Not so long ago, the Swedes became terribly uncomfortable. It turned out that their state carried out a violent sterilization of the "inferior" to preserve the purity of the nation. The only difference between the Swedish welfare society and the Nazi one was that the Swedes did it for longer.
“I began to see badly in early childhood. But the parents did not have enough money for glasses. At school I could not see, sitting at my desk, that the teacher was writing on the blackboard, but I was afraid to say. I was recognized as mentally retarded and sent to a boarding school for mentally disabled children. At seventeen I was summoned to the headmaster of the school and given to sign some papers. I knew I had to sign them. The next day I was sent to the hospital and had an operation. I was told that I would never have children."
This is the story of 72-year-old Maria Nordin. But Maria Nordin is not alone. There are 60 thousand such people in Sweden. All of them are victims of a state sterilization program that has lasted for almost half a century.
Let's remember how and when it was …
In 1921, the Swedish parliament unanimously supported the proposal of the Social Democratic faction to establish a State Institute for Racial Biology in Uppsala. The main task of the institute was defined as follows: "Investigation of the problem of human degeneration caused by the mixing of races."
There were no problems with personnel at the institute. Racial studies in Sweden began almost immediately after the end of the First World War. And by the early twenties, the country's leading universities - in Uppsala and Lund - were already ready to serve the state. On the basis of irrefutable scientific facts, scientists have proved that the tribes of short and black-haired Lapps and Finns, who originally inhabited Sweden, were ousted by tribes of tall, blond and blue-eyed Aryans. Genetically, the purest of the Aryan peoples were, of course, the Sves, who gave Sweden their name and their highly developed Nordic culture.
The state and science, as is often the case, have found each other.
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The institute was headed by former Prime Minister Yalmar Hammarskjold, and soon Uppsala became a recognized international center for the study of racial issues. The conclusions of the Institute's scientists were unconditionally recognized not only in Sweden, but also in many other countries of the world, in particular in Germany.
In the early thirties, the two main political parties in Sweden - the peasant and the Social Democratic - called on the government to take measures to prevent the degradation of the Swedish nation. The scientists were at the ready. Their research, as was intended when the institute was founded, showed that the degradation of a race is obviously due to a violation of its purity. The next step suggested itself: to deprive the opportunity to give birth to children of “ethnically handicapped inhabitants”, that is, people born from interracial marriages.
Germany in 1933 legalized the forced sterilization of the "inferior", but the Swedes took a different, more "civilized" path. In 1934, a law was passed, according to which the sterilization of "inferior" residents of Sweden was recognized as a desirable, but exclusively voluntary procedure. Of course, there were no volunteers, and it became necessary to change the law.
This was done a year later under pressure from the Social Democrats. Alva Myrdal, who in the thirties was the leading ideologue of the party, and in 1982 became a Nobel Peace Prize laureate for humanitarian services to humanity, published a manifesto, in which she called for a radical change in the approach to sterilization of disabled people in the country:
“The society is interested in that the freedom of reproduction of inferior ones was limited … Even if we leave aside the long-term benefits - the improvement of the gene pool of the nation - society will breathe a sigh of relief when such individuals cease to be born”.
It is clear that the government's concern for the cleanliness of the Swedish nation was not limited to free operations for its citizens. The influx of ethnically disadvantaged foreigners into the country was limited to a minimum. In the thirties, for example, there were mass demonstrations throughout the country demanding a ban on "the import of Jews into Sweden." The government, in fact, organizing these demonstrations, listened with pleasure to the voice of the people. However, the main focus was on operations.
The peak of the wave of sterilization and castration of the "defective" fell in 1946. But at the end of the year, they tried not to talk about the state social program, as it was customary to call it. The trial of Nazi criminals ended in Nuremberg, at which a similar German practice was declared barbaric and criminal. The racist research of German scientists was also declared criminal.
In Sweden, they did not want to remember that almost all Germanic geneticists trained in Uppsala and Lund. All references to racial inferiority were promptly removed from the sterilization law. The State Institute of Racial Biology was hastily renamed the Institute of Human Genetics, and in 1958 it was completely absorbed by Uppsala University.
In 1964, the sterilization legislation was finally liberalized. The mention of "unusual and excessive sexuality" disappeared from it. Nevertheless, sterilization continued. The last operation to sterilize a mentally retarded Swede took place in 1976. Like the previous 60 thousand, it did not attract the attention of the Swedish public. For most Swedes, the procedure for sterilizing mentally disabled people was as natural as the rules of the road.
In accordance with the letter of the law, residents of a country who were recognized as mentally or racially disabled by the health or social services were subject to sterilization. To fall into this category, it was enough to exhibit a "persistent learning disability" or to have an appearance that does not meet the recognized Aryan standards of the Swedish nation.
Then everything was simple. Persons to be sterilized were summoned to the social security authorities and informed about the upcoming operation. Those who tried to protest were intimidated: they were threatened with imprisonment in hospitals for the mentally ill, deprivation of parental rights or benefits provided by the state to its citizens. After signing the paper that consent to the operation was obtained voluntarily, the operations were not delayed. The whole procedure - from a call to the authorities to returning home - lasted no more than a week.
When the technology was fine-tuned, they decided to expand the list of signs of inferiority to include "asociality", and at the end of the war, in addition to the existing law, a new one was added. He allowed castration - again "voluntary" - of dangerous criminals, as well as "men with unusual or excessive sexual desires." This group of persons had a choice still: an operation or a prison.
The brutal operations ended for the same reason they began. The global trend has changed. The mentally ill were no longer treated as second-class citizens. It has become generally accepted that their desire to be full members of society should be welcomed and encouraged. As for eugenics, it was once and for all recognized as a pseudoscience. They tried to forget about the barbaric laws of the thirties in Sweden.
And they would have forgotten, believing in their own moral infallibility, if not for Maria Nordin. In 2011, she applied to the Ministry of Social Affairs for compensation. An answer came from the ministry. The request was denied: the operation was performed in full compliance with Swedish laws and with the patient's voluntary consent. Those in doubt are free to familiarize themselves with the relevant documents, drawn up in full form and still stored in the state archive.
Maria decided to continue the fight and told her story to the journalist of the liberal Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. The result of the journalistic investigation was a series of articles that first told the Swedes the whole truth.
“For many, this was a real discovery. Almost nothing can be learned about operations from history textbooks, and the newspapers did not write much about it, - says the author of the articles, Matsiash Zaremba, who does not fully meet the standards of Aryan appearance. “All Sweden knew that it was, but no one knew how it all began and how barbarous this program really was.”
The government quickly took action, and, according to Sweden, the issue will soon be resolved. A special commission should investigate the revealed facts of forced sterilization and find out how many victims of such operations still live in the country. The government is preparing to apologize to them and pay generous compensation for the suffering caused.
The topic, however, is not exhausted by this. After the public confession of the Swedish government, the existence of similar programs was recalled in other European countries. The scandalous revelations promise to be no less loud there.
For example, in Austria and Switzerland, where liberal-minded lawyers are still trying to find out whether the sterilization laws adopted in these countries during the Second World War have been canceled.
In order to exclude superficial comparisons of Swedish forced sterilization programs with similar practices used, for example, in the United States, it is worth pointing out two fundamental differences.
Firstly, Swedish "social engineering" was an order of magnitude larger: if in the United States in the framework of "eugenic programs" a total of about 30 thousand American women were sterilized, then in Sweden the number of women forcibly subjected to this procedure was 10 thousand more. Given the difference in population between the United States and Sweden, the difference in scale is obvious.
Secondly, the plans developed by the Swedish government went much further than simply the desire to rid society of those whom the ruling circles considered a socio-genetic "burden". It is not for nothing that Bettner compares Swedish eugenic programs with the racial policy of the Third Reich: the Swedish authorities quite officially viewed forced sterilization as a way of physically exterminating entire ethnic groups, primarily the Roma:
“The reasons why the Roma were singled out in a separate category are less clear. Their late appearance in statistical reports suggests that racial factors were the reason, because, as in the case of the Sami, their lifestyle did not meet the requirements of modern developed society. By the 1920s, the Roma and Tattare (an ethnic group of Roma who settled in Scandinavian countries in the 16th century; the authors of the work use this term to distinguish the Tattare Roma from the Roma who immigrated to Sweden and Norway in the late 19th century) were clearly seen as racially inferior people, although the origin of the tattare was unclear and remained a matter of debate. When, in 1923, the government began to study the tattare problem as a way of solving it (but never implemented, however),considered the direct or indirect destruction of this ethnic group. The sterilization laws passed by the Swedish parliament in 1934 and 1941 were seen as a solution to the tattare problem. Although sterilization was rarely used against members of this ethnic group as such, the very fact of being a tattare member in many cases determined the decision to sterilize particular women. (…)
As the country embraced the modern way of life, scientific and technological advances provided the architects of the new Sweden with previously unknown opportunities to solve existing problems. The statistical categories, invented in the 19th century, and the statistical information collected, provided racial biologists and social Darwinists with new means to translate their ideas into reality. “Idiots”, gypsies and tattare, in their opinion, could ultimately be eliminated through the use of various measures - from a ban on marriage to sterilization. For the Sami, Finns and Jews, assimilation was considered the best solution at the time. It is worth noting that the measures taken indirectly led to the loss of life only in the case of mentally disabled citizens. Sterilization of thousands of mentally disabled people in Sweden,carried out within the framework of eugenic programs in the 1930s - 1950s, can in no way be considered an accident, a temporary retreat on the way to building a civilized and modern Swedish society. On the contrary, they were a logical consequence of the desire for modernization, which implied the use of natural science methods to create a society of a new, "improved" type, the society of the 20th century."
And in 2003, the Swedish state completed the payment of debts to the Swedes, who were forcibly sterilized between 1935 and 1975. Since 1999, approximately 1,700 people have received almost 300 million kroons (33 million euros), 175 thousand kroons (19,200 euros) each.
It is known that to date, 20% of claims for compensation have been satisfied, Liberation writes today (translation on the website Inopressa.ru).
Some people believed they were sterilized, but did not have any documents confirming this fact. In other, more rare cases, specially created bodies came to the conclusion that the plaintiffs could not prove the fact of pressure or coercion to sterilize.
According to the 1934 law on sterilization, socially poorly adapted or mentally retarded people were considered citizens who spoil the image of society and cost it a round sum.
The French edition asks the question: after the payment of compensation, does Sweden think that it has paid off its debts?
“I was hoping that a member of the government would write me a personal message, apologize, that Sweden would show more compassion,” says Barbo Lisen, one of those women who were among the first to receive compensation for being forcibly sterilized.
It happened to her in 1946. As a child, Barbo sometimes had seizures. She was diagnosed with epilepsy. When she became pregnant, her attending physician was categorical: it is necessary to have an abortion and sterilize. Under the pressure of the doctor, Barbo stepped back. From then on, she was ashamed of becoming a second-class individual.
Sweden was shocked when a forced sterilization scandal erupted in August 1997. With the exception of the 1986 assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme, no news received such widespread press coverage.
In 1934, parliament voted unanimously to pass the first sterilization law; the second law was passed in 1941. For the right, the main argument was the defense of the Nordic race. Leftists and social democrats sought to avoid aggravating social problems. Socially poorly adapted people or mentally retarded people were viewed as citizens who worsen the image of society, which, moreover, cost it dearly.
Maya Runsis, a historian, accidentally stumbled upon archival documents and was shocked to open the very first document. “It was a letter written by a priest to the police. He complained that a 13-year-old girl was unable to learn the catechism. It was the end of the 30s. This was enough for the girl to be sterilized! And there are a huge number of such cases. Modest women with many children, difficult teenagers, etc.
And even the end of World War II and the exposure of the Holocaust were not enough to end this practice. Sweden was genuinely convinced that it was acting for the good of society. We had to wait until the 70s and the intensification of the feminist movement for the law to be revised. Is it worth specifying that feminists did not oppose these sterilizations as such, but were against the fact that in more than 90% of cases, women underwent surgery. Unbalanced law in terms of gender equality.
Sweden reacted only after the world community began to point the finger at it, claiming that Nazi methods were used there. A commission of inquiry was set up, then compensation was paid. The results are as follows: in the period from 1935 to 1975, 63 thousand people were sterilized, of which 27 thousand were forcibly, without consent or under pressure, for example, under the threat of being deprived of their pension.
Barbo was one of the few victims to tell her story to the media. “Many people are still hesitant to do this,” she says. - I am constantly ashamed. I always feel like I've been labeled. For the government, we belong to the past. It wants money to forget this story. All this is so bureaucratic, soulless."
Throughout her life, Barbo tried to prove that she was not an idiot, "epileptic seizures" have not been repeated since 1946. Everywhere abroad, where her husband served, she presented her driver's license - as a document proving her normality. She never wanted to adopt a child, fearing that her "epilepsy" would turn into misfortune: "During a seizure, I could drop the child." In the 70s, when a more attentive doctor did the necessary research and declared that she had never suffered from epilepsy, it was too late.
Sweden, meanwhile, was far from the only country that had a law on forced sterilization. It is incorrect to think that this was an exclusively Swedish "invention".
The sterilization of mentally retarded people, alcoholics, and recidivist criminals existed in about 30 states in America. The Virginia authorities even erected a monument to Carrie Buck, an 18-year-old single mother who was one of the first victims of the American sterilization law. In the 1920s and 1930s, such compulsory operations, in addition to the Nordic countries, were carried out in several Western European states and even in one of the Swiss cantons. According to some reports, in Austria forced sterilization of people with psychophysiological disabilities continued until the end of the 90s.
At the same time, Sweden turned out to be one of the few countries where not only recognized the sterilization policy as erroneous (this is what the authorities of many states have done today), but also agreed to pay material compensation to the affected people.
“I hoped that the members of the government would personally apologize to me for the violence committed,” Barbro Lisin told the French newspaper Liberation. In the 40s, Barbro suffered from epilepsy, a disease that at the time was synonymous with dementia. When she became pregnant, the doctors forced her to have an abortion and be sterilized. Only in 1970 did it become clear that the diagnosis given to the woman was incorrect. “For the state, we are the past. By paying us money, the government is trying to forget this unpleasant story forever,”says Barbro.
And yet the debate about whether it is necessary to subject certain social groups to forced sterilization continues - even in democracies.
“This woman is characterized by extremely weak intellectual development. She constantly smiles stupidly and does not understand the simplest questions. She does not know which city is the capital of Germany. When asked how many will be three times three, he answers: six. This woman has eight children, but during the entire conversation she did not say a word about her children. This is an excerpt from the report of the medical commission, which doctors sent to the Health Council of one of the cantons of Switzerland - the state body that had the power to decide on forced sterilization. Doctors recommended an operation - 7 children of this woman by that time were already in the care of the state.
The physicist from the United States, William Shockley, who became a Nobel laureate in the middle of the last century, specially studied the reasons for the decline in the intellectual potential of American society. He proved that women with particularly low IQs have higher fertility. Shockley believed that if this trend persists, "there will be a real threat to the gene pool of the American nation." One of Shockley's suggestions is to pay $ 30,000 to people with low IQs if they agree to voluntary sterilization.
But Shockley's ideas turned out to be unclaimed by society. In democracies, sterilization is still perceived as unacceptable violence that violates the rights of individuals - regardless of their mental or physical development
In addition to immigrants from the African continent and their descendants, representatives of the Mongoloid race, Hindus and Pakistanis, as well as representatives of the indigenous population who could not confirm their stay in Virginia before the arrival of the colonists, also fell under the definition of "colored" (from eight tribes living in the state, only two managed to do this). In addition, any person who had more than one “colored” ancestor in the fifth generation was considered "colored".
In addition to women of color, people with mental illness, as well as people of non-traditional sexual orientation and hermaphrodites were sterilized. The law was in force for more than half a century and was canceled only in 1979. In 2001, the Virginia Parliament declared the law unconstitutional and issued an official apology to its victims. After the war, the law on forced sterilization was in force not only in the United States, but also in Sweden and Japan.
In 2013, a law on compensation for victims of sterilization was passed in North Carolina - 1,800 people affected by it, the state pledged to pay 50 thousand dollars. In Virginia, there are far fewer people to receive compensation - at the moment, only 11 victims of forced sterilization are known. They themselves believe that by depriving them of the right to procreate, the state left them without a future.
“I couldn't have the same family that everyone else had,” said 87-year-old Lewis Reynolds, who was a victim of the program. "They took my license away."