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Why did Sweden choose, in the late 1960s, to abandon its long-standing nuclear weapons plans? A number of historical investigations have analyzed some aspects of this issue, particularly as it related to the public political debate in Sweden and the formulation of the Swedish defense doctrine in the postwar years. Some studies have attempted to explicate, from a more overarching perspective, why Sweden opted not to develop anuclear weapons capability, but these efforts have generally been hampered by heavy dependence on secondary source materials consisting of published English-language works. Taken together, these studies provide a far-from-complete picture of Sweden’s historical nuclear weapons plans. The main reason for this lack of a comprehensive picture has been the paucity of primary sources. Today, however, the end of the cold war and the declassification of large parts of the relevant documentary record, especially concerning the technical preparations for nuclear weapons production, have created the prerequisites for a more penetrating analysis of this important historical issue. The purpose of this presentation is to summarize the research on Sweden’s plans to acquire nuclear weapons based on primary sources. This overarching analysis is then tested against International Relation theories which have sought to explain factors of proliferation and non-proliferation.

Thomas Jonter is Professor in International Relations at the Department of Economic History, Stockholm University. His research is focused on nuclear non-proliferation and energy security. He is also project leader for different educational and research programs in Russia with the aim to initiate academic courses and programs in nuclear non-proliferation at different universities in the regions of Tomsk and Jekaterinburg. These projects are carried out in a cooperation between Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), Monterey, United States, and  Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).  Professor Jonter is also chair of the ESARDA (European Safeguards and Research Development Association) working group for Training and Knowledge Management. Currently he is a visiting scholar at The Europe Center at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University.

 

Audio Synopsis:

First, Professor Jonter explains that Sweden initiated nuclear weapons research in the 1950’s because of the presence of a large uranium supply, ample technological and scientific knowledge, and concerns about self-defense. He cites wide support for nuclear research during that time, including from Prime Minister Tage Erlander, the Defense Ministry, and the military. In 1945 the Swedish National Defense Research Establishment created plans for a nuclear weapons program within a civilian nuclear power program, necessitating high levels of cooperation between military and civilian entities.  Despite pressure from the United States to abandon nuclear research, uranium production began in 1955 along with the construction of two reactors. Eventually, social groups within Sweden protested and a debate emerged within Parliament, resulting in a decision that Sweden would only pursue research related to self-defense against the Soviet Union. Behind the scenes, however, nuclear weapons research carried on covertly for some time. Jonter addresses questions of whether the program was really weapons-based or simply scientific research, how the debates in Sweden were influenced by criticisms at home and abroad, the role of private investors in the Swedish nuclear research program, and the factors that ultimately allowed Sweden to publicly back away from a weapons program.

Professor Jonter then examines implications for the international system by analyzing the Swedish nuclear case in light of several international relations theories. He also considers the argument that "outward looking" states which are active in international trade are less likely to develop nuclear weapons. Jonter asserts that research on this topic would benefit from more historical analysis of primary resources, although the secret nature of nuclear records make them difficult to access.

 A question and answer period following the presentation addressed such issues as: How does the Swedish case study compare with the Danish case? Did the Swedish government tie its hands with a public decision not to pursue weapons development? Is there evidence of Sweden having to balance nuclear weapons research with other military expenses?  Why did the government switch from high levels of secrecy about the nuclear program decisions to a policy of openness and public discussion?

CISAC Conference Room

Department of Economic History
Stockholm University
SE-106 91 Stockholm
Sweden

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Professor of International Relations, Department of History, Stockholm University
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Thomas Jonter is Professor in International Relations at the Department of Economic History, Stockholm University. His research is focused on nuclear non-proliferation and energy security. He is also project leader for different educational and research programs in Russia with the aim to initiate academic courses and programs in nuclear non-proliferation at different universities in the regions of Tomsk and Jekaterinburg. These projects are carried out in a cooperation between Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), Monterey, United States, and  Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).  Professor Jonter is also chair of the ESARDA (European Safeguards and Research Development Association) working group for Training and Knowledge Management. Currently he is a visiting scholar at The Europe Center at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University.

Anna Lindh Fellow, The Europe Center
Thomas Jonter Speaker
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This talk presents the prolonged deadly encounter between the Germans and Soviets in World War II as a clash between two different interpretive templates.  In engaging the Soviet enemy, Nazi German leaders and soldiers employed visual frames of analysis, centering on physiognomy and racial makeup.  As they fought back, the Soviets assessed the German invaders through a palpably textual register, focusing on their psychology and political consciousness.  The talk shows how these templates worked in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and how they collided in the course of the war.

Talk Synopsis:

In this seminar Jochen Hellbeck explains the German-Soviet war as having been a battle of "images against words," a term that reflects both a clash of wartime ideologies and the different choices of media used to express these ideologies. Germany, Hellbeck explains, relied heavily on visual media, using videos and photos as propaganda, while the Soviets used written materials to inspire their soldiers and citizens and to demoralize Germans. Hellbeck focuses on the battle of Stalingrad, which involved a long standoff and extended exposure between the two sides.

The Germans used multimedia, as well as strong visual imagery in written materials, to portray the battle as a conquest of an inferior race and a vast landscape available for the taking. A compilation of German soldiers' reports from the Eastern front in July 1941, and the 1942 war diary of a German journalist  embedded with troops in Stalingrad, use descriptive imagery to paint Soviets as mute and beastly and Germans as war heroes full of vitality.  Letters from German officials employed vivid language of the landscape, with repeated references to art as representations of German culture and greatness. Wartime photography by German soldiers, many of whom were amateur photographers, was common. The German use of visual media is exemplified by "Soviet Paradise," a 1942 short film made to discredit the Soviet Union's campaign of print propaganda. The film, which employed sophisticated cinematography techniques and very little commentary, was made into an exhibit in Berlin during the summer of 1942 and was visited by 1 million people.

In contrast, the Soviets did not come close to the amount of investment the Germans made in wartime multimedia.   Soviet soldiers were forbidden from keeping photos, and only officers could occasionally take them, in the rare event they had access to cameras. Instead, Hellbeck finds ample written records of the Soviet wartime experience. The Soviet military leadership commissioned a war history and invested heavily in the work of Soviet writers and historians, rather than photographers or film crews, to document events on the front lines.

Hellbeck’s presentation also includes analysis of the war records of prominent military personnel on both sides, as well as a review of the sources he used in his research, and his perceptions of how the Germans and Soviets interpreted each other’s wartime records. The next step in Hellbeck's research project will involve comparing techniques used in German and Soviet news film chronicles.

A discussion period following the talk addressed such questions as: did Germans and Soviets employ the same strategies in their military engagements with other countries? Why is there so much portrayal of Soviet POWS in Germany, and so little of German POWs in the Soviet Union? How was the defeat at Stalingrad represented by the Germans and by the Soviets? How did the strategies resonant with the respective sides?

 

About the Speaker:

Jochen Hellbeck is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Rutgers University.  He is the author of Revolution On My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Harvard, 2006), and is currently writing a book about the clash and the entanglements of Germans and Soviets in the battle of Stalingrad.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Jochen Hellbeck Associate Professor, History Speaker Rutgers University
Seminars
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When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine had the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal on its territory.  When Ukrainian-Russian negotiations on removing these weapons from Ukraine appeared to break down in September 1993, the U.S. government engaged in a trilateral process with Ukraine and Russia.  The result was the Trilateral Statement, signed in January 1994, under which Ukraine agreed to transfer the nuclear warheads to Russia for elimination.  In return, Ukraine received security assurances from the United States, Russia and Britain; compensation for the economic value of the highly-enriched uranium in the warheads (which could be blended down and converted into fuel for nuclear reactors); and assistance from the United States in dismantling the missiles, missile silos, bombers and nuclear infrastructure on its territory.  Steven Pifer recounts the history of this unique negotiation and describes the key lessons learned.

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The Europe Center
Encina Hall, 2nd Floor
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
The Europe Center
Encina Hall, 2nd Floor
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

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Anna Lindh Fellow (Spring 2011)
Doctoral Candidate, Political Science, Humboldt University of Berlin
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Daniel Schatz is a Visiting Anna Lindh Researcher at the Europe Center and a Doctoral Candidate in Political Science at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Schatz’s doctoral dissertation, “The Politics of Foreign Policy Change: An Analysis of Sweden’s Middle East Policy 1996-2006” examines the dynamics of foreign policy change by analyzing changes in Sweden’s foreign policy towards Israel and the Palestinians. His main research interests are international relations, foreign policy analysis, foreign policy change, European and Scandinavian politics, the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

Prior to joining Stanford University, Schatz’s professional appointments include positions at the European Parliament, the UN Headquarters, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, the World Jewish Congress Headquarters and the Canadian Embassy in Stockholm. He was nominated as a Candidate for Sweden's Parliament in 2006 and 2010.

Schatz is an editorial page contributor in Svenska Dagbladet, one of Sweden’s largest dailies. His articles and opinion pieces on contemporary international affairs appear regularly in European and international newspapers. He graduated with a Masters Degree in Political Science and European Studies from the University of Lund and has completed studies in International Relations the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and New York University. He speaks Swedish, English, Polish, German, Russian, Hebrew and Yiddish.

Department of History
Building 200, Room 11
Stanford, CA 94305-2024

(650) 725-5560 (650) 725-0597
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Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History
Professor of History
Zipperstein_Web.jpg PhD

Steven J. Zipperstein is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. He has also taught at universities in Russia, Poland, France, and Israel; for six years he taught Jewish history at Oxford University. From 1991-2007, he was Director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford. Zipperstein is the author and editor of nine books including The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History (1986, winner of the Smilen Prize for the Outstanding book in Jewish history); Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zionism (1993, winner of the National Jewish Book Award); Imagining Russian Jewry (1999); and Rosenfeld’s Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing (2008, shortlisted for the National Jewish Book Award in Biography, Autobiography and Memoir).  His work has been translated into Russian, Hebrew, and French. Zipperstein’s latest book, Pogrom:  Kishinev and the Tilt of History, published by Liveright/W. W. Norton in 2018, has been widely reviewed in newspapers and magazines in the United States and England including The New York Times, New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New Statesman, Literary Review, and the San Francisco Chronicle. The Economist, Ha-Aretz, San Francisco Chronicle and Mosaic Magazine have named it one of the best books of the year.  It was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award (History) and Mark Lynton award for the best non-fiction book of 2018. 

He has been awarded the Leviant Prize of the Modern Language Association, the Judah Magnes Gold Medal of the American Friends of the Hebrew University, and the Koret Prize for Outstanding Contributions to the American Jewish community.  He has held fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Yitzhak Rabin Institute in Tel Aviv, and has twice been a Visiting Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Sciences Sociales.  In spring 2014, he was the first Jacob Kronhill Scholar at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, in New York. At Stanford, and earlier at Oxford and UCLA, he has supervised the dissertation work of more than thirty students now teaching at universities and colleges in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere.  He has delivered keynote addresses and endowed lectures at several dozen universities in the United States and abroad including the Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Central European University, Budapest; Emory; UCLA; University of Wisconsin, Madison; Vanderbilt, and the National Yiddish Book Center. 

Zipperstein’s articles have appeared in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, the Washington Post, The New Republic, the Jewish Review of Books, Chronicle of Higher Education and in many scholarly journals.  He was an editor of Jewish Social Studies for twenty years, and the book series Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture for a quarter of a century.  He is immediate past Chair of the Academic Council of the Center for Jewish History, in New York. Together with Anita Shapira, he is series editor of the Yale University Press/Leon Black Foundation Jewish Lives volumes that were named in 2015 the best books of the year by the National Jewish Book Council -- the first time a book series has won this prize. Some forty-five Jewish Lives books have already appeared, and Zipperstein is currently at work on a biography of Philip Roth for the series.  He and his wife Susan Berrin live in Berkeley.  

Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center

Department of Art and Art History

(650) 723-0513
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Osgood Hooker Professor of Fine Arts
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Pavle Levi is Osgood Hooker Professor of Fine Arts in the Art Department's Film and Media Studies Program. He is the author of several books, most recently, Jolted Images: Unbound Analytic (2018). He is the recipient of the 2011 Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
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In March 2011, NATO launched its Deterrence and Defense Posture Review, which will examine the Alliance's nuclear posture, among other issues.  At about the same time, the U.S. government began its formal interagency consideration of options for dealing with non-strategic nuclear weapons in a possible future round of arms reduction talks with Russia.

Written for the Nuclear Policy Paper series sponsored by the Arms Control Association, BASIC and the University of Hamburg, it describes the thinking within the U.S. government on NATO's future nuclear posture, including Alliance declaratory policy, and the possible arms control approaches for dealing with non-strategic nuclear weapons.

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As Hungary took over the EU  presidency, the EU member states watch the crisis in the Middle East unfold with great concern.  H.E. Dr. Gyorgy Szapary, the newly appointed Hungarian Ambassador to WDC, will discuss the political, economic, security and social implications for Hungary and the Europe of the last weeks events.

An economist by training, Dr. Szapary spent several years at the IMF in WDC, and is in a unique position to discuss the current events and their potential effects.

Jointly sponsored by The Europe Center at FSI, and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Philippines Conference Room

H.E. Mr. György Szapáry Ambassador of the Republic of Hungary to the United States Speaker
Seminars
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