Russia at the Olympics the Unified Team in 1992, and finally returned once again as "Russia" at the 1994 Winter Olympics. The Russian Olympic Committee was created in 1991 and recognized in 1993. The Soviet Union hosted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, and the Russian Federation hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. In six appearances Russian athletes have won a total of 428 medals at the Summer Olympic Games and another 120 at the Winter Olympic Games. Over the most recent twelve Games (since 1994), Russia's 548 total medals, including 196 gold medals, are second only to the United States. All Summer
Winter Olympic Games War since the Soviet Union first participated at the 1956 Winter Games. It did not take long for the Cold War combatants to discover what a powerful propaganda tool the Olympic Games could be. The advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete" of the Eastern Bloc countries further eroded the ideology of the pure amateur, as it put the self-financed amateurs of the Western countries at a disadvantage. The Soviet Union entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on