The Cold War and the Olympics

Author(s): Allen Guttmann

Source: International Journal , Autumn, 1988, Vol. 43, No. 4, Sport in World Politics
(Autumn, 1988), pp. 554-568
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. on behalf of the Canadian International Council

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40202563

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 ALLEN GUTTMANN

The Cold War

and the Olympics

From 1952 to 1988, from the games held at Hel

just completed in Seoul, one of the most drama
the modern Olympics has been the sports rivalry
United States and the Soviet Union. Propagandists
of the Iron Curtain have presented the compet
Russian and American athletes as a portentous sym
gle between two ideological systems. As the game
increasingly important in the political sphere,
failure of the Olympic team, as measured in the un
counts, has often overshadowed the performances
and women who actually ran, jumped, threw, w
and otherwise displayed their physical skills. Pres
1980 decision to use an Olympic boycott as a diplo
ended, or ought to have ended, the naive notion t
might somehow be insulated from the intern
struggle. The Soviet Union's 1984 reprisal shou
surprised anyone.

Although tsarist Russia had participated in the 1912 Olympic

Games, without significant athletic success, the ussr initially
opted for the development of a sports system based on co-
operative physical culture rather than the competitiveness which
characterized 'bourgeois' sports. Whether or not the Interna-

Amherst College, Massachusetts; author of a number of books on sport, including

The Games Must Go On: Avery Brundage and the Olympic Movement (1984) and A Whole
New Ball Game (1088).

International Journal xliii autumn 1088

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 THE COLD WAR AND THE OLYMPICS 555

tional Olympic Committee (ioc), then dominated by Baron

Pierre de Coubertin and a covey of European aristocrats, was
sincere in its professions of openness to the ussr is difficult to
determine. The idealistic impulses which drove the ioc in the
direction of universal participation were probably stronger,
however, than the reactionary social and economic views of
many of its members, which led them to look upon the new
regime with fear and suspicion. At any rate, the Soviet Union
chose to sponsor a rival to the Olympic Games in the form of
the Red Sport International, founded in 1921 as an affiliate of
the Communist International. When the Soviet Union adopted
a more favourable view of competition in the period of the New
Economic Policy, the authorities staged the first Spartakiad in
1928 and invited foreign as well as Soviet athletes to display
their prowess in Moscow. The ussr hoped to draw attention
away from the games of the IXth Olympiad, celebrated in Am-
sterdam, but the Spartakiads, despite massive participation by
Soviet citizens, have never rivalled the Olympics as an inter-
national sports event.
The Soviet Union's change of heart with respect to the
Olympic Games came after World War II. Having achieved
great-power status and having accepted a role in the United
Nations, Josef Stalin decided to end the Soviet Union's self-
willed athletic isolation; but a desire to join the club had to be
matched by the ioc's desire to admit. As President Sigfrid Ed-
strom remarked in 1945 in regard to the first postwar session
of the ioc: The great problem will be the question of Russia.'1
(In fact, the ioc's first great problem was what to do with Ger-
man and Italian colleagues who had been active members of
the Nazi and Fascist parties, but that is another story.) Although
the wishes of the athletes were not always uppermost in the
members' minds, Edstrom wrote to the ioc vice-president, Avery
Brundage, that 'our young athletes all over Europe are crazy

1 University of Illinois (Urbana), Avery Brundage Collection, box 42, Edstrom to

Brundage, 7 December 1945.

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556 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL

to have the Russian athletes participate.'2 It is clear from pub-

lished documents and from archival records that there was no
significant opposition to Soviet participation from any of the
ioc's leaders. Despite their dislike of communism in general
and the Soviet Union in particular, they were more than ready
to act upon their cherished principle of universalism. As Brun-
dage commented as early as 1944: 'If the Russians would agree
to live up to the rules and regulations of the [International
Sports] Federations and the International Olympic Committee
there is no reason why they should not be members.'3
Unfortunately, the Russians were reluctant to agree to these
rules and regulations (which, of course, were not universally
adhered to in the non-communist world either). The first great
obstacle was the notorious amateur rule. The best Soviet athletes
were state-supported (often as members of the military or the
police apparatus). Stellar performances, such as unofficial world
records, were richly rewarded with automobiles, apartments,
and cash bonuses. The second difficulty was that the Olympic
Charter called for complete separation between the state and
the national Olympic committee. There had scarcely been an
ioc session in which some indignant member did not rise to
complain of Ting£rence politique,' but the newly formed Na-
tional Olympic Committee of the Soviet Union was unques-
tionably under government control and no one in the ioc was
foolish enough to imagine that Stalin was about to grant in-
dependence to that or any other organization. 'How there can
be a Russian Olympic Committee that is autonomous,' wrote
Brundage to Arnold Lunn in 1950, 1 do not understand.'4
Nonetheless, Edstrom and Brundage, whose influence in the
ioc was dominant, decided to accept the assurances of the
Soviet sports administrators and to ignore both the infractions
of the amateur rule and the subservience of the national com-
mittee. After a 1954 trip to the Soviet Union, Brundage, now
president of the ioc, refused to admit that the ussr continued

2 Ibid, Edstrom to Brundage, 4 December 1946.

3 Ibid, box 36, Brundage to Frederick Rubien, 17 March 1944.
4 Ibid, box 31, Brundage to Lunn, 7 April 1950.

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 THE COLD WAR AND THE OLYMPICS 557

to provide 'special inducements or material rewards' to its ath-

letes.5 When John T. McGovern, legal counsel to the United
States Olympic Association, wondered about Brundage's aston-
ishing credulity, the response was legalistic: 7 was told by the
Russians that they knew the Olympic rules and followed them.'6
No doubt he was told and no doubt he knew that the Soviet
Union never intended to follow the rules.
Before the Soviet Union was able to join the ioc, however,
it had to join the various international sports federations. It
made its entrance into the International Amateur Athletics Fed-
eration, which controlled track and field, contingent upon the
federation's agreement to make Russian an official language,
to provide the ussr with a seat on the executive council, and
to expel Spain (then ruled by a Fascist government). The fed-
eration, led by the Marquis of Exeter (also an important mem-
ber of the ioc), refused the Soviet demands, which were then
dropped. As the ioc neared a decision formally to invite the
ussr to join the Olympic family, the Soviet Union made the
same triad of demands. Once again, they were rejected and the
ussr dropped them. When the vote on admission was taken at
Vienna in May of 1951, there were three abstentions, but no
ioc member voted against.
When it came time to select individual members to 'repre-
sent the ioc to the ussr' (which is the way the ioc liked to
interpret the relationship), the committee was informed that
the Kremlin had sent Konstantin Andrianov to Vienna. That
the Russian spoke neither of the ioc's two official languages
was an additional insult. 'When the Russians announced that
they intended to name their own i.o.c. members, Edstrom huffed
and puffed and banged his cane upon the table and lectured
the Russians on i.o.c. rules and ordered them out of the room.'7
The ioc members chuckled at the Soviet embarrassment, but

5 A very Brundage, 'I must admit - Russian athletes are great!* Saturday Evening
Post, 30 April 1955, 29.
6 Brundage Collection, box 32, Brundage to McGovern, * August iqkk.
7 Allen Guttmann, The Games Must Go On: Avery Brundage and the Olympic Move-
ment (New York: Columbia University Press 1984), 139.

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55O INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL

they were unable to answer the question: if they rejected An-

drianov, who did they know to elect in his place? No one.
Andrianov was elected and a similar willingness to bend the
rules allowed the group to accept the appointment of Aleksei
Romanov a year later.
Once Andrianov and Romanov were seated, there began a
complicated, protracted bureaucratic struggle over the struc-
ture of governance within the Olympic movement. To the man
(or woman) on the street, however, such matters as an additional
vice-president from the Third World or the guarantee of an
ioc member to represent every national committee were of
little moment. The public's attention was drawn, inevitably, to
the Olympics as sports events. From Helsinki in 1952 to Mon-
treal in 1976, there was a widely held perception that the games
were a continuation of politics by other means. On the American
side, this perception was an unofficial one, as befits a polity still
committed, at least in principle, to liberal rather than socialist
organization. On the Soviet side, however, athletic triumphs
over the 'capitalist' nations were an officially recognized goal,
and every victory by a Soviet or Hungarian or Czech athlete
was heralded as a sign of ideological superiority. Athletes like
Vladimir Kuts and Ludmilla Touresheva were hailed as symbols
of New Socialist Man. There is no consensus about a point
system, but impartial observers agree that the United States
'won' the competition in 1952 and 1968 while the ussr reaped
a larger harvest of medals in the other games between 1952
and 1976. An ironic consequence of the athletic triumphs of
the Warsaw pact nations is that the United States and other
members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (nato)
have begun belatedly to imitate the kind of state-sponsored
sports systems first developed in Moscow and Leipzig.

11

Because liberal theory affirms the minimalist state and depre-

cates 'political interference' in sports, it is also ironic that it was
the United States, not the Soviet Union, which first turned to
the Olympic boycott as a weapon in the Cold War. The games

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 THE COLD WAR AND THE OLYMPICS 559

were, of course, always political in at least two senses. First of

all, de Coubertin and his fellow Olympians on the ioc conceived
of them as an instrument of international reconciliation. Sec-
ondly, it was stipulated that the games were to be open, at least
in principle, to all athletes regardless of race, religion, ethnicity,
or ideology. (The initial reluctance of the ioc to open the games
to female athletes was also political.) The threat or actuality of a
boycott, however, made it impossible to ignore the political di-
mensions of the games. An Olympic boycott had been threatened
or used before 1980, most notably when American sports admin-
istrators came within a whisker of boycotting the 'Nazi' Olympics
of 1936 and when more than a score of African nations departed
from the 1976 games in Montreal to protest the ioc's refusal to
punish New Zealand for its rugby contacts with South Africa (the
only nation ever expelled from the Olympic movement).
The boycott drama of 1980 began when Radio Moscow re-
ported on 28 December 1979 that the Soviet Union had been
asked by the government in Kabul to intervene in Afghanistan.
The options available to the United States administration were
meagre. Diplomatic protests are useless. Economic reprisals bear
political costs. The Soviet Union can veto Security Council res-
olutions. An Olympic boycott is obviously a weak and ineffectual
weapon, but it was attractively available and relatively inexpen-
sive in political as well as economic terms. The prolonged crisis
over the seizure of American hostages in Tehran was unques-
tionably on President Carter's mind when he determined that
some kind of decisive action was necessary. He indicated the
possibility of an Olympic boycott on 4 January and announced
his ultimatum on the twentieth: Soviet withdrawal or American
boycott.
Ironically, the Final Report of the President's Commission on
Olympic Sports (1977) had deplored 'the actions of governments
which deny an athlete the right to take part in international
competition.'8 Carter was not, however, in a legalistic mood.

8 Final Report of the President's Commission on Olympic Sports (Washington: US

Government Printing Office 1977), 1.

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5OO INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL

Informing the president of the United States Olympic Com-

mittee, Robert Kane, of his determination to deiiy this right,
Carter announced: 'I ... urge the US Olympic Committee, in
cooperation with other national Olympic Committees, to advise
the International Olympic Committee that if Soviet troops do
not fully withdraw from Afghanistan within the next month,
Moscow will become an unsuitable site for a festival meant to

celebrate peace and good will.'9 In response to Carter's ob-

viously political demand, Kane announced: 'if we started to
make political judgments, it would be the end of the Games.'10
When the athletes too proved less than enthusiastic about his
proposal, Carter became uncharacteristically tough: 'I cannot
say what other nations will not go. Ours will not go.'11
On 24 January, a compliant House of Representatives en-
dorsed Carter's boycott proposal by a vote of 386-12. The Sen-
ate followed suit on the twenty-ninth with a vote of 88-4. One
might have expected the United States Olympic Committee to
view the matter differently. Article ix of its charter reads: 'No
member of the usoc may deny, or threaten to deny, any am-
ateur athlete the opportunity to compete in the Olympic Games.'
On 3 January, the committee's executive director, Don Miller,
had spoken in opposition to the boycott, but that opposition
eroded quickly as the White House threatened not only to cut
off federal support for Olympic sports but also to tax the usoc
on its other sources of income. When the committee gathered
to make its decision, Vice-President Mondale declared porten-
tously: 'History holds its breath, for what is at stake here is no
less than the future security of the civilized world.'12 The usoc
surrendered on 12 April with a vote of 1604 to 797. The lame
excuse given by Kane and others was that it really had been a
matter of national security.

9 Quoted in Baruch Hazan, Olympic Sports and Propaganda Games (New Brunswick
nj: Transaction Books 1982), 124.
10 Ron Fimrite, 'The Olympic crisis,' Sports Illustrated 52(4 February 1980), 20.
1 1 Kenny Moore, 'Stating "iron" realities,' ibid, 52(31 March 1980), 17.
12 'The decision: no go to Moscow,' New York Times, 21 April 1980.

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 THE COLD WAR AND THE OLYMPICS 56 1

Many of the athletes were embittered by the sacrifice of their

dreams to political expediency. Pentathlete Jane Frederick com-
mented: 'whichever way it goes this time, I must accept the
inescapable conclusion: I am a pawn.'13 Others, like high-jumper
Dwight Stones, proudly subordinated their athletic careers to
what was portrayed as the national interest. Public opinion was
unquestionably behind Carter. A poll published on 2 February
had shown 73 per cent in favour of the boycott.
Between 4 January, when Carter first indicated the possi-
bility of a boycott, and 20 January when the ultimatum was
issued, there had been a flurry of diplomatic activity. Muham-
mad Ali was sent on a mission to Africa, where his ignorance
of international politics angered African leaders who felt, quite
correctly, that Carter had underestimated their sophistication.
Carter personally solicited the co-operation of nato allies. It
seemed, at first, that Great Britain was no problem. Prime Min-
ister Thatcher joined the boycott movement on 17 January and
the House of Commons voted in favour of a boycott on 18
March by a margin of 315 to 147. A week later, however, the
British national committee, led by the outspoken Dennis Fol-
lows, lived up to its rhetoric of independence and defied the
government, which then spitefully refused permission for mil-
itary personnel to go to Moscow. (When the Australian gov-
ernment was defied by its national committee, the government
paid a number of athletes $6,000 each to stay away from the
games.) The British defection from the ranks was certainly a
major defeat for Carter.
The People's Republic of China joined the boycott on 1
February, but the initial response from Western Europe was
negative. The secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, infuriated many
Europeans when he appeared at the winter Olympics at Lake
Placid and used the ceremonial occasion for a highly political
tirade. 'Vance's speech,' wrote the 10c president, Lord Killanin,

13 Kenny Moore, 'The "pawns" make a move,' Sports Illustrated 52(4 February
1980), 22.

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5O2 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL

in his memoirs, 'was greeted in absolute silence by everybody.'14

All seventy-three ioc members voted to reject Vance's appeal.
On 5 March, eighteen European national committees voted
their opposition to a boycott. Because the team from the Federal
Republic of Germany was expected to be among the strongest
to compete in Moscow, if a German team went, it was extremely
important to Carter to persuade this reluctant ally not to go.
Initially all parties were hostile to a boycott. The Christian Dem-
ocrats and the Free Democrats soon came round, but Carter
had to put great pressure on the Social Democrats to bring
them on side. The West German government, in turn, at-
tempted to convert the German national committee from its
initial opposition to a boycott. One reason for German reluct-
ance was that Willi Daume, an ioc member and the leader of
the German national committee, was generally expected to fol-
low Lord Killanin as the next president of the ioc. (The election
was scheduled for Moscow - at the games.) The German ath-
letes, moreover, were less compliant, better organized, and more
articulate than their counterparts in the United States. On 16
March, they appealed to their government to withstand Amer-
ican pressure, but the Bundestag voted, on the twenty-fifth, for
a boycott. The tally was 446-8-9. The German national com-
mittee collapsed under the political pressure and fell in line on
15 May, two days after the French national committee had
declared its independence with a 23-0-1 vote for participation
in the games. The vote in the German committee was close: 59-
40.
Except for Norway, whose national committee decided to
join the boycott, the rest of Europe went the way of the inde-
pendent French rather than the compliant Germans. Canada's
prime minister, Joe Clark, had originally declared himself against
a boycott because it would have 'no practical effects.'15 By 27
January he had changed his mind. As Canada (26 April), Israel
(22 May), and Japan (24 May) climbed aboard the half-empty

14 Lord Killanin, My Olympic Years (London: Seeker and Warburg 1983), 181.
15 Toronto Globe and Mail, 8 January 1980.

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 THE COLD WAR AND THE OLYMPICS 563

American bandwagon, it was clear that Carter's power of per-

suasion was ineffective except where the government was mili-
tarily or economically dependent upon the United States or
where indigenous factors predisposed the regime to express
solidarity with the Afghans, as was the case in the Islamic world.
In the end, 62 nations joined the boycott; 81 participated in
the games.
In some ways, the Soviet response was the most interesting.
'From the outset the Soviet Union refused to accept the fact
that the boycott was a reaction to the invasion of Afghanistan.'16
Among the explanations it offered instead were: that President
Carter needed something to salvage his sinking popularity in
an election year; that nato militarists wished to diminish the
chances of peaceful co-existence; and that the Americans were
unable to contemplate the thought of Moscow's success as Olym-
pic host. While Tass announced that the boycott violated the
Olympic Charter, the Helsinki accords, the United Nations
Charter, and the Amateur Sport Bill of 8 November 1978,
Sovetsky Sport explained that the boycott was contrary to the
United States constitution. The reasons set out by Carter went
unmentioned.

in

Although the Soviet Union and its allies minimized t

of the boycott and the protests made at the games, w
nations eschewed national flags and anthems and ava
selves of Olympic symbolism, Moscow proclaimed the
the most glorious of all. Despite the brave words, it w
to everyone that the games were seriously diminishe
absence of the American, Canadian, German, and
teams. David Kanin's assessment is probably sound
lost a significant amount of international legitim
Olympic question.'17
The likelihood of Soviet retaliation in 1984, when

16 Hazan, Olympic Sports and Propaganda Games, 130.

1 7 David Kanin, 'The Olympic boycott in diplomatic context/ Journal o
Social Issues 4(spring-summer 1981), 20.

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504 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL

were scheduled for Los Angeles, was discussed from the mo-
ment that Carter first announced his intentions for 1980. The
question of Soviet participation was definitively answered on 8
May 1984 when the ussr's national committee issued the fol-
lowing statement:

Chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria are being whipped

up in the United States. Extremist organizations and groupings of all
sorts, openly aiming to create 'unbearable conditions' for the stay of
the Soviet delegation and performance by Soviet athletes, have sharply
stepped up their activities. Political demonstrations hostile to the ussr
are being prepared, undisguised threats are made against the ussr
National Olympic Committee, Soviet athletes and officials. Heads of
anti-Soviet, anti-Socialist organizations are received by us adminis-
tration officials. Their activity is widely publicized by the mass media
... Washington has made assurances of late of the readiness to observe
rules of the Olympic charter. The practical deeds by the American
side, however, show that it does not intend to ensure the security of
all athletes, respect their rights and human dignity and create normal
conditions for holding the games ... In these conditions, the National
Olympic Committee of the ussr is compelled to declare that partici-
pation of Soviet sportsmen in the Games is impossible.18

There was no mention of retaliation as a motive.

Although some had predicted this decision, most commen-

tators were caught by surprise. Certainly the Soviet Union gave
few signs of dissatisfaction with the arrangements in Los An-
geles in the autumn and winter of 1983-4, even when the Cali-
fornia state legislature, angered by the Soviet destruction of a
Korean Air Lines jet on 1 September, had voted unanimously
for a resolution that Soviet athletes should be barred from en-
tering the United States to participate in the games. Indeed,
Marat Gramov, head of the Soviet national committee, re-
marked on 7 December that he saw no reason for the Soviet

18 Quoted in Kenneth Reich, Making It Happen: Peter Ueberroth and the 1984
Olympics (Santa Barbara: Capra Press 1986), 208-9.

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 THE COLD WAR AND THE OLYMPICS 565

team to stay away from the games. Visiting Los Angeles, Gra-
mov seemed satisfied with arrangements (which included spe-
cial permission for Aeroflot flights and for a Soviet cruise ship
to dock at Long Beach). On 6 February, at the winter games
in Sarajevo, Konstantin Andrianov (still a member of the ioc)
opined that the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee
(laooc) was doing an excellent job. His younger colleague,
Vitaly Smirnov, indicated that he was not worried about the
safety of Soviet athletes.
Shortly thereafter, Yuri Andropov died and was replaced
by Konstantin Chernenko. Whether this change in the Soviet
leadership made a difference is difficult to determine. The laooc
chairman, Paul Ziffren, thought that it did. Given the secretive
nature of the Soviet regime, we cannot know exactly when the
Kremlin decided on a tit-for-tat strategy, nor can we gauge what
opposition there was to this strategy within the Politburo, the
Soviet national committee, or the governments and national
committees of the Soviet Union's allies. As late as 24 April, the
ioc's president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, was able to an-
nounce, after meeting with Soviet and American officials in
Lausanne: 'We may say that the black clouds that accumulated
in the Olympic sky have vanished or are very soon going to
vanish.'19

Speculation on the internal debates of the Politburo is idle

for anyone but Kremlinologists, and perhaps for them too, but
one must at least venture an opinion on the motivation behind
the decision to boycott. Although the Los Angeles police and
the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not always work well
together, there seems to be no reason to think that security was
inadequate or that Soviet worries about the safety of their ath-
letes should be taken at face value. There was the threat of

agitation by part of the local emigre community, but a dem-

onstration at laooc headquarters had drawn fewer than 100
persons and a petition that was to have had one million names

19 Ibid, 223.

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566 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL

actually garnered one-tenth of one per cent of that number.

Soviet authorities must have been well enough informed about
American political conditions to have expected some kind of
agitation. It is inconceivable that they had not realized the pos-
sibility of protest before 8 May, when their decision was an-
nounced. For decades international sports events have been
occasions for athletes from the Warsaw pact nations to defect
to the West, but there was no reason to fear an exodus of the
sort that occurred in Melbourne in 1956 in response to the
Hungarian revolution. Ziffren called the Soviet statements of
concern over security transparently absurd.'80
Charges of petty harassment by the State Department have
always been part of East- West relations, but an incident of some
importance had occurred on 1 March when the Reagan admin-
istration denied a visa to the ussr's proposed Olympic attache,
Oleg Yermishkin, whom American officials identified as a kgb
operative. There seems little doubt that Yermishkin was in fact
an intelligence officer who had been given a hurried course in
sports administration. Peter Ueberroth, the director of the
laooc, had tailed to sway the administration to overlook this
matter, but he was successful in a related effort. When the
German Democratic Republic complained about the wording
of the standard United States visa application, Ueberroth per-
suaded the State Department to alter the language of the ques-
tionnaire. Some have speculated that the Soviet Union may have
feared athletic embarrassment at the hands of an American
team with the 'home court* advantage. This was Ueberroth's
opinion, but the Americans were not likely to have done much
better against the Soviet Union and its allies than they had at
Montreal in 1976, when the Soviet Union and the German
Democratic Republic outscored the United States with 49 and
40 gold medals, respectively, to the latter's 34. A survey of
world-record holders in various quantified disciplines gives no

20 Ibid, 216. For a contrary view by a West German scholar, see Sport und Politik
(Frankfurt: Peter Lang 1987), 448.

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 THE COLD WAR AND THE OLYMPICS 567

reason to think the Soviet Union and its allies were faced with
athletic humiliation in Los Angeles. In short, there seems little
doubt that the ussr's decision was motivated mainly by the
desire to retaliate for the damage done in 1980. As Ueberroth
commented after the games were over: 'I knew how bitterly
hurt they were [in 1980].'21
How much damage was done in 1984? The ussr and sixteen
of its allies stayed away, but the laooc hosted 140 teams, in-
cluding one from Rumania (which was greeted with wild en-
thusiasm by the spectators). There were no serious incidents.
The dominance of the home team was enough to delight Amer-
ican spectators but insufficient to deny others a modicum of
nationalist excitement. The laooc, under Ueberroth's dicta-
torial leadership, raised so much money from television and
from a phalanx of corporate sponsors that the committee was
able to report a 'surplus' (that is, a profit) of over $200 million,
a fact which allowed propagandists in Washington and Moscow
to say in unison: 'We told you so.'
One of the strangest moments in the propaganda war came
when the usoc president, William E. Simon, condemned both
the Soviet Union and the United States for political interference
in the games: 'The most pressing question is whether the Olym-
pic movement can survive repeated invasions by governments
that want to make participation an adjunct of foreign policy.
Hitler's exaltation of Aryan superiority at the 1936 Games in
Berlin seems mild in comparison with more recent acts: the
Palestinian terrorist attack at Munich in 1972, the 1980 Amer-
ican-led withdrawal to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghani-
stan, and now the Soviet boycott.'28 One is left to wonder if
Simon's views will prevail in the event of another campaign like
Carter's.

James Riordan, the foremost Western authority on Soviet

sports, has alleged that the Reagan administration has sought

21 Ibid, 212.
22 William £. Simon, 'Olympics for the Olympians/ New York Times, 29 Tuly 1984.

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568 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL

'to force the Soviet Union and its aligned nations, if not out of
the Olympics altogether, at least into an uncomfortable di-
lemma. The extraordinary attempts by the us administration
to keep most Communist nations out of Los Angeles, and the
imposing upon them of the us client-state of South Korea as
host nation for the 1986 [sic] summer Olympics are just two
examples of the new concerted Western policy.'2* There is little
evidence to prove or disprove such an assertion, but the en-
thusiastic public reception of the Rumanian team in 1984, the
welcome afforded Katarina Witt and other Warsaw pact athletes
in Calgary in 1988, and the matter-of-fact acceptance of Soviet
participation in Seoul cast doubt on Riordan's theory. If the
Reagan administration and its nato allies had really wished to
drive the ussr into the athletic wilderness, they did nothing to
rally public opinion behind their project. Cuba was the only
major sports power to opt for a boycott of the summer games
in 1988. Neither the White House nor the Kremlin had much
to do with Castro's decision. The immediate prospect is for the
Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union to
continue in the less frigid form of athletic competitions.

23 James Riordan, 'Elite sport policy in East and West/ in Lincoln Allison, ed, The
Politics of Sport (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1986), 87.

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