As Russia prepares to host the 22nd Winter Olympics
next week, the adage about not "mixing sports with
politics" is making the rounds in the media. In
reality, however, sport—as indeed other areas of human
activity—is linked to and affected by politics. And
the Sochi games are no exception. Why would President
Vladimir Putin spend over 60 billion US dollars
hosting the games if it were not in the hope of
enhancing his political fortunes at home and the
status of Russia abroad?
The Sochi games represent a political choreography
designed to mark Russia's return to center stage in
international life.
In a sense, the entire Olympics tradition has been
linked to political calculations from its beginnings
in ancient Greece when Athens used the occasion to
outshine rival city states. Having conquered the
Balkans, the Romans replaced the Olympics with their
own games as a sign of their supremacy. When the Roman
Empire adopted Christianity as its official religion
it stifled sporting traditions. Attention to the human
body could not divert attention from the sufferings of
Christ.
In modern times, the idea of reviving the Olympics
found an echo among English Hellenophiles who helped
the Greeks win independence from the Ottoman Empire in
1832. However, it was not until 1866 that what was
presented as the new "Olympian Games" took place in
Crystal Palace in London. The aim was to underline
Great Britain's position as the global superpower of
the time.
Political calculations also played a part in the
launching of the modern Olympics by the French
aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin in the 1880s. France
was still smarting from a humiliating defeat at the
hands of the Prussians and the loss of the twin
provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. Coubertin thought
that the Olympic movement would re-inject the French
with a new martial spirit, toning down their defeatist
mood. Thus, he often used martial terms. He said: "The
important thing in life is not victory but combat; it
is not to have vanquished but to have fought well," a
sentence pregnant with warlike terminology.
The most glaring example of using sport for political
purposes came in 1936 when Hitler organized the summer
Olympics in Berlin. Having re-imagined Germans as the
"Aryan race," he hoped to demonstrate their
superiority over other "races," especially "subhuman"
Jews, Gypsies, Blacks and Slavs. Twelve years later it
was the turn of Great Britain to organize the London
Olympics, reasserting the superiority of the victors
in the war against Hitler's "Aryan supermen."
The Olympics also allowed some losers in the Second
Word War—notably Italy and Japan—to reclaim a place in
the new world order. Post-Mao China used the Beijing
Olympics for the same purpose, ending decades as a
pariah. At times, the Olympics are used to signal one
power's anger against another. In 1980, US President
Jimmy Carter boycotted the Moscow Olympics because he
was unable, or unwilling, to do anything to stop the
Soviet Union from conquering Afghanistan. Four years
later, the Soviets repaid the compliment by boycotting
the Olympics in Los Angeles.
But let us return to Sochi.
Putin is desperate to regain at least part of the
prestige the defunct Soviet Union had during the Cold
War. If he succeeds in delivering a well-organized
Olympics he will be able to claim that the chaotic
phase of post-Soviet history is over, with a new
Russia capable of developing great ambitions.
The fact that the games are being held in Sochi could
also help Putin reassert Russia's position in the
Caucasus and the Black Sea. Russia has already set up
military bases in neighboring Abkhazia, an autonomous
republic that Putin snatched from Georgia in 2008.
Putin also hopes that the Sochi show will convince
everyone that he has succeeded in breaking the back of
Islamist terrorism rooted in the Muslim-majority
highlands of the northern Caucasus, notably Dagestan,
Chechnya and Ingushetia.
However, the exercise may also draw attention to the
bloody history of Russian expansionism in the Caucasus
and the wars the tsars fought for almost two centuries
against the Ottoman Empire, Iran, and a dozen Muslim
khanates.
Originally known as Ubikhya, Sochi was founded in 1672
as a small capital for a branch of the Circassian
Muslim tribes and remained an almost exclusively
Muslim town until 1864 when the Russians managed to
finally crush the Muslim tribes. Having driven the
Iranians out of Georgia in 1802 and the Ottomans out
of the coastal region in 1829, Russia organized the
first major ethnic cleansing exercise in modern
history with Sochi and its environs bearing the brunt.
Between 1864 and 1870 more than 90 percent of the
area's Muslim inhabitants were either massacred or
forced into collective migration into the Ottoman
Empire, an event that entered history as "the
Circassian genocide." The Ottomans re-settled many of
them in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan.
Over the following century, Russia repopulated the
territory with settlers from Belarus, Ukraine, Finland
and Christians from Georgia and Armenia. Today,
Muslims number around 20,000, mostly from the Shasug
Sunni community, and account for four percent of the
population. Even under Communism, Sochi managed to
keep 36 churches with Muslims allowed a single
semi-derelict mosque. (In 2008, a second mosque was
built with money from the United Arab Emirates.)
Stalin loved Sochi and built a sumptuous dacha there.
Here he entertained distinguished guests, among them
Princess Ashraf, the twin sister of the late Shah of
Iran, in 1945.
With its subtropical climate, magnolias and decorative
palm trees, and a backdrop of snow-covered peaks,
Sochi always reminded me of Caspian resorts such as
Ramsar in Iran. The impression was reinforced by the
food, mostly Iranian-style kebabs prepared by
Armenians and Georgians, and the fruit—the variety of
which made the average Russian green with envy. As
visitors in the 1970s, we always assumed that almost
anyone in Sochi might be a KGB agent. Today, they
would be agents of Putin's FSB.
At the time the place was full of apparatchiki,
including many exiled foreign Communist leaders, some
from Iran and Arab countries. They benefited from
annual all-expenses-paid holidays to do a bit of fast
living lubricated with Georgian wine, Armenian brandy
and Russian vodka. However, few would venture up the
mountains in the Roza Khutor and Krasnaya Polyana
resorts, some 12 miles away, where this year's
competitions will take place.
A political exercise, the Sochi Olympics cannot but
remind the world of a dark page in Russian
imperialistic history. That, however, should not
prevent anyone from hoping for the games to be a
success. Its pride wounded, Russia is still in a mood
of self-doubt and needs to be reassured. A reassured
Russia is more likely to live in peace with the rest
of the world, helping end the tragic experience of a
region that has been a victim of war and imperialist
greed for centuries.
Amir Taheri was born
in Ahvaz, southwest Iran, and educated in Tehran,
London and Paris. He was Executive Editor-in-Chief of
the daily Kayhan in Iran (1972-79). In 1980-84, he was
Middle East Editor for the Sunday Times. In 1984-92,
he served as member of the Executive Board of the
International Press Institute (IPI). Between 1980 and
2004, he was a contributor to the International Herald
Tribune. He has written for the Wall Street Journal,
the New York Post, the New York Times, the London
Times, the French magazine Politique Internationale,
and the German weekly Focus. Between 1989 and 2005, he
was editorial writer for the German daily Die Welt.
Taheri has published 11 books, some of which have been
translated into 20 languages. He has been a columnist
for Asharq Alawsat since 1987. Taheri's latest book
"The Persian Night" is published by Encounter Books in
London and New York.
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