‘Collaborators and traitors’: Russia goes to war with Winter Olympics ban

The outraged Russian reaction to the IOC’s decision has been fuelled by comparisons with the great national triumph in the second world war
Russian fans demonstrate against the IOC ban from the Winter Olympics at the World Cup Biathlon in Hochfilzen, Austria
Russian fans demonstrate against the IOC ban from the Winter Olympics at the World Cup Biathlon in Hochfilzen, Austria. Photograph: Matthias Hangst/Bongarts/Getty Images

On sulphurous television chat shows this week, Russian athletes considering competing under a neutral flag at the upcoming Winter Olympics were compared to wartime collaborators and traitors. The second world war was evoked repeatedly. “Try telling them that the flag isn’t important,” wrote one Kremlin-friendly journalist on Twitter, alongside a photograph of Red Army soldiers lifting the Soviet flag above the Reichstag in 1945.

The ban on the Russian flag and anthem from the Pyeongchang Games next year, combined with the slow‑drip withdrawal of medals from athletes guilty of doping at Sochi four years ago, has left Russians furious. From the Russia president, Vladimir Putin, there has been a surprisingly low‑key response, suggesting individual athletes who want to travel to South Korea and compete under a neutral flag should be free to do so. But elsewhere in the country, the ban has been greeted with even more fury than political sanctions or diplomatic expulsions.

Every country gets excited by the Olympics but in Russia the fervour is particularly intense. The Sochi Winter Games in 2014 were seen by Putin as a defining moment in his presidency. In 2007, during the vote to determine the host city, Putin flew to the International Olympic Committee meeting in Guatemala City and implored the delegates to back the Russian bid in person, speaking English in public for the first time. “This is not just a recognition of Russia’s sporting achievements, but it is, beyond any doubt, a judgment of our country,” Putin said, shortly after Russia had won the vote. The Olympics would be a sign to the world that Russia had recovered from the pain and misery of the Soviet collapse.

As Russia’s oligarchs were pressed into service to help construct a new winter capital fit for the Games in Sochi, it became clear that all was not well with Russian sport. In 2010, the Russian team had a desperately uninspiring performance at the Vancouver Olympics, winning just three golds. Perhaps the most impressive statistic was that the then sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, racked up expenses claims for 97 breakfasts. Faced with the prospect of an embarrassment on home ice in Sochi, the then-president, Dmitry Medvedev, it is claimed ordered a total overhaul of the system. According to the whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov, the task was to win at Sochi at all cost, even if that involved flagrant, systematic cheating. And that is how we ended up where we are today.

Partly, Russia’s obsession with the Olympics medals table is a legacy of the Soviet mania for achievements and records. But there is also another reason, which is that modern Russia has had precious little to celebrate over the past generation, during which the Soviet Union collapsed and many Russians found themselves consumed by social, economic and existential woes. Putin’s presidency has been about trying to restore a sense of pride to Russia, and any sense of being a “winning” nation is a precious feeling in a country that has had little to cheer about in recent years. The idea of winning became very important.

Primarily, Putin used the Soviet victory in the second world war as the building block on which to base a new Russian national pride, something I argue in my upcoming book The Long Hangover. The wartime rhetoric about the IOC ban this week is not accidental: the war victory has penetrated virtually every sphere of public life by this point and has gradually became less about remembering the feats of veterans and more about projecting the might of a new, victorious Russia.

The 2014 Sochi Olympics were meant to be a contemporary equivalent to 1945 – a new date to rally Russians around a patriotic idea and unite the nation. In the end, 2014 was indeed a watershed year, but more because of the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine than because of the Olympics.

Russia was hit with sanctions and opprobrium for its actions in Ukraine that year, and now is dealing retrospectively with the consequences of its alleged doping programme at the Olympics. In both cases, the sense among many Russians is that the country is being unfairly victimised.

Lawyer Valery Fedoreev, managing partner of CMS Moscow, who took part in a Unesco evaluation of Russian anti-doping procedures this year, said he accepts the IOC verdict but wants it to make more evidence public, rather than relying on the testimony of Rodchenkov. “There’s a Russian saying: ‘You’re not a thief unless they catch you,’ and I think this is what a lot of Russians think. If you are guilty it should be proven beyond reasonable doubt,” he said.

Certainly, the more evidence of the Russian scheme to cheat the anti-doping policy there is in the public domain the better. But it is debatable whether in the current climate, hard evidence would make any difference. After all, a poll shows that only 5% of Russians believe Moscow or Russia‑backed separatists were responsible for shooting down a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet over eastern Ukraine in 2014, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

One consequence of the elevation of the second world war victory to a quasi-religious narrative is that it has made it easier to transpose the events of the war years on to modern-day Russia. Instead of looking to Mutko or other officials for an explanation of how the country got into this mess, many Russians instead see their country as heroically standing up to a monstrous external aggressor once again, whether it is on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine or the ski slopes of Sochi.

  • Thsi article was amended on 9 January 2018 to give lawyer Valery Fedoreev’s full title.