Interview
Ukraine war
“We are experiencing a turning point in sports history”: What the sports sanctions against Russia mean – and bring
At the Olympic Games in Sochi, the Olympic flag flew alongside the Russian one. Will she ever do that again?
© Hannibal Hanschke / Epa File / DPA
Researcher Jutta Braun on the effect of the sport sanctions against Russia – and what lessons there are from the Cold War, when West and East boycotted each other.
Miss Dr. Braun, you research boycotts and sanctions in sport. What can we learn from history? Will banning Russian sport have a pacifying effect on the Russia-Ukraine conflict?
Certainly not as a one-off measure. But in combination with other sanctions such as the exclusion from the SWIFT banking system and the extensive severing of trade relations, a sports boycott can have an effect. He contributes to Putin’s visible isolation.
Russia has been almost completely expelled from the world of sports: Russian athletes are not allowed to take part in competitions, nor are international events held on Russian soil. Has there been a comparable package of sanctions before?
No, the force and speed of the measures are unique. But I see a parallel in history: South Africa has been gradually banned from sport since the 1960s as a reaction to the inhuman apartheid regime. It began with the exclusion from the Olympic movement, followed later in the 1970s by isolation in football, as well as in athletics. It was only after Nelson Mandela was released from prison and apartheid came to an end that South Africa was allowed to return to the international stage in the 1990s.
Such a ban has recently been rare: in 2014 the Olympic Winter Games took place in Sochi – although Russia was already a country in which human rights and freedoms were of little value. The same applies to China, which hosted the Winter Games in February this year.
The whole world knew about the situation in the respective countries – and the games were still allowed to take place there. Incidentally, this also applied to the 1936 Olympics, the folk festival under the swastika in Berlin. The writer Heinrich Mann gave a speech in June 1936 that is still relevant today. He said: “A regime that prepares for war and exists only through mendacious propaganda, how should such a regime respect peaceful sports and libertarian athletes?” This warning is similar to the political concerns raised against Sochi in 2014.
Just three days after the end of the Sochi Games, Putin invaded Crimea. And that year, four days after the closing ceremony in Beijing, he launched the invasion of Ukraine.
dr Jutta Braun is a historian at the Leibniz Center for Contemporary History (ZZF) in Potsdam.
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Putin apparently did not want to miss the Beijing 2022 Winter Games to show the world Russia’s supposed superiority on the sporting stage. The beginning of the aggression in 2014 and 2022, each a few days after the end of the games, is clear evidence that the so-called Olympic truce only exists on paper.
Putin apparently schedules his attacks according to the sports calendar.
I find it striking what an outstanding role sport plays in dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. Such regimes have always devoted disproportionate resources to sport, using it as a vehicle for self-expression. That was the case with Hitler, later with the communist states, and is also the case today in China and Russia.
A 15-year-old talent of the century writes Olympic history
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In 1980, after Russia invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Western and Islamic countries boycotted the Moscow Summer Games. In 1984 the Eastern bloc stayed away from the Los Angeles games. Today the West and Russia face off once again. What lessons can we learn from these boycotts during the Cold War?
The German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt was initially against the boycott. He said that as a result not a single Soviet soldier would leave Afghanistan. Which he was right about. Nevertheless, Germany joined the boycott out of loyalty to the United States. The symbolic importance of this boycott should not be underestimated. The Soviet Union held summer games that were devalued from a sporting point of view because many of the best athletes did not compete. In total, more than 40 nations boycotted. That was a heavy blow for Moscow and a sign to the local population that the country was maneuvering itself into the background with the war in Afghanistan.
Thomas Bach, the current President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), was the German spokesman for athletes at the time and heavily criticized the boycott. The fencer Bach had wanted to defend his Olympic gold medal in Moscow.
With this personal experience, Bach has always justified his push as a sports official and IOC President to keep the Olympic show going. No matter what might happen in world politics.
But now the IOC has given in and recommends excluding Russian sport.
The consistency with which Russian sport is being sanctioned these days is unprecedented. In addition, there is no audible public debate about the legitimacy of the measures, and there is broad agreement. We are currently experiencing a turning point in the history of sport, also because suddenly no one is claiming that sport is apolitical. The sports world is increasingly positioning itself against the Russian invasion. Let’s hope that this signal gets through to sports friend Putin.
