This booklet is a rarity. Shipped all the way to Zurich from a legendary leftist bookstore in San Francisco (“fighting commodity fetishism with commodity fetishism since 1981”), this is a Soviet broadside against Reagan’s America, seen through the lens of the 1984 Summer Olympics.

Back when I was living in Russia, a good friend once shared his secret for detecting nationalist media bias. I was complaining about the difficulties in writing critically about Russia because I was worried about playing into Russophobic discourse. How can I criticize what rightly needs criticism, but not reinforce anti-Russian stereotypes?

I was surprised when he told me how he treasures critical news about his country from abroad. Why? In order to understand what’s happening in a country with a controlled media environment, he explained, it’s useful to read what your enemies or opponents write about you. I’ve kept that perspective with me, and this is the largest contribution of the booklet: Reading about the quintessential American mega-event from a Soviet perspective helps puncture some of the myths that surround the 1984 Olympics.

This is different from my usual take – a ground-level exploration to uncover gentrification, securitization, and the inequalities engendered by uneven development. In contrast, this booklet claims to take seriously the values and obligations of the Olympic Movement, and then demonstrates how Los Angeles 1984 violated them.

As a product of the USSR and the Cold War, though, we can’t quite take this text entirely at face value. One of the problems with reading stuff written by Russians and Americans about each other is that it’s hard to separate fact from hyperbole. So, reading this book, it is not entirely clear how much of these Soviet accusations actually happened (the Soviets are not well known for being married to the truth after all). But some of it surely did, and so perhaps it will be of use to see a little bit of how the Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games and the United States, from the perspective of the USSR.

The central thrust of this book is an explanation of why the Soviet Union would not be attending the 1984 Games, framed through a rather legalistic rundown of the Olympic Charter and the numerous ways that the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, the State Department, and the White House violated various provisions therein. Their appeal was both legalistic and moralistic, attempting to demonstrate the ways that LA84 broke both the letter and the spirit of the charter. There is lots of detail about how Rule 41 or Rule 53 of the Charter was violated in such-and-such a way.

Perhaps I am a victim of the passage of time, but it seems to me that the power of this argument is lost on people who don’t necessarily believe in the utopian rhetoric of Olympism. When the Soviets complain about the excess commercialization of LA84, for instance, they protest against the violations of the spirit of the Olympic Games: “Sergei Bylov, who was given the honor of lighting the flame of the Moscow Olympics, said, ’To run each kilometer of the Olympic relay was a great honor for every Soviet citizen. I never thought the sacred symbol would be auctioned’” (p19).

Give me a break.

And yet there is something valuable in cataloguing the variety of violations of the Olympic Charter, if only to demonstrate how the USA did not deem it at all necessary to bow to international agreements. American exceptionalism par excellence. But for those who do not see the Olympic Charter as some kind of sacrosanct document, this line of reasoning doesn’t carry much weight.

Aside from this, though, there are some interesting bits about the backstory of LA84. Apparently, the Soviets were actively discouraged from participating in these Games. They were denied entry on the basis of Olympic cards (as was customary in all previous Games, apparently) and instead forced to apply for visas. They were forced to register with the State Department and justify the presence of all sorts of support staff like coaches and doctors. They were called spies by anti-Soviet organizations who had the tacit support of the White House. They were disinvited on an official tour of Los Angeles, while all other National Olympic Committees could go. Billboards went up and t-shirts went on sale saying “Beat Russia” and “Kill The Soviets”. They even claimed that Soviet athletes would be drugged and kidnapped, which seems a bit farfetched to me and seems rather like a pre-emptive explanation for why certain athletes might try to defect and never return. But you never know. In Cold War hysteria, it’s often hard to tell what’s an exaggeration and what’s an actual fact.

Aside from detailed complaints about the political and commercial nature of LA84, the booklet also notes how Reagan was using the Olympics to bolster his re-election. The text reads like a declaration of outrage against the Reagan administration and an attempt to explain both to the International Olympic Committee and the world why the USSR couldn’t and wouldn’t be in Los Angeles. Here, the Soviets framed the Olympics as turning into a political game and a commercial enterprise that violated the Olympic Charter and international standards of decency, fair play, and international inclusion. Though they made clear that their argument was with American politicians and not the people, this book featured a great deal of anger and indignation, directed at a nation that they saw as violent, duplicitous, amoral, and unworthy of hosting what they considered “sacred” games based on honest competition, sportsmanship, and transcultural sharing.

I’d love to find something similar from the Americans about the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow, but the best I have is a now-declassified 1979 report from the CIA. Quite interesting in its own right, but as it was not designed for public consumption, it lacks the bombast of this Soviet production.