The legacy of crimes, lies and hypocrisy that refuses to be silenced
SWEDISH SURVIVORS FROM SOVIET RUSSIA
Sun Oct 31, 9:11 AM ET
By Gleb Bryanski
KIRUNA, Sweden (Reuters) - Alice Eriksson calls herself a "Russian grandmother" and seems an unlikely threat to Sweden's Left Party, a vital partner for the country's ruling Social Democrats.
But the 79-year-old's story of emigration to Stalin's Russia and life in the gulags has brought to its knees a party on which Sweden's minority government -- facing a strong challenge from the center-right in 2006 elections -- depends in parliament.
In 1933, Eriksson's father Ernst, a miner, fled poverty and unemployment in northern Sweden to help build a Soviet workers' paradise, along with about 1,500 other Swedes, with the blessing of the Swedish Communist Party to which he belonged.
The dream went sour for him, his wife and two daughters. Arrested in 1938 by Stalin's secret police, he was accused of spying and executed. As a daughter of an "enemy of the people," Alice Eriksson was arrested in 1942 and sentenced to 10 years in the labor camps, where she remained until 1953.
On their return to Sweden gulag survivors were denounced as traitors and liars by the forerunners of today's Left Party. Many had to flee Kiruna to other parts of Sweden.
Their "crime" was to tell the truth about the "communist paradise." In their hometown of Kiruna, a party stronghold, many communists would not speak to Eriksson's sister Astrid who managed to return in 1956.
Eriksson herself was not harassed. She returned to Sweden in 1992 after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
The story of the Kiruna Swedes was silenced until a television documentary shown this month revealed that Left Party leader Lars Ohly censored an apology to them about their persecution.
A letter they were sent in 2000, edited by Ohly, promised only a detailed historical study of their case.
Seeing support for the party slump in the polls, Ohly told Reuters in an interview: "I feel deeply that we were wrong. The decision we made worsened the trauma these people suffered."
The party has been thrown into internal turmoil over parts of the documentary that showed Ohly describing himself as a communist and praising Fidel Castro's Cuba.
"Communist ideology is like a religion," said Alice Eriksson, speaking in Swedish and Russian at her neat two-room apartment in Kiruna. "I think it is ridiculous that here in Sweden someone can still call himself a communist."
Social Democrat dissidents founded the local Communist Party in 1917, the year of Russia's Bolshevik revolution. "Communist" was dropped from the name in 1990 and it was renamed the Left Party. But the last portraits of Lenin were not taken down from all party offices until 1999 and there is now a debate about whether it should allow communists to join.
"When I call myself a communist I mean there is a tradition within the working class movement that is worth defending," Ohly told Reuters, outlining a party program calling for the abolition of class differences in society and opposition to European Union membership. A priest's son and former train conductor, Ohly became head of the party in 2003 after fiery feminist Gudrun Schuman quit over allegations of tax fraud.
Asa Lindeborg, an historian at Uppsala University, said Ohly came from a generation that had been "taught not to criticize the Soviet Union in the same way liberals were taught not to criticize the United States."
Ohly compared the current fuss to Senator Joseph McCarthy's witch-hunt of communists in the United States in the 1950s. There have been calls on the party to break with its past and get rid of its controversial leader. Prime Minister Goran Persson said the Social Democrats would scale down their cooperation with the Left Party after the 2006 elections -- assuming he wins a third consecutive term -- if Ohly insists on calling himself a communist. Ohly dismissed this, predicting Persson would come "cap in hand, begging for the Left's support."
Columnist Johannes Aman at Dagens Nyheter newspaper said the Left was unlikely to lose its appeal as "an anti-party for voters wanting to take a critical stance on society. The storm will die down."
Just in case, up north in Kiruna the leader of the local Left Party branch took Alice Eriksson a bunch of flowers and proposed erecting a memorial for Kiruna's gulag victims.
"I do not need their apology," said Eriksson bitterly. "I got one from the KGB."
Sun Oct 31, 9:11 AM ET
By Gleb Bryanski
KIRUNA, Sweden (Reuters) - Alice Eriksson calls herself a "Russian grandmother" and seems an unlikely threat to Sweden's Left Party, a vital partner for the country's ruling Social Democrats.
But the 79-year-old's story of emigration to Stalin's Russia and life in the gulags has brought to its knees a party on which Sweden's minority government -- facing a strong challenge from the center-right in 2006 elections -- depends in parliament.
In 1933, Eriksson's father Ernst, a miner, fled poverty and unemployment in northern Sweden to help build a Soviet workers' paradise, along with about 1,500 other Swedes, with the blessing of the Swedish Communist Party to which he belonged.
The dream went sour for him, his wife and two daughters. Arrested in 1938 by Stalin's secret police, he was accused of spying and executed. As a daughter of an "enemy of the people," Alice Eriksson was arrested in 1942 and sentenced to 10 years in the labor camps, where she remained until 1953.
On their return to Sweden gulag survivors were denounced as traitors and liars by the forerunners of today's Left Party. Many had to flee Kiruna to other parts of Sweden.
Their "crime" was to tell the truth about the "communist paradise." In their hometown of Kiruna, a party stronghold, many communists would not speak to Eriksson's sister Astrid who managed to return in 1956.
Eriksson herself was not harassed. She returned to Sweden in 1992 after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
The story of the Kiruna Swedes was silenced until a television documentary shown this month revealed that Left Party leader Lars Ohly censored an apology to them about their persecution.
A letter they were sent in 2000, edited by Ohly, promised only a detailed historical study of their case.
Seeing support for the party slump in the polls, Ohly told Reuters in an interview: "I feel deeply that we were wrong. The decision we made worsened the trauma these people suffered."
The party has been thrown into internal turmoil over parts of the documentary that showed Ohly describing himself as a communist and praising Fidel Castro's Cuba.
"Communist ideology is like a religion," said Alice Eriksson, speaking in Swedish and Russian at her neat two-room apartment in Kiruna. "I think it is ridiculous that here in Sweden someone can still call himself a communist."
Social Democrat dissidents founded the local Communist Party in 1917, the year of Russia's Bolshevik revolution. "Communist" was dropped from the name in 1990 and it was renamed the Left Party. But the last portraits of Lenin were not taken down from all party offices until 1999 and there is now a debate about whether it should allow communists to join.
"When I call myself a communist I mean there is a tradition within the working class movement that is worth defending," Ohly told Reuters, outlining a party program calling for the abolition of class differences in society and opposition to European Union membership. A priest's son and former train conductor, Ohly became head of the party in 2003 after fiery feminist Gudrun Schuman quit over allegations of tax fraud.
Asa Lindeborg, an historian at Uppsala University, said Ohly came from a generation that had been "taught not to criticize the Soviet Union in the same way liberals were taught not to criticize the United States."
Ohly compared the current fuss to Senator Joseph McCarthy's witch-hunt of communists in the United States in the 1950s. There have been calls on the party to break with its past and get rid of its controversial leader. Prime Minister Goran Persson said the Social Democrats would scale down their cooperation with the Left Party after the 2006 elections -- assuming he wins a third consecutive term -- if Ohly insists on calling himself a communist. Ohly dismissed this, predicting Persson would come "cap in hand, begging for the Left's support."
Columnist Johannes Aman at Dagens Nyheter newspaper said the Left was unlikely to lose its appeal as "an anti-party for voters wanting to take a critical stance on society. The storm will die down."
Just in case, up north in Kiruna the leader of the local Left Party branch took Alice Eriksson a bunch of flowers and proposed erecting a memorial for Kiruna's gulag victims.
"I do not need their apology," said Eriksson bitterly. "I got one from the KGB."