Bil- och containerbränder, stenkastning mot bussar, brand i en skola och en nedbrunnen restaurang. Så var läget i Botkyrka och Huddinge under några dagar i maj 2013. Det talades om kaos, ungdomsgäng, och attacker av högerextrema grupper. Det gjordes jämförelser med händelserna i Husby som startat två dagar tidigare. Civilsamhället reagerade snabbt och nattvandringar med föräldrar och andra vuxna organiserades. Myndigheternas krisberedskap var inte utvecklad och det hela uppfattades ibland som ”en blixt från klar himmel”. Poliskårens dubbla uppgift i form av närpolisens välvilliga kontakt och kravallstyrkornas repression väckte starka reaktioner som personal på ungdomsgårdarna fick hantera, och sedan uppmanades att inte tala om.

Vilka lärdomar kan vi dra av dessa händelser? Hur kan begreppet ”förort” ge kunskap om civilsamhället i bred bemärkelse?

I detta vittnesseminarium Brinner ”förorten”? berättar aktörer som var direkt inblandade vad de såg och hur de uppfattade händelserna på lokal nivå.

”Jag letade efter en mordängel och jag hittade en prislista.” Orden är journalisten Marciej Zarembas, en av deltagarna på det vittnesseminarium om vårdens marknadisering som hölls i Almedalen sommaren 2013 och som återges i denna skrift.

Marciej Zaremba, som hittat närmare 2 500 virtuella avtal och en modell av företagsliknande styrformer inom den offentliga vården, är övertygad om att prislistor, beting och vårdgarantier styckar upp vården i moment och diagnoser utan hänsyn till faktisk tid och resursåtgång, hänsyn till patentens behov eller vårdens kvalitet och utgång.

En annan av seminariedeltagarna, Klas Eklund, professor i nationalekonomi, menade istället att problemen handlade om patienters bristande valfrihet, statens ekonomiska problem och dåliga styrsystem i vården. De skulle lösas genom att vården drevs som ett företag med interndebitering och prislistor. Där skulle personalens initiativ kunna tas till vara och den solidariska sjukvårdsmodellen försvaras.

The Swedish Social Democratic welfare state system that peaked during the 1970s was based on a common belief in the existence of strong and potent state with strong tendencies toward a de-commodification. However, with the Palme government in 1982, Social democrats accepted the idea that the welfare state should be reoriented around a prevailing notion of individualization, and be a vehicle in particular for a middle-class strategy of social mobility tightly entangled with consumer preference. In subsequent decades, a complex and multi-motivational process of privatization was carried out as a de facto alliance between Left and Right. In the 2000s, the Party has abandoned control of the welfare state as part of its reformist strategy or “power resource”.

Between 1942 and 1945, Jewish inmates of a forced labour camp and later Auschwitz subcamp at Blechhammer (Blachownia Slaska, Upper Silesia) worked alongside British prisoners of war on the construction site of a giant synthetic fuel facility, the Oberschlesische Hydrierwerke. This paper examines the multifaceted forms of interaction between these two groups, who were situated at the opposite ends of a spectrum ranging from high survival rates to certain death. By reframing the Jewish inmates' perceptions of the POWs, it seeks to shed new light on a controversial debate on the nature of the relationship between them and the British prisoners. The paper argues that important aspects have been missing from this debate, as the Jewish inmates were not sufficiently represented and not viewed as active protagonists. The relations between Jews and British POWs were not one-sided, but rather interdependent in complex ways. Both groups used these contacts to gain strategic information on the war and jointly contributed to the Allied resistance effort. The barter with British POWs played a crucial role in the collective and individual survival strategies of Jewish inmates, whereas the British increasingly depended on the Jewish inmates to procure basic foods, when German rations ceased to be allocated. An analysis of the effects of British aid-giving showed that the actual impact on the physical survival of the emaciated inmates was negligible. However, these gifts were commonly interpreted as humanitarian gestures by both sides. Altogether, the British were encouraging symbols of resistance against the Nazi regime in the eyes of the inmates. Negative experiences were rarely corroborated and were often linked to poor English language skills, or a stronger identification with other nationalities.

The purpose of this project, The Bund in Sweden 1946-1954 : a Jewish workers’ movement at the crossroads, is to illuminate how the once strong Jewish workers’ movement in Eastern and Central Europe with its concentration to Poland, tried to answer the new challenges after World War II and the Holocaust. Newly found archives show that some sections of the Bund were also established in Sweden, among refugees and transmigrants, during these first post war years. Here, they met with a social democratic labor movement in power, engaged in building its national “people’s home” in a society undamaged by the war. How did the bundists in Sweden - organized in jiddisch sections (Arbeter-Ring) affiliated to the Swedish social democratic party - handle the political and ideological challenges of socialism and nationalism during their hardships as refugees after the Holocaust? Did they take side as the international Bund split between the developing Eastern and Western block? How did they rethink Zionism and the project of Israel? Would the experience of the Swedish social democratic project influence their furtherperspectives?

Antologin med populärhistoriska artiklar från ETC Nyhetsmagasin, Internationalen, Arbetarhistoria mfl spänner över ett stort antal teman, från uppror, antimilitarism och nykterhet till rasism, idrott och spanska sjukan - det hela i förhållande till arbetarrörelsen och dess motståndare.

Myten om "judebolsjevismen” - d v s föreställningen att revolutionen i Ryssland och kommunismen varuttryck för judisk anda och strävan efter makt - utgjorde en betydelsefull faktor i mellankrigstidensideologiska och politiska liv i Östersjöområdet. Studien i vilken utsträckning - och hur - denna sammanknytning av bolsjevism och judendom ägde rum i första hand i svensk offentlighet och politik under åren efter första världskriget – samt i vilken mån och av vilka krafter den bars vidare in i det sena 1930-talet?

Hot eller möjlighet? På 1960-talet förändrades romernas situation i Sverige dramatiskt då bofasthet och skolplikt för romska barn skulle ersätta ett nomadiserande liv utanför välfärdssamhällets växande strukturer.

Men hur genomfördes förändringen – på vems villkor och till vilket pris? Kring de frågorna samlades forskare och aktörer, både tidigare lärare och elever, till ett vittnesseminarium på Södertörns högskola tillsammans med dagens romska brobyggare.

I spänningsfältet mellan romernas kamp för lika rättigheter och myndigheternas strävan efter assimilering gjordes under vittnesseminariet erfarenheter av betydelse för den aktuella diskussionen om minoriteters rättigheter och möjligheter.

Opposition became the Bund’s condition of existence, but not opposi-tion for its own sake. The Bund was founded on the conviction that the “Jewish question” could only be resolved through the liberation of the international working class from all forms of oppression on its way to establishing a world of equality, welfare and democracy without borders – a socialist social order. There, the broad strata of the population would rule, rather than capitalist elites or communist party apparatchiks.

The Bund was one of the losers of history. The once deeply-rooted move-ment was crushed during terror and genocide, dispersed into exile, driven into its shell by overpowering political forces and undermined by assimi-lation as time wore on and the world changed. The following story is about that process at the micro-level, in a place on the edge of the world.

In this unique account Håkan Blomqvist relates a largely unknown chapter in both the historiography of the Swedish labor movement and in Swedish–Jewish history, that of the non-Zionist Jewish Arbeter Bund among refugees in Sweden during and after World War II. 

Håkan Blomqvist is associate professor in history at Södertörn University and author of several respected books on the Swedish labor movement, nationalism and antisemitism.

Den socialistiska och icke-sionistiska judiska arbetarrörelsen Bund var en massrörelse i mellankrigstidens Polen. Efter kriget och förintelsen försökte flyktingar från rörelsen återuppbygga sina organisationer även i Sverige. Personliga trauman, det framväxande kalla kriget mellan öst och väst samt bildandet av staten Israel ställde medlemmarna inför svåra utmaningar, personligt och politiskt. Efter några år begav sig de flesta "bundisterna" vidare till andra länder med störra möjligheter.

Blomqvist's article holds that nationalism in the socialist labour movement did not suddenly manifest itself as Europe went to war in 1914. In Sweden, patriotic ideas from the French Revolution and radical liberalism heavily influenced the early labour movement and contributed to the development of a socialist patriotism. As a twin of socialist internationalism, this left-wing working-class nationalism centred on the question Who is the nation?' The answer was not simply the working people', but penetrated further into the questionin this age of nationalization of the massesof who those working people' were. With few intellectual resources of its own in its early years, the young socialist movement in Sweden had to rely on popular liberal education. Accordingly, knowledge from the modern natural sciences and anthropology was imported with its ideas of human races as kernels of nationality. Academics who subsequently joined the socialist movement tried to interpret racial science and eugenics to the advantage of the working class and for the sake of social reform. Together with socialist patriotism, this attempt developed into a racialized message on the anthropological value of Swedish workers as opposed to both the bourgeois elites and foreign low-paid workers and strikebreakers. In its more extreme versionas represented by a leading Swedish social democratit turned older stereotypes of Jews into a racist antisemitic discourse against those who were believed to be the enemies of Swedish labour. The combination of socialist patriotism, racism and antisemitism, however, was challenged by other interpretations and experiences.