The Moscow Olympics are often best remembered by the Olympic boycott-in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter led a boycott that eventually included 66 countries, so the games attracted far fewer athletes and guests than anticipated. However I am not interested in exploring how the West viewed the Soviet Union at the time, but rather how the design of the games via posters, symbols, architecture, culture, and mass spectacles all worked in unison to project the Soviet system to the rest of the world. It was to be a “festival of friendship, a holiday of peace, a demonstration of cooperation” to show the world how the Soviet Union was a true superpower, hopefully, the Olympic games could demonstrate a “visual incarnation of Soviet foreign policy goals” (Hazan, 108).
In keeping with the tradition of central Soviet planning, the 1980 Summer Olympics were rigidly controlled by the Communist Party and they were a deliberate political and ideological event that became an enormous priority for the Kremlin and the city of Moscow for over 6 years. A smaller number of events also took place in Leningrad, Minsk, Tallinn, and Kiev. Thus the Moscow Olympics was a culmination of national pride, a belief in the promise and superiority of socialism, and athletic excellence. All of these messages were wrapped into a singular ideology. The games put the Soviet Union on display, but one journalist from Inside Sports noted it was “almost as if Moscow was the event, and the Olympics the excuse for holding it” (Hazan, 201). The Soviet Union took the games very seriously, don’t let the smiling bear mascot Misha fool you.
Source:Ḥazan, Barukh, 1942- Olympic sports and propaganda games : Moscow 1980.
