This is my last day of watching Russian TV, and I think it’s a good thing because the pre-Olympic coverage has started and it is driving me nuts. I often have to stop watching and check my calendar because all of the news segments sound like they were taped back in 1980.
The commentators insist that there is some world-wide conspiracy that prevents Russian athletes from getting every medal at the Olympics. The judges hate Russians and act unfairly towards them, the Russian athletes are sabotaged by mysterious forces, the other teams steal their strategies, and so on. If a Russian athlete has been caught using forbidden substances, this means that the evil foreign agents doctored their food and beverages. No explanation is offered as to why everybody supposedly hates and sabotages the Russian athletes, but not the Chinese, the British, or the Americans.
In his great novel The First Circle, Solzhenitsyn ridiculed the way in which Stalin’s media reported on the sporting events. “Whenever our team loses,” the novel’s protagonist Innokenti Volodin says, “it’s reported as an unexpected and suspicious loss. Another team’s win is always discussed as having shocked the public. Only our teams deserve to win, while everybody else’s wins are deemed incomprehensible.”
The Russian athletes will get 100,000 euro for the gold, 60,000 for the silver, and 40,000 for the bronze during the 2012 Olympic Games. Other than this, nothing much has changed in the 63 years since the events described in Solzhenitsyn’s novel.
Clarissa's Blog 
“If a Russian athlete has been caught using forbidden substances, this means that the evil foreign agents doctored their food and beverages. No explanation is offered as to why everybody supposedly hates and sabotages the Russian athletes, but not the Chinese, the British, or the Americans.”
You know, what’s really interesting here is that I was doing some reading on the old Soviet army, and the exact same thinking occurred regarding soldiers who were getting addicted to opium in Afghanistan (during the Soviet occupation there). Soviet officers were attributing it to a stealth conspiracy on the part of the United States to destroy the Red Army. That the answer might be as simple as opium being readily available in that part of the world and the soldiers being strung out were getting high on it and addicted, didn’t occur to them.
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I didn’t know about this but it sounds precisely like something the Soviet leadership would do.
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Wow. Interesting what they’ll say and how it’ll sound in 4 more years, when Olympics come to Russia. Being sabotaged in your own country sounds kind of pathetic, so the commentators will’ve to think harder about what to say. Supposedly.
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I remember that when I was very very very young I overheard a conversation at home about the Moscow Olympic Games. My dad was laughing?/ranting? at the Soviets because apparently they openend the door of the stadium every time a Soviet athlete was running, jumping, or throwing something in the stadium, so that the wind help that athlete to be citius, altius, fortius, Is this a Cold War legend?
Because of your post I have the Beatles in my head now!
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This sounds like a Cold War legend to be honest. You don’t mess with an athlete’s work against the wind so cavalierly and expect good results. If anything, this would harm the athletes’ chances.
Cold War legends flourished on both sides and they were all equally bizarre.
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“Cold War legends flourished on both sides and they were all equally bizarre.”
I know. And it is still going on.
Another USSR+Olympic+my dad anecdote: my dad was so sad after the collapse of the USSR not to hear the Soviet anthem aymore during the Olympic games. Now he is happy because Russia adopted and adapted the national anthem of the Soviet Union.
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It’s beautiful music, so I can kind of understand the choice. It also still means a lot to people who lived in the Soviet Union. The war veterans are very happy, and I believe nothing is too much to keep them happy. Why do you think Lenin is still in the mausoleum?
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Olympics are corrupt in lots of ways and bring on oppression — remember Tlatelolco, look at them clear slums for Rio, and look at the surveillance devices in London, for random starters. World Cup is a bad thing, too, and US college football, and on and on.
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Oh, I so agree! The Russian olympics in Sochi has already started messing up people’s lives.
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As somebody living in Israel and whose country’s 11 sportsmen were murdered in Germany Olympics in 72, in HUGE part because Germans were lax with security out of desire not to remind of 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany (with lots of security, SS men everywhere, etc), I am A-OK with heightened security. Terrorists would love to kill Israeli (may be, not only) sportsmen again, and one of helpers in the terrorist attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria (on 18\7\12) was supposed to go to London. At least, that’s what I read in Israeli newspaper. Security is the price to pay for Olympics.
Besides, you have the problems of the rich, people. 🙂
Every time I hear of Olympics, I have a dream that will never come true in my lifetime – for them to come to Israel.
I suppose everybody here understands why, despite my deepest indifference to sports.
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The 1972 events were a horrible tragedy.
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In general, living in Israel gives you appreciation of security. Because of terrorist attacks, bags are checked f.e. before entering a university or a big shopping mall.
The bigger, more important the occasion, the better security should be. And it’s not only in Israel, US had its’ 9/11 f.e. I am quite sure not only Jews would be targeted now, if terrorists knew the security was lax. So what, never have a big game / concert / etc. ? I disagree on principle.
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Interesting pov about Syria from Russian-speaking blogger, who knows people there:
http://u-troitskaya.livejournal.com/29843.html
I’ve mentioned her lj before too.
And another recently discovered blog you may like:
http://nursingclio.wordpress.com/
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The whole collapse of the FSU is believed to be a big conspiracy. Everyone who wanted to separate from the SU is believed to have been financed by the West. All current opposition in Russia is believed to be financed by the West…
I once was in a teasing mood and asked some people who entertain such ideas – if it is so easy, why didn’t Russia devote some of its petrol wealth to financing Texas separatists, for example? 🙂
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Good point. 🙂 🙂 🙂
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