The ideology of the inevitable degradation of mankind became the real mainstream of the early 20th century in enlightened European countries, including Russia. A new scientific direction, eugenics, was supposed to save the day. Based on the evolutionary teachings of Darwin and the newly born genetics, the adherents of the new scientific trend proposed to create special conditions for the reproduction of the elite of society. These included statesmen, scientists, the creative intelligentsia, the military elite, and sometimes just healthy and strong people. The founder of eugenics is considered the Briton Francis Galton, whose ideas regarding the improvement of the human race are still considered the scientific foundation of fascism and Nazism. Many scientists and thinkers were irritated by the ideology of eugenics, which, in fact, proposed to transfer the methods of breeding domestic animals and cultivated plants to humans. Two natural questions arose: who will identify people who are “full-fledged” for the social gene pool and what to do with those who were rejected? But despite this, eugenic societies at the beginning of the last century grew like mushrooms throughout Europe. For example, in England there were three societies at once, researching the problems of eugenics: the Mendelian School, the Biometric School at the University of London and the Society of Eugenics Practitioners. Over time, practical developments appeared, which received the general name of racial hygiene. Now such a phrase causes disgust and associations with Hitler's Germany, and at the beginning of the last century it was the peak of scientific progress.
In fairness, it should be noted that in Russia, and later in the USSR, there was its own school of eugenics. The leader was the talented biologist Nikolai Koltsov, under whose leadership the Russian Eugenic Journal was published. But Russian eugenics did not have a noticeable impact on public life, and in 1929 the Russian Eugenic Society collapsed.
But in Europe, the activity of breeders of the human breed was gaining momentum. One of the first "recommendations" on racial hygiene was offered by the British. In accordance with them, it was proposed to eliminate the "inferior" or defective from reproduction either by separating men from women in the ghetto, or by sterilization. It was also proposed to limit the size of the family in the category of those less suitable for reproduction, that is, those who on their own, without the help of the state, will not be able to support children. Conversely, all people valuable to the nation should form alliances and multiply as soon as possible. I quote:
"The first duty of every healthy married couple is to produce offspring large enough to counteract the deterioration of race."
There were also calls for control of conceptions and abortions in the program of English eugenics for those who, for various reasons, should not reproduce too quickly. They offered to conduct propaganda from the school bench to choose a healthy and intelligent spouse in the future. For each resident, it was also planned to introduce a special passport, in which the pedigree and hereditary diseases were prescribed. At that time, the inheritance of traits was not yet fully understood, but already thought about the certification of the population.
How did racial hygienists plan to assess the effectiveness of such innovations? For this, it was supposed to introduce regular anthropometric surveys of the population, showing where the gene pool of the British is heading. But the public opinion of the British was rather negative towards such things, obviously, they had not matured yet. Most of the protests were caused by provisions on the exclusion of certain categories of citizens from participation in reproduction. Similarly, the public in Austria, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland and France opposed the practical implementation of the ideas of eugenics. But in Scandinavia, racial hygiene came to the court very much. And not only in Sweden, but also in Denmark, Norway and Finland.
State Institute of Racial Hygiene
The first society for racial hygiene in Sweden appeared in 1909 and was located in Stockholm. It became famous, in particular, for traveling around the country with a very entertaining exhibition "Types of People". The influence of eugenics in the country gradually expanded, and by the early 1920s, the universities in Uppsala and Lund had created a powerful research apparatus to improve the indigenous nation. Ethnically, the most valuable for Sweden were Nordic sves - tall, blond and blue-eyed Aryans. But the Finns and Lupas did not fit this description at all - they were mostly short and black-haired.
Given the rather favorable attitude of society towards radical National Socialist ideas, the government decided that it was time to act. On May 13, 1921, the Riksdag Parliament of Sweden and the Social Democratic Prime Minister Karl Hjalmar Branting approved the opening of the world's first public institute for racial biology in Uppsala, which existed until 1975. The founding date of the institution, perhaps, can be called one of the most unseemly moments in the history of modern Sweden. Of course, not forgetting about the mutually beneficial cooperation between "neutral" Sweden and the Nazi regime during the Second World War. The first director of the new institute was Herman Bernhard Lundborg, a typical anti-Semite, psychiatrist and anthropologist.
One of his main "tricks" was the pathological fear of interracial marriages, which caused irreparable damage to the Swedish gene pool. The Institute for Racial Hygiene received its first research order from the state in 1922 from the inspector for the care of the mentally ill, Dr. Alfred Perrin. It was necessary to work out the conditions under which it would be allowed to sterilize the mentally ill, mentally ill and epileptics. Lundborg's office carefully studied the issue and presented the results in the form of a "memo". It turned out that in Sweden the growth in the number of disabled citizens is taking on alarming proportions, and the situation is aggravated by the still high fertility of this stratum of the population. A typical example of how a state structure is trying in every way to justify its existence and knock out additional funding. In the report of the Lundborg team, one could find the following:
“We consider ourselves entitled to restrict the freedom of the inferior by prohibiting marriages. But the easiest and surest way to prevent the reproduction of such individuals is operative sterilization, a measure that in many cases can be considered less contrary to the personal interests of the individuals concerned than the prohibition of marriages and long-term imprisonment."
The Swedes in this document referred to the positive results achieved by their colleagues from the United States. Americans, too, managed to mess themselves up with forced sterilization: from 1907 to 1920, fifteen states had regulations that made it possible to sterilize unwanted elements of society. Such laws went down in history as "Indiana" - after the name of the state that first adopted it. In total, 3,233 criminals and mental patients were forcibly deprived of the opportunity to have children in the United States.
But the Swedes were more humane - they refused to use sterilization as a punishment. Sweden took the first steps towards sterilization and served as an excellent example for Germany's southern neighbor. German doctors in the future will have excellent practice at the universities of Uppsala and Lund. They will go down in history with their inhuman programs of forced sterilization and euthanasia of elements of society objectionable to the regime. We must pay tribute to the Riksdag - parliamentarians rejected the adoption of the sterilization law twice - in 1922 and in 1933. But in 1934, under the influence of "irrefutable" evidence and the tacit participation of society, they nevertheless approved the voluntary deprivation of the ability of the country's citizens to procreate.
What does voluntary sterilization mean in Swedish? This means that without such a procedure, discharge from the hospital, admission to an educational institution or, for example, marriage is impossible. If the child, according to the doctors, by his abilities (only on the basis of tests) could spoil the gene pool of the Svei, then he was isolated in a special institution. Naturally, the return to the parents of the child could only be sterilized. In total, from 1934 to 1975, about 62 thousand people were subjected to voluntary-compulsory sterilization in Sweden. And in the 1930s, the Swedes were ready to go further and pass a law on the compulsory sterilization of prostitutes, vagrants and all those who, in the opinion of the ruling elite, were predisposed to antisocial behavior. Sterilization became part of the welfare program in Sweden, when the state intervened directly in the family life of citizens. The main ideologies of the Swedish demographic model, the spouses Alva and Gunnar Myrdal, fully encouraged the sterilization of unwanted members of society. By the way, Alva Myrdal received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982, and Gunnar in 1974 received a similar award in economics. Gunnar Myrdal is credited with the thesis that sterilization is an important and necessary element of the “great social process of adaptation” of a person to a modern urban and industrial society. The last gasp of Swedish addiction was the repeal in 2012 of the compulsory sterilization law on gender reassignment. He was declared unconstitutional at the request of an unidentified person.
This whole story could have become only an unsubstantiated legend, if not for one of the many victims of sterilization, Maria Nordin, who turned to the government in 1997 with a demand for financial compensation. In response, local bureaucrats explained to Nordin that the procedure was carried out in full accordance with the laws of the time. And then the unfortunate woman went to the newspaper "Dagens Nyheter" …
