The political undertones of the Olympic games occupy a spectrum, taking center stage in some years and a back seat in others. Famous examples of the former were 1936, when Nazi Germany used the event as a stage for their propaganda, or 1972, when Black September took 11 Israeli athletes hostage, resulting in all of their deaths. The Olympics cannot be expected to be a two week pause in international hostilities, where the olive wreath bestowed on the victors from ancient times is fully realized in all of its symbolism. Every two years, the course of current events is interrupted as a city, perhaps unknown before they were selected by the committee to host the games, scrambles to wash the dishes and make up the guest bedrooms before the world arrives. But in a flash, they are over, and the world picks up where it had left off with no competition to distract from the turmoil that was momentarily quieted.
The Olympics are a respite from the weariness of conflict, as hackneyed as that may seem. Even as protesters were murdered in Kiev, the peace talks failed in Syria and the final straw broke in the Venezuelan crisis, the world’s attention was instead on Jeremy Abbott, the 28 year old figure skater from Colorado who plummeted to the ice from a failed quad and lay crumpled next to the wall. After 30 agonizing seconds, a global audience watched with baited breath as he raised one arm and dragged his body to an upright position, moving into the correct second of his program as a smile, seasoned with pain, emerged on his face. He skated with courage and the audience cheered him on, waving whatever flag was in their possession while they watched him finish 12th overall in the competition.
One could argue that the Olympics are colossal waste of time and money. They raise the terrorist threat, dissuading some athletes and their families from attending, and leave the host city, if not built to sustain the industry and tourist trade, in economic decline. But I find something beautiful in it all. For a just a moment, the microcosm of the world represented in the Iceberg Skating Palace simply wanted this American man to stand up, and when he did, it wasn’t an American victory. The love of sport, of pushing humans to their individual limits, both psychological and physical, is common ground for all the countries who cannot seem to agree on much more. For a moment, we are given a platform of relative neutrality to wave the Russian flag for an American skier, or cheer on the Dutch speed skating team regardless of nationality, because their skill and dominance astounds even the skaters they beat. The Olympics are as close as our flawed world ever comes to unity, and despite being an imperfect conglomeration of agendas and rivalries, they extract nobility from us all.
Now setting all of this Kum-ba-ya talk aside for a moment, it seems fair to note that the Sochi games were a notable deviation from this model. Vladmir Putin seemed to take the opportunity as an extended advertisement for his country and its policies, investing approximately $51 billion in infrastructure and promotion. Sochi was initially viewed as an unlikely location for the winter games, with its subtropical climate and proximity to Chechnya. But Putin hinged Russia’s reputation on Sochi’s success, beginning with an absurd torch relay that lasted for 40,000 miles into the world’s deepest lake, the North Pole and outer space. The location, Putin’s attitude and the general trend toward injustice that has come into the media’s foreground recently put the Sochi games at the middling to extreme end of the political spectrum. Many countries, including the United States, braced for a potential terror attack.
When the guests arrived in Sochi, the guest bedrooms were not clean and the dishes were piled up. Hotels were unprepared to accommodate the masses, and the water from many of the faucets was tinged with yellow. Putin shook off these inconveniences as the demands of bourgeois Westerners unfamiliar with how the real world works, but could only bite his tongue when the fifth Olympic ring did not appear. From the water to the asymmetrical rings, the audience was left with a bitter taste in their mouths. Although most of those examples could be written off as minor inconveniences, they did speak to the lack of foresight and superficiality with which the games were staged.
What emerged as the fatal flaw was the attitude that the Olympics were about Russia, ignoring the reason for the games: the athletes and the international community. And frankly, the Olympics didn’t do much good for Russia either. The villages surrounding Sochi, such as Kazachy Brod, were deprived of a fresh water source, among other…“Western luxuries”. A resident was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “It’s clearer to see the benefits for the government… It will be good if you tell Mr. Putin to pay attention to families with many children.” The construction of the Olympic village and the sporting complexes in Russia seemed like a bodybuilder whose muscle was temporary and not properly vascularized. Once the audience leaves, the city and the country most likely will not maintain their upward swing, and the atrophy will last longer than the excitement leading up to 2014. The prevalent beliefs regarding basic human rights prevented the innovation and growth that Russia claimed would come with hosting the Olympics. The Washington Post wrote, “President Vladimir Putin said Friday that gay people have nothing to fear in Russia as long as they leave children alone,” which came on the coattails of the imprisonment and subsequent release - only to save face - of Greenpeace and Pussy Riot.
Obviously there is no perfect host country, whose intentions are entirely pure and selfless, and whose ideologies oppress no one. Yet even so, Sochi was an odd choice for host, not because of their lack of snow but because Putin - and by extension Russia, for however unfair that generalization may be one cannot seem to go without the other - fundamentally misunderstood the purpose of the Olympic games, to such an extent that they could not even feign success in their wake.
Dostoevsky wrote, “Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.” While this is certainly true and Russia is an immensely complex country, whose contributions to society and enthralling history certainly do merit examination, the standards for tolerance and progress in the world are rising. And since Putin opened the door by staking Russia’s good name on the games, it is fair to say, that the character of their nation has been simultaneously tarnished and exposed, the ultimate ripple in Narcissus’ reflection.
Nika Sabasteanski is a Sophomore majoring in Neuroscience. Her column in the Opinions Section, called “Crooked Wood”, discusses philosophy, law, and international politics.
