In 1952, the Soviet Union made its long-anticipated debut at the Olympic Games, and elite competitive gymnastics, along with the broader world of international sports, would never be the same. But how did a country so wary of Western influence, and so determined to control its global image, come to participate in what was once seen as a bourgeois spectacle?
The path to participation was anything but straightforward. It involved high-level political debates, intense internal pressure to guarantee victory, and even intelligence gathering to assess the strength of foreign competitors. Thanks to the work of historian Jenifer Parks, we now have a clearer picture of the motives, hesitations, and strategies behind this monumental shift. Here’s a very brief overview of what happened.
Reminder: The Soviet Union had participated in the 1937 Workers’ Olympiad. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, I have not been able to track down the results of the gymnastics competition in 1937.
Quick Facts:
- In 1949, the FIG (International Gymnastics Federation) admitted the Soviet Union.
- The Olympic Committee of the USSR was formed on April 21, 1951.
- Weeks later, the IOC recognized the new body at its 45th session.
- Additionally, Konstantin Andrianov became an IOC member in 1951.
The Soviet Union weighed participating in the 1948 Olympics but ultimately held back, wary of falling short in the medal count.
Note: Nikolai Romanov was the chairman of the USSR Committee on Physical Culture and Sport. The Politburo was the principal policymaking committee of the communist party in the Soviet Union.
Note #2: The following quotes come from Jenifer Parks’s “Verbal Gymnastics: Sports, Bureaucracy, and the Soviet Union’s Entrance into the Olympic Games, 1946-1952.”
In 1947, Nikolai Romanov, in a letter to Politburo member Andrei Zhdanov, asked permission to prepare a Soviet team for the 1948 Olympic Games, stressing the huge popularity of the Games throughout the world, the increasing number of countries joining the Olympics, and the idealized message of the Olympic Movement to justify his request. According to Romanov, Stalin believed that even the second place finish of Soviet wrestlers at the 1946 European Championships could discredit the Soviet Union and chastised Romanov for sending a team to the competition: “if you are not ready, then there’s no need to participate.” From this exchange, Romanov drew the lesson that only the guarantee of first place would induce the Soviet leadership to send athletes to compete abroad. Following Stalin’s cue, Romanov couched his request to send a team to the 1948 Olympics in terms of “total team victory.” Since Soviet athletes could reasonably hope only for second, third, or fourth place in events such as track and field, boxing, and swimming, where the United States held prominence, Romanov conceded that the Soviet Union could not surpass the United States in medals. Reporting to Zhdanov in 1947 that competing nations observed an unofficial point system based on the first six places in each event, he asserted nonetheless that by competing in every sport on the program and placing in the top six in those sports the Soviet team could secure full team victory based on the “unofficial” points system.
The IOC feared the Soviets might crash the 1952 Olympics—uninvited but impossible to ignore.
Note: Edström was the IOC president from 1946 to 1952. Brundage served as IOC president from 1952 to 1972.
Unable to reconcile the Soviet Union’s possible entrance with the Olympic amateur ideal, Brundage found refuge in the IOC’s bureaucratic process. Before the Soviet Union formed a National Olympic Committee (NOC) and petitioned the IOC for recognition in 1951, Brundage could avoid dealing with the challenge to the Olympic amateur ideal and focus instead on the more clearly defined rules of the IOC under which no country lacking a National Olympic Committee would be invited to participate in the Olympic Games. Edstrom now made several attempts to persuade Nikolai Romanov, chairman of the Soviet Sports Committee, that the Soviet Union would be allowed to participate in the Olympic Games only if it followed IOC rules and formed a National Olympic Committee. The many missives Edström sent to Romanov went unanswered, creating further anxiety for the IOC president and vice-president. Hearing nothing from their Soviet contact, Edstrom and Brundage worried that the Soviet Union might cause embarrassment to the IOC by sending a delegation to Helsinki with or without official recognition. Reminding Edstrom of the Soviet Union’s unexpected appearance at the 1946 European Track and Field Championships in Oslo, Brundage stated:
‘It would not surprise me if they tried the same stunt at Helsinki in 1952 … Not only the IOC but also our Finnish friends must be prepared for this contingency in order to avoid finding ourselves in the middle of a most embarrassing and dangerous controversy.’
Romanov’s silence, however, had more to do with indecision within the Soviet party-state bureaucracy than with a plot to enter the Olympics on their own terms.
Brundage worried that the Soviet Union would bring the IOC “nothing but trouble.”
Unlike many of his colleagues, Brundage lacked an aristocratic pedigree, having risen to a position of wealth and prominence through business. This self-made man, however, betrayed the “gentlemen’s club” mentality of the IOC when, in a circular letter to IOC members, he waxed nostalgic over the days when
‘the care exercised in the selection of the individuals who composed the IOC produced members who, no matter where they came from or what their language, were of the same general type and they were soon welded into what has so often been called the “Olympic Family.’”
In Brundage’s view, the Soviets, “not understanding fair play, good sportsmanship and amateurism,” were obviously not of “the same general type” as the current IOC members and would “bring with them nothing but trouble.”
Privately, Soviet officials were sweating. Could they actually beat the West in medals? Just to be safe, they did their homework—on everyone else’s athletes.
Despite the election of Andrianov to the IOC and the recognition of the Soviet NOC, the Soviet leadership continued to withhold permission for a team to be sent to the Games: invitations to compete in both the winter Games in Oslo and the Helsinki Summer Games remained unanswered. As budget constraints and continued avoidance of foreign sporting contacts further jeopardized the Olympic project, Romanov relied heavily on Andrianov and other leaders within the Sports Committee to maintain control over Olympic training measures. In June 1951, the official invitation to participate in the 1952 winter Games set off a flurry of in-house memos and reports deliberating on the Soviet athletes’ chances of success. With the decision to compete in either the winter or summer Games still up in the air, Andrianov called on various departments in the sports apparatus to compare their athletes’ achievements to those of foreign athletes to assess the state of Olympic training. Setting November 1, 1951, as the deadline, Andrianov hoped to gather all necessary information so that a decision could be reached regarding Olympic participation.
[…]
Romanov and the sports administrators now had to guarantee a full team victory under continued restrictions on international competition, and Soviet sports leaders struggled with the question of international experience almost to the eve of the Soviet Olympic debut. On April 30, 1952, less than two months before the opening of the Games in Helsinki, Romanov wrote to Malenkov requesting that the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) provide information to the Sport Committee about the Olympic training of foreign athletes, specifically those from the USA, England, Switzerland, and France. This request strongly suggests that the dearth of foreign sporting contacts continued in the months leading up to the Helsinki Olympics, forcing Romanov to obtain through the MVD what his committee had been unable to get through international competition and trainer exchanges. Working under political and ideological constraints, trainers and bureaucrats maintained their call for more international meets, tried to find out as much as possible about foreign sporting activities, and did everything they could to prepare their athletes.
Officially, the U.S. topped the medal tally in 1952. Unofficially? The Soviets had a different version of events.
The reason for this becomes clear as one looks at discrepancies in the unofficial point totals of the United States and the Soviet Union. At the end of the Olympic Games in Helsinki, Pravda (Truth), the official newspaper of the Communist Party, proclaimed victory without reference to point totals, reporting simply that the “athletes of the Soviet Union took first place.” On the same day, the New York Times claimed a win for the USA based on a score of 614 to 553 ½. Upon his return to Soviet Union, Romanov told the members of the Politburo that while the United States had won more medals in the Games, the Soviet Union tied with the USA in terms of points, with 494. This revised total appeared in the New York Times on August 7. Part of the disparity comes from the use of two different point systems. Romanov calculated his results assigning seven points for first place, five for second, four for third, etc., but the United States’ system gave ten points for first place. Hours after Romanov’s appearance before the Politburo, Malenkov called to confirm the totals. Malenkov put to rest any fears Romanov might have had over his fate by telling him to “Relax. Go home. Rest.” After the Games, criticism for poor performance in certain events fell on athletes and trainers, rather than on Romanov and the Sports Committee. Satisfied with the assurance that the United States had not won outright, the Politburo declared its first Olympic Games an adequate success, and Romanov’s point tally became the official word for the next fifty years. In October 2002, however, Aksel’ Vartanian recalculated the points and found that even by Romanov’s point system, the United States came out on top with a score of 495 to 487. The fact that his point totals remained unchallenged for fifty years indicates the security of Romanov’s position and the influence he enjoyed in the Politburo.
More on 1952
