The 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia have provided excellent entertainment and watercooler conversation for spectators during the past week, and they have certainly not escaped the attention of student journalists on University of Wisconsin-Madison’s campus, inspiring coverage and commentary of the event.
The last time the Olympics were held in Russia, this was not the case.
In fact, The Daily Cardinal’s 1980 summer issues make no mention of that year’s Summer Games in Moscow.
“If you were in North America, you didn’t even pay attention,” UW-Madison Russian history professor David McDonald said of the 1980 Olympics, which the United States and 64 other countries boycotted in objection to the Soviet Union’s military intervention in Afghanistan.
Largely a political move, refusing to participate in the Games was perhaps the most convenient action for President Jimmy Carter at the time, according to UW-Madison professor emeritus of history Alfred Senn.
“The Carter administration was looking for something to hit the Soviets with that wouldn’t cost the Americans too much,” Senn explained. “From his point of view, the boycott recommended itself and this nonsense about keeping politics out of the Olympic Games is ridiculous.”
In the months leading up to the boycott’s announcement, many expressed concern over the United States’ potential refusal to participate in the Games.
“It’s a shame that U.S. athletes have to be used as a political wedge,” 1976 women’s Olympic basketball team member and 1980 Olympic candidate Nancy Lieberman said in a January 1980 issue of The Daily Cardinal.
Her sentiments were echoed by 1980 UW senior Kim Schultz.
“We should not try to bring politics into sports,” Schultz said. “The Olympics are not a political statement. The athletes cannot be cast aside for politics.”
Politics are an inevitable part of the Olympics, however, Senn said.
“The Games are the biggest reality show on television, they are major show business, that’s their first job right now, and they’re just bound to be political,” he said. “People care about the Olympic Games and therefore there are politics.”
Today’s athletes, even those most directly affected by Russia’s anti-gay propaganda, see the Games chiefly as an arena to showcase their sport, rather than a political agenda, according to McDonald.
He added many aspects of the Olympics have changed since 1980, with greater transparency about expenditures and a higher tolerance for public controversy leading the charge.
However, the Games still act as a platform to showcase the host country’s best assets and, for a country whose previous Olympics were largely unsuccessful, Sochi provides Russia opportunity for redemption, McDonald said.
“I think it’s certainly reasonable to believe that [Putin] has been staging himself to re-emphasize his vitality and his vigor,” McDonald explained. “[He] is showing…the possibilities of a vital and dynamic post-Soviet government.”
