There is a story that suggests Joseph Stalin hated Hamlet. Shakespeare’s story of bloody intrigue in the court of Denmark supposedly reminded Stalin of Kremlin politics – and could not criticism of the former provide a thinly veiled criticism of the latter? In another version of the story, Shakespeare’s Danish prince fascinated the dictator, and Hamlet was among the only Shakespearian characters that Stalin mentioned by name.
Stalin, though, had his own Danish story. In the spring of 1945, Soviet forces liberated the Danish island of Bornholm from German occupation and remained there for 11 months after the German surrender. Danish, British and US politicians all doubted that the Russians would withdraw from the island without considerable diplomatic and perhaps military pressure. They were wrong. Bornholm was quietly evacuated leaving no Soviet presence in Scandinavia.
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