The role of sport behind the Iron Curtain
By Jack Kelly (Deputy Sports Editor)
On the 24th of February 2022, Russia launched a full scale invasion on Ukraine and subsequently caused tens of thousands of deaths and the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War. The mass devastation and disruption of the war on the lives of Ukrainians has been well documented and every day the scenes of the destruction are broadcast around the world. Many armchair experts regularly make their predictions about the potential end result of this latest act of Russian Imperialism but who actually knows what the future holds for the citizens of Ukraine?
Certainly, we more often than not take sport far more seriously than what it should be and events like the war offer us a chance for perspective, but on the flip side, sport plays a vital part in our lives. That is undeniable and Ukraine has given the world a wide range of sporting icons. The Klitschko brothers in boxing, Andriy Shevchenko in football and Faina Melnik in athletics to name a few. These sportspeople are legends in Ukraine and are embedded in the country’s identity on the international stage. Following some research into these heroes, it became clear that they all grew up behind the Iron Curtain. They were introduced to their sports under the rule of the Communist Party. Furthermore, it is interesting to investigate what sport looked like in the USSR.
To do a quick sport history lesson, the Soviet Union lasted from 1922 to 1991. During this period, the sporting success of the Soviet Union was unprecedented, claiming an incredible 1,010 medals (395 Gold, 319 Silver and 296 Bronze). In 6 out of 8 appearances at the Summer Olympic Games, the Soviets were top of the medal haul. But the sporting success was not necessarily produced in the most wholesome, athlete friendly environment. Much of the Soviet Union's success can be directly linked to the governments tightly run sports programs, whereby sport was used as a means to cleanse their communist movement on the world stage. An early example of what is now known as ‘sportswashing’.
Physical education and sport came to prominence in the Soviet Union during the 1940’s. Like all aspects of Soviet life, the physical education program was controlled by the Communist party and its development was harnessed and adjusted to suit the needs of the party. Due to sports ability to achieve non-sport objectives, it was hijacked by the Communist party to politically indoctrinate and train the masses. After the 1917 Russian revolution, sport was used as a means to prepare the population for defending the socialist state. In 1948, the USSR sent experts to the London Olympics and subsequently entered the competition in 1952 thus signalling the beginning of a dominant era for the state. The USSR was the major giant of the communist countries and it was the first country in the post-war period to utilise the full extent of the political significance of sport.
‘Massovost’ (mass participation) was the central pillar of the program. The result of this philosophy was the centrally controlled and organised program that made the state a sporting powerhouse on the international stage. Sport was made available to everyone and, under the Communist party, became widely available for everyone. This was a major change from the Tsar regime of the past where sport was mainly reserved for the elites in Russia.
The first step in the organisation of sport was the ‘kollektiv’ which was basically the spine of the sport system for the average person. In 1967, there was 201, 876 kollektiv with 50, 528, 200 members. The kollektiv were set up in factories, offices, state farms, schools and higher education institutes with the goal of having people athletically organised at their place of work or study. The financing of these kollektiv was provided by the state and trade unions. They allocated considerable amounts of money to build stadiums, equipment, finance competitions and to pay coaches and instructors. The exact figure spent on striving for sporting excellence was never made public by the Russian government.
The dedication to sport is best evidenced by the sheer number of facilities recorded in 1975. By that time, in the USSR, there were 2,895 stadia, 42,000 gyms, 1,231 swimming pools and 90,000 soccer pitches with untold numbers of running tracks, basketball courts, ice rinks etc. The most impressive sports complex was located in Moscow; the Central Lenin Stadium. A 450-acre site, the complex had a stadium capable of hosting 105,000 people, a 50 metre swimming pool with seating to cater for 15,000 people, an ice arena with a capacity of 10,000, a 20,000 seater stadium able to host handball, volleyball, or volleyball, seven soccer pitches, two archery fields and thirty tennis courts.
Like any good system of propaganda, it targets the next generation. There was only one youth organisation in the whole of the Soviet Union. This organisation was divided into three categories based on the athletes age (Oktobrists for seven to ten year olds, Pioneers for ten to seventeen year olds and the Komsomols for the eighteen to twenty-five year olds). All children were encouraged or perhaps, more aptly, pressured into participation but entry into the Komsomols was far more selective and rigorous.
Award systems were also established and controlled by the state. The systems were Ready for Labour and Defense fitness programs and the All-Union Sports Classification System, each viewed as vital to ensuring participation for the Soviet sports program. The goal of the first program was to make physical activity a part of the daily life of Soviet people across all age groups and to bring talented athletes to the fore. The second program was used to award those for a high level of excellence in a particular sport. The standards of excellence were set by the state from Class C to Honoured Master of Sport. The two sport reward systems were successful in stimulating interest in athletic development and raised physical fitness levels across the population of the Soviet Union.
The recent revelations into Russia’s state-sponsored doping program acted somewhat as a throwback to the similarly systematic approach to doping used in the USSR. The state did not stop with just mass investment into sporting facilities- doping was everywhere.
Before the Soviets announced a boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, Soviet sport officials sent details to the head of track and field team. The team should inject its top athletes with three kinds of anabolic steroids. The officials provided measurements and timings to ensure optimal doping conditions. This operation was overseen by Dr. Sergei Portugalov, who, nearly 40 years on, is viewed as a central figure in Russia’s doping controversy. All of this information was leaked by the New York Times.
The leaked document provided new evidence of how far back Russia’s state-sponsored doping stretches but also how clandestine the operation was. Two former KGB agents were accredited to work in the anti-doping centre during the Olympics. “They filled the containers [of urine] that allegedly were from the athletes,” recounted Popov, who handled sports journalists at the time. “Naturally, they didn’t have any doping, and that’s how these samples were clean.” “And if some kind of sample was really taken from an athlete in order to guarantee that there’d be nothing there, the samples were simply replaced with obviously clean ones,” he added. Anti-doping measures had first begun in the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. By 1975, the International Olympic Committee had banned anabolic steroids, the drug often used with Soviet athletes. The next year, at the Montreal Summer Olympics, 12 athletes were disqualified for using these steroids.But within four years, in Moscow, not a single disqualification for doping occurred. At the time, Moscow was under more than ordinary pressure to ensure that no scandals hampered the Games. The United States and 64 other countries had decided to boycott the Olympics in protest against the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
It seems like history repeating itself. Russia is again under pressure for an unwarranted invasion but more specifically what does this systematic approach to doping tell us and the commitment investment in sport tell us about sport behind the Iron Curtain? Sport and politics were clearly intertwined and desperation in this area created a ruthless environment that bred a plethora of elite athletes but the role of sport was not what it was elsewhere. It was not for play and love; but more so for political socialisation. A strategy still in use today.
