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SWEDEN The leadership of the "neutral" Swedish army is running into trouble on the home front. On October 23, some 1,000 soldiers stationed in Umea assembled on base in protest against their conditions. A few days later, 850 soldiers marched in protest actions throughout the city of Kariskrona, and on October 30 demonstrations were held in two other cities. The soldiers in Umea demanded higher pay, a lump sum bonus of 1,000 kronor after ten months of military service, and the right to hold meetings on base with no officers present. In Karlskrona the soldiers also demanded guaranteed employment after discharge from the military. The soldiers base their demand for the 1,000-kronor bonus on the expectafion that many of them will be unemployed for a certain time after they finish their service. There was a quick reaction from the army leadership and the state apparatus, as could have been expected. Movements within the pillar of the bourgeois state are not the sort of thing that the bourgeoisie takes lightly. On October 31 the police raided the Red Room, bookshop of the revolutionary Marxists, and confiscated all the copies of Red Soldier, a journal distributed by revolutionary Marxists together with other revolutionaries. The excuse for the raid was the charge that the paper was stirring up trouble because copies had been distributed
АБІТИВОЯ against officers on base in Umea urging continuation of the struggle by mass turnouts at the base hospital for sick call. (The exact charge was inciting to insubordination.) All the barracks were searched; but only twenty copies of Red Soldier were found of a total of 800 that had been distributed. Finally, one militant was taken into custody and subjected to an oldtime, light-in-the-face interrogation. Such repressive action did not at all curb the soldiers' will to fight. On November 5, some 1, 100 soldiers of the base in Umea once again demonstrated on base against the repression. The. proposals from the Red Soldier were adopted. All 1,100 collectively went to the base hospital on sick call. The doctors were not allowed to reject them; each soldier had to be examined individually. The movement among the soldiers is now taking hold on every base in the country. To the soldiers, it is absolutely self-evident that they must be given a lump sum upon discharge to enable them to live normally while looking for work. More actions are expected, and it can be anticipated that they will be broadened to include a struggle against repression and the lack of democratic rights for soldiers within the army. D
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