Mid Sweden University

An established view on the issue of Swedish volunteers participating in the Finnish civil war in 1918 has been that they mostly distanced themselves from the fierce level of violence of the conflict. Later research has contested this view and instead suggests that the Swedes involved in general took part in the executions and cleansing actions going on during the civil war and its aftermath. In the memories and testimonies of the Swedish volunteers there is a conspicuous contrast between the lofty ideals and emotional expressions of pride and idealism and the emotions, or lack of emotions, towards the enemy and in the handling of prisoners of war in general. This article focuses on how the Swedes related emotionally to the higher goals of their contribution and the general degree of violence in the conflict.This angle can shed some light not only on how the notions of Grand Swedishness developed but also on the issue of how emotional numbness and distancing in dealing with victims and enemies develops in a war situation. The result of the study is that processes of legitimization made it possible to keep an emotional distance towards the defeated party in the conflict, and that the view that the Reds were the moral losers in an unjust war made this possible. However, while the legitimacy of this stance svenskar i österled 1918 · 225 was a matter of course in Finland, in 1918 dominated by the White army, the interaction with Swedish society was more complicated. Hence there is a more noticeable tendency towards arguing one’s case in the Swedish volunteer testimonies and narratives as compared to the dominant white narrative in Finland; this points to the possibilities of further analysis.

During the 1960s and 1970s, radicals from the west travelling to socialist countries in the 'Third World' tried to create an alternative pool of expertise, often with a utopian agenda. This leftwing tourism later became the subject of academic discussion and analysis. One prominent standpoint is that the travellers involved agreed with the propaganda to which they were subjected, or at least believed in it. Others regard the travellers' loyalty to the socialist country in question as a way of improving the prospects for hegemony within left organisations at home. Another view is that the travellers contained their criticism amongst themselves, while struggling with their experiences in the country in question. The aim of this text is to examine, through a case study, how travellers not tied up in any partybuilding struggles back home perceived and explained their experience in China, and how this experience was understood and interpreted – and reinterpreted – in hindsight. The study is focused on the Swedish social worker Elsa Larsson, who went to China in 1977. Her impressions and reflections were documented in a short film made with a small hand camera, in letters and notes, and in two speaker texts to her film, one from 1977 and one from 2005. The study shows that Larsson did harbour some scepticism about what was presented during her visit – but also that the expectations of friends and colleagues in Sweden were important in how she came to tell the story of her trip. This points to a more general picture, whereby the preconceptions of the traveller's own communities were of great significance in creating the western image of Red China, in addition to the Chinese state's own propaganda. The study contributes a tentative explanation as to why China as an alternative welfare society was so favourably received in Sweden (and in Europe) in the 1970s. When Larsson reinterpreted her material many years later she added in analysis of the problematic issue of how the travellers had in general failed to grasp the extent of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda. It seems that, in this later phase, it was important for Larsson to continue to create a frame for her experiences, rather than to uncritically adapt to any contemporary interpretation.

The women’s auxiliaries Riksförbundet Sveriges Lottakårer became during the second world war period one of the largest women’s organization ever in Sweden. The main purpose of this chapter is to analyse material from the SLK archive in order to understand how the Lottas related to war, neutrality, gender and peacebuilding in this era. The study shows that the organization after the second world war became part of a general, humanitarian reorientation of the Swedish neutrality, that they evolved into a discourse of gender equality and also started to profile themselves as one of the people’s movements in Sweden.