Olof Palme

Sven Olof Joachim Palme (Swedish: [ˈûːlɔf ˈpâlːmɛ] ; 30 January 1927 – 28 February 1986) was a Swedish politician and statesman who served as Prime Minister of Sweden from 1969 to 1976 and 1982 to 1986. Palme led the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1969 until his assassination in 1986.

A longtime protégé of Prime Minister Tage Erlander, he became Prime Minister of Sweden and Chairman of the Social Democratic Party in 1969. He left office after failing to form a government after the 1976 general election, which ended 40 years of unbroken rule by the Social Democratic Party. While he served as a Leader of the Opposition, he also served as special mediator of the United Nations in the Iran–Iraq War, and was President of the Nordic Council in 1979. He faced a second defeat in 1979, but he returned as prime minister after electoral victories in 1982 and 1985, and served until his death.

Palme was a pivotal and polarizing figure domestically as well as in international politics from the 1960s onward. Domestically, Palme pursued a left-wing and social democratic agenda for the country, including switching to unicameralism in the constitution, expanding the welfare state, advocating for womens' rights, and pushing for nuclear power, although his last term was more moderate due to Sweden's economic troubles. Many of his economic views were opposed by Sweden's business community. Materially, his reforms resulted in a reduction in infant mortality, an increase in the basic old-age pension replacement rate, and an increase in minimum replacement rate in healthcare earnings, among other improvements.

He followed a policy of non-alignment towards the superpowers, frequently criticising both Soviet and American foreign policy. He supported numerous liberation movements and Third World governments. He was the first Western head of government to visit communist Cuba after its revolution. He publicly opposed numerous authoritarian regimes, including those of Francisco Franco of Spain, Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union, António de Oliveira Salazar of Portugal, Gustáv Husák of Czechoslovakia, and South Africa's apartheid system. His 1972 condemnation of American bombings in Hanoi resulted in a temporary freeze in Sweden–United States relations.