Kalle Holmqvist was awarded the 2021 Robespierre Prize with the following justification:
“As a socialist writer and classical man of the Enlightenment, Kalle Holmqvist has worked as a historian, journalist, proletarian writer and organizer. In novels, debates and reports, he has written with clear pedagogy and a genuine class perspective about the burning issues of our time both at home and abroad, both in the present and in history, and consistently sided with the oppressed. He has in a broad, popular way addressed both young people and adults, which testifies to a genuine desire to make our world a little better and more understandable in all areas and for as many as possible. In these times of reactionary headwind, animated popular educators of a new generation are just what the cultural struggle needs more than anything else.”