to the jailhouse. Guards with machine guns were stationed on the walls and the military was called in. The prison guards were ordered to shoot Anton Nilson if necessary rather than letting him escape. Eventually the masses demonstrating outside the prison gave up and walked away. Finally, in October 1917, Anton Nilson and his two compatriots received a full pardon. It was the first decision made by Nils Edén's appointed coalition government of Liberals and Social Democrats, which under the following two years would institute democracy and women's suffrage in Sweden. In the Russian Revolution As Anton Nilson was released from jail, the Bolshevik Revolution had just started in Russia. With nowhere else to go, Nilson went to visit Russia in company with the Swedish communist leader Ture Nerman. Anton Nilson decided to join the Red Army, fighting as a pilot in the civil war. Nilson helped organize the air defense of Moscow, later taking command of the air force on the Baltic Front. For his services his comrades elected him to receive an award from Leon Trotsky. At the rise of Stalinism, Anton Nilson decided to return to Sweden in 1926. He would always consider Stalin as a traitor to the revolution, saying: "Stalin took the state police, which had been formed against the counter-revolution, and turned it against socialists...." and an adherent to the fascist model of a police state. His departure from the Soviet Union may well have saved him from the Great Purges during the 1930s. When Nikita Khrushchev took over the leadership of the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, Anton Nilson considered it a positive development. For the rest of his life, Nilson toured Sweden agitating for Swedish Communist rule. He also became revered as one of the Swedish Labour Movement's heroes, and his portrait is still today to be found at the headquarters of Landsorganisationen. His 100th birthday, during which Anton Nilson himself held a speech lasting for several hours, was celebrated by several Social Democratic members of the Swedish Cabinet. Anton Nilson lived to be 101 years old, and dying only months short of the fall of the Berlin wall. Of the Soviet Old Bolsheviks, he outlived all but Lazar Kaganovich, his junior by several years. Although Nilson expressed "regret" at his trial that he had killed and injured, he is not recorded as ever having apologised to