Eastern Europe’s Coming-Out Party: Regime Changes, Economic Transformations, and the 1992 Summer Olympic Games

• In Event: Sporting Histories of East Central Europe II: Re-Assessing Eastern European Narratives of Sport Under State Socialism

Abstract

The 1992 Olympic Games, the first held after the collapse of state socialist regimes in Europe, provided a unique opportunity for former Eastern Bloc countries to establish a new place in both the imagining of the European continent and in global sport hierarchies. This presentation looks at the new narratives promoted about liberalizing Eastern Europe at the 1992 Games as well as the struggles to maintain international sporting prowess amid the dire economic crisis the region experienced in the 1990s. Sources include television broadcasts of the Olympic Games as well as correspondence between the International Olympic Committee, the Association of European Olympic Committees, and National Olympic Committees of various Central & Eastern European states.

Author

• Leslie Waters, U of Texas at El Paso