1984: A LOOK BACK: Summer Olympic Games (12/30/84)

1984: A LOOK BACK

Summer Olympic Games

1984 was the year the Soviet Union and its allies boycotted the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. For Ukrainians, the Soviet decision to stay home was doubly disappointing. For one thing, Ukrainians and their fellow Americans were deprived of seeing world-class Ukrainian athletes compete, men such as pole-vaulter Sergei Bubka. Moreover, the boycott also undercut plans by several groups to protest Soviet human-rights abuses, the continued occupation of Afghanistan and the subjugation of the captive nations.

Nevertheless, the Smoloskyp Ukrainian Information Service went ahead with plans to open a bureau in Los Angeles to distribute information concerning, among other things, the exclusion of Ukrainian and other nations within the Soviet Union from the Olympic Games. The bureau, which opened on July 16, provided background information on Ukraine and on the contributions of Ukrainian athletes to past Olympics, data on the various forms of national discrimination practiced against Ukrainian athletes, as well as materials on Soviet abuses in Ukraine.

Undoubtedly the most startling information released by Smoloskyp was the charge, made at an August 2 press conference, that 59 Soviet Olympic athletes had died prematurely from the cumulative effects of performance-enhancing drugs and other abuses of sports medicine. Smoloskyp said it based its information on a list of the dead athletes that it got from Soviet athletes.

Members of the Smoloskyp bureau also discussed their controversial assertions on local radio and television programs. They also pressed demands that Ukraine, as a member of the United Nations, be allowed to compete as a nation and send its athletes to international sports competitions.

Soviet reaction to the Smoloskyp presence at the Olympics was predictable. On August 1, one day before the Smoloskyp press conference, the Soviet news agency TASS attacked what it called "Ukrainian emigre rabble" for stirring up anti-Soviet hostilities at the Games. At the conference itself, a man identifying himself as a Soviet journalist accused Ukrainian organizations of collaborating with the Nazis during World War II. The charges were summarily denied by Smoloskyp representatives, who countered that he Soviet accusations were made only to draw attention away from Soviet sports abuses.