The Man Who Played with Fire: Stieg Larsson's Lost Files and the Hunt for an Assassin

by Jan Stocklassa

But Palme’s commitment to those foreign politics often occurred at the expense of the existing superpowers. He annoyed the Soviet Union in April 1975, when he called the regime ruling their satellite state of Czechoslovakia “the beasts of the dictatorship,” and again when he criticized the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. On the other side of the Cold War, he also provoked the United States, which broke off diplomatic ties with Sweden twice due to Palme’s actions. The first time was after he marched in a torchlight procession side by side with North Vietnam’s ambassador to Moscow in February 1968. The second time was after he criticized the bombing of Hanoi just before Christmas 1972, comparing the United States’ actions to the worst massacres of the twentieth century.