Cold War Olympics

Author : Harry Blutstein
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 261 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2021-12-03
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9781476686875

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Cold War Olympics by Harry Blutstein Pdf

The political tension of the Cold War bled into the Olympic Games when each side engaged in psychological warfare, exploiting sport for political ends. In Helsinki, the Soviet Union nearly overtook the United States in the medal count. Caught off guard, the U.S. hastened to respond, certain that the Soviets would use a victory at the next Olympics to broadcast their superiority over the Western world. Following the 1956 suppression of the Hungarian uprising, a Soviet athlete struck a Hungarian opponent in the Melbourne water polo semifinals, turning the pool red. The United States covertly encouraged Eastern Bloc athletes to defect, communist Chinese agents nearly succeeded in goading the Taiwanese government into withdrawing from the games, and a forbidden romance between an American and Czech athlete resulted in a politically complex marriage. This history describes those stories and more that resulted from the complicated relationship between Cold War politics and the Olympics.

Author : Erin Elizabeth Redihan
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2017-02-28
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9781476627281

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The Olympics and the Cold War, 1948-1968 by Erin Elizabeth Redihan Pdf

For Olympic athletes, fans and the media alike, the games bring out the best sport has to offer--unity, patriotism, friendly competition and the potential for stunning upsets. Yet wherever international competition occurs, politics are never far removed. Early in the Cold War, when all U.S.-Soviet interactions were treated as potential matters of life and death, each side tried to manipulate the International Olympic Committee. Despite the IOC's efforts to keep the games apolitical, they were quickly drawn into the superpowers' global struggle for supremacy, with medal counts the ultimate prize. Based on IOC, U.S. government and contemporary media sources, this book looks at six consecutive Olympiads to show how high the stakes became once the Soviets began competing in 1952, threatening America's athletic supremacy.

Author : Toby C Rider
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2016-05-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780252098451

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Cold War Games by Toby C Rider Pdf

It is the early Cold War. The Soviet Union appears to be in irresistible ascendance, and moves to exploit the Olympic Games as a vehicle for promoting international communism. In response, the United States conceives a subtle, far-reaching psychological warfare campaign to blunt the Soviet advance. Drawing on newly declassified materials and archives, Toby C. Rider chronicles how the US government used the Olympics to promote democracy and its own policy aims during the tense early phase of the Cold War. Rider shows how the government, though constrained by traditions against interference in the Games, eluded detection by cooperating with private groups, including secretly funded émigré organizations bent on liberating their home countries from Soviet control. At the same time, the United States appropriated Olympic host cities to hype the American economic and political system while, behind the scenes, the government attempted clandestine manipulation of the International Olympic Committee. Rider also details the campaigns that sent propaganda materials around the globe as the United States mobilized culture in general, and sports in particular, to fight the communist threat.

Author : Jenifer Parks
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 231 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2016-12-27
Category : History
ISBN : 9781498541190

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The Olympic Games, the Soviet Sports Bureaucracy, and the Cold War by Jenifer Parks Pdf

Using previously inaccessible archival documents, this study provides a longitudinal investigation of the middle levels of Soviet bureaucracy responsible for overseeing Olympic Sport during the Cold War. Spanning the period from the USSR’s Olympic debut in 1952 through the 1980 Games held in Moscow, this book argues that behind the high-profile performances of Soviet elite athletes, a legion of sports administrators worked within international sports organizations and the Soviet party-state to increase Soviet chances of success and make Soviet representatives a respected voice in international sports. Soviet officials helped expand the Olympic movement, increasing the participation of women, developing nations, and socialist bloc countries, while achieving Soviet political and diplomatic aims. Soviet representatives, over the course of only a few decades, became a dominant and respected voice within international sports circles, actively promoting Olympic ideals abroad even as they transformed those ideals to better align with Soviet goals. In the process, Soviet sports contributed to the evolution of Olympic sport, integrating the Soviet Union into an emerging global culture, and contributing to transformations within the Soviet Union. Back home in the USSR, the Sports Committee's leading personalities represented a new kind of Soviet bureaucrat, who emerged in the late years of Stalinism and contributed to the professionalization of party-state apparatus. Standing at the intersection between state and society, between Soviet political goals and their execution, and between Olympic sport and Communist ideology, mid-level Soviet sports administrators demonstrated ideological drive, political savvy, and professional pragmatism, providing the impetus, expertise, and experience to transform broad ideological constructs into specific policies and procedures in the Soviet Union and realize Soviet propaganda and foreign policy goals in international and Olympic sports.

Author : Toby C Rider
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2016-05-30
Category : History
ISBN : 0252040236

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Cold War Games by Toby C Rider Pdf

It is the early Cold War. The Soviet Union appears to be in irresistible ascendance and moves to exploit the Olympic Games as a vehicle for promoting international communism. In response, the United States conceives a subtle, far-reaching psychological warfare campaign to blunt the Soviet advance. Drawing on newly declassified materials and archives, Toby C. Rider chronicles how the U.S. government used the Olympics to promote democracy and its own policy aims during the tense early phase of the Cold War. Rider shows how the government, though constrained by traditions against interference in the Games, eluded detection by cooperating with private groups, including secretly funded émigré organizations bent on liberating their home countries from Soviet control. At the same time, the United States utilized Olympic host cities as launching pads for hyping the American economic and political system. Behind the scenes, meanwhile, the government attempted clandestine manipulation of the International Olympic Committee. Rider also details the campaigns that sent propaganda materials around the globe as the United States mobilized culture in general, and sports in particular, to fight the communist threat. Deeply researched and boldly argued, Cold War Games recovers an essential chapter in Olympic and postwar history.

Author : Nicholas Evan Sarantakes
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 357 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780521194778

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Dropping the Torch by Nicholas Evan Sarantakes Pdf

Dropping the Torch: Jimmy Carter, the Olympic Boycott, and the Cold War offers a diplomatic history of the 1980 Olympic boycott. Broad in its focus, it looks at events in Washington, D.C., as well as the opposition to the boycott and how this attempted embargo affected the athletic contests in Moscow. Jimmy Carter based his foreign policy on assumptions that had fundamental flaws and reflected a superficial familiarity with the Olympic movement. These basic mistakes led to a campaign that failed to meet its basic mission objectives but did manage to insult the Soviets just enough to destroy détente and restart the Cold War. The book also includes a military history of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which provoked the boycott, and an examination of the boycott's impact four years later at the Los Angeles Olympics, where the Soviet Union retaliated with its own boycott.

Author : Philip D’Agati
Publisher : Springer
Page : 197 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2013-06-05
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781137360250

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The Cold War and the 1984 Olympic Games by Philip D’Agati Pdf

The Soviet boycott of the 1984 Olympic Games is explained as the result of a complex series of events and policies that culminated in a strategic decision to not participate in Los Angeles. Using IR framework, D'Agati developes and argues for the concept of surrogate wars as an alternative means for conflict between states.

Author : Stephen Wagg,David Andrews
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2012-09-10
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9781134241675

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East Plays West by Stephen Wagg,David Andrews Pdf

The Cold War spanned some five decades from the devastation that remained after World War Two until the fall of the Berlin wall, and for much of that time the perception was that only on the Eastern side were politics and sport inextricably linked. However, this assumption underestimates the extent to which sport was an important symbol for both power blocs in their ongoing ideological struggle. This collection of essays from leading international authorities on sport, culture and ideology brings together an impressive body of work organized around key political themes and outstanding moments in sport, and is at once a political history of sport and an illuminating new perspective on the forces that shaped this unsettled time.

Author : Heather L. Dichter
Publisher : Culture and Politics in the Company
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2021-10-29
Category : History
ISBN : 162534595X

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Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games by Heather L. Dichter Pdf

During the Cold War, political tensions associated with the division of Germany came to influence the world of competitive sport. In the 1950s, West Germany and its NATO allies refused to recognize the communist East German state and barred its national teams from sporting competitions. The construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 further exacerbated these pressures, with East German teams denied travel to several world championships. These tensions would only intensify in the run-up to the 1968 Olympics. In Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games, Heather L. Dichter considers how NATO and its member states used sport as a diplomatic arena during the height of the Cold War, and how international sport responded to political interference. Drawing on archival materials from NATO, foreign ministries, domestic and international sport functionaries, and newspapers, Dichter examines controversies surrounding the 1968 Summer and Winter Olympic Games, particularly the bidding process between countries to host the events. As she demonstrates, during the Cold War sport and politics became so intertwined that they had the power to fundamentally transform each other.

Author : Lu Zhouxiang,Fan Hong
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 170 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2019-07-09
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9781351181471

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Olympics in Conflict by Lu Zhouxiang,Fan Hong Pdf

In the second half of the twentieth century, the Olympics played an important role in the politics of the Cold War and was part of the conflicts between the Capitalist Block, the Socialist Block and Third World countries. The Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO) is one of the best examples of the politicization of sport and the Olympics in the Cold War era. From the 1980s onward, the Olympics has facilitated communication and cooperation between nations in the post–Cold War era and contributed to the formation of a new world order. In August 2016, the Games of the XXXI Olympiad were held in Rio de Janeiro, making Brazil the first South American country to host the Summer Olympics. This was widely regarded as a new landmark event in the history of the modern Olympic movement. From the GANEFO to Rio, the Olympic Games have witnessed the shifting balance in international politics and world economy. This book aims at understanding the transformation of the Olympics over the past decades and tries to explain how the Olympic movement played its part in world politics, the world economy and international relations against the background of the rise of developing countries. The chapters in this book were published as a special issue in The International Journal of the History of Sport.

Author : H. Lenskyj,S. Wagg
Publisher : Springer
Page : 592 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2012-04-11
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9780230367463

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The Palgrave Handbook of Olympic Studies by H. Lenskyj,S. Wagg Pdf

A comprehensive, state-of-the-art reference collection, bringing together an authoritative and international line-up of scholars to examine key social and political issues related to the Olympics. An essential, 'one-stop' volume for a wide range of academics, students and researchers.

Author : Philippe Vonnard,Nicola Sbetti,Grégory Quin
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2017-12-18
Category : History
ISBN : 9783110529098

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Beyond Boycotts by Philippe Vonnard,Nicola Sbetti,Grégory Quin Pdf

Sport during Cold War has recently begun to be studied in more depth. Some scholars have edited a book about the US and Soviet sport diplomacy and show ow the government of these two countries have used sport during this period, notably as a tool of "soft power" during the Olympic games. Our goal is to continue in this direction and to focus more on the sport field as a place of exchanges during the Cold War. Regarding this point, our aim is to show that there were events "beyond boycotts"many and that unknown connections existed inside sport. Morevoer, many actors were involved in these exchanges. Thus, it is important not only to focus on the action of States, but also on private actors (international sporting bodies and journalists), considering that they acted around sport (an "apolitic" field) as it was tool to maintain links between the two blocs. Our project offers a good opportunity for young scholars to present original research based on new materials (notably the use of institutional or personals archives). Morevoer, it is also a step forward with a view to conduct research within a global history paradigm, one that is still underused in sport academic fields.

Author : Harry Blutstein
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : Cold War
ISBN : 1760408298

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Cold War Games by Harry Blutstein Pdf

Author : Harry Blutstein
Publisher : Allen & Unwin
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2017-08
Category : Cold War
ISBN : 176040568X

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Cold War Games by Harry Blutstein Pdf

The 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games have become known as the 'friendly games', but East-West rivalry ensured that they were anything but friendly. From the bloody semi-final water polo match between the USSR and Hungary, to the athletes who defected to the West, sport and politics collided during the Cold War.

Author : Heather L. Dichter
Publisher : Culture and Politics in the Company
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2021-10-29
Category : History
ISBN : 162534595X

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Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games by Heather L. Dichter Pdf

During the Cold War, political tensions associated with the division of Germany came to influence the world of competitive sport. In the 1950s, West Germany and its NATO allies refused to recognize the communist East German state and barred its national teams from sporting competitions. The construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 further exacerbated these pressures, with East German teams denied travel to several world championships. These tensions would only intensify in the run-up to the 1968 Olympics. In Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games, Heather L. Dichter considers how NATO and its member states used sport as a diplomatic arena during the height of the Cold War, and how international sport responded to political interference. Drawing on archival materials from NATO, foreign ministries, domestic and international sport functionaries, and newspapers, Dichter examines controversies surrounding the 1968 Summer and Winter Olympic Games, particularly the bidding process between countries to host the events. As she demonstrates, during the Cold War sport and politics became so intertwined that they had the power to fundamentally transform each other.