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Sport Under the Iron Curtain:
Alliance, Defection, and Competition
During the Cold War
By: Sam Sheldon
Europe Since 1945
Professor Bowman
2
Introduction: The Cold War and Sports
Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, Larisa Semyonovna Latynina. When these names come to
mind there is only one event they can be paired with. The Summer Olympics. The Summer
Olympics, to many, is the premier sporting event in the world. Every four years, millions of
people around the world gather around televisions or in the stadiums to watch world-class
athletes participate in events ranging from skeet shooting to basketball to rowing. This being a
year where the Tokyo Olympics has been postponed due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the
magnitude of the Olympics is truly being felt in its absence. It would be impossible for the
Olympics to have the impact it does if it was solely about sports. Despite the best efforts of those
like Avery Brundage, the Olympics has just as large of an impact in the areas of politics and
culture as it does in sports. This is particularly noticeable when one looks back to the Olympics
of the 1950s – 1980s when the politics of the Cold War dominated the games. This paper will
seek to investigate that time, covering the Summer Olympics that took place in Europe from
1952, when the Soviet Union first participated in the Summer Olympics, to 1980, when the
Summer Olympics found its way to Moscow. Using these Olympic Games, an argument can be
made that the combination of sports and politics at the international level was felt by more than
just the United States and the Soviet Union.
Much of the scholarship on the Olympic Games during this time covers the competition
between the two main powers of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States. Both
countries took a broad approach to focus on international sport as a way to engage in symbolic
warfare. The success of one side and failure of the other would act as subtle propaganda
promoting their political system. In her book The Olympic Games, the Soviet Sports
Bureaucracy, and the Cold War, Jenifer Parks approaches this conflict from the side of the
3
Soviet Union. She writes that in the Soviet Union, sports were essential to building the new state.
The role of sports in public health, education, and military preparation made it crucial to building
a strong Soviet society both before and after WWII. The Olympics were also an important way
to promote late Stalinism and communism to the rest of the world. Pitting Soviet-style sports
regimes against the "free" west sports programs allowed the Soviets to overcome many of the
negative perceptions of communism held by the rest of the world.
1
On the opposite side is Toby C. Rider’s book Cold War Games: Propaganda, the
Olympics, and U.S. Foreign Policy, in which he discusses the United States' approach to athletics
during the Cold War. Rider writes that the Americans were keenly aware of the threat Soviet
sport showed in its display of Soviet political and ideological strength, and, because of this, they
engaged in a "Total Conflict" that was fought in the trenches of public opinion. In order to do
this, the U.S. attempted to fully utilize the medium of the Olympic message for political gain
through the competition itself, the host cities, and by secretly gaining leverage within the
Olympic committee itself.
2
The attempts of these two powers to influence the games they competed in were not lost
on the games themselves. In his book Rome 1960: The Olympics that Changed the World, David
Maraniss writes about the political, cultural, and athletic landscape of the Rome Olympics. While
often overshadowed by games such as the Munich Olympics of ’72 or the Moscow Olympics of
’80, the Rome Olympics was still a significant affair. Maraniss writes that these games
represented the dying of the old order and the formation of the new one. These were the first
Olympic Games to be commercially broadcast, and this brought the athletic propaganda of these
1
Jenifer Parks, The Olympic Games, the Soviet Sports Bureaucracy, and the Cold War: Red Sport, Red Tape (New
York: Lexington Books, 2016).
2
Toby C. Rider, Cold War Games: Propaganda, the Olympics, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Urbana, IL: University of
Illinois Press, 2016).
4
countries to an even wider audience. Female athletes also had a much larger role than ever
before, as did the African countries that competed and represented the burgeoning success of the
African decolonization movement. The games also took place against the backdrop of an anxious
period of the Cold War, with the infamous U2 affair and Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to the UN
General Assembly putting fuel on the political fire.
3
If the political torch of the Olympic Games was burning bright after Rome, it would
become an inferno after the Munich Olympics of 1972. In their study, The 1972 Munich
Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany, Kay Schiller and Christopher Young show how
these games forged the state of Germany that we know today. The narrative of these Olympics
could be easily overshadowed by the boycotts of Rhodesia’s inclusion, the opposition to the
games by the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR), or by the most infamous event
that occurred, the murder of eleven Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists. Schiller and Young
attempt to overcome this by telling the story of the Munich from beginning to end. They write
that beyond the politics of the Cold War, these games were important for how they showed West
Germany’s successful rehabilitation to the world stage through their attempts to distance
themselves from the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the so-called “Nazi Olympics.”
4
David Clay Large’s book Munich 1972: Tragedy, Terror, and Triumph At The Olympic
Games follows a similar path, claiming that the Munich Olympics was the most political of all of
the modern Olympic Games. He reminds the reader that West Germany’s importance in the Cold
War was because of its position directly next to communist East Germany and that this resulted
3
David Maraniss, Rome 1960 : The Olympics That Changed the World (New York : Simon & Schuster, 2008),
accessed March 27, 2020, http://archive.org/details/rome1960olympics00mara.
4
Kay Schiller, The 1972 Munich Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany, Weimar and now 42 (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 2010).
5
in militant anti-communism in West Germany.
5
The most important point that Large makes is
that in the magnitude of the festivals and the political atmosphere surrounding them, especially
in the case of the Munich Olympics, it is easy for the athletes to get lost. That is the case for most
of these Olympic Games. What is also clear is that much of the scholarship on the Olympics
during the Cold War is very focused on the aims and actions of the two great powers, the United
States and Russia. This causes the experiences of the athletes of other nations to be
overshadowed as well. This paper will distance itself from this scholarship is to investigate the
Olympic involvement of the other nations of the Warsaw Pact in Europe, and to see what cultural
and political implications their involvement came with. The politics of the Soviet Union's allies
in Eastern Europe were just as intertwined with their sporting programs as they were for the
larger powers. Sports allowed these countries to show their allegiance to their socialist allies and
prove their dominance over capitalism and the west but were also examples of the
oppressiveness of the Stalinist system and provided an outlet for the discontent of the people
under the communist regimes.
Helsinki and Hungary: The Golden Team
The Helsinki Olympic Games were significant because they were the first true “Cold
War” Olympics. These games were the first in which the athletes of the Soviet Union would
compete against the athletes of the United States.
6
From this point forward, the games would
have an inherently political nature. But this was not the only major story to come out of the 1952
Olympics. If there is a story that defines the experience of the non-Soviet communist countries in
5
David Clay Large, Munich 1972: Tragedy, Terror, and Triumph at the Olympic Games (New York: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 2012).
6
Allen Guttmann, The Olympics: A History of the Modern Games (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press,
2002), 97.
6
Helsinki, it is that of the Hungarian national team and their gold medal-winning soccer team, the
“Golden Team.” One of the most famous football teams of all time, it was captained by the
legendary Ferenc Puskás, for whom the Puskás award is named. The team was formed by coach
Gustav Sebes, who needed to argue with Soviet-influenced Hungarian political authorities for the
ability to enter a team into the games.
7
The team's legend comes from more than just their
success, they would go on to have a deep impact on how the game of football itself is played.
The team pioneered the 4-2-4 formation and a unique playstyle, as described by Puskas as "'a
proto-type of the ‘total football’ played by the Dutch [in the 1970s].’”
8
Throughout the six years
of the team’s existence, including the 1962 Olympics, they had forty-two victories, seven draws,
and one defeat, which came in 1954 to the West German team in the game that became known as
“The Miracle at Bern.”
While the “Golden Team” exemplified the success of Hungarian international sports,
especially at the 1952 Olympics, it also exemplified the dark nature of sports under the iron
curtain. In 1952, Hungary was in the midst of Stalinist rule, characterized by harsh political
practices and oppression. This would take the form of violent altercations by the Hungarian
secret police with anyone who seemed to be a threat to the state.
9
Despite this, as shown by the
success of the football team at the Olympics, the Hungarian athletes achieved relative success in
sports. Yet this success came with a political cost. From 1948-1951, the Hungarian Communist
Party, the MKP, centralized more than just the economy; it also took firm control of the nation's
sports teams as well. All the sports clubs in the nation became attached to state-owned industries,
7
“The Legend of the Hungarian Golden Team Was Born at the Helsinki Games in 1952 - Olympic News,”
International Olympic Committee, last modified April 19, 2020, accessed April 30, 2020,
https://www.olympic.org/news/the-legend-of-the-hungarian-golden-team-was-born-at-the-helsinki-games-in-1952.
8
“The Legend of the Hungarian Golden Team.”
9
Johanna Mellis, “From Defectors to Cooperators: The Impact of 1956 on Athletes, Sport Leaders and Sport Policy
in Socialist Hungary,” Contemporary European History 29, no. 1 (February 2020): 60–76, 64-65.
7
and both the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defense placed teams under their
control, stacking them with the best players in the process.
10
This created an atmosphere in
which the sports teams, and their players, were seen as connected to the communist government
and essential in its promotion. While their needs were met to ensure that they were successful in
their athletic endeavors, heavy punishments were used to control their behavior and make them
into models of the Soviet Man and Woman.
11
This created the conditions that made their teams
so successful but also greatly damaged them, especially in the case of Sándor Szúcs.
Sándor was a defender on the Hungarian team owned by the Ministry of the Interior and
was drawn away from Hungary for love and for money. He had planned to escape to West
Germany with his mistress and also felt that he could earn money playing football in Italy.
12
Defection was the biggest threat to the Hungarian national sports body, and this was primarily
what the punishments were used to prevent. In 1951, Sándor attempted to purchase the
documents he needed to defect but unknowingly purchased them from an agent working for the
Ministry of the Interior. He was caught armed with a pistol on his way to the border. Sándor was
subsequently tried and despite pleas from Puskás and other members of the Hungarian national
team, he was sentenced to death.
13
This served as a painful lesson to Hungarian athletes and may
have served to assist in the success of the Golden Team. The team’s most talented players would
have been too scared to leave the country and be well-paid for their talents, instead choosing to
not risk death and play for Hungary. Their morale was most definitely shaken as well, yet they
still were able to find great success. The Hungarian football team at the time of the 1952
Olympics was an example of the initial strength of the Stalinist system. Hungarian officials saw
10
Mellis, “From Defectors to Cooperators,” 65.
11
Mellis, “From Defectors to Cooperators,” 65.
12
Mellis, “From Defectors to Cooperators,” 66.
13
Mellis, “From Defectors to Cooperators,” 66-67.
8
sports as essential to their foreign policy goals, wanting to use it to promote the ideal Soviet Men
and Women through physical success. Yet to achieve this they had to resort to violent and
oppressive tactics, which would lead to the challenges to the Soviet system in Hungary in the
subsequent 1956 revolution. The painful memories of their lost friends like Sándor had stuck
with the Hungarian athletes, and at the Melbourne Olympics of that same year they promised
“that at the Olympic Games we will be fighting in the sacred spirit of the martyrs of the national
revolution and for the glory of the Hungarian nation.’
14
Rome and Bulgaria: The Dive
As mentioned earlier, the 1960 Olympics in Rome were overshadowed by other games in
popular memory. Besides the success of Wilma Rudolph and these games being the first to be
televised internationally, the 1960 Olympics lacked notable events. But there is one event that
flew under the radar in its subtlety that sheds light on the politics of sport in another iron curtain
country, Bulgaria. In the semifinals of the Men’s Greco-Roman wrestling competition, Bulgarian
Dimitro Stoyanov and the USSR’s Avtandil Koridze faced off for a chance to wrestle
Yugoslavia’s Branislav Martinovic in the gold medal match. At the time, the Bulgarians were
seen as “loyal to the Soviets to the point of athletic obedience.”
15
So when faced with the
possibility of both wrestlers being eliminated if the match was to end in a tie, Stoyanov
seemingly gave up and allowed Koridze to win. Koridze would subsequently defeat Martinovic
for the Olympic gold, and many fans and commentators were quick to call foul and blame
Stoyanov for throwing the match.
16
Does this claim hold any weight?
14
Mellis, “From Defectors to Cooperators,” 68.
15
Maraniss, Rome 1960, 215.
16
Maraniss, Rome 1960, 215.
9
Bulgaria had a long history of domination at the hands of Soviet authorities. Following
World War Two, Bulgaria was quickly swept up in the Stalinization of Eastern Europe. The
Soviet Red Army occupied the nation after its victory over the Germans, and this put it in a
prime position to force a communist takeover of Bulgaria’s government. Its politicians were
unjustly tried and either imprisoned or shot.
17
The political oppression went so far as to reach the
founder of the Bulgarian Communist Party, Traicho Kostov, who was tried and executed for
criticizing a Soviet-Bulgarian economic agreement that was unfavorable towards Bulgaria. Stalin
did this to show the crimes of “nationalism,” despite the fact that Kostov was a key opponent to
Yugoslavia, one of Stalin’s main opponents at the time.
18
This connection to the Soviet system would have a direct influence on the Bulgarian
approach to sports. The Bulgarian government matched its political takeover with one of the
sports leadership of the country, eliminating the old system and establishing the Supreme
Committee for Physical Culture and Sport in 1949.
19
This lead to a centralization of sports by the
government, similar to that of Hungary, whereby the number of sports clubs in the country was
minimized in order to bring full control under the state apparatus.
20
This allowed for the
importance of sport to the Soviet to system to take hold in the country, which was made clear by
Bulgarian head of state Todor Zhikov in 1963: “‘What kind of builders of socialism and
communism would people be? What defenders of the country would they be with an undermined
health? What generations would they create?’”
21
As in Hungary, sports were essential to the idea
17
Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2006), 132, 137, 175.
18
Judt, Postwar, 178.
19
Vassil Girginov, “Totalitarian Sport: Towards an Understanding of Its Logic, Practice and Legacy,” Totalitarian
Movements and Political Religions 5, no. 1 (January 1, 2004): 25–58, 37.
20
Girginov, “Totalitarian Sport,” 36.
21
Girginov, “Totalitarian Sport,” 39.
10
of an ideal communist society. In order to defend the country and its communist system, health
needed to be a priority of the Bulgarian people.
Was Stoyanov feeling this pressure? While we may never know what was going on in his
head, it was certainly possible. Wrestling was one of the six sports imposed by the Bulgarian
Communist Party in 1958, which was brought down from the eleven imposed in 1949.
22
By
imposing a sport the Communist party put these six sports at the forefront of their goals at the
time, distributing resources and privileges to the sports that others did not receive. Most
importantly, Stoyanov could have been in direct contact with Zhikov. During his time as First
Secretary of Bulgaria, 1954-1988, Zhikov wrote fifty-seven letters to world champion and
Olympic athletes. The content of these letters revolved around one central idea, that their
accomplishments were "A sporting victory in the name and for the glory of Bulgaria."
23
Bulgaria's direct communist takeover at the hands of the Red Army, the direct influence of the
communist government on the sports leadership of the country through the centralization of
sport, and direct communication from the First Secretary of the Communist Party to athletes
would all provide reasons for the Bulgarian teams to be "athletically obedient" in their loyalty to
the Soviets, pushing Stoyanov to feel compelled to throw the match.
Interestingly enough, the Soviet sports bureaucracy was not feeling confident in their
communist neighbors at the time. In 1961 a report was prepared by Russian bureaucrats to argue
that contests between Soviet teams and the teams of other socialists were being used for
nationalistic purposes. They cited incidents in which Bulgarian athletes, among others, had
injured their Soviet competitors, and Bulgarian fans had exhibited “hooliganish” behavior in
22
Girginov, “Totalitarian Sport,” 38.
23
Girginov, “Totalitarian Sport,” 46.
11
their treatment of the Soviet athletes.
24
So was Stoyanov’s loss truly an iron curtain submission?
An argument could be made for both sides. The Bulgarian government was closely connected to
the Soviet system and its political leaders placed importance on sports, but there was also an air
of discontent among the Bulgarian athletes and fans. While Stoyanov may have simply tired at
the end of the match and been defeated fair and square by his opponent, the world, for the first
time televised internationally, saw what they believed to be a Cold War act of socialist
oppression.
Munich and the GDR: The Scandal
The Munich Olympics will be forever characterized by the tragic events that unfolded
during it, but the athletic achievements of these games are stained by much more than blood. The
Munich Olympics provided a stage for one of the most important conflicts of the Cold War to
play out: the rivalry between Western Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), and
Eastern Germany, the GDR. The GDR was one of, if not the most important socialist ally of the
Soviets. The Russians had established a communist regime during their post-war occupation, and
by the time de-Stalinization was threatening many of their socialist allies, the East Germans had
become the most loyal and obedient ally of the Russians.
25
The importance of this was the
GDR’s proximity to Western Germany, which was directly connected to the socialist enemies in
the Western Bloc. Any division within the communist party of the GDR would endanger its
independence from the West, so great care was taken with their leaders by Russia, and any
inkling of national independence was crushed.
26
24
Parks, The Olympic Games, 53.
25
Felix Gilbert and David Clay Large, The End of the European Era: 1890 to the Present (New York: W.W.
Norton, 2009), 434.
26
Gilbert and Large, The End of the European Era, 434.
12
Like the other Eastern Bloc countries, sports were seen as a political weapon for both the
GDR and the FRG. In its early days of 1949, GDR officials wanted to avoid athletic
involvement, especially in the Olympics, because they saw it as capitalist exploitation. Their
minds were changed by the sporting ambitions of their Soviet allies and of their neighbors,
resulting in their attempts to join the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the governing
body of the Olympics.
27
The opposition to sports had transitioned to willing participation, and
eventually to obsession when the FRG prevented GDR athletes from competing in either of the
1952 Olympics. East German officials saw that “Olympic Sport offered a golden opportunity for
the GDR to challenge the FRG’s peremptory claim to be the only legitimate Germany.”
28
Not
only did sport become the way for the GDR to compete directly with the FRG, but sports became
a pillar of socialist society there. Athletes became the heroes of the workers’ and peasants’ state,
and victory was a success for the GDR and its socialist system.
29
The only thing that stood in
their way was the IOC’s goal to avoid politics being involved in the games and have one, unified
Germany compete. Neither side was a fan of this, and the GDR used Soviet backing to push for
the ability to compete on its own, winning the right to do so before the 1968 Olympics in
Mexico.
30
This set up the 1972 games in Munich as the absolute perfect time to prove the
dominance of the Soviet system over the “evil capitalists.”
At the end of the games, the East Germans seemed triumphant. They were third in the
medal count with sixty-six medals, twenty-six more than their West German neighbors. But a
“grotesque shadow [was] hanging over the competition.”
31
Allegations and stories about drug
27
David Clay Large, Munich 1972: Tragedy, Terror, and Triumph at the Olympic Games (New York: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 2012), 23.
28
Large, Munich 1972, 24.
29
Large, Munich 1972, 25.
30
Guttman, The Olympics, 96.
31
Large, Munich 1972, 284.
13
use and gender manipulation surrounded the GDR teams. Their reliance on pharmaceutical
enhancement became clearer over time. The GDR’s major contribution to sports medicine was
the recent development of an anabolic steroid, and the speculation about their drug use was
confirmed by testing after the games.
32
Yet due to the poor testing of athletes during the games,
particularly the West German officials’ inability to test for steroids, meant that the stained East
German performances would stand. What led to the GDR taking such drastic measures? Was the
direct influence of their Soviet allies so strong that they would throw ethics out the window in
order to win? In the leadup to the 1972 games, the GDR wanted to strengthen its alliance with
the other socialists through sports, organizing meetings of the sports leadership of socialist
countries.
33
The East Germans also found common ground through political propaganda before
the games. But in reality, they were very much on their own: “the prospect of Western currency
and Olympic capital provided more luster than the GDR’s ideological smear could tarnish.”
34
The West German’s Ostpolik policies had begun to break up the solidarity between the socialist
states, and the Soviets had been working on treaties with the West Germans in order to enforce
the subsidiary nature of the GDR. Yet, “In Sport, in contrast to politics, however, it was the
imperial master who felt exploited by its satellite.”
35
Despite the Soviet’s best efforts to enforce
the GDR’s subsidiary role, the GDR had become a sports powerhouse and a daunting threat to
the Soviet Union.
Like the Bulgarians, the East German athletic teams potentially broke ethical barriers in
order to achieve athletic success: taking a dive to ensure success for the Soviet athletes in the
case of the Bulgarian wrestlers, and for the East Germans rampant drug use was implemented to
32
Large, Munich 1972, 181-182.
33
Schiller, The 1972 Munich Olympics, 179.
34
Schiller, The 1972 Munich Olympics, 179.
35
Schiller, The 1972 Munich Olympics, 176-177.
14
ensure that their athletes were at the top of their game. It could be argued that the direct influence
of the Soviet Union due to the importance of East Germany caused this. But in reality, the
athletics policies of the GDR and its socialist allies were split at the time, with the Soviets and
other Eastern Bloc states working with West Germany in order to make money through athletics.
The true cause lies in the intense rivalry between East and West Germany due to their ideological
differences and political history. The East Germans were driven to abandon their allies and
devote themselves to beating their neighbors by whatever means necessary.
Moscow and Poland: The Pole Vaulter
Of all the Olympic games that took place in Europe during the Cold War, the Moscow
1980 Olympics may be most emblematic of the divide between East and West. Upon the
announcement of Moscow’s selection as the host city there was immediate controversy. The
Russians were more than pleased with the selection: “The Soviet people, the Communist Party,
and the Government of the USSR view the Olympic Games as an outstanding event in
international sporting life, reflecting the striving of peoples for peace, détente, cooperation, and
mutual understanding.”
36
But there would be little room for mutual understanding. Calls for a
boycott of the games came very quickly, and these calls became shouts upon the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan at the end of 1979. The Americans had already been wary of the games,
predicting that they would be “a ‘major propaganda festival’ advancing the Soviet cause,” and
jumped on the opportunity the invasion presented to boycott the games if the Soviets refused to
remove their troops, urging other countries to join them.
37
When his deadline for removal passed,
United States President Jimmy Carter stayed true to his word and used presidential powers to
36
Alfred Erich Senn, Power, Politics, and the Olympic Games (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1999), 174.
37
Senn, Power, Politics, and the Olympics Games, 176-177.
15
pressure the United States Olympic Committee into supporting the boycott. Thirty-five other
countries refused the IOC invitation for the games, and twenty did not respond at all.
38
For those
that did compete at the games, their participation inherently showed their support for the Soviet
Union. It was impossible for the IOC, or anyone for that matter, to deny the political nature of
these games.
The games themselves went particularly well in the eyes of those that supported them,
but there was one event that stuck in the mind of spectators. The Moscow Olympics were meant
to be a display of the dominance of Soviet sport, and their winning medal count proved that it
was, but the way this dominance was achieved left a sour taste in the mouth of observers. During
the final of the men’s pole vault competition, it became obvious that the home crowd wanted
Soviet athlete Konstantin Volkov, who was going up against the Polish favorite Wladyslaw
Kozakiewicz, to win.
39
The Soviet fans tried everything in their power to undermine
Kozakiewicz during his jumps, whistling, booing, and heckling him during each attempt and
staying silent during the jumps of his competitor.
40
Despite this, the Pole vaulter (Kozakiewicz)
won the event, setting a new world and Olympic record in the process. Upon his winning jump,
Kozakiewicz stood up and gave a now-infamous Italian gesture to the entire Russian crowd in
attendance, who were praised by the very unbiased Eastern European press for their politeness.
41
Was this an act of political dissidence? Or just competitive in nature? In the politically
charged atmosphere of the games, both are likely. Poland had a long history in the Eastern Bloc.
It was one of the countries occupied by the Red Army immediately after World War Two and
38
Senn, Power, Politics, and the Olympics Games, 182-183.
39
“Kozakiewicz Denies Local Hero in Pole Vault - Olympic News,” International Olympic Committee, last
modified July 21, 2016, accessed May 1, 2020, https://www.olympic.org/news/kozakiewicz-denies-local-hero-in-
pole-vault.
40
Barukh Hazan, Olympic Sports and Propaganda Games: Moscow 1980 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers, 1982),183.
41
Hazan, Olympic Sports, and Propaganda Games, 183
16
suffered at the hands of Stalinist purges. Despite this, it would go on to become one of the most
industrialized countries in the Bloc.
42
The de-Stalinization period at the end of the 1950s was a
period of social unrest. Communist leader Wladyslaw Gomulka, who was removed from power
by the Stalinists, took over after their ousting yet remained loyal to the Soviet system. He
continued to emphasize industrialization, and his failures led to the communist government
retaining its image as an oppressive force in Poland.
43
This was evident in their approach to
sports. In the same 1961 report naming Bulgarian fans as being hostile to Soviet athletes,
Russian officials claimed that Polish fans threw bottles at the athletes during contests.
44
In 1980,
the year of the Moscow Olympics, the discontent reached another boiling point. Polish workers
across the country launched non-violent strikes that were successful enough to receive support
from Pope John Paul II, who was the first Polish Pope.
45
Similar to the other individual acts
made by athletes mentioned in this paper, it is impossible to truly know what Kozakiewicz was
thinking when he made his gesture. The picture of him smiling and giving his gesture to the
crowd could have been competitive spirit, it could have been emblematic of the simmering
discontent of the Polish people, or, as the Polish government reportedly claimed, it could have
been an involuntary muscle spasm.
46
Like the other athletes, regardless of his intent, it is
impossible to separate his action in a sporting competition from the political contexts in which it
existed.
42
Gilbert and Large, The End of the European Era, 324.
43
Gilbert and Large, The End of the European Era, 432.
44
Parks, The Olympic Games, 53.
45
Gilbert and Large, The End of the European Era, 520.
46
Christian Tugnoli, “Gest Kozakiewicza | Vintage Sport,” accessed May 1, 2020,
https://www.sportvintage.it/2009/05/02/gest-kozakiewicza/.
17
Conclusion: More Than A Game
The issue with using the examples of individual athletes is that their example only
provides a snapshot and not the full picture of the approach to sport in the countries of the
Eastern Bloc. But viewed against the context of their international politics and the importance
each communist government placed on sport, it is obvious that the connection between politics
and sport was just as strong in the Eastern Bloc countries as it was in the Soviet Union or the
United States. In Hungary, the centralization of sports programs and oppression of its athletes
created the conditions in which their soccer culture thrived. In Bulgaria, their athletic obedience
to the Soviet Union and their own centralization of sports was seemingly tested through a
potential dive. The East German sports program made an effort to align themselves with other
socialist countries and was so consumed with its drive to dominate West Germany that they
threw ethics out the window. With Poland, their athletes experienced the importance of sports
success to the Russian people.
But in each case, there is an air of independence. Hungarian athletes attempted to leave
the country prior to Helsinki and pledged their performances in Melbourne to those involved in
the Hungarian Revolution. The Bulgarians were not trusted by Russian sports officials because
of their anti-Soviet fans, casting doubt on the potential of a dive. The Germans were virtually
independent in their sports efforts from their Soviet allies in Munich. And against the backdrop
of protests in Poland, Kozakiewicz showed the Russian fans what he thought of their efforts.
Each case displays the complicated nature of sports and politics in the Eastern Bloc. Sports were
a way for each country to connect to the Soviet system at the state level, show their superiority to
the West, and create the ideal Soviet Mand and Woman. But sports also showed the
independence of the states from the Soviet system both at the individual level through athletes’
18
attempts to achieve success for reasons separate of the system their country was pledged to. To
those living under the Iron curtain, sports were more than just games. If it was up to Avery
Brundage, this wouldn’t be the case, but to those who compete and love their sport, it will always
be more than a game.
19
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