Olof Palme

Sven Olof Joachim Palme (Swedish: Olof Palme; 30 January 1927 – 28 February 1986) was a Swedish politician. A longtime protégé of Prime Minister Tage Erlander, Palme led the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1969 to his assassination, and was a two-term Prime Minister of Sweden, heading a Privy Council Government from 1969 to 1976 and a cabinet government from 1982 until his death. Electoral defeats in 1976 and 1979 marked the end of Social Democratic hegemony in Swedish politics, which had seen 40 years of unbroken rule by the party. While leader of opposition, he parted domestic and international interests and served as special mediator of the United Nations in the Iran–Iraq War, but returned to power as Prime Minister after stunning electoral victories in 1982 and 1985.

A pivotal, renowned, and polarizing figure domestically as well as in international politics since the 1960s, Palme was steadfast in his non-alignment policy towards the superpowers, juxtaposed to support of numerous third world liberation movements following the process of decolonization including, most controversially, economic and vocal support for a number of non-democratic anti-imperialist regimes.

Frequently a critic of US and Soviet foreign policy, he resorted to fierce and often polarizing criticism in pinpointing his resistance towards imperialist ambitions and authoritarian regimes, including those of Francisco Franco of Spain, Gustáv Husák of Czechoslovakia, and B J Vorster and P W Botha of South Africa. Palme's steadfast opposition to apartheid, which he labeled "a particularly gruesome system", has elevated theories of South African involvement in his death some of the most prolific even a quarter of a century after his assassination. His murder by an unapprehended assailant on a street in Stockholm on February 28, 1986 was the first of its kind in modern Swedish history, the first of a national leader since Gustav III, and had a great impact across Scandinavia.