The Prime Minister Matriculates : Ex-Swedish Politician Attends Pomona College

Former Swedish Prime Minister Thorbjorn Falldin is a self-educated farmer who normally spends the darkest months of the year in a snow-blown forest cutting down trees and hauling timber to the nearest logging road.

But this winter he was in balmy Southern California--going to college for the first time ever.

Falldin was attending political science and economics classes, taking tennis lessons and leading Pomona College faculty in seminars on how to run a country. Not surprisingly, he also clearly enjoyed his first experience of the region’s “truly remarkable climate,” a welcome change from the sub-freezing temperatures on the family farm about 300 miles south of the Arctic Circle near Ramvik on the eastern coast of Sweden.

A big, thoughtful, slow-talking, polite, pipe-smoking man with large, calloused hands shaped by outdoor work, Falldin inspired comparisons with America’s frontier democrats of the last century.

“He doesn’t have the sort of slickness one expects of north European politicians,” said Hans Palmer, a Pomona economics professor. “It’s a little trite to say he’s a man of the people, but in a sense I think he is . . . He is probably more like an 1840s Indiana farmer cum politician than a 20th-Century American politician. Yet he’s quite sophisticated despite his apparent rough-hewn qualities . . . There’s a genuine warmth and human quality in the guy, which I think he would seek to translate into policy.”

Palmer speaks with some authority. The Pomona campus has hosted a number of former foreign officials, including former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and former British Prime Minister Edward Heath. However, those visits were for a few days at most.

Previous experience with politics and Falldin’s easy-going, approachable manner notwithstanding, some found his presence intimidating, degree or no degree.

“I found it daunting,” said Elizabeth Crighton, an associate professor of government who taught a comparative foreign policy class attended by Falldin (pronounced Fell-dean). Crighton, who has made several research trips to strife-ridden Northern Ireland, explained, “He was very polite and didn’t object to what I said but it was quite terrifying. When he didn’t come to class on occasion, you couldn’t very well say, ‘Sorry, you have to come to class.’ Former prime ministers get to skip classes.”

In an interview, Falldin himself noted with understatement that his practical experience often gave him a different view from that of a teacher. “I know that reality is often more complicated than that which a professor describes,” he said.

Palmer, for one, found Falldin’s pragmatism refreshing.

“Whenever you can bring the ivory tower and the real world together, it’s helpful,” he said. “I think that our students, particularly at a college like this, are often way up in the clouds of abstraction and we have to pull them down. . . . It’s also good for students and faculty to see a public figure who knows his own mind, is very direct and is very honest in his responses. In a period when there is some skepticism and cynicism about the credibility of public officials, I think it’s valuable for them to see that.”

Leader of Coalition

Hardly a household word in this country, Falldin is probably best known as the conservative coalition leader who in 1976 unseated Olaf Palme, the outspoken and fiery Socialist prime minister assassinated on a Stockholm street last year. During three terms totaling five years as prime minister, Falldin’s closest brush with international prominence came in late 1981 when a Soviet submarine ran aground in Swedish waters, generating a fleeting crisis and a few days of worldwide headlines.

So while his presence here created no stir beyond the campus, in Sweden it was another matter. The 60-year-old Falldin’s encounter with higher education got big play in that country of 8 million, said Steven Koblik, a Pomona College faculty member who has known Falldin since 1973, helped arrange his visit and served as Falldin’s translator until he left the country late last week.

“I don’t think there’s been any Swedish newspaper that has not written about it in big form, one or two full pages,” Koblik said, noting that the Swedish press considers Pomona “a very strange place because Sweden doesn’t have small, private liberal arts colleges.”

Falldin’s eight-week stint as elder statesman and student may have gotten so much attention at home because “people in Sweden are aware that Thorbjorn is not formally educated,” Koblik said. “ . . . I think for them his willingness to come out and participate in a university was a very exciting and attractive thing.”

Retired From Politics

Now avowedly retired from politics, Falldin said with some humor that he now seems to be bigger news than when he was an active politician. After he got a speeding ticket last fall, the incident was played up by the Stockholm dailies, he explained.

“I’ve been away from public life about a year and perhaps the editors have decided there’s a kind of residual interest in me as a person,” he said.

As head of the Center Party, Falldin was the only Swedish party leader without a university education. He finished elementary school but did not attend high school because his father became ill and young Falldin had to help out on the farm. He filled in the gap with correspondence courses and twice-a-week classes at a nearby village.

First Local Election

However, Falldin jumped into politics early, attending an Agrarian Party youth league meeting at age 14. He won his first local election at age 25.

While acknowledging his lack of a degree is a rarity among political leaders, Falldin insisted that he hasn’t been seriously handicapped by that lack.

“I dare say because I’m self-educated and because I learned about society through my work in youth organizations and other activities, my knowledge of society is much broader than would have been the case if I were academically trained,” Falldin said. “Academicians often have the responsibility to understand a much narrower range of society’s functions.”

‘Dedicated Commitment’

Falldin, who understands English but does not speak it, regrets that he hasn’t learned a couple of other languages, as he would have at a university. But he added, “In a political context, it was an obvious advantage to have an education but the most critical thing was to have a strong and dedicated commitment to a political party.”

Falldin declined to give his opinion of the Iran- contra controversy embroiling the Reagan Administration but offered this observation on Reagan’s recent national television speech about the scandal:

“In one area the President is remarkably effective and that is when he meets the American people in front of a TV camera,” he said. “I believe that he has had a remarkable impact on a broad sector of the American people. It’s obviously very clever of him to say that he made mistakes but you learn from your mistakes and now we want to go forward.”

The former prime minister made a point of stressing that although he is a conservative by Swedish standards, he has little in common with American politicians of the same label. Large majorities of Swedish politicians in all parties support both the country’s cradle-to-grave welfare system and the free enterprise economy that supports that system, he said.

Falldin was also circumspect about the so far unsuccessful and controversial investigation into Palme’s assassination.

“This kind of murder on an open street in Stockholm is very, very difficult to solve,” he said. “Then there’s been the additional problem that the police chief in charge of the investigation and the prosecuting attorney have not worked well together, there has been conflict between the two.”

Crime May Yet Be Unraveled

Although more than a year has elapsed since Palme was shot down, Falldin said the crime may yet be unraveled. “Hope is the last thing that people give up,” he said. “We would like to believe that we will be able to solve this crime.”

Falldin said he had recently been appointed to a special commission that will study the Palme killing and the failed investigation. Among other things, the commission will make recommendations about how to protect politicians who previously were not guarded.

“This problem about what kind of security to give the politicians is a very difficult one because we don’t want to lose that character of Swedish politics, which makes it a very open democracy,” he said.

Falldin was most animated when he talked about farming and his opposition to all forms of nuclear power, whether in generating plants or weapons. Both of these subjects came together last year when his family’s land was squarely in the path of wind-borne radiation from the Soviet nuclear plant disaster at Chernobyl, he said.

Due to the fallout, Falldin said he was forced to slaughter about a dozen beef cattle well ahead of schedule and to pen up his flock of 50 sheep in a barn. He and his youngest son also have been turning over all the soil in their cultivated fields to dilute the radioactive dirt.

However, he said the worst aspect of the Chernobyl disaster is beyond his control. “. . .the greatest problem is the radioactivity in the water supply; all fishing has been stopped. The radioactivity that we got was Cesium-137 and it has a half life of 30 years . . . we have no ability to affect the areas outside of cultivation, no ability to affect the impact on wild animals and plants, elk, reindeer, rabbits, wild berries and so forth.”

Uncompromising Stand

Falldin, who was first elected partly because of his uncompromising stand against nuclear power, found that he could not maintain that position once in office. He resigned in 1978 when he saw that “I would have to break completely with that position I held personally and my party represented.”

Professor Palmer explained the situation. “As prime minister, he recognized that Sweden has the largest per capita investment in nuclear power in the world and that you just don’t throw that all away without serious disruption to the economy and society,” Palmer said. “He seems to believe that the present plan, which calls for phase out in the early 21st Century is practicable and acceptable.”

Toward the end of the interview, Falldin struck a note that would find a responsive chord in many American farmers.

It’s almost impossible to make money farming in Sweden, he said. “If you worked full time in the forest you could just cover your expenses. Just. Agriculture in general has enormous problems . . . but it’s a wonderful job to work with the animals and the seasons of the year and the earth and what it produces.”