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"Rider, Toby C"
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Cold war games : propaganda, the Olympics, and U.S. foreign policy
\"The U.S. Government became increasingly alarmed by Soviet attempts to exploit the Olympic Movement in the early 1950s, and responded to this challenge aggressively. Cold War Game chronicles that response and shows that it was not a replication of the state-directed Soviet sports system, but was instigated through covert psychological warfare operations and overt propaganda distributed to the \"free world.\" In the lead up to and during each Olympic festival throughout this period, the U.S. sent waves of propaganda material across the globe to advocate the American way of life and to denounce communism. It used the Olympic host cities as venues to advertise the American economic and political system; it also attempted to manipulate the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in clandestine ways. Cold War Games describes the emergence of government fears about communist sport in the late 1940s and, crucially, how these fears were channeled into the Olympic Games starting in 1950. It concludes its analysis in 1960 at the end point, in many ways, of covert government initiatives at Olympic festivals. Cold War Games situates sport in the larger discussion of how America was committed to a \"total\" Cold War by demonstrating that the Olympics Games was embroiled in the U.S. government's own cultural offensive\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Cold War Games
It is the early Cold War. The Soviet Union appears to be in
irresistible ascendance and moves to exploit the Olympic Games as a
vehicle for promoting international communism. In response, the
United States conceives a subtle, far-reaching psychological
warfare campaign to blunt the Soviet advance.
Drawing on newly declassified materials and archives, Toby C.
Rider chronicles how the U.S. government used the Olympics to
promote democracy and its own policy aims during the tense early
phase of the Cold War. Rider shows how the government, though
constrained by traditions against interference in the Games, eluded
detection by cooperating with private groups, including secretly
funded émigré organizations bent on liberating their home countries
from Soviet control. At the same time, the United States utilized
Olympic host cities as launching pads for hyping the American
economic and political system. Behind the scenes, meanwhile, the
government attempted clandestine manipulation of the International
Olympic Committee. Rider also details the campaigns that sent
propaganda materials around the globe as the United States
mobilized culture in general, and sports in particular, to fight
the communist threat.
Deeply researched and boldly argued, Cold War Games
recovers an essential chapter in Olympic and postwar history.
eBook
Sport, Thatcher and Apartheid Politics: The Zola Budd Affair
On 23 March 1984, Afrikaner teenage running sensation Zola Budd boarded a KLM flight at the Jan Smuts airport in Johannesburg bound for Britain. Through the manoeuvrings of the London-based
Daily Mail
newspaper, Budd fled apartheid South Africa for the opportunity to compete on the international stage under the representative colours of Great Britain. To forward his own commercial agenda, Sir David English, chief editor of the
Daily Mail
and a personal friend of the British Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, pressured the Home Office into awarding British citizenship to the 5000-metre world-record holder. This article seeks to examine the Zola Budd affair in four interrelated ways. First, we argue that it should be read within the context of the Thatcher government's pursuit of 'constructive engagement' with South Africa and its concomitant opposition to growing international calls for economic sanctions and firmer cultural boycotts against the country. Second, the Zola Budd affair revealed the growing tensions in the British Conservative Party and among officials within different branches of government regarding engagement with the South African regime. Third, the government's handling of Zola Budd exposed an arbitrary and unfair immigration system that legislated in favour of white migrants from the Old Commonwealth. Under the government's redrawn immigration policies, Zola Budd fitted seamlessly within the racial and cultural image of Thatcher's modern Britain. Finally, this article argues that the Zola Budd affair further aligned anti-apartheid and anti-Thatcher activists who grew to become virtually synonymous with one another during Thatcher's premiership.
Journal Article
A Campaign of Truth
Scholars who have examined the role of the Olympic Games in U.S. Cold War strategy have dealt mostly with the post-Stalin era, when the Olympic Games were a stage for “symbolic combat” between athletes from the East and West and a cultural force with a powerful and compelling message that could be used for political gain. The Games were overseen by the International Olympic Committee, which both influenced and was influenced by the actions of world leaders and states. Although U.S. officials generally refused to approve federal funds for the national Olympic team, they took steps to manipulate the Games for propaganda purposes. The Cold War origins of such activities have not yet been clearly delineated. This article shows that Harry Truman's administration in the late 1940s and early 1950s was the first to address and to take advantage of the propaganda potential of the Olympics in the Cold War era, and this transformative period coincided with, and was driven by, the government's much expanded information offensive, the “Campaign of Truth.”
Journal Article
Eastern Europe’s Unwanted: Exiled Athletes and the Olympic Games, 1948-1964
During the post Second World War years, a number of athletes defected from the newly established Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. Many of these exiled athletes wanted to compete in the Olympic games, but the rules of the Olympic Charter stipulated that they could not. As such, this study examines how the International Olympic Committee negotiated the persistent efforts of exiles to change the organization’s eligibility rules. This campaign eventually achieved some success in 1964, when the International Olympic Committee enacted changes to its Charter that allowed individuals to compete at the games for a second country of citizenship after a period of naturalization. Crucially, this issue also casts further light on the complicated role of sport in the Soviet bloc and the challenges it posed for the Olympic Movement.
Journal Article
The Five Rings and the \Imagined Community\
This paper distills the many forms or expressions of nationalism associated with the Olympic Games into four historical themes: the Olympic athlete, or team, as a tangible representation of the nation incarnate; the symbolic value of victories and medals; the diplomatic significance of recognition in the International Olympic Committee; and the political currency of hosting an Olympic festival.
Journal Article
Cold War Games
It is the early Cold War.The Soviet Union appears to be in irresistible ascendance and moves to exploit the Olympic Games as a vehicle for promoting international communism.In response, the United States conceives a subtle, far-reaching psychological warfare campaign to blunt the Soviet advance.
eBook
A New Olympic Challenge
Shortly after Dwight D. Eisenhower took office, Joseph Stalin suffered a fatal stroke. The Soviet dictator died on 5 March 1953. A small cadre of officials assumed leadership in the Kremlin, until Nikita Khrushchev eventually manipulated his way into power. Almost immediately, Stalin’s successors took steps to reconfigure Soviet foreign policy. They brought an end to the Korean War and mended diplomatic ties with Yugoslavia, Israel, Turkey, and Greece. They also displayed a willingness to negotiate with the United States. “There are no contested issues in U.S.–Soviet relations,” announced Georgi Malenkov, the chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers,
Book Chapter