Svensk strävan

by Vilhelm Moberg

21 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1941

About the author

Vilhelm Moberg was a Swedish journalist, author, playwright, historian, and debater best known for his Emigrant series of novels about Swedish emigrants to America. He also wrote other novels and plays and also participated in public debates about the Swedish monarchy, bureaucracy, and corruption. Among other works are Raskens (1927) and Ride This Night (1941), a historical novel of a 17th-century rebellion in Småland acknowledged for its subliminal but widely recognised criticism against the Hitler regime.

A noted public intellectual and debater in Sweden, he was noted for very vocal criticism of the Swedish monarchy (most notably after the Haijby affair), likening it with a servile government by divine mandate, and publicly supporting its replacement with a Swiss-style confederal republic. He spoke out aggressively against the policies of Nazi Germany, the Greek military junta, and the Soviet Union, and his works were among those destroyed in Nazi book burnings. In 1971, he scolded Prime Minister Olof Palme for refusing to offer the Nobel Prize in Literature to its recipient Alexander Solzhenitsyn – who was refused permission to attend the ceremony in Stockholm – through the Swedish embassy in Moscow.

Reviews

[Paul Lindstrom · Rating 4 out of 5]

En kort men tankvärd skrift. Jag förmodar att den var omdebatterad under andra världskriget. Han säger det inte rakt ut men man får känslan att han förordar att svenskarna bestämmer sig en gång för alla att man måste slåss mot tyskarna om det blir nödvändigt, om de invaderar Sverige som de invaderade Danmark och Norge. Idag vet vi att tyskarna hade långt gångna planer för att invadera Sverige, men pga den undfallande hållningen från regeringen valde tyskarna att vara nöjda med de samarbetsvilliga svenskarna. Debatten kommer väl fortsätta under lång tid om huruvida det var ynkligt eller nödvändigt för oss svenskar att vara så samarbetsvilliga. Vi vet att i de länder som verkligen stred mot nazisterna är Sveriges hållning svårbegriplig och man ser det som fel och ynkligt.