American Cruiser missiles were placed in Europe, and a "Star Wars” defence programme was planned. The Cold War was back, and the balance of terror was threatened. It was not until 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union, that the world climate once again became. Disarmament, openness (glasnost) and change became the order of the day in the Soviet Union. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, and a few years later, the Soviet Union was disbanded. The Cold War was at an end.
Foreign submarines in Swedish waters
In 1981, the world had again become troubled, and a Soviet submarine ran aground in the Karlskrona archipelago, bringing back fears of Russian invasions and imminent war. Sweden came down with a case of "submarine sickness.” In the years that followed, there were lots of sightings of foreign submarines in Swedish waters. The Armed Forces put a lot of time, effort and money into hunting submarines, and Swedish-Soviet relations reached a crisis.
The new slogans: individualism and materialism
The economic crisis at the beginning of the decade ended, and was replaced by the "happy eighties”, a time of prosperity and growth. Individualism and materialism became the new slogans. At the same time, environmental issues came to the fore. After the nuclear reactor disaster at Chernobyl in 1986, opposition to nuclear plants grew rapidly. That same year, Sweden experienced its domestic political assassination in centuries, the murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme. Toward the end of the decade and the beginning of the 1990s, Sweden experienced a new economic crisis, and defence spending was reduced.