The reaction to the war which came: an examination of a cold war shelter from the 1960s and the Swedish response to the war in Ukraine

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper presents an analysis of the relationship between civilians and politicians towards cold war air-raid shelters in Sweden, and how the encounter between Russia and Ukraine might affect how individuals perceive what was previously considered obsolete relics of the cold war. The study makes use of the air-raid shelter at Halvtumsgatan 3 in Gothenburg and interviews are conducted with its tenants, the landlord of the apartment building, as well as a local politician currently part of the municipality council. The text applies a theoretical framework based on post-colonial theories such as Homi Bhabha’s Encounter and Third-Space theories, and it is stressed that a change in the relationship between civilians, the shelter and Sweden’s national foreign policy is the result of the encounter between both Ukraine and Russia. This result is attained by focusing on the case study Halvtumsgatan 3, through interviews, and observing policy changes from the Swedish government.