Vladimir Putin It is not Nikita KruschevNeither is Russia the USSR, nor is the international balance, today, sustained by the equidistances imposed by the cardinal points of the Cold War. The world response in the form of sanctions, unanimous except that of stigmatized regimes on the board of international relations, such as Syria, Cuba or Maduro’s Venezuela, with China in the role of a calculating lover, I love you but I don’t live with you, show. Sport, the continuation of war by other means if we adapt the maxim of Clausewitz, is one of the most visible activities in which it materializes. It wasn’t always like that. When Putin was Khrushchev or Brezhnevthe old USSR reached the top of the sport despite taking the tanks that now surround Odessa or Kiev to Budapest, Prague or Kabul.
Despite the historical differences, for Putin there is a political and emotional parallelism between the current invasion of the Ukraine and those of Hungary, in 1956; Czechoslovakia, in 1968, and Afghanistan, in 1980. The first two were in Olympic years; the third, in pre-Olympic. If he now intends to block the expansion of NATO to his border, with the excuse of protecting the Russian population of the Donbas, the entry of the T-34s into Budapest or Prague had the objective of suffocating the movements of political openness. In all cases, Westernization. With regard to Afghanistan, the reason given was to crush growing Islamism, another form of threat to the Soviet ecosystem, but on the other side of the planet. In reality, Ukraine is suffering from the unhealed closure of the fall of the USSR, of which Putin is a missing but very powerful link.
The USSR, epicenter and driving force of the communist bloc, did not suffer sentences comparable to the current ones, not even in the West. Sport never removed the Soviets from competitions either, although boycotts in some countries grew from the lukewarmness of 1956 to the harshest in 1980. For the affected athletes, on the other hand, it was an ordeal, due to repression or instrumentalization.
FIRST BOYCOTT, WITH SWITZERLAND AND SPAIN
In 1956, Khrushchev proceeded with the dismemberment of Stalinism, four years after the death of the ‘Little Father’ Josef Stalin, at the 20th congress of the Communist Party of the USSR. The movement created false hopes in some satellite countries, the most significant being Hungary, with citizen mobilizations and revolts. The USSR sent 15 divisions and more than 6,000 tanks. The repression resulted in 40,000 detainees and 150,000 exiles. The first Minister Imre Nagy he did not do as the heroic Volodimir Zelensky. He fled to take refuge in the Yugoslav embassy, from where he left to be deported to Romania. In both cases, communist countries. Hungary returned to the discipline of the USSR, under a puppet government, and Nagy was executed two years later.
The repression took place in October and the Olympic Games in Melbourne began in November, just one month later. In a convulsive and still colonial world, with a war in the Suez Canal and France facing harsh repression in Algeria, there were no sanctions against the USSR, but there was an initial political boycott of the meeting due to Soviet participation, for which Switzerland it abandoned its neutrality in sports, curiously as it is now, and was seconded by the Netherlands and Franco’s Spain. As a consequence, the gymnast lost his great opportunity. Joaqun flower. The Soviet won the general contest Viktor Chukarin. A year later, Blume dominated the USSR specialists in the European Championships, but months later, a plane accident ended his life and prevented him from reaching the next Olympic event, in Rome.
THE “BLOODY TOILET” THAT INSPIRED TARANTINO
The tension generated by the repression in Hungary was staged in a water polo match between the Magyars, who were already concentrated in Australia during the repressions, and the Soviets. The press baptized it as the “bloody bath”. the hungarian Ervin Zador He left the pool bleeding and proclaimed: “We played for all our country.” They reached the final, in which they beat Yugoslavia. Quentin Tarantino he produced a documentary about that party which he called ‘Freedoms’s Fury’.
Many of those players did not return to their country and requested asylum. Hungarian footballers from the Hungaria team, led by Fernando Daucick. Ladislaus Kubala He was one of their leaders who ended up at Barcelona to define an era at the Barça club. The repression of 1956, years later, led to the flight of the next and best generation of players. In fact, the Hungarian team had won the 1952 Olympic final in Helsinki and had played in the World Cup in Switzerland in 1954. Between one final and another, they beat England at Wembley (3-6), in the well-known as “game of the century”.
PUSKAS, AMONG THE EXILE
Most of its players belonged to Budapest’s Honved, which was abroad at the time of the tanks’ entry into the capital. Many of his soccer players did not return, others would stay in South America during a tour, a year later. FIFA, unlike now, sanctioned them with a two-year suspension that was finally reduced to one. Many landed in Spain. Puskas he did it at Real Madrid, while Czibor and Kocsis They will go to Barcelona. There were many more, like Kuzman (Betis), Szalay (Seville) or Szolnok (Spanish).
The Prague Spring lasted from January to August 1968, when the entry of tanks from the USSR and other Warsaw Pact allies aborted Prague’s reforms. Alexandre Dubcekkidnapped by the KGB and taken to Moscow, where he was brought to his senses. The Mexico Games began in October, politically marked not only by the movements in Czechoslovakia, but also by the French May or the emergence of the ‘hippy’ movement and the protests against the Vietnam War. The Plaza de las Tres Culturas itself, in the Aztec capital, was the scene of harsh repression against students before the competitions. On the track, another phenomenon will arrive, the ‘Black Power’.
THE GOLDEN GYMNAST FLEES INTO THE FOREST
In the middle of a year turned into an eruption of demands, the repression in Prague had fewer sporting consequences than the one in Budapest 12 years ago, but it was especially suffered by Czech athletes. Vera Caslavaska, who had won the all-around in 1964 in Tokyo, had to flee to the Moravian forests after the invasion. She was one of the signatories of the Two Thousand Words Manifesto that supported the reforms. She was only able to come out of hiding from her shortly before traveling to Mexico, where she won again and got married. Upon her return, he gave one of her medals to Dubcek but was declared ‘persona non grata’. Her figure was not vindicated until the Velvet Revolution of Vaclav Havelin 1989. He was also sentenced to ostracism, Emil Zatopek, one of the best athletes in history. Expelled from the Army and the Communist Party, he ended up as a sweeper.
The conflict in Afghanistan, starting in 1978, already took place in a different context, with a USSR that began its decline in the 1980s, involved in a war that was for the Soviets their Vietnam. The Moscow Games, in the first year of the decade, suffered, this time, a boycott promoted by the Carter administration and supported by the majority of Western powers. The United States did not send athletes, while other countries, including Spain, limited themselves to the diplomatic boycott and allowed their athletes to compete without a flag. The sports organizations, however, did not issue sanctions as they do today, with a Spanish, Juan Antonio Samaranch, that reached the top of the sport. The future was going to be very different. With the Wall and the Iron Curtain fallen, it is easier to be brave.
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