Olof Palme

Sven Olof Joachim Palme rose through the Social Democratic Party as a protégé of Tage Erlander, becoming Prime Minister and party chairman in 1969. He lost power in 1976, ending four decades of unbroken Social Democratic rule, then returned after victories in 1982 and 1985. He carved a polarizing international profile: non-aligned but outspoken, the first Western leader to visit post-revolution Cuba, a critic of both superpowers and a denouncer of authoritarian regimes from Franco's Spain to apartheid South Africa. His 1972 comparison of American bombing in Hanoi to Treblinka and other historical atrocities froze relations with the United States. On 28 February 1986, walking home from a cinema, he was shot and killed. A convict named Christer Pettersson was convicted, then unanimously acquitted on appeal. In 2020, prosecutors named a dead man, Stig Engström, and closed the case on evidence too thin for trial. The assassin's true identity remains unknown.