Thirty-six years ago, on May 8, 1984, the Soviet Union announced its plans to back out of participating in the 1984 Summer Olympic Games that were to be held in Los Angeles that year.
Following suit, East Germany and Bulgaria announced on May 9 that they would not be sending teams to the Olympics in Los Angeles, and similar announcements were expected from other Soviet satellite countries.
The Soviet National Olympic Committee statement claimed that Soviet participation was impossible because of “the gross flouting” of Olympic ideals by the United States. In particular, the statement cited plans by groups to stage anti-Soviet demonstrations during the Games and the American refusal to ban such protests.
Although the Soviets insisted that their action was not a boycott, many experts said they believed the Soviets decided to withdraw from the Games in retaliation for the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Others thought the Soviets hoped to embarrass the Reagan administration.
Despite official statements mocking the boycott of 1980, the U.S. move seriously undermined the efforts that the Kremlin had mounted in playing host for the Games and considerably weakened competition in many sports, creating deep resentments.
The possibility of defections was another sensitive issue that may have contributed to the Soviet decision, although only one Soviet citizen had defected since the USSR entered the Olympics in 1952 – and he later voluntarily returned to his country. In Los Angeles, however, several citizens’ groups, including the Ban the Soviets coalition, had publicly stated that they planned to encourage defections among Soviet and East European athletes.
The coalition was formed after the Soviets shot down a commercial passenger jet, Korean Air KAL 007, in the fall of 1983, and it included a number of émigré and ethnic groups. The coalition said it had as many as 500 “safe houses” around Los Angeles in which to harbor possible defectors.
The Soviet withdrawal from the Olympics was seen by most analysts as a means to punish Washington for its 1980 boycott of the Games, as well as wider disputes between the two countries.
The Soviet statement also implied that President Ronald Reagan was using the Games for “political aims,” and the Soviet move was seen an attempt to hurt President Reagan’s bid for re-election. The Soviet press had indicated that the Kremlin strongly favored a Democratic Party victory.
Washington called the Soviet action a “blatant political action for which there was no real justification.”
Almost immediately after the Soviet announcement, plans were already being announced for staging an athletic meet for Soviet-bloc countries, which suggested that the Soviets had been preparing to pull out of the Games for some time. Additional evidence that the Soviets had pre-planned their move included the list of charges and counter-charges leveled by the Soviets at the Los Angeles Organizing Committee and the U.S. government since the beginning of 1984.
Source: “Soviets quit Olympic Games,” The Ukrainian Weekly, May 13, 1984.