Back in the old pre-Fall of the Berlin Wall days I used to hear a lot of negativity towards the Eastern Bloc countries, especially East Germany and the USSR, with regards to the Olympics. It seems, if memory serves me correctly, that when little communist kids were discovered to have special athletic talents, they were forced to undergo rigorous training at the expense of any “normal” childhood lifestyle. All time outside academia was spent in workouts and gyms under the eyes of despotic coaches. Sports were not fun–sports success was patriotism. Failure was not tolerated, and success at the Olympics (always the ultimate goal) meant a hero status at home and much wealth and favors. Parents accepted that their children would rarely be at home because their future glory and the country’s glory were of utmost importance.
I grew up in a conservative household that generally took most anti-communist propaganda as the gospel truth. But now I wonder: Was there really that much difference between how those bad old communist countries trained their olympic hopefuls? Or was this just a convenient sour grapes excuse to explain why they so often kicked ass?
I have heard there are several lawsuits pending in Germany due to the now middle aged athletes from the 70’s who were told they were getting vitamins when really they were being seriously doped with steroids and other performance enhancing chemicals. Many are having health problems now.
Who knows. Steroid use was common in the U.S. as well. All I know is that female swimmers are hot now. Back then the looked like they needed a shave.
I just recently read online an article detailing all the excesses of East Germany in this field and (of course) now I cannot find it. Yes it was very bad and people were give drugs without being told etc.
Were they really fired for not bringing home gold medals?? This at first seems absurd, but I guess we see the same things in our own country–in college and professional sports.
On the other hand, does anybody really connect Olympic gold with a country’s or a people’s worth? How long could an Olympic victory rally the countrymen around the government in bad times? If things are going well in a country, how much of a damper would losing an Olympic medal bring? Maybe if you’re preaching a “master race” doctrine, you’d lose some credibility if your country got whupped in the Olympics, but all in all, who remembers who won what when?
I recall that in my youth that we were told that Olympic losers in the Eastern Bloc countries became outcasts. I find this hard to believe. Wins are nice, but what’s the big deal?
Biotop, communist countries lived on propaganda. That’s all they had to offer their people. mybe to you it is no big deal but for them it was a VERY big deal. They could say they had gone abroad and won over capitalist countries. Somehow this was a reflection on their own internal affairs. The people need not be told the real differences between how people lived in other countries.
China has opened up a lot in the last few years but there’s still one thing: nobody can report news except the official state agency (Xinhua). I have not seen any negative news about China reported by Xinhua. It is kind of funny because they report everything is going fine all the time and then something like a few top level bureaucrats have been executed for being corrupt. (But they will not allow anyone to report there is corruption). It is like the positive news is they are getting rid of corruption that did not even exist.
Anyway, if this is so today, you can imagine what it was like 25 years ago in the height of the cold war and the Cultural Revolution. Millions of chinese perished as a result of the Cultural revolution. It took much less than leaving your country in a bad place in view of the world to get yourself executed those days.
Slightly off topic, the childhoods of American Olympic hopefuls are also far from normal-to train a body to do the things an olympic athelete can do doesn’t leave much time for anything else. The parents of a fifteen year old Olympic hopeful in Americal alsop have to get used to not seeing thier child much, and they finace it themselves. This is not the same as slipping a ten year old steriods, by any means, but still worth mentioning.
Sailor,
I’m not saying propaganda is no big deal. Much propaganda can be insidiously effective. I just fail to see how a gold medal in the javelin toss or track and field makes the communist hold over it’s people more powerful. It’s a nice news story, and countrymen no doubt feel pride, but are the people really so fired up over the Olympics that winning a gold medal for the country has any long-lasting positive results for the leadership?? So much so that it is worth the government’s time to spend years and years compulsively forging athletes out of their promising youth? Hmmm…
No doubt positive nationalistic stories create a common bond for the people and therefore would be promoted by the government. But to go to such an extreme for so little results …this all seems a bit exaggerated to me. Could perhaps there be just a tad of anti-communist propaganda in all this?
This may seem like an extreme to you and me, but think about it this way… Issuing an order for little BamBam Rubble to be trained as a weight lifter is of no consequence to the person who would have the authority to give that order. This would be because that person would not ever have even met any of the Rubble family. He would not see how the day to day life of this child has been affected by his order. The only thing this official will see, is the end result. A gold medal or 4 for his country. What was the cost to the official? One teensy-weensy little order he issued several years ago. Even if we assume that the benefit to this official’s career and his country are small in the grand scheme of things, the return on investment (from the POV of the official) was fantastic. Remember, there is no press that can pull on the heart strings of the people by showing the story of the forced saccrifice made by the Rubble family. The only thing the press will be showing the people, is BamBam standing on the top tier of the podium set with a gold medal hanging around his neck.
At least that’s my take on things, and I’ve been known to be wrong once or twice per year.
-China, a notorious Olymoic doper, has backed off in an attampt to get the 2008 games
-In 1952, after the Americans barely edged out the USSR for Olympic Gold Medals, the head of the USSR Olympic committee was heavily questioned by Beria, Stalins’ henchman, and according to the book, “War of the Century” he was convinced he would be shot until Stalin let him go.
Biotop, maybe you have not been exposed to other cultures. Think of any culture that hates the USA like Irak or Libya. What do they gain by beating the USA at a sports event? To you it may mean nothing. To them, even if it were not sponsored by the government it would mean enormous pride. Like Argentina beating the UK at soccer. If you do not understand it I think you just need to be exposed to other cultures more because I cannot explain it better.
The fact is communist countries did force their athletes to the limit and you ask why. I am trying to explain it to you but you do not understand that reason. Well, can you come up with a better one? I can’t. The one I have explains it pretty well for me.
By the way, Cuba also does the same kind of thing. It goes out of its way to try to win at sports. The people there mostly do not know the standard of living abroad is way higher because they get no news from outside. They cannot be told Cuba has any achievements in the outside world because there aren’t any. But if they send an athlete somewhere and he wins it must be a sign of Cuban superiority. It is propaganda by association and it works with selling soap or with selling ideology. Al Gore kisses his wife on national TV and his popularity goes up. Does that mean people conciously are looking for a good kisser to be the next president? It just means they associate him with something they like.
But getting back to Cuba, it spent a ton of money it didn’t have to build sports town in the outskirts of Havana for the PanAmerican games in 1990 (or thereabouts). They built all these buildings and stadiums to impress the world (meaning other latinamerican countries) but now they are all run down out of lack of maintenance. I stayed at what used to be the apartments for athletes and you should see the place. They have converted them into apartment-hotels for foreigners so they are maintained much better than any home and yet half of the stuff doesn’t work, the place is filthy etc. You have to see it to believe it.
By the way, the name of the place is Cojímar and it is where hemmingway used to go fishing. They absolutely love Hemingway there and you see his picture everywhere.
Manda JO, I tend to find immoral how some kids are pushed. The difference of course is that here it is the parents who do it and in the Communist countries it is the government. IMHO it is wrong in both cases but in the case of the government it is doubly wrong and they will abuse the kid much more.
Another thing that has not been mentioned is the blatant cheating by all countries in the aspect that olympic athletes are supposed to be amateurs.
In communist countries this takes the form that they are officially given a post as army officers or something of the sort while in reality they are full time athletes.
Huh? No, they haven’t. Beijing is THE front runner for the 2008 Games, and it’s generally believed the decision’s already been made via lots and lots of bribe money.
It’s not quite like Argentina beating the UK at soccer. Soccer is an huge worldwide sport, obsessively followed by millions upon millions of fans. Weightlifting, track, and fencing however, as well as many other Olympic sports, have comparably few followers. Hence I can see the nationalistic value in soccer wins much more so than in, say, curling.
Did communist countries “force their athletes to the limit” as much as has been claimed–and more so than other countries at the time? I’m certainly willing to believe it if the evidence is presented to me, but where’s the proof of this supposedly commonplace and widespread activity for those of us so culturally challenged.?
Never mind, it probably is just anticommunist propaganda. It’s all in the news but it could well be just anticommunist propaganda made up by the capitalist exploiters. You just don’t know who to trust these days do you? It seems even your parents were part of the evil plot.
As for me being anticommunist, yes, you are 100% right. I am also antiNazi, antiFascist, antiChildabuse, antiCHildporn, antiracism and anti a long list of other things I consider evil.
“Frontline” on PBS did a story on this a few years ago.
To the old Soviet Union and some of it’s Iron Curtain friends (like East Germany) the Olympics were a very, very big deal. It was international battle that showed the superiority of their systems. Kids that showed special talent as early as kindergarden would be recruted. Gold medal winners were Heros Of The People.
As to “pushed to the limit”…well, let’s just say those kids got the best coaches available. Nothing dark and sinister about that.
And I’m right up there with you, sailor. I am well aware that the communist bloc countries were terrible places for their people. Giving steroids and other dangerous drugs to athletes without their knowledge is despicable.
It would be interesting to find out just which other countries have abused their athletes in search of gold medals.
Well, this opens up an entirely new can of worms. I do not think western countries (and by this I mean governments) have done this for the simple reason that they can’t. The US government is not in the business of training athletes to win gold medals for the greater glory of Yankeeland. If they were I have no doubt they would do such things because it is human nature.
But there is no doubt that individuals will also cheat and abuse themselves to win. Since I do not care about sports I don’t care about this either.
What I do find disturbing is parents who will push their children way too hard in sports like gymnastics where you see young girls who have pretty much been deprived of a normal childhood. IMHO this is child abuse and I would try to take some measures to curb this kind of thing. Still, I do not think it comes anywhere close to what the communists were doing.
This behaviour from parents happens not only in sports. When I see the video of Jon Bennet Ramsey in those pageants it makes me sick. I do not understand what kind of parent would do that to a little girl.
Those are governments, not cultures. Nonetheless, the Olympics did play an outsized role in Soviet era propaganda – as someone else mentioned, symbolic of the new Soviet man (or woman) defeating the perfidious capitalist weakling etc. etc. Abuse greater than our atheletes, well insofar as its rare in the West to have government sponsored programs, of course it was greater? Greater than some abusive pressure in our private sector sports… Well who knows.
I’m sorry, but with all this talk about “western countrie’s” practices, we shouldn’t forget how the united states trains their own atheletes. I remember many biographies during the last olympics regarding our gymnasts. Many of those girls either left their parents completely to train, or the family split up to be there with her. It applies to our figure skaters too. How many stories have been told about parents mortgaging their houses several times over to pay for their daughters training. All the while, their little girl is hundreds of miles away practicing for 10+ hours a day.They suffer stress fractures because their little bodies can’t take the pressure on their bones. And school! it is a second priority to their “career”. I think we are just as demanding as those western countries. The only difference is, it is the parents, not the government pushing these children.