Authors

Discussion

The paper investigates how peace and future were discussed and imagined from within neutral Sweden. More specifically, the paper focuses on the pacifist and feminist thinker Ellen Key who condemned war and propagated Sweden’s neutrality. Key’s views on peace were connected specifically to her personal connections in Finland and the Romanov Empire and her ideas on “women’s question”. According to Key, the special role in peace-keeping was ascribed to women. Through close reading of Key’s texts and correspondence, the paper will address the following questions: how were the ideas of peace elaborated in neutral Sweden? How Swedish neutrality was conceptualised in the context of ongoing war? How were Key’s ideas on peace and the future received by the parties involved in the war, especially in the Russian context about which Key wrote? The paper argues that the ideas of Swedish neutrality and pacifism elaborated by Ellen Key should be seen in a broader historical and transnational context: Swedish relations with Norway and peaceful Norway’s transition to independence in 1905 and Swedish relations with Finland.  Key’s views on peace were mainly shaped through the prism of the struggle of Swedish intellectuals for a peaceful non-military solution for Norway’s independence. Key was convinced that the same solution was possible for Finland’s independence, and consequently to all the fighting parties even in WWI. Hence, she supported the nations’ right for  self-determination and saw the Russian Empire in the similar position she saw Sweden vis-a-vis Norway back in 1905. The paper will also address the implications such ideas had for the development of humanitarianism later after the war.