Sport: Just a game or something more? The state use of sport as a propaganda tool in Cold War Russia.

By David Breen, ContributorFollowing the conclusion of the Second World War and the emergence of the Eastern Bloc, leaders of these ‘Iron Curtain’ governments felt it necessary to attempt to catch up to and overtake expanding capitalist countries. Given the limited opportunities elsewhere, sport acted as a means of exerting the power and strength of the Soviet Union over Western countries. Following the Second World War, the USSR mobilised a considerable amount of resources in order to expand sports systems and create a system which would produce athletes capable of dominating the West. Soviet (the eastern bloc-name) leaders saw sport as one of the best and most comprehensible means of explaining to people, the world over, the advantages of the socialist system over capitalism.National sport has always been linked to national pride and this was particularly true in Eastern Bloc countries where when citizens of these nations saw that their national teams were doing well internationally, they were more likely to conform and to agree to the emerging communist regime. The government realised the value of sport for political aims and realised that sport could be used to forge a sense of extreme nationalism within citizens and they capitalised on this to great success. The dominance of the German Democratic Republic was used by the government in order to reinforce cultural and national identity. Sport provided a global stage which could not only be used to highlight the strength of the system but more importantly, project an array of national symbols and ideas. Flags, anthems and chants were all used to ignite a sense of nationalistic pride which could not be fostered through other means. Soviet teams were impervious to pressure and the ceremony of global events such as the Olympics unlike athletes from other countries who were considered celebrities back home.Russian ice hockey players were a prime example of this. The nicknamed ‘Red Army’ Hockey team was dominant throughout a number of Olympic cycles, winning a medal at every Winter Olympics from 1956 to 1988. Crucially, a number of these medals - including 7 gold - were won over opposition from Western countries such as Canada and the United States of America. Despite this dominancehowever, the teams were almost unfazed as shown in commentary of the games:“The players are void of emotion, a microcosm of their society”. These words were used to describe Russian Ice hockey players by a commentator during the gold medal game at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. The team represented the society and the society represented the system. Strong, powerful and superior to everyone else, all whilst being completely devoid of emotion.Soviet governments soon realised the value that sport had as a means of broadcasting their superiority over the west. Millions were spent on sports programmes in order to facilitate training of athletes whowould go on to represent the Eastern Bloc countries on a global stage. While employing coaches and building training centers and stadiums is common practice, the Soviet sports teams often used other means of gaining an advantage over the opposition. State sponsored doping was commonplace in theUSSR at the time, with athletes as young as 16 being systematically doped with the government in order to ensure they had a competitive advantage. One example of this is Andreas (formally Heidi) Kriger, who competed for East Germany in the shot put. From a young age, Heidi was unknowingly doped by coaches to such an extent that Heidi began to experience gender dysmorphia and underwent gender reassignment surgery to become a man. To put into perspective the level of steroid use he was unknowingly subject to, Kriger took almost 2600 milligrammes of steroids in the year 1986 alone. This was over 1000 milligrammes more than Ben Johnson who was famously stripped of medals due to positive steroids tests. These were the lengths the government was willing to go to in order to win medals, regardless of the consequences.While sport was a cause of tension between nations and most certainly used to achieve political aims throughout history, there have been some notable cases of the use of sport for diplomacy between nations. The Goodwill Games in the late 1980s were an example of this. The Goodwill Games were an attempt to heal the wounds caused by Cold War Tensions and were a resounding success. This does illustrate however that sport can be a tool used by governments and its role in society definitely transcends its face value as just a game. Something we should keep in mind today.