SWEDEN AND RUSSIA

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 40, 16 January 1945, Page 5

SWEDEN AND RUSSIA

ANXIETY OF SWEDES

MORE SENSIBLE TENDENCY NOW

OBSERVED

Russia is. becoming so popular a study in this country t particularly at evening schools, in London and: other .big cities, that the news of the first Russian language course now ready for students of Stockholm. University seems to us hardly worth comment states an English exchange. But it is an event in Stockholm, for Sweden has been more than a. little nervous of Russia for the past 30 years «nd all the more nervoussince the first war between th& Soviet Union and Finland. Though; a strongly democratic country Sweden is highly sensitive to communist infiltration and this despite* the fact that her own communist party has representatives in both her Houses of Parliament, This anxiety of the Swedes goes back more than two centuries to» the days of. Peter the Great, who- "opened a window on the sea" at a time when. Sweden was one of the 1 Great Powers of Europe, and held wide including Finland and much of the southern coast of the Baltic, which later on were divrdecft between Russia and Prussia. Even after being defeated at Pol-* Sweden remained strong, on the£ .shores opposite to those vvhieh are*t her borders tmlay and when finally Russia -detached Finland from Swed—ish rule a solid block of Finland's*, population was still Swedish, as it* is today. This may account for a. certain Swedish sympathy with, tlieFinns at the present time. Muclr. of the obstinacy which preserved a large measure of. autonomy . for Finland even under the" Tsars was Swedish obstinacy. The apparently pro-German trend of Swedish foreign policy in the last war and in the earlier part of this war which t never diminished Sweden's liking and admiration for Britain, Avas due to nervousness about Russia whether Tsarist or Bolshevik. But in. the past year there has been, a more sensible tendency to be oa. friendlier terms with her mighty neighbour.