Bojkot igrzysk olimpijskich jako instrument polityki międzynarodowej w latach 1976–1988 by Michał Słoniewski, Warsaw

This book is a cogent analysis of boycotts of the Olympic Games in the years 1976–1988 in their international context, as well as the consequences of these boycotts for the Olympic movement itself. The book is based on meticulous, original research. Despite the wealth of historical detail that Michał Słoniewski presents, his book is engaging and lively. He focuses on the boycotts of the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984, placing them in a broader context and discussing the problem of boycotts in the history of modern international sporting events.Słoniewski's starting observation is that the modern Olympic movement, despite its proclaimed insulation from politics, has reflected all the major political problems of the world. This is a consequence of the growing internationalization of the movement and the problems that affected the participating countries regionally and globally. Not surprisingly, the Olympic movement during the Cold War started to reflect the bipolar division of the world, especially after the Soviet Union started to compete in the Olympics in 1952.The first chapter discusses the inception of boycotts, from the start of the modern Olympic movement at the end of the nineteenth century until the Games in Munich in 1972. Some of the focal points of this chapter include the response of the movement to the rise of Nazism in Germany, the problems stemming from the Cold War division of the world, and changes affecting newly independent Third World countries. According to Słoniewski, the first instances of multi-country boycotts of the Games came during the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne. Numerous countries were involved, albeit for different reasons: Egypt, accompanied by Iraq and Lebanon, protested against foreign intervention during the Suez Crisis; The Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland protested against the Soviet invasion of Hungary in November 1956; and the People's Republic of China (PRC) protested against Taiwan's presence at the Games generally. In principle, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) could have punished the boycotting countries by barring them from participation in subsequent Olympic Games, but the IOC never went beyond verbal criticism. Participating countries came to see boycotts as a useful political tool.The second chapter concentrates on the Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976. The two central problems in this case were (1) further controversy about the participation of the PRC and Taiwan and (2) the boycott of the Games by nearly thirty African countries in protest against New Zealand's maintenance of sports relations with South Africa, a country that had been excluded from the Games for its apartheid policies since the 1960s.Chapter 3 is one of the two main chapters of the book, offering a detailed account of the U.S. boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980. Słoniewski stresses that the Carter administration intended the boycott as a condemnation of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan and also as a means of reinforcing the position of the United States. By tarnishing the image of the Soviet Union around the globe, President Jimmy Carter also hoped to unite Americans behind him in the coming presidential election. The main opponent of U.S. efforts to spread the idea of the boycott was not the Soviet Union, but the IOC and its president, Lord Killanin, who tried to defend the movement. Słoniewski's assessment is that although the boycott succeeded in terms of numbers (only 81 out of 141 National Olympic Committees were represented at the Moscow Games), the scaled-back competition was still a sporting success (with 36 world records broken). In the meantime, Soviet troops continued to occupy Afghanistan, and for a variety of reasons Carter ended up losing the presidential election.Chapter 4, the other major chapter of the book, examines the Soviet decision not to participate in the Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984. Słoniewski firmly places the decision in the context of worsening relations between the Soviet Union and the United States in the years 1983–1984, although he notes that the Soviet boycott was probably also intended as payback for the earlier U.S. boycott. He notices that this time the main conflict was between the Soviet Union and the United States, with the IOC playing a secondary role. Słoniewski traces the Polish government's decision to join the Soviet boycott rather than siding with Romania and sending a national team to the Games after all.Chapter 5 discusses the changed international context of the Olympic Games by the time they were held in Seoul in 1988. Soon after the closing of the Los Angeles Olympics, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union started to improve, a process that accelerated after Mikhail Gorbachev took office in 1985. The prolonged negotiations between North and South Korea on the possible involvement of the North in the organization of the Seoul Games apparently stemmed from North Korea's hope of persuading the Soviet Union and other European Communist states to reverse their decision to participate in the Games. North Korea's efforts proved for naught, and only a tiny number of states (most notably, North Korea and Cuba) boycotted the Seoul Games. Apparently, the time for using boycotts of Olympic Games to generate political pressure had already passed.In a concluding chapter, Słoniewski points to changes in the Olympic movement itself, through which it has increased its resistance to outside pressure. Chief among these are the reforms introduced by Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the IOC from 1980 to 2001, that set up the IOC on a fully independent financial basis. This, together with the increase in the popularity of the Olympics as a global show, has made boycotting the Games today an unattractive option for politicians and states. Protests by individual athletes are still a possibility, however, and are occasionally practiced.The book, in addition to the main text, contains an appendix with 36 key documents. Most of them originated with the top party organs or sports authorities in the USSR and Poland, and some have never been published before. The book also contains 220 biographical notes about individuals who appear in the text, as well as a calendar providing parallel timelines of key political events and developments in the Olympic movement from the beginning of the 1970s to the end of the 1980s. The book is in Polish but includes substantial English and Russian summaries. In breadth and attention to detail, especially regarding the crucial cases of the Moscow and Los Angeles boycotts, Słoniewski's study is a unique contribution to the field. It well deserves being translated and published in English

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