East Plays West: Sport and the Cold War

Description

The Cold War spanned some five decades from the devastation that remained after World War Two until the fall of the Berlin wall, and for much of that time the perception was that only on the Eastern side were politics and sport inextricably linked. However, this assumption underestimates the extent to which sport was an important symbol for both power blocs in their ongoing ideological struggle. This collection of essays from leading international authorities on sport, culture and ideology brings together an impressive body of work organized around key political themes and outstanding moments in sport, and is at once a political history of sport and an illuminating new perspective on the forces that shaped this unsettled time. East plays West Sport and the Cold War Copyright Contents List of contributors Foreword Acknowledgements Introduction: war minus the shooting? Chapter 1 Totalitarian regimes and Cold War sport: steroid “Übermenschen” and “ball-bearing females” Chapter 2 Verbal gymnastics: sports, bureacracy, and the Soviet Union’s entrance into the Olympic Games, 1946–1952 Chapter 3 Cold War expatriot sport: symbolic resistance and international response in Hungarian water polo at the Melbourne Olympics, 1956 Chapter 4 Cold War football: British–European encounters in the 1940s and 1950s Chapter 5 “Oscillating antagonism”: Soviet–British athletics relations, 1945–1960 Chapter 6 “If you want the girl next door …”: Olympic sport and the popular press in early Cold War Britain Chapter 7 The “muscle gap”: physical education and US fears of a depleted masculinity, 1954–1963 Chapter 8 Good versus evil? Drugs, sport and the Cold War Chapter 9 The Cold War and the (re)articulation of Canadian national identity: the 1972 Canada–USSR Summit Series Chapter 10 “One day when the Yankees …”: Cuban baseball, the United States and the Cold War Chapter 11 Playing the “race card”: US foreign policy and the integration of sports Chapter 12 “Miraculous” masculinity meets militarization: narrating the 1980 USSR–US men’s Olympic ice hockey match and Cold War politics Chapter 13 The Soviet Union and the Olympic Games of 1980 and 1984: explaining the boycotts to their own people Chapter 14 “Sport and politics don’t mix”: China’s relationship with the IOC during the Cold War Chapter 15 Sport after the Cold War: implications for Russia and Eastern Europe Chapter 16 Performing America’s past: Cold War fantasies in a perpetual state of war Chapter 17 Beyond the stadium and into the street: sport and anti-Americanism in South Korea Index