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

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

State socialist regimes in Eastern Europe invested heavily in international sport with an impressive record of success. These successes became an important element in promoting the political system and bolstering national prestige. Official narratives of sporting prowess were frequently challenged by detractors, however, who highlighted tales of cheating, doping, and abuse, creating much bleaker counter-narratives to the official ones promoted by governments. This panel analyzes and problematizes Eastern European narratives of sport from a variety of perspectives. The first paper uses oral histories to construct a narrative of Hungary’s Central Sport School’s junior female basketball team. From this bottom-up perspective, we see how knowledge-sharing worked in the state socialist sporting system and can more easily identify the ways in which the academic literature has discounted the lived experience of junior athletes. The second paper looks at narratives surrounding Romania’s participation at the 1984 Olympic Games, in which western media rewarded the Ceaușescu regime’s decision to defy Moscow and field a team in Los Angeles by lavishing attention on the country’s successes in gymnastics, thus helping to legitimize a country in the throes of structural crisis. The final paper examines the search for new narratives about Eastern European sport at the 1992 Olympic Games after regime change. Together, the papers all explore sports’ central role in storytelling both for individuals as well as societies. This is the second panel in the series "Sporting Histories of East-Central Europe."

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Leslie Waters, U of Texas at El Paso

Papers

• Rewarding the Maverick: Cold War Logics and Romania’s Special Treatment at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics - Victoria Elisabeth Harms, Johns Hopkins U

• Eastern Europe’s Coming-Out Party: Regime Changes, Economic Transformations, and the 1992 Summer Olympic Games - Leslie Waters, U of Texas at El Paso

Discussant

• Johanna Mellis, Ursinus College