Quote Originally Posted by maxmixiv View Post
Thank you Hanna, but I wonder what had triggered such a sudden change. Something happened at 1990, didn't it?

Have the government some explanation, why the massive immigration is necessary?
Yes something happened in 1990 as you probably noticed in Russia, lol!

The big thing that happened was that socialism fell so MASSIVELY out of favour. In the span of a year or two, in Sweden, peoples entire worldview was shifted. It certainly happened to me. The only way you could have avoided it was to never open a paper, watch TV or listen to radio. I'm sure everyone who is Russia saw all this to a much more extreme degree. But Sweden went through the exact same steps, without people actually having any serious grief against the state. There was no shift in government during the 1989-1994 era... It just happened anyway! People weren't even unhappy with the state.. They were just carried away from the fallout of the events in Eastern Europe.

While I was growing up, before the 90s, it was essentially the opposite: Unless you wanted to be a social pariah, you had to support anti-imperialism, peace activism, solidarity with anyone who was oppressed, class consciousness and these types of ideas. In a way it was just as one-sided as it is now; just the opposite side of the spectrum.

As for the Cold War; Sweden was neutral and it was practically religious! We were SO anti-war. The papers + most people felt that between the two super powers, they were equally corrupt, but for different reasons. The Soviet Union had allegedly abandoned true communist/socialist ideals (with "socialism in one country" and people being unjustly imprisoned). As for the USA; obviously it is/was imperialist in the extreme, morally corrupt and totally un-principled (which media did not hold back about in those days).

Intellectual people and media tended to be more left leaning and give the USSR the benefit of the doubt. Likewise people in the business community leaned towards the USA. Interestingly there was a lot of business with Eastern Europe, which put many in the business community in a split-loyalties position. For example my family.

Then the floodgate opened in 1989.... EVERY day there was some horror story of something that had happened in Eastern Europe. Orphans, mentally disabled, minorities, the spying of the Stasi and the corruption of Ceaucescu. Just about anyone who wasn't mainstream seemed to have been brutally mistreated under socialism. People from Eastern Europe were constantly given airtime to tell their horror stories. I particularly remember this rather extreme woman called Slavenca Draculic who literally toured the country presenting about how awful it had been to live in Eastern European socialism. The story that stuck with me: There was only one size of tampon available in Belgrade, lol. You think "communism must be so darn incompetent, if it can't even produce proper tampons and loo paper... So let's ditch this!

I think most who were around in those days remember the pictures of extremely drab flats and people complaining "the state forced me to live in this dump of a place and refused to fix it up", then all the misdeeds of Stalin were "revealed", i.e. whole peoples relocated, made to carry out slave labour etc. The personality cult of Ceaucescu and his cheesy wife showed how vulnerable these ideologies are to abuse. Everybody was extremely surprised at the backwardness of the rural areas of Eastern Europe. We had been told that technically advance kolkhozes and similar were busy producing food according to the latest clever plan. Then you saw the pictures of grannies looking like they were out of the 1930s digging potatoes by hand, and empty shelves in the food stores.
I had visited several Eastern European countries, but never saw/realised any of this. Personally I felt a bit cheated or duped.

So anyone who had been a socialist or communist repented and washed their hands of it. Some official people actually denied that they had ever believed in it. In order to "prove" how they changed, even the social democrats and communists (who promptly changed their name to the Left wing party supported acts that went totally against their ideology - just to prove themselves. There had been a pioneer organisation in Sweden but it just closed down. Nobody stuck around and parents did not want it for their kids.

The swing of media/journalism was unbelievable. The same journalists who had previously reported enthusiastically from Havana or Moscow suddenly had nothing but abuse stories and overnight supported neo-liberal ideas! Their ideological stance was obviously a seed in the wind and not rooted in anything other than what people around them seem to believe. They kept "exposing" proof of various high-profile people who used to holiday on the Black Sea (considered ultimate proof of being in bed with the USSR!) and church officials who had been close to to the Lutheran Church in East Germany on which the tide had seriously turned.
First May parades went from a big deal to just a side thought.

Then in case anyone had any illusions left, some really shady people from Eastern Europe turned and behaved like total crooks.
There were stories of human trafficking, brutal murders etc. Medias' explanation: Communism made them be like that because it doesn't have regard for human values and life.

In Sweden everybody seems to move en-masse and so the whole country just shifted direction because of what had happened in Eastern Europe. Even though things had been fine in Sweden - no corruption, abuse, restrictions or shortages. It was a functional blend of the two systems.

Capitalism was obviously not losing a SECOND taking advantage of this situation.
The state in Sweden owned some very well run enterprises that were now up for grabs. There were a few years during which EVERYTHING was privatised and sold out. Regular people were totally unable to follow what was going on, or understand the long term impact. As it worked out; prices became much higher and service or quality did not improve. In many cases the state and tax payers had to bail out the new private (often foreign) owners. I found the trains in Ukraine and Belarus be more punctual and less crowded than in Sweden right now, just as a comparison.
They even eventually sold out quite a few schools to foreign owned corporations that can make profit from educating kids in state schools!

The IMF and similar started to heave praise over Sweden as you can imagine, for "reforming in time".

Although about 30-40 per cent still voted for the social democrats or the Left party, they are no longer recognisable in their bland ideology which is just the centre of things. All parties are essentially representing the same ideas nowadays and severel politicians changed over to another party because there is no longer any clear ideological boundaries.


As for the immigration: It started with Palme wanting to accept refugees from right wing dictatorships. I was very young then, and am not really fully up to scratch on it. But I think Chile was the first big wave of refugees, followed by Iranians who thought that their socialist revolution was hijacked by islamists.

I was told in school that reproduction rates were so low that immigration was needed simply to keep the country running. The other supposed reason at the time, was solidarity... and benefits of multiculturalism (in the 1980s) in our extremely homogenous country. They sure achieved that, in record time!

My views on it is that Sweden's been in gentle decline since about the 1960s taking a sharp turn downwards in 1990.
Nowadays it's an extremely secular country with no religion and no ideology apart from political correctness. Class differences are growing every year, and there is a new underclass of people who even look different (i.e. immigrants/refugees).

It's really quite extreme and it's very much a social experiment in the making, with all the extreme things going on.