Over the past decades, Swedish scientists have made some progress in studying both the past of their country and a number of problems of universal history. The former division of Swedish historiography into the hypercritical Lund school, with its increased interest in the history of all Scandinavia, and the nationalist Uppsala school has now receded into the background .1 In recent years, the differences between the conservative and liberal historians of the older generation (B. Boetsius, N. Anlund, E. Heckscher, L. Stavenov) and the more radical historians of the middle generation (E. Lenroth, S. U. Palm, B. Hansen) have rather made themselves felt, the radicalism of the latter consists in a certain departure from the nationalist traditions of Swedish historiography, in recognizing the important and sometimes decisive role of socio-economic factors (not so much production, however, as trade), in an emphatically critical attitude to narrative sources. However, the demands to "rewrite Swedish history anew" 2 and the desire for a "new synthesis" do not yet go beyond the framework of bourgeois methodology. Such a scholar as M. Blok 3 enjoys great authority among the" young " Swedish historians . Not fully understanding the essence of Marxism, these historians identify it with "economic determinism" and declare it "obsolete". The growth of progressive forces throughout Swedish historiography is facilitated by the Communist press's statements on historical issues, although (unlike in England, France, Italy, and the United States) there are no Marxist monographs on history in Sweden yet. The speeches of Swedish Marxists are either a critical analysis of the products of bourgeois and social-democratic authors, or short articles on historical materialism, on the history of the Swedish labor movement, Swedish culture, and the Second World War in the central organ of the Communist Party "Ny Dag" and the party's theoretical journal "Var tid". A major contribution to the de ... Read more