs. Palme, herself grazed across the back by a bullet, said, "Don't you recognize me? My Olof has been shot." Within minutes Palme was rushed to Sabbatsberg Hospital, where doctors struggled in vain to keep him alive. At six minutes past midnight Saturday morning he was declared dead. Palme thus became the first Swedish leader to be killed since King Gustav III was shot to death at a masked ball at Stockholm's opera house in 1792.

Police sealed off all exits to the city for hours after the shooting, called a national alert, and stepped up patrols at border crossings. It was the largest manhunt in Sweden's history, but as the week began, no arrests had been made. Police speculated that the murder might have been committed by any number of disaffected groups, from Croatian nationalists to West German terrorist factions.

Palme's assassination sent a wave of revulsion across Sweden, which for decades has advertised itself as a model society largely devoid of the social strains that create such wrenching political violence. Stunned Swedes tossed red roses on the murder site; some placed candles on the sidewalk. By Saturday morning, the lines of mourners wound around the block. On a wall a banner was hung, reading: WHY MURDER A TRUE DEMOCRAT? "It is an almost unbelievable shock," said Ulf Adelsohn, leader of the conservative opposition in the country's one-house parliament. "Sweden will never be the same after this." Following an all-night meeting of key Swedish leaders, Acting Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson, 51, who was promptly designated Palme's successor as party chief, announced that the government would be dissolved, but would act on an interim basis until parliament meets this week to choose a new Prime Minister. Said Carlsson: "This was a blow not just to Olof Palme and his family but to Sweden as an open society."

Condolences poured into Stockholm from all over the world, with many noting the irony that a man so devoted to peace and nonviolence could be assaulted in anger. President Ronald Reagan expressed his "great shock" and "sorrow in the face of this senseless act of violence." Said British Labor Party Spokesman George Foulkes: "It is an absolute tragedy. He was a very good man, a very peace-loving man."

Born into a well-to-do family and educated in the best schools, Palme built his career on his reputation as a friend of the laboring classes and of the poor and oppressed everywhere. His egalitarianism and idealism often got him into trouble, not only with conservatives at home but in the international arena, where he sometimes seemed most comfortable.

Palme first came to public attention in the U.S. in 1968 when, as Sweden's Education Minister, he marched side by side with the North Vietnamese Ambassador to Moscow at a rally to protest the American role in the Viet Nam War. As Prime Minister in 1972 he compared the U.S. bombing of Hanoi to the Nazi bombing of Guernica. That and other pronouncements so infuriated President Richard Nixon that he told the Swedes their Ambassador was no longer welcome in Washington.

While in recent years relations have been less stormy, the U.S. and Sweden have often been at odds. Palme was a firm backer of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and was seen by the U.S. as too sympathetic to the Soviet position on questions of peace and the nuclear buildup. Asked last summer what he and President Reagan might have in common if they were to meet, Palme said with a twinkle, "I suppose you could say we share the same political slogan--stay the course."

One of the formative experiences of Palme's life was a sojourn to the U.S. in 1948. He zipped through four years at Kenyon College in Ohio in one year, then took a four-month hitchhiking tour of 34 states. The poverty he saw amid plenty, he would say later, helped him develop the intensely personal and emotional commitment to Swedish-style socialism that guided him all his life.

Returning home to Sweden, he received a law degree at the University of Stockholm in 195l and immediately plunged into Social Democratic politics. A protege of longtime Prime Minister Tage Erlander's, Palme rose swiftly. He won Cabinet rank in 1963, and when he replaced Erlander as Prime Minister six years later, became the youngest head of government in Europe. In 1976 a center-right coalition drove the socialists from office for the first time in 44 years. Palme led the opposition and worked as a troubleshooter in the Middle East for the United Nations.

The center-right government of Thorbjorn Falldin eventually foundered during the worldwide recession following the 1979 oil shocks, and in 1982 Palme and his socialists were returned to power. Palme's economic policies, especially the creation of controversial union-dominated investment funds, sparked angry protests. Nonetheless, his mandate was renewed again only last September in one of the sweetest electoral triumphs of his career. "We've won the victory for the welfare state," he exulted.

As numb and disbelieving Swedes gathered last week to stare at the small pool of blood in the snow where their leader had been gunned down, they wept not just in grief at the death of a shrewd and compassionate man, but at their unwelcome entry into the era of political terrorism. As one commentator eloquently observed, "The time of political innocence in Sweden has come to an end."

With reporting by William McWhirter and John Kohan/Bonn