The master narrative of Cold War sports describes a two-sided surrogate war, measurable by falsely objective medal counts every four years at the Olympic Games. This approach is as inadequate for sports as it is for the Cold War. Rather than a bipolar, superpower conflict, the Cold War was a competition between the dueling globalization projects of capitalism and Communism composed of far-from-monolithic blocs. While a fragile, fearful peace took shape in the Northern Hemisphere, both sides waged proxy wars that killed tens of millions in the Global South. Alongside other forms of popular cult ... More

The master narrative of Cold War sports describes a two-sided surrogate war, measurable by falsely objective medal counts every four years at the Olympic Games. This approach is as inadequate for sports as it is for the Cold War. Rather than a bipolar, superpower conflict, the Cold War was a competition between the dueling globalization projects of capitalism and Communism composed of far-from-monolithic blocs. While a fragile, fearful peace took shape in the Northern Hemisphere, both sides waged proxy wars that killed tens of millions in the Global South. Alongside other forms of popular culture, sports were deployed to win the sympathies of the world’s citizens, many of them from nations that had emerged in the wake of European decolonization. Sport was the most conspicuous form of popular culture in the period. It offered millions around the world the opportunity to forge identities that both supported and undermined dominant ideologies—racial, gender, local, regional, national, and international. Sport crossed rather than created borders and identities—and it did so in myriad and intricate ways. This book brings together experts working on sports in the United States, USSR, German Democratic Republic, Asia, and the postcolonial world. Their work is theoretically aware and underpinned by extensive archival research. Taken together, they go beyond simple notions of bipolarity and present new insights that should invigorate the study of both international systems and of culture in the Cold War period.