Ture Nerman (18 May 1886 – 7 October 1969) was a Swedish journalist, author, and political activist. He also wrote poems and songs.
Nerman was a vegetarian and a strict teetotaler. Alcoholism was a major social problem in Sweden in the early 20th century, and Nerman considered alcohol to be a drug that made the working class passive instead of fighting for better conditions.
Ture Nerman had younger twin brothers, the artist Einar Nerman and the archeologist Birger Nerman.
Early life Nerman grew up in a middle-class family in the working-class, industrial city of Norrköping. His father owned a bookstore in the city and had married an employee who was many years younger: she became the mother of Ture and his two younger brothers. As a boy, Nerman loved reading the books at his fathers store, especially western books about cowboys and Indians.
Nerman graduated from Norrköping gymnasium (secondary school) in 1903 at the age of 17. On his graduation day he took his school bible and tossed it in the Motala ström river. In his autobiography, Nerman describes this as his first revolutionary action. Some years later when he was asked by the Swedish Social Democratic Party's leader Hjalmar Branting what had made him a socialist, Nerman answered that it had been the questioning of religion.
After graduation he moved to Uppsala to study at Uppsala University.
Political awakening The year 1905 saw both a revolution in Russia and revolutionary development in Scandinavia as Norway declared itself independent from the rule of the Swedish crown. These changes radicalized Nerman politically to the left. He had already started reading August Strindberg, Leo Tolstoy and Ellen Key. Soon he would discover Karl Marx (even if it took many years until he fully started to study and understand Marxism). Nerman started going to socialist youth meetings in Uppsala.
In 1907, Nerman was conscripted for military service. By his own request, he got medical training. Nerman had already developed an anti-militarist standpoint and in 1908 he was caught by the secret police handing out illegal anti-militarist leaflets. He was first convicted to jail, but the penalty was altered to a 300 kronor fine. His father sent him the money, but the rebellious son used it to finance a trip to Paris, where he stayed a couple of weeks. Upon returning to Sweden he was once again sent money by his father to pay off the fine to avoid going to jail.
In 1909, Nerman moved to the northern city of Sundsvall where he started working as a writer for a Social Democratic newspaper called Nya Samhället (New society). At this point Nerman had already gotten a couple of his poetry books published. Many of these were radical, provocative poems, aimed against the church, the Swedish king and the bourgeoisie.
Nerman joined the Swedish Social Democratic Party and soon became part of the left wing together with Zeth Höglund. He became one of the leaders of the left opposition of the party against its reformist leader Hjalmar Branting.
On New Year's Day in 1912, and the following weeks, Nerman and some of his Swedish friends went to Germany to follow Karl Liebknecht during his election campaign. Nerman had met Liebknecht briefly a couple of years earlier on a socialist gathering in Stockholm, but this time they got to know each other well. In his autobiography, Nerman writes that he was surprised and impressed to learn that Liebknecht could speak almost fluent Swedish and liked to sing songs by Bellman.
World War I and Zimmerwald In November 1912, Nerman attended the special emergency convention of the Socialist International, which had been summoned to Basel in Switzerland, due to the outbreak of the Balkan Wars. At the convention, the leaders of all the European Socialist parties agreed to stand together internationally to prevent any future wars. With a united international working class, they stated, there could be no more wars.
Therefore, the outbreak of World War I in 1914, and the collapse of the Socialist International, came as a shock to Nerman. Almost all the leaders of the European Socialist Parties suddenly sided with their bourgeoisie governments in support of the war, and turned against their former Socialist allies. Workers were killing workers on the battlefields.
But there were exceptions. His friend Karl Liebknecht stood alone in the Berlin Reichstag, and against 110 of his own party members, when he voted against German war credits. Learning of Liebknecht's action, Nerman knew which side he was on.
Together with his friend Zeth Höglund, Nerman represented the Swedish-Norwegian members of the Zimmerwald Conference. It united the remaining international socialist anti-war movement, whose more prominent leaders were Vladimir Lenin, Grigory Zinoviev and Leon Trotsky from Russia, Robert Grimm from Switzerland, and Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht from Germany. Those two could not participate, but sent their greetings and support. Luxemburg was in jail for anti-war propaganda, while Liebknecht had been mobilized by the German military to dig trenches on the frontline. Returning to Sweden, Höglund was also sentenced to jail for his activities in the international anti-war movement, even though Sweden didn't participate in the World War.
In America At the start of the year 1915, (before Zimmerwald), Nerman travelled around in the United States for several months. To finance the trip he wrote articles for several Swedish newspapers. He arrived by boat in New York City where he stayed only for a short time but took the chance to go up to the top of the Woolworth Building, the highest skyscraper in the world at the time. He took the express train across the continent to San Francisco where he visited the World's Fair on opening day.
Nerman then started a tour speaking to American workers, mostly of Scandinavian origin, in Minneapolis and Chicago.
He also took some time to visit some relatives in Astoria, Oregon.
When Nerman returned in the mid summer to Sweden, Höglund complained, asking if it really had been necessary of him to go to America when he was so much needed at home in the intensifying class battle and the struggle within the Swedish Social Democratic Party between the left wing and the right wing.
The birth of Swedish Communism
At the beginning of 1917, the struggle between the left and the right within the Social Democratic Party resulted in a split. Höglund and Nerman, now considering themselves Communists, were expelled from the Party together with other prominent radicals such as Kata Dalström, Fredrik Ström and Stockholm's mayor Carl Lindhagen.
Höglund, who was the leader of the Party's youth organisation, managed to get the whole young socialists on his side in the foundation of the Swedish Social Democratic Left Party. The new party was formed in May 1917 and had around 20,000 members. It would soon change name and become the first Communist Party of Sweden. They launched a newspaper, Politiken, in which they wrote and published texts by other international communist leaders.
In April 1917, when Lenin passed through Stockholm on his journey from exile in Switzerland home to Petrograd, Nerman was one of those who greeted Lenin and took care of him while there. For instance, the Swedish Communists took Lenin to the PUB department store, where they bought him a brand-new suit so he would look good and clean coming back home to Russia.
Upon Lenin's return in Russia and the October Revolution that followed, Nerman and the Left Social Democrats fully supported the Bolsheviks and agitated for a similar Communist revolution in Sweden.
As an international representative of the Swedish Communist Party, Nerman had several communist contacts from all over the world: His friend Karl Liebknecht; Karl Radek, the Polish Bolshevik who had lived in Stockholm for a while; The Ukrainian-Italian socialist leader Angelica Balabanoff, who lived and worked in Stockholm; and Yrjö Sirola and Otto Kuusinen, two prominent Finnish communist leaders visited Nerman in Stockholm several times.
Nerman also corresponded with the American socialist leaders Eugene V. Debs, John Reed (who helped him write a book on the first World War (Folkhatet)) and the American communist leader Max Eastman, who provided Nerman with a subscription to The Liberator.
In Soviet Russia
At the end of the summer of 1918, Nerman traveled together with Angelica Balabanoff and Anton Nilson to Bolshevik Russia.
In Petrograd, Nerman was invited two visit the home of Zinoviev, who was the leader of the Petrograd Soviet. They knew each other from Zimmerwald. Zinoviev asked him: "When will you make revolution in Sweden?" Nerman replied modestly that they did not have a definitive date yet. The next day Nerman attended a rally outside the Winter Palace, in which Zinoviev and Balabanoff spoke to the red soldiers heading out to fight in the civil war.
After spending some days in Petrograd, the trip continued to Moscow, where Nerman was greeted by Kamenev and his wife, the sister of Trotsky. Nerman was welcomed to live with the Kamenev family at the Kremlin.
On 3 October, Nerman attended a grand meeting at the Bolshoi Theatre. Amongst the speakers were Sverdlov, Radek, Bukharin and the main speaker Trotsky. Lenin, who recently had been shot and wounded, could not attend, but his greetings were received with cheers and applause. Afterwards Nerman spoke briefly with Trotsky who was in a hurry to go out and fight in the Civil War the same night. Nerman mentioned that the Swedish press, and even the Social Democratic newspapers, wrote almost every day that the Soviet government was about to fall, but still it remained. "Yes," answered Trotsky with a stern smile, "and we will remain."
The day after, Nerman got to sit down with Bukharin for a long interview, in which Bukharin expressed his optimism in the world revolution and socialist future. The same day he met with Alexandra Kollontay, the female Bolshevik leader, who later would be the Soviet ambassador to Sweden.
Nerman returned to Sweden through the Finnish archipelago in late October. The positive energies he had massed from his experience in revolutionary Russia were replaced with devastation after hearing of the failed German revolution of 1918/1919, and the murdering of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.
Nerman made his second trip to Russia with Otto Grimlund in the spring of 1920, where he got to meet with Lenin, this time as the guest, after having been the host in Stockholm April 1917.
Upon returning to Sweden in the summer he learned about the death of his father. His family had tried to delay the funeral, but still he had missed it.
Nerman would make one more trip to Russia, in 1927. It was the tenth anniversary of the revolution. Lenin was dead now and things had started to change.
Against Stalinism Nerman condemned the rise of Stalinism in Russia, but when Höglund broke with the Communist Party in 1924, Nerman remained, although less involved in the leadership. The party's new leadership was composed of Karl Kilbom and Nils Flyg.
In 1929, the Comintern made sure that the power of the Swedish Communist Party was taken over by the minority fraction of Stalinists led by Hugo Sillén. The majority of the party's members, the non-Stalinists, were expelled, including Nerman, Karl Kilbom and Nils Flyg. The minority (Stalinists) seized the party's headquarter and its archives, but the majority (non-Stalinists) managed to keep control over the newspaper Politiken.
The majority, under the leadership of Kilbom, tried to keep running a Swedish Communist Party independent from Moscow. In 1934 this party took the name Socialist Party (Socialistiska partiet).