In an interview in the largest Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter the former Soviet spy Stig Bergling revealed that he has been a member of the Swedish Left Party (v, Vänsterpartiet) since the beginning of this year. Officially it is no problem for the party, which supports the Swedish minority government of Social-Democrat Prime Minister Göran Persson, that a convicted spy is an active member, "because he has done his time in prison, and everybody deserves a second chance."

Who is Stig Bergling? He started to work for the Swedish security service Säpo, but as an officer in the military reserves he also worked for Defense and had access to secret information about Swedish military installations. During a mission for the UN in Lebanon in 1973 he sold documents to the GRU, the military intelligence service of the Soviet Union, but after his return to Sweden he continued to work for the Soviets. Eventually he was arrested in 1979 by the Mossad in Israel. That same year a Swedish court sentenced him to life in prison for espionage.

In 1987 he managed to flee from prison in Norrköping in a spectacular escape and, via Åland and Helsinki, found his way to his old employer, the Soviet Union. He lived for a while in Moscow and later in Hungary, but left for Lebanon in the autumn of 1990. He voluntarily returned to Sweden in 1994, where he served another three years in prison before being released.

In his interview with Dagens Nyheter Bergling says he did it mainly for the money, and says he is not a communist. The latter is a rather hot potato in the former communist Left Party since the controversy around party leader Lars Ohly in 2004. Research by the Swedish national television channel SVT revealed some rather undemocratic aspects of the current party president and Ohly was questioned and attacked about them in an interview. He defended himself by saying that someone who calls himself a communist does not necessarily endorse Soviet style communism. However, further research showed that Ohly called himself a Leninist until as late as 1999. In the aftermath of the interview almost all national Swedish politicians, from the right to the social democrats, insisted that he stop calling himself a communist, but he refused to do so until a year later when, on 30 October 2005, Lars Ohly said on Swedish television that he would stop to do so.

It seems to me that Ohly's real ideology is more important than how he labels it. Today, his party has a former and convicted Soviet spy in its ranks. Officially this is not a problem for the party: he has done his time in jail, and just like everybody else he deserves a second chance. When the party was asked whether it feared that he would sell the party strategy to political opponents, its spokesperson said they were confident that this would not happen. However, a question that immediately comes to mind, is whether the party would be equally forgiving if Stig Bergling had sold Swedish military secrets to, let's say, the CIA. Or is it possible that the party distinguishes between a peccadillo (spying for the Soviet Union), and mortal sins (spying for the United States)? Maybe even more remarkable is that the party allows someone to become a member who did not spy out of conviction, but who did it for the money. Does this mean that if the Americans had offered him more money, he would have sold the Swedish military secrets to them? Perhaps this is something for the Left Party to reflect upon this summer.

At present the Left Party supports the social democrat minority government together with the Green Party (mp). It has announced, however, that it will not support a new government after the general elections in the fall of this year, unless it can join the coalition, because it wants to have more influence on government policies. The party labeled itself communist until 1990, the year of the fall of Iron Curtain.