As is known, history abounds in strange stories, in comparison to which the fantasies of the most famous writers look “drab” and farfetched. Here is one of such stories. When the 18-year-old Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte from Gascony, France (incidentally, a fellow countryman of the famous d’Artagnan), the son of a lawyer who was respected in the town of Pau for unimpeachable honesty and incorruptibility (the low-income Bernadotte family never managed to gain nobility), lost his father, he had to ponder, willy-nilly, on how to avoid banal poverty. The young man chose to devote his life to military service, signed up for the Regiment Royal-La Marine, received a proper military education, became an officer and a general (at age 31 during the Revolution). Then, as fate decreed, he met Napoleon Bonaparte who duly appreciated Jean-Baptiste’s talents, promoting him to Marshal of the Empire in 1804 at age 41. A brilliant career, isn’t it? But it is not all, dear reader!
I am saying so much in detail about Marshal Bernadotte because this Gascony-born person was the founder of the now reigning royal dynasty in Sweden and occupied that country’s throne as Charles XIV John (Karl XIV Johan) in 1818-44 (in fact from 1810). It was the result of very intricate diplomatic combinations and compromises. The point is that, in the period of “political turbulence” caused by the illness of the old King Charles XIII, the then Swedish ruling elite expected, by inviting the Napoleonic marshal as regent (it was clear that he would ascend the throne soon), to resolve the problem of a desired alliance with France and Bonaparte personally in a hope to enlist the latter’s support for winning back Finland annexed by Russia. But the future king behaved rather unexpectedly and joined, on the contrary, the anti-Napoleonic coalition in 1813. He focused his efforts, quite successfully, on annexing the Norwegian territory thitherto owned by Denmark. To sum it up, Charles XIV John showed a tough nature in the three decades of his reign and was in no way a “puppet king.”
In general, it should be emphasized that Swedish monarchs (the most ancient historical information about them can be found in the 9th-century sagas about the kingdom of Svear, the descendants of Vikings) were never “whipping boys.” All the Ukrainians know about the famous Charles XII, and many know about his predecessors King Gustav II Adolph (1611-32), Queen Christina (1632-54), Charles X Gustav (1654-60), and Charles XI (1672-97), when Sweden was a “Northern Empire” and they did not consider themselves being bound by any constitutions.
After the death of Charles XII in 1718, the country saw the so-called “Era of Liberty” (1720-72), when the center of power shifted to the government and parliament (a conflict-ridden Riksdag which consisted of the upper chamber that represented the nobility, the top clergy, and officials, and the lower chamber that represented peasants). King Gustav III (1771-92) staged a coup d’etat and partly restored absolutism, but he was assassinated in a conspiracy of the oppositional nobility. No one knows what destiny the monarchy would have had, had it not been decided to invite Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, an ostensible “outsider,” a foreigner, to the throne in 1810. Although his successors Oscar I, Gustav V, and Oscar II strove to broaden their power, monarchy remained part of a constitutional framework.
And now about the present day a little. The current King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden (on the throne since 1973) is the seventh monarch of the Bernadotte dynasty (incidentally, Sweden’s permanent neutrality was declared as far back as 1815). It must be noted that the life of the royal house is not so easy in such a country of social welfare as Sweden. The royal family is always criticized for even a negligible departure from high human rights standards. By tradition, the Bernadotte royal family does not exercise its right to vote in the elections, its members must belong to the Evangelist Lutheran Church and must not change their denomination, and cannot enter into a marriage without governmental permission. The programs of some Swedish parties (including the largest and now ruling Social Democratic Workers’ Party) have an item on the abolition of monarchy, but this is an outright utopia now because the majority of Swedish citizens support the monarchic institution.
It is, to a large extent, the result of the political compromise reached in 1971 at a meeting of the leaders of major political parties, most influential MPs, and leading businesspeople in the town of Torekov (the meeting was “moderated” by the Social Democratic Prime Minister Olof Palme). The compromise envisaged a modernized, democratic, “people’s” monarchy. What also contributed to this was a very attracting personality of the then King Gustaf VI Adolf (the “Old King,” as the people called him), the current monarch’s grandfather, who was very well educated (he was almost professionally keen on archeology) and modest (he could not stand any pomposity, was always the first to take off his hat to the people he came across, and always walked the streets of Stockholm with his wife without any guards). It is he who proposed a compromise: to keep the monarchy intact but to vest the king with representative and ceremonial functions only – the king is the head of state, but real power belongs to the government and the Riksdag; he opens annual sessions of the Riksdag in September (incidentally, he is allowed to appear there only once a year on this day); government ministers regularly inform the king on the current events; the king has the topmost military ranks – he is a full general and a full admiral, but Sweden’s armed forces are subordinated to the government only; he receives letters of credence from foreign ambassadors; and pays official visits abroad. This compromise has proved to be quite successful. According to the leading Swedish politicians, the importance of monarchy to the country is not in a concrete set of the monarch’s powers (Carl XVI Gustaf will be succeeded by his daughter, Crown Princess Victoria) but in the fact that the royal institution itself is an extremely important national symbol which must not be politicized or flatly denied. Members of the royal family are still among the most respected people in Sweden. To turn this experience to its own advantage, Ukraine should first learn to create, “build,” normal traditional political parties (centrist, left, right) instead of “personalized” blocs (there could be no “Olof Palme Bloc,” “Carl Bildt Bloc,” etc,. in the country of Vikings).
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The current Constitution of Sweden adopted in 1975 after two decades of preparation (Gustaf VI Adolf did not live to see it entering into force) has the following words: “All public power in Sweden proceeds from the people.”As we can see, the existence of the institution of monarchy in no way runs counter to this fundamental provision.
