Russia was not present in the first modern Olympics in Athens (although they had entered the names of competitors). The first participation of the Russian Empire was in the Paris, 1900, Games (without much success). They appeared again in the 1908 Games, winning their first gold medal (in figure skating) as well as two silver and again in 1912 with a large team which brought home two silver and three bronze medals. Then the World War disrupted the Olympics, the February and October revolutions did away with the tsarist regime in Russia and the Russian Empire disappeared. Soviet Union was finally created in 1922.
The initial attitude of Soviet Union towards the Olympics was a most negative one. For them , the Olympic Games was a bourgeois invention, a misogynist, colonialist, and elitist movement that served to deflect workers from class struggles. The Games were a tool of “imperialist propaganda” hidden under “hypocritical phraseology about fidelity to the idea of brotherhood and friendship of the peoples in sport”. The soviet ideal of sport was a centralised state one, with mass participation, aiming at promoting social integration and health and preparing the population for national defence. It is interesting to point out here that the soviets' ideals about sport were very close to the beliefs of de Coubertin about the moral and educative power of amateur sport.
Shunning the Olympics the soviets decided to sponsor a rival thereof, the Red Sport International. The latter was founded already in 1921 and was an affiliate of the Communist International. The first Spartakiads took place in 1923 within formations of the Red Army and the International Workers' Olympiad was held in 1925. The first all-Union Spartakiad was organised in Moscow in 1928. Again, one cannot help pointing out that these communist organisations were closer to the Coubertenian spirit of amateurism than the baron’s socially and racially exclusive, patriarchal, and increasingly commercialised Olympics.
However the attitude of the USSR towards the Olympics changed after WWII. All of a sudden Stalin realised that the propaganda tool that were the Olympics could well be turned into a vessel for soviet propaganda. And thus the self-imposed athletic isolation of Soviet Union ended. Of course this was a source of worry for princes, counts, barons, generals, and wealthy businessmen that composed the IOC. Already at the end of the War, Edström, the IOC president, had remarked that the great problem will be the question of Russia. (That was somewhat hypocritical, since the thorny problem was how to deal with the members of Nazi and Fascist parties already members of the IOC).
But, in practice there has been no opposition to the admission of the USSR in the IOC. Even a die-hard anti-communist like Brundage declared already in 1944, that "if the Russians would agree to live up to the rules and regulations of the Federations and the International Olympic Committee there is no reason why they should not be members". The problem is that the Russians were not eager to agree with these rules and regulations. The soviet athletes were supported by the state and their exceptional performances rewarded. Moreover while the Olympic Charter required a complete separation between the state and the national Olympic committee this was something totally impossible in USSR. Brundage himself recognised this in 1950, wondering "how there can be a Russian Olympic Committee that is autonomous". But Brundage being essentially a hypocrite, he did not hesitate to defend the USSR, once the latter was a member of the IOC with himself at the presidency. Returning for a trip to the Soviet Union, Brundage, when challenged by a USOA representative concerning material rewards to athletes, he replied "I was told by the Russians that they know the Olympic rules and follow them".
In 1946, Edström wrote to N. Romanov, who was the chairman of the All-Union Soviet Sports Committee, that “your country’s sports organisation must adhere to the rules and amateur regulations of their respective international sports federations and an Olympic committee must be formed in Moscow”. The letter went unanswered but in 1947, Romanov formally applied for membership to the IAAF (that was the name of World Athletics at that time). But the application came with some special demands. They asked that russian become an official language of the IAAF, that a seat be reserved to UUSR in the executive council and also that Spain (ruled by Franco's fascists government) be expelled. Lord Burghley, president of the IAAF refused and, surprisingly, the soviets dropped their demands. Lord Burghley then travelled to Russia where he obtained reassurances that the existing soviet policy of remunerating athletes had been abolished and that the (western) rules of amateurism were accepted. So he endorsed the soviet application and moreover agreed to grant amnesty to russian athletes who had previously received cash payments.
Soviet Union did not participate in the London, 1948, Games (but were represented by a special emissary). Finally in 1951 it was announced that Soviet Union had formed an Olympic Committee. The president was C. Andrianov, a high-ranking Communist Party official and former head of the Moscow Sports Union. He did not speak any of the IOC official languages. In 1951 (almost unanimously with only three abstentions and no vote against) USSR was officially invited to join the IOC. And, pronto, the Russians announced that they would name their own IOC members. Edström was most unhappy with this but he could not do anything: if he rejected Andrianov, who would the IOC elect in his place? So, Andrianov was elected and a year later A. Romanov joined him.
Brundage, who succeeded Edström, was under the illusion that, given time, the Soviets would learn to respect the Olympic principles and abandon the professional character of communist sport. He tried desperately to avoid the nationalism pervading everything during the Cold War era. He even prohibited Olympic medal tables and proposed (without success) to replace national anthems with the Olympic hymn. Alas, contrary to our baron's teachings, everybody believed that winning was more important than taking part.
The soviets were masters of misdirection, playing a game of silence, ignorance, and denial. “Calumniatory accusals of soviet sportsmen in ‘professionalism,’ by some representatives of foreign press”, Andrianov decried, “do not contribute to the strengthening of friendly relations between the sportsmen of all countries and to the rising of the authority of the Olympic Movement". And he counter-attacked by stating that “America has the most professionals of all”, which is fact may be true. And the British regularly lent support to the Soviets, warning that the commercial orientation of collegiate sport “makes the United States’ representatives so vulnerable, when they talk about amateurism”.
Thus Soviet Union became a member of the IOC and would participate in all the Games from 1952 to 1988 (the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991) with one notable exception, that of the 1984 Games, a retaliatory move after the USA boycott of the 1980, Moscow, Games. But the story of the boycotts should better be told on some other occasion.
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