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International sporting events, including the Olympic Games and the
FIFA World Cup, have experienced profound growth in popularity and
significance since the mid-twentieth century. Sports often
facilitate diplomacy, revealing common interests across borders and
uniting groups of people who are otherwise divided by history,
ethnicity, or politics. In many countries, popular athletes have
become diplomatic envoys. Sport is an arena in which international
conflict and compromise find expression, yet the impact of sports
on foreign relations has not been widely studied by scholars. In
Diplomatic Games, a team of international scholars examines how the
nexus of sport and foreign relations has driven political and
cultural change since 1945, demonstrating how governments have used
athletic competition to maintain and strengthen alliances, promote
policies, and increase national prestige. The contributors
investigate topics such as China's use of sports to oppose Western
imperialism, the ways in which sports helped bring an end to
apartheid in South Africa, and the impact of the United States'
1980 Olympic boycott on U.S.-Soviet relations. Bringing together
innovative scholarship from around the globe, this groundbreaking
collection makes a compelling case for the use of sport as a lens
through which to view international relations.
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.
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.
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