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Bruce Berglund, "The Moscow Playbook: How Russia Used, Abused, and Transformed Sports in the Hunt for Power" (Triumph Books, 2026)
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A
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B
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C
I'm Caleb Zakrin, CEO and publisher of the New Books Network. Today I'm speaking with Bruce Berglund about his new book, the Moscow Playbook. How Russia Used, Abused and Transformed Sports in the Hunt for power with the 2026 Winter Olympics due to begin next month, Russian flags will be conspicuously missing. In addition to the invasion of Ukraine, Russia's relationship with the International Olympic Committee has soured in the wake of an extensive doping scandal. In search of athletic glory on the global stage, Russia initiated a state sponsored doping scheme to give their competitors a chemical edge. Russia, much like nearly every country, sees athletic dominance as a way to promote an image of political power and national vigor. The Moscow Playbook takes us through Russia's initiatives to use sports as a tactical weapon and strategic play for improved global status. Bruce Berglin takes us through the history of Soviet and Russian sports, exploring an angle of political power that is often overlooked. Bruce, thanks for joining me today on the New Books Network.
- [02:35]
D
Thanks for having me, Caleb.
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C
This is a very timely book as we look forward to the Winter Olympics. It's always a fun, you know, it's fun just to watch the sporting events, but also, you know, of course there's always other things going on. You know, not so much behind the scenes, but you know, under the surface. You know, we, we, we've seen many examples and you know, you talk about them in the book of instances where in Olympic competition or some sort of athletic competition was a bit of a stand in for a war minus the shooting. So before I even jump into the book, I was wondering if you just tell us a little about yourself and you know, your interest, how you got into writing about sports.
- [03:19]
D
Yeah, so mentioning these, you know, these political contests that are played out in, in, in sport, you know, that's a good jumping off point to talk about my own background. So, so for me, the how to say, most salient sports memory in my life was the 1980 Miracle on Ice game between the United States hockey team and, and the Soviet Union. And I remember listening to, you know, the game was televised on tape delay, but it was, it was broadcast live on radio. I was growing up in Minnesota. I remember my dad and I listening, listening to the live broadcast in the afternoon. We just were just stunned that, that the United States could possibly beat the vaun powerful Soviet Soviet hockey game. And it was just a thrilling moment. And as, as a hockey fan, as a kid growing up in, in Cold War America. Right. And in this very heated period after the invasion of Afghan, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in, in 1979. And so yeah, that was, that was really an important experience for me. And, and you know, the broader context is, is I was really just a nerdy k. Cold War. I was already reading newspapers and news magazines. You know, back in the 70s I was particularly fascinated with the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc. And you know, that ultimately led me when I went off to university to start studying Russian language. I had this kind of fascination as, as I say with, with the enemy in the Cold War. It was during my time in university that perestroika and glasnost, the reforms by Gorbachev really were changing the Soviet Union. I was a student when the revolutions in 1989 took place in Eastern Europe and that kind of opened the path for me. I Went to graduate school initially with plans to. I did my master's thesis actually on Russian history. But then when I began my PhD work, I moved more into East European history, in particular, particular Czech history. So rather than doing doctoral research in Moscow, I ended up doing doctoral research in Prague, which is not a bad gig, I will say. And so, yeah, that was the beginning of my academic career, was really focusing on Czech history. I did political history, did cultural history, religious history, and then I came back once. A familiar story for people of my generation who are doing research in sport history is that we first had to get tenure before we were free to do sport history. It was pretty unusual to find an advisor back in the day when I was in graduate school and people of my generation who saw sport history as a legitimate branch of academic history as something that should be studied or could be studied using archival sources and so forth. But by the time I had tenure, I was able to do work. I did a book published with University of California Press on the history of world hockey, where I went to archives and, goodness, I think eight different countries. And it was out of this book on world hockey. Of course, I had sections on Soviet hockey and hockey in Putin's Russia. After this book was published in 2021, I was giving lectures at universities and bookstores, and I'd usually focus on. On hockey and politics and Putin's Russia, particularly after the start of the war in Ukraine. And this is what led me. People, you know, people really suggested, hey, have you ever thought about writing a book on the. On the history of. Of Soviet and Russian sports and their involvement in. With the international governing bodies and the Olympics and its connection with politics. So. So here I am.
- [07:34]
C
Obviously, the Moscow Playbook. It's not a literal playbook. You can't go and find a document. But, you know, you have this. This term. And I think it is. There is like a pretty clear strategy that has developed over over the years. What is the Moscow Playbook? In your idea, what would. What would be some of the key aspects of this playbook?
- [07:54]
D
Yeah, so this is a good question. So this is something of a device. And first of all, I'll say this is my first book I've written, you know, so I had a. I had a career of over two decades as a professor at colleges and universities in the States. And so my previous books were published with university presses. This is my first book with a trade press and thinking more in terms of the art of narrative history and engaging the reader and kind of reinforcing lessons from history. I use this device of the Moscow playbook and how I describe it as the strategies that Moscow, that Soviet and then Russian officials have used in their dealings with, in their relations with the international world governing bodies, and in particular the International Olympic Committee, but also the other sports federations, such as the Hockey Federation, FIFA, the Soccer Federation and so forth. And so what I looked at and what I develop in the course of the chapters is how various sections or strategies within this playbook took shape over history, beginning with the Soviet Union's initial involvement in international sports in the years immediately following World War II. The Soviet Union was not involved in the Olympics. It was not involved in the World cup during the 1920s and 30s. But it was after World War II that the Soviet leadership decided that they wanted to be part of international sporting events. So they entered world federations. In 1952, the Soviets made their first appearance at the Olympics. And already from this early period, you began to see, you could say, both the dirty tricks that Moscow would use in terms of deceiving, in terms of one, gaining an advantage against their athletic rivals, as well as deceiving the governing bodies, disguising what the Soviets were doing in order to build their, to build their team. But they also came up with strategies that have been adopted, and I talk about this in the book as well. They adopted strategies for training athletes, for developing young athletes, for looking at events that sports programs in other countries, in particular the United States, had been overlooked and emphasizing those, those programs and really building strength by looking at areas that other nations had neglected in terms of sports disciplines. And so I look at how these different strategies developed and in some cases were changed over the course of the years. But it was interesting in the course of my research, how you can see certain patterns in which, you know, first the Soviet leaders would respond to accusations that came from the IOC on a particular issue that have then been used likewise by Putin and sports officials in contemporary Russia.
- [11:11]
C
Obviously, the Olympics famously used to be amateur only. How did the Soviet system and approach to the Olympics, how did they skirt around this notion of what it meant to be an amateur using forms of state professionals, this kind of a state sponsored program in order to, to train their amateurs, much like you might train a professional athlete, right?
- [11:38]
D
So for athletes from the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, the IOC had strict rules regarding amateurism. There were, there were athletes what, according to the rules of the ioc, athletes could not make their livelihood from their, their sporting activities. Athletes could not train. This was the rule in the 1950s into the 60s. Athletes could not spend more than two weeks of dedicated training to their sport in preparation for the Olympic Games. The Soviets enter the games. And already before the Soviet Union became members of the International Olympic Committee and began participating in the games, the Soviets already had a system in which its top athletes were paid so principally in soccer. Already by the 1930s in the Soviet Union, you had this system where athletes, soccer players and other athletes as well, would pay for clubs that were associated with a factory or with the military. They would be, the athletes would be on the payroll of that particular factory or they would be registered as an officer within the military. But really what they would be, what they were being paid for, what, you know, what their job was, was to be a full time athlete. So they were receiving salary as a worker at the locomotive factory, when in fact what they were doing was playing for Moscow Locomotive. So this system was already placed in the 1930s, and members of the International Olympic Committee were aware of this. They were aware that the Soviet Union had a system of paying its players. And this was one of the requirements that the IOC made for the Soviets as they applying to enter the, enter the Olympic movement. As they said, we know you have professional athletes. You need to get rid of this system. And Soviet sports officials said, yep, that's something we used to do, but we don't do it anymore. All of our athletes now, they're, they're fully amateur, they meet the rules, they're full time workers or they're full time students and they do, you know, sport is their hobby. It's something they do on the side. They're, they're amateurs, in accordance with, with IOC rules. In fact, this was not the case. The Soviets were continuing to pay their athletes, you know, as members of clubs that were affiliated with an industrial enterprise, more commonly with the military or with the state police. And in addition to that, once the Soviet Union entered international competitions, the state committee that was responsible for overseeing the development of athletics, the development of, of a, of a, of a Soviet sport policy, the committee that was responsible for building up, and this was the explicit aim is that the Soviets wanted to have dominance in world sport. And so they had a government committee that was, you know, this was Stalin as central planning. They were going to have a committee that would plan out how to accomplish this, how to fund it, and that would be carried out at the, at the lower level. So right away, the state committee also began to pay directly the top athletes in international sports. So it might be soccer, it might be track and field, gymnastics and so forth, hockey. So the very best athletes were getting payments directly from the state. In addition, if they competed internationally, whether the world championships or the Olympics, and won medals, they would receive, receive bonuses. And they were, they were well compensated. Athletes would receive as much as two times to three times the salary of an average Soviet worker. In many cases, the bonuses they would receive for winning in international competitions would be equal to an average worker salary. So the Soviet Union really set up the system where they were sending out professionals, so people who were training year round in their sport to compete against amateurs who were training part time in their sport. And this is really what made the big difference at the start in terms of the success of Soviet athletes in international competition and at the Olympics.
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C
One of the central figures of the book is Nikolai Romanov. Can you talk a little about him and his role? You have these really interesting stories of the 1952 Olympics and all of the ways that he tried to manipulate the way that the points scoring, and that's the thing about the Olympics is the way in which they tally. What is a gold medal worth versus a silver medal versus a bronze medal? Like, I never really thought about it, but I suppose you could give them different weightings and as a result, you could manipulate the outcome if you so chose. So if you talk about him in the way that he was a kind of a master at manipulating the system to make it seem like they were much more successful than they actually were at the Olympics.
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D
Yeah, so this is a terrific story that I talk about in the first chapter of my book. And it's just, it's so clearly understood, explains how this system worked. Right. In terms of deceiving not only international sports officials, but also Soviet sports officials deceiving their own political leadership. Right. To show that, that we're actually fulfilling our mandate to go out and compete against the bourgeois capitalists and defeating them. So Nikolai Romanov, he was, he had no athletic background whatsoever. He was just, you know, a pure party apparachi who was put in charge right after the war. He was put in charge of this state sports committee. And he was really, I talk about him in the book as an effective Soviet bureaucrat in the Stalinist period, in that he was able to, he was ambitious, of course. He was able to follow the directions that he received above. And he reported directly to the Politburo bureau. So, so he was under the Politburo. So he would receive instructions, adapt them. You know, he built his own power base within the sports committee and he was quite effective, you know, and, and I, I make the statement in the book. If we look at the history of the Soviet Union, Soviet sports stands out as, as the most successful accomplishment, I would say, of the Soviet Union, right? This is one instance where the Soviets set out to do what they aim to do, to build something that would be the envy of the world, that would be a model for the world in terms of modern development and technology. They, they did come to dominate the world in, in sport, unlike in many other things they tried to dominate the world in. And a lot of the credit for that goes to, as I write in the book, goes to Romanov. He was very effective at building up this bureaucra that, that managed sport and created a, not only a competitive sports program, an international sport, but within. You know, the Soviets made their first appearance in the Olympics in 1952. Four years later at the Melbourne Games in 1956, they won more gold medals and more total medals than, than anybody, including the, the United States. So this was quite remarkable. So, but to go back, this story you, you bring up with, you know, the 1952 Games, you know, Romanov knew that he had an order, the Soviet Union must dominate in world sport. And he knew, okay, this is going to be hard to do because you just, you can't guarantee the outcome of an athletic competition, right? And, and it was the case. And I talk about this in, in my book. You know, Romanov writes this in his memoirs, which were published during, during perestroika. He said, you know, I would have to write a letter to. Anytime we sent athletes outside the country to compete in international events, I had to write to Stalin guaranteeing that we would win. And there's this great line from the memoir where Romanoff writes, and I would have a bit of anxiety in my soul when I did this. And in fact, at one point, he did lose his job. He was sacked when I think it was the speed skaters weren't as successful as he had promised. So he was briefly the deputy head of the committee and then he was brought back. And so what he did in, in 1952 is he wanted to make sure, you know, basically he wanted to put his finger on the scales to make sure that he could report to the Politburo that Soviets were successful in their first outing in the Olympics. And, you know, to set the background right now so it, you know, in February when the Winter Olympics happens, everybody will be looking at the medal table. And now that's pretty much how we judge which, which country wins the Olympics. Who gets the most gold medals, who gets the most total medals. And so forth, forth back in the 30s, 40s and into the 50s. And this was the case in American newspapers. There would be a point system that was used to decide who was the winner, which country was the winner of the Olympics. And so American newspapers had one system in which they gave, for instance, 10 points to every winner of a gold medal and seven points for silver and so forth. Romanov devised a different system where he kind of backloaded. He gave only seven points for a gold medal, but then he gave more points for not just bronze medal winners, but those who came in fourth place, fifth place and sixth place. And he knew the Soviets can't yet compete with the Americans in winning gold medals, but we have, and the Soviets had the largest contingent at the 1952 Games. He said, you know, basically, we're going to overwhelm the Americans with numbers and we're going to, we might not win the most gold medals, but we're certainly going to have the most people placing in the top six in different events. And so this was his point system that he was using. And so at the end of the Games, it was indeed the case. The United States had 40 gold medals, the Soviets only had 22. In terms of total medals, it was closer. The Americans had 76. The Soviets had 71. But on the, on the point scale, according to, to Romanov's math, he. And it was decided on the last day, the Soviet Union had 494 points compared to 490 for the Americans. So he could go to the Politburo and declare that the Soviet Union has won the Olympics. In our first time out, yes, it was close, but we are victorious. He does write in his memoir how after making his presentation to the Politburo, he was sent away and he had to wait for the results of their deliberations. And they finally agreed. Yes, you did very good, comrade. We have more work to do, but we declare this a success. And so the interesting thing with this, and I finished this section with this, and this is one of my favorite parts, is a Russian journalist, a sports journalist. This was in the late 90s, no, early 2000s, he went through the results of the 1952 Olympics. You know, not only the medal table, but, you know, the top six finishers. And he used Romanov's own formula and he found out that, no, the Soviets didn't win. The actual score was 495 points for the Americans, 487 points for the Soviets. So not only did Romanov come up with this formula to kind of Tilt things in the Soviets favor. He also lied to his bosses and presented them some bad math, but it worked to his benefit. Politburo, the Soviet leadership, continued to fund the Soviet sports program and continued to send athletes abroad to compete internationally.
- [24:03]
C
He got the Pravda headline in, which is all that matters. It's quite amazing, and I think it's such a great example of the various lengths that people go to fudge the numbers to impress their boss. Obviously, the stakes for him might have been a lot higher than the average worker. I want to jump ahead a little bit to the Miracle on Ice because this has been so immortalized in the West. Obviously, the film Miracle does a great job of displaying, and I think that, you know, when you're, when you're a kid and you're growing up, you know, in America, you know, sports fan, this, this story is told as this, this incredible moment where the American amateurs showed the Soviets who's boss. And if it were not for Miracle on Ice, the US would not have won the Cold War. But I, I had no idea at all how it was received or understood in the Soviet Union. So how, how did people in the Soviet Union interpret the Miracle on Ice?
- [25:01]
D
Yeah, so this is a great question. As I said at the top, this is one of the defining events for me as a young sports fan and a young cold warrior and budding historian back in 1980. So it's interesting, there were a couple of documentaries that were done, I think, for the 40th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice. One was done by espn, which is fantastic documentary. They interview a number of former Soviet players. And this is really a terrific documentary. And it, and it aims to present the Russian perspective of what happened at Lake Placid. There was another film, a theatrical documentary, which presented really the side of only one player, the captain. Or no, he wasn't the captain at the time, but a player who later became a captain of the Soviet national team, who was one of the first Russian players in the NFL, in the NHL. Slava Fetisov, who played for the Devils. He played. He won Stanley cup with the Red Wings. So he was one of the most famous Russian players in the NHL back in the. Back in the 1990s. And that film really just presents Fatisov's side of the story. And what you get from those films is the players really blamed their coach, Tikhanov, who was seen, he. He even at the time, he was seen as this taskmaster, as something of a tyrant who worked his players too hard. And the hockey players, you Know what comes out of these documentaries is just how demanding training was for a top level Soviet athlete. The hockey players were, they were, during the summer they went to the barracks, you know, so all of the members of the national team were also officers in the army, so they were expected to go to military, military barracks and that they would train all summer and they had this year round training program. They played together as a single team in the Soviet domestic league. And then in, in March and you know, if the Winter Olympics were coming in February, they would play in the Olympics together, right? So they'd take off their, their club team jersey, put on the national team jersey and then they'd go compete in the Olympics or in the hockey world championships, right. So these players were training together constantly. They just had one month off A, they were not on the ice or in the weight room or engaged in endurance drills and so forth. And this was seen as, you know, Tikonov being really this, this tyrant coach. The fact of the matter is, is that all Soviet athletes had to endure similar, similar training where they were training year round and they were expected to devote the same energy as soldiers to their, to their preparations as, as athletes. So, so, you know, the story that comes out in these documentary films is that these players were miscoached in the Miracle on Ice game. Not only were they, how to say they were exhausted emotionally and physically by this coach, but that the coach also made these strategic errors during the course of the game. So this is what the players say, the former Soviet players say to American media when they speak to Russian media. However, and I looked at interviews with these former players in different Russian sports sites, what comes out instead is they all say there's no way these American college students could have skated with us. They're, you know, we were the best hockey team in the world. There's no way they could have beaten us. The only way they did is that they were doping up. And, and players will say, I saw it in their eyes, they were on drugs. They, you know, there's no way they could have been skating with us to have the endurance at the end of the game. Absolutely, I'm completely sure that they were, that they were doping. So this is the story that you get in, you know, really in, in contemporary Russia is that the Miracle on Ice wasn't so miraculous. It was instead a, the result of devious American, American doping. That's the only explanation for how these American college kids could beat, could beat the Soviet juggernaut.
- [29:22]
C
Obviously afterwards it would only be a couple More. A few more Olympics. The Olympic Games of the Soviet Union. What was it like that, that transition over for, for sports from Soviet sports to, to Russian sports? What was the, that, that, that, that period like, especially for, you know, many of these great hockey players that weren't even really playing in, in the Soviet Union or in Russia anymore.
- [29:47]
D
This was a fascinating part of my research, so I'll explain here. In researching this book, I went to, as, as I was just saying, I. I looked at, at Russian sports media and there are a lot of terrific interviews with former Soviet athletes that had been in Russian sports sites. In addition, I would look at Soviet sports media. There was a daily sports newspaper, Soviet Ski Sport, which was also a great source. In addition to that, I went to the archives of the International Olympic Committee in Switzerland. And this was particularly, this collection was particularly useful in looking at this period, the late 1980s, the early 1990s, as the Soviet Union was collapsing and you had the post Soviet states and post Soviet Russia emerging. And what I found in the documents, so the collections have the correspondence and other documents exchanged between the Soviet Olympic Committee in Moscow and the International Olympic Committee in Switzerland. And what you see during this period, and it was particularly the case after 1988 and 1989, is that the Soviet sports program was completely completely bankrupt financially, as was the Soviet state. And it comes across in the documents how the Soviet sports program was just completely falling apart and they were doing, doing anything. They were kind of making these spur of the moment ad hoc deals with different European and American companies in the hopes of getting. They just needed, not only do they need cash, they needed equipment. So, you know, one deal I remember reading about is they made a deal with, with Xerox to just get copiers for the office at, at the Olympic Committee in Moscow. Moscow. So they were in this state where things were completely falling apart. And I talk about in the book and historians who've looked at the fall of the Soviet Union, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, they all make the same point is that you can look both at the bankruptcy in terms of finances that all of the communist states were just, they were no longer able to. They just had no money anymore. And so bankruptcy in terms of finances, but also bankruptcy in terms of ideas. And that by this time, by the late 1980s, the citizens of these countries, and in particular the athletes, they recognize, you know, we no longer believe in what we're competing for and what we're training for. You know, so to go back to what I was talking about before with with the training of, of hockey players, national hockey players, training of all top level athletes. Athletes these athletes recognize. You know, wait a minute. We are dedicating 11 months a year, we're dedicating our lives to preparing for this sport. And we are treated terribly. Our coaches are little, little dictators themselves. We are humiliated. We go compete internationally, we win gold medals, we win international titles. We get no benefits from, you know, yes, we get apartments, yes, we get a salary, yes, we get cars. But compared to the western athletes, we're defeating an international competition. You know, we, we're, you know, impoverished compared to these people. So the athletes, because they were going outside the country, they had this awareness of just how mistreated and exploited they were. And they lost faith in the system. They no longer trusted the sports committee. They no longer trusted their coaches, coaches. And it really began in late 1988, early 1989, beginning with members of the, of the hockey team, that athletes began to rebel against their coaches. They began to rebel against the sports committee. So you had, you know, one of the most notorious, or not, I shouldn't say notorious, one of the most fascinating and remarkable instances is one of the top Soviet hockey players, Igor Larianov, who also played in the NHL in the 90s. He wrote an open letter to Tahin Takinov, the coach of the national team, in the equivalent of like Time magazine or Newsweek, you know, denouncing the coach as a dictator, as a tyrant who mistreats the players. He did put in the hint that the coach is making his players take drugs. So, you know, the, the players, the athletes went public in denouncing this, this system. And so that, you know, this is when things began to erode. And in the last two years of the, of the Soviet state, Soviet sports officials recognized that we need to create avenues for our athletes to compete in the west and also gain the monetary benefits of competing in the West. Otherwise we're going to lose the athletes completely. Right? So this is when Soviet sports officials began to sell hockey players to NHL teams, sell soccer players to European clubs. And so this is the process that unfolds until 1991, when the Soviet Union collapses. In the immediate aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse. So the Soviet Union is done in December 1991. The next year is an Olympic year, right? So there are Winter Olympics in February 1992. Summer Olympics, the Barcelona Olympics are later that summer. And so right away, sports officials have to figure out, how are we going to be able to feel teams, how are we going to be able to send our athletes to, to the Olympics. And the documents in the Olympic archives show that it's only thanks to Western Adidas. Adidas, for instance, put up hundreds of thousands of dollars to enable Russian athletes and athletes in the other post Soviet republics to be able to compete at the Winter Olympics and then also at the Olympics and in Barcelona. And you know, this was the state of Soviet sport in the early 1990s 90s is that, you know, it was essentially financially bankrupt. Sports facilities were just in, in horrible, horrible conditions. So the facilities, the infrastructure, the equipment were all just in a ruinous state. And any money that came in from international sources was subject to being grabbed by corrupt officials or, or by the mafia. During this time.
- [36:32]
E
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- [37:02]
C
Part of what comes across quite vividly is the extent to which Vladimir Putin clearly cares so much about sports glory. You know, not from the get go of him becoming the president. He is chairing the Russian Olympic, you know, team, you know, committee, team caring care, you know, caring deeply about paying these athletes, ensuring that the gold, winners, winners are getting money even if other people aren't. This was a connection that I hadn't really put together. But it's kind of funny to think that at the same time that Vladimir Putin was coming onto the political stage, you also had George W. Bush, who had dreams of being the commissioner of baseball, coming out the soon M2. So it was a time period where the two global 20th century superpowers were being led by people that loved sports to some extent or another. So could you talk a little about Putin and just, just him coming in wanting to restore that sports glory as a sort of a central notion for getting Russia back on the global stage.
- [38:01]
D
Yeah, so that's interesting. You made that connection between Putin and Bush. That's something, you know, because I write about this, this meeting and their kind of bromance they have in late 2001. But I didn't, you know, bring in the connection that Bush as well, was so involved, so involved in sports. So, but yeah, for Putin, goodness, you know, so Putin already, before he was elected president, he, he emphasized, well, I should say so you know, to back up, Putin becomes, he's named Prime Minister by Boris Yeltsin in 1999. Yeltsin resigns on, on New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, Putin steps in as the interim president. And Then later in 2000, Putin wins election outright as, as the new president. And during that year, there was a, there was kind of an early press, you could say public relations biography of Putin that went out. And in that biography, Putin himself talks about how important sport was for him as, as a boy. And you know, Putin grew up in, in Leningrad and he grew up in a rough neighborhood and he got involved in judo, you know, one, as a way to basically defend him. So he was, he was a small boy way to defend himself in kind of the rough neighborhoods he, he grew up in. But he talks about how important judo was for, you know, giving him discipline. And he would say, oh, and it gives you respect for your opponent and, and, and so forth. And, and there have been people who've looked at how Putin in his political maneuvers, you know, does operate in some way like a, a, a, you know, a judo master, right, in terms of using other, other's strength to his own, his own advantage. So Putin was already, already saw the importance of sport in his, in his personal life. And of course, you know, we later see all of the famous photos and, and then the memes of Putin, excuse me, projecting himself as this vigorous man of action that, you know, he's out riding horseback, bare chested, he's, you know, fly fishing, swimming in Siberian la and so forth. One of the things I, the opening scene in my book is Putin playing in an exhibition hockey game which he would do every year prior to the, prior to the war. He would play against these former Soviet players, against former Russian NHLers. So he used sport as a way to kind of demonstrate his, you know, his strength, but also his, his healthiness as a Russian man, you know, and.
- [40:44]
C
He would get a double hat trick too.
- [40:46]
D
He would, yes, you know, these players would feed passes and if you haven't, you know, watched, I, I implore listeners to just look on YouTube at videos of Putin playing hockey and, and clearly he's wobbly on skates and these players all pass, you know, make passes to him and the defensemen kind of get out of there, get out of his way so he can score these easy goals. And yeah, like you said, double hat tricks. Eight, nine goals per game. His team wins and they, you know, and they give Putin this big, big trophy at the end of the game as the, as the mvp, he's, he's, he's seen sport as, as a way to build his, his own personal prestige, but he's also sees sport as a way to build Russia's prestige. And, and there are different statements, you know, that I found in my, my research where Putin does. He doesn't talk about particular sport memories like I did at the top of the interview, and we're talking about the Miracle on Ice and so forth, but he has commented in interviews about his memories of Soviet teams of the past, when the Soviet Union was dominant. In particular, he talks about hockey. So Putin, at the beginning of his presidency, his task was, and what he aimed to do was to rebuild one, the internal cohesion and strength of Russia, to rebuild the Russian economy, rebuild the Russian state, but also to reestablish Russia's prestigious prestige and standing as a great power in the world. And so he took political steps to do this, of course, he took economic steps to do this, but he also saw sport as fundamental to this task of rebuilding Russia, both internally and externally. And you mentioned at the start that right at the start of his presidency, in the year 2000, 2000, Putin made himself the chair of the committee that oversaw preparations for, for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. You know, so, and, and there was a member of the committee who's, you know, who'd been involved in Soviet sport going back to the Brezhnev period. And, and this person said you'd never see this from a Soviet leader, that they would be involved in the nuts and bolts of, of sport policy and training and development and, and facilities. So, yeah, right from the start, Putin, of Putin dedicated his time, his attention to rebuilding Russia's strength in international sport. And, you know, there's a terrific quote also in Putin's first year as president, in 2000, he spoke to the Russian Olympians just before they were heading off to Sydney. And it's interesting because it was a, you know, this ceremonial moment. It was just deep in symbolism. These athletes, they came to the Kremlin, they went to pay their respects to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. They received a blessing from the Patriarch of Moscow. And then Putin gave a speech, and he said in the close of his speech that victories in sport do more to unite the nation than a hundred political slogans. And I think this really sums up how Putin has seen sport and its importance for Russia, not only in 2001, when he was, when he was brand new as president, but throughout his time as Russia's leader.
- [44:25]
C
Yeah, let's jump to 2014, because I feel like this is such a consequential year. This is the year of the Sochi Winter Olympics, which now have been, after all, the analysis of everything that's gone down. In many ways, it was potentially a cover for invasion of Crimea. It was also also, you know, scandalized by all the doping that went, that went down. Could you just talk a little about the Sochi Winter Olympics and why they are so infamous in this broader narrative of Putin's political, you know, tenure.
- [45:04]
D
So the Sochi Winter Olympics are, and I'll say that the specialists in Russian politics who I talk to, they emphasize this, that 2014, the Winter Olympics is in some way the high point and also the turning point point of, of Putin's time as, as Russia's ruler, Putin put a lot of, of his own personal prestige into getting the Olympics for, for Sochi. Putin himself traveled to the meeting of the IOC where they were deciding on, on the host city. Putin spoke to delegates at the meeting in English, which is, is remarkable to think of Putin and his English was, was shaky like his hockey. SK saw getting the Olympics as, as so important that he was going to, you know, address the audience in English, something you would never hear Putin do today, right? You'd never hear Putin speak English today publicly. So he saw this as essential to rebuilding Russia. And when Russia was awarded the Games, so they were awarded the Games in 2007, there was celebration in Sochi, there's celebration in Moscow. And this was seen as one of Putin's officials said, you know, this demonstrates that Russia is again recognized as reliable, a trusted nation in the world. So getting events like these, like both the Winter Olympics and then later the World cup, this was seen as certifying that Russia had come back from the depths of the 1990s, that Russia was again a strong, successful, stable, trusted, reliable member of the international community. One of the, one of the great nations of, of the world. So a lot of effort went into getting the Games and then a lot of effort and money went into preparing for the Games. So Sochi is really one of the best examples of the corruption of the Putin period. The initial budget that they gave the IOC was that all of the construction would cost $12 billion. It ended up costing 51 billion DOL. And it's estimated, according to Russian anti corruption activists, somewhere in the neighborhood of 30, 20 to 5 to 30 billion dollars in that amount was lost to corruption. And it mainly went to Putin's good friends who were able to, they were in positions where they operated construction Companies, they were in the positions that they were able to get no bid contracts from the government in order to build infrastructure in Sochi. You know, whether it was the stadiums or the new airport or the new Formula one racetrack that was built in Sochi. You know, the best example, and this was something that was published by the, the opposition politician and anti corruption activist Boris Nemtov. He made a detailed report about corruption in the Sochi Games. And he points out that the organizers built a 30 mile highway from Sochi, which was on the Black Sea coast, up into the mountains to the ski resort where the ski events would be. And it ended up costing $9 billion, which, which was, as the report says, three times more than what NASA spent to send the Mars rover to, to Mars. Right. So, so enormous corruption that's happening. And reports like the one that Nemtsov published, this, this did sting Putin and his supporters. You know, so this was still a time, 2014, when you had independent media, when you had people who were criticizing Russians, who were criticizing Putin in the press. So there was a lot of criticism and reports of this Cor. Ping Putin's popularity. So he took a hit. And so it was essential then that the Russians do well athletically in the Games and, and to make sure that Russia would do well at the Games. This is when Grigory Rodchenkov, the, you know, the, the figure who's featured in the documentary film Icarus, the, the chemist who ran the anti doping lab in Moscow ago, he comes in to really mastermind this clandestine operation which included the Russian Secret Service, where Russian athletes would be given hits of performance enhancing drugs. Their urine samples would be washed out and replaced with clean urine samples. They would be tested clean. And this would be the way that the Soviets would, or, excuse me, the Russians would be victorious in the Sochi Games. And in fact, the Russians won more medals than any other nation at Sochi. In fact, the Russians tied the record for most total medals at the Winter Olympics. And largely thanks to, you know, Rodchenkov in his memoir, claims a lot of credit for the fact that his doping program that he organized wasn't in fact, the difference maker in helping the Russians. But, you know, so. And you also brought up the invasion of Crimea, which, which takes place, you know, Putin made the decision to have the Russian military invade Crimea the day before the closing ceremony. And I remember when this was happening, you know, and it's fascinating and people have asked this question of why did, why did Putin, you know, really kind of give up all of the prestige and kind of the goodwill that he had built up in Houthis hosting the Winter Olympics. And something I learned in talking with some scholars from the region who do work on Russian sport and politics is that they reminded me that the Sochi Games were not necessarily the audience, the intended audience of the Sochi Games was not the world. It was instead Russia. And the Sochi Games proved to Russians that Russia was a great nation. It was able to put on this remarkable show. It was able to win, win at the Olympics. And at the same time, Russia was able to carry out an invasion and an annexation of territory that, according to Russians, was always Russian. So 2014, we have to view the Winter Olympics and the annexation of Crimea as linked and that they demonstrated to Russians themselves that the 1990s were over and Russia was again a strong nation that nobody could, nobody could dictate to Russia what they were going to do in their, in their own region. Right.
- [52:14]
C
And since then, obviously, so much criticism has been directed, was, was directed towards the IOC for, you know, the numerous corruption, you know, like you said, just the, the absolute corruption that, that, that occurred, you know, giving essentially enriching people that were Putin's, Putin's buddies. And then also, you know, this cover for this war, the doping scandal, everything, you know, today or in a month, when we watch the Olympics, we're not going to see the Russian flag, we're going to see the, we're going to see Russian athletes, but, but they won't be competing under the Russian flag. So I was wondering if you could just kind of bring us to the present and, you know, where things sort of stand if, if, if it's possible to assess whether or not it was worth it for them, you know, whether or not there is, there is any, any kind of effort to restore themselves to essentially normalcy in the world of international sports.
- [53:16]
D
Yeah, that's a great question. Was it worth it? So they won the Winter Olympics in 2014, but in carrying out this doping program and then covering it up and covering up the COVID up and repeatedly getting caught in doing this, you know, prior, you take away the war in Ukraine, prior to 2022, Russia was still in many ways excluded, right, from sanctioned international, international competitions. And, and it comes out of the doping program, it comes out of the investigations conducted by the World Anti Doping Agency. And then, you know, one of the most, you know, amazing things I found in my research, research was the extent of, not just the extent, but the brazenness of Russian attempts to cover up what was going on with their doping program. And how they were attempting to conceal these positive results and, and you know, they're, they're wiping computer files and so forth. So that's just an amazing story. And you know, so when people, you know, people often make the point to me, yeah, the Russians cheat. But doesn't everybody cheat in international competition? When you look at, and you know, when I was digging into to, particularly with the doping and the aftermath of doping, yes, there are individual athletes in different countries who cheat. In Russia you had a system where athletes, top level athletes were expected to cheat, their coaches expected them to cheat. And then the sporting officials, team physicians, scientists. At the Institute of Sport, you had this entire apparatus, they, that was built to help find the best concoctions of chemicals for the athletes to win and then help them to pass the anti doping test. So that's what was revealed in 2015. And then the Russians kept trying to cover that up and kept getting caught. So now we're in the situation as a result of the invasion of Ukraine where Russia has been excluded and there were repeated attempts to figure out what do we do with Russia in having been caught, repeatedly caught doping, cheating in, in the Games themselves. Now you add in this international political element of the war in Ukraine. But what I point out in the book is, is we can't, we can't disentangle the record of cheating in the athletics and the lying and deception that's gone on not only to the governing bodies, but to athletes from other countries. You know, something I found in my research and I, I inter athlete who had been part of the structure of the World Anti Doping Agency is that there were athletes from around the world when these doping revelations came out who said kick the Russians out entirely. Kick them out. They've stained sport, they're cheating as athletes. And so the situation we have now is, is that the IOC and FIFA and some of the other international federations, they want the Russians back in the Olympics and in international competition. There's still strong opposition from world athletes and there's also strong opposition from some of the sports federations, the governing bodies of international sport that recognize one on the question of the war in Ukraine, but also on the question of doping, which they see as essentially being up, unresolved. Right. The Russians never admitted they had a state run doping problem. They said, yes, we have athletes who dope, but they didn't acknowledge the extent of, of this program. So, you know, in that regard this issue is still, is still unresolved. And what I see as unfortunate is that, you know, at the point when the war ends, you know, when Putin is no longer in the Kremlin, there will be a move to say, okay, let's reinstate Russia to international competition. But that would paper over this deeper issue of the doping programs, the COVID up of the doping, the extent of the doping, which then links back to this entire history that I write about in my book going back into the Soviet decades.
- [57:47]
C
Yeah, I think no matter what the Olympics especially, but just global sports will always have this undercurrent of population politics at play, you know. No, it will never just be pure competition. And so long as that's the case, you know, there's, there's probably going to be, whether it's the Russians or, or, or other countries or other individuals, there's probably, it's probably going to get even easier to cheat. You know, I'm sure there'll be new drugs that come out that will, that are constantly going to always find some way to, to, to get past the screen. So, you know, it, you know, I think it's an interesting thing for, for, for listeners to think about, you know, when you're watching the Olympics, you're not just watching athletes competing, you're watching like an entire, you're watching a war without shooting. And you know, that's interesting to think about and also frightening too. Maybe it adds a bit more to the, to the competition as well. But you know, regardless, I'm, I'm so looking forward to watching the Olympics. I, I, I know it's there, it's such a, it's such a controversial if anyone ways of the, you know, sporting event. But I just, I can't help but love watching it.
- [58:54]
D
I agree. I, I, you know, I do this research as a historian of sport, you know, and, and I just find one instance after another where I think, ah, this is just so corrupt and rot gut and, and awful. And you know, I go to the archive and I feel like I have to take a shower afterwards. It's, it's, but yet it's still just so compelling and I'm always drawn to watch and, and I love, I love the Winter Olympics. I love watching, watching the events and you know, and I close my book with this, this point. I talk about the Paris Olympics, you know, and I think the Paris Olympics really revived so many people's love of the Olympics. Right. They had high television ratings, they sold the largest number of tickets and ever for Summer Olympics. And I make the point in the book, I think a big part of it is the fact that yes, you had a couple dozen Russian athletes who were there as independent neutrals. But I make the point that we didn't have that cloud hanging over the games of what to do with Russia and these unresolved questions of the doping and then with the war in Ukraine. By removing the moment most notorious cheater from the Games, it, it allowed the rest of us to enjoy the, the spectacle and the competition and, and the fun of the Games. And I really, you know, I, at the very least the Paris Olympics showed that the world can have a terrific and outstanding of an engaging and fun athletic company competition without the involvement of, of the Russians.
- [60:40]
C
Yeah, I, I, I think, I think this, this coming Olympics in in Italy will be will be really interesting to see play out. I feel like the past, you know, obviously with the COVID postponement of the Olympics in 2020 too, I, I, I, I feel like, you know, we, it would be nice to have a good string of Olympic Games that don't feel, you know, mired in controversy to some extent. So I really hope that that the, that this, this, this next Olympics goes goes quite well. So you know, Bruce, it was really fun to get the chance to talk to you about this book. I feel like, you know, sports is really just such a fun topic to, to think about politics, to think about history, to think about the world. And you know, I think, I think people neglect it at their own peril. So it was really wonderful to talk to you about the Moscow Playbook and, and thanks for being a guest on the New Books Network.
- [61:28]
D
Thanks so much, Caleb. I appreciate your questions. Sam.