The IOC, Hungary, and the 'Middle'
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The IOC, Hungary, and the ‘Middle’ Bloc States during the Cold War: From Contentious to Trusted Members of the Olympic Family Johanna Mellis University of Florida, USA Department of History Final report for the IOC Olympic Studies Centre PhD Students Research Grant Programme 2017 Award December 2017 2 Table of contents I. Abstract……………………………………………………………….3 II. Executive Summary…………………………………………………4 III. Research Project Objectives and Subject………………………...6 IV. Academic Significance of the Research Project………………….8 V. Impact on the Olympic Movement…………………………………11 VI. Methodology………………………………………………………….12 VII. Results and Conclusions of Research…………………………….13 VIII. Key OSC Collections Used in the Report……………..................46 3 I. Abstract This research explores the changing relationship between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its members for Hungary and other ‘middle’ Eastern Bloc nations from 1948-1989. The experiences of two IOC members, the aristocrat Ferenc Mező (1948- 1961) and the Communist Árpád Csanádi (1964-1983), show how the IOC and Communist Hungary successfully adapted to one another’s bureaucratic and political norms throughout the Cold War. Csanádi’s position as a highly trusted member of the IOC administration illustrates the extent of both parties’ adaptation. I also examine how the mass defection of Hungarian athletes after the 1956 Revolution indirectly influenced the Olympic movement’s shift away from investigating state amateurism to commercial professionalism in the West. Finally, the IOC gradually grew so reliant on the Bloc members for support that IOC president Juan Samaranch met with the newly-democratic NOCs in 1990 to urge their continued support for elite and Olympic sport, and not only mass sport. I argue that the middle members’ position in the IOC and the Cold War allowed them—and not just the USSR and GDR—to gradually shape Olympic policies over time. This dynamic enabled Hungary to cater its sport system to the desires of its athlete, thereby securing the athletes’ willing (and not forced) cooperation with the state. Keywords: Hungary, International Olympic Committee, Communism, Cold War, Ferenc Mező, Árpád Csanádi, Sport Diplomacy, Sigfrid Edström, Otto Mayer, Avery Brundage, Juan Samaranch 4 II. Executive Summary This research explores the relations between the IOC and the IOC members for Communist Hungary from 1948-1989, as a way to understand the influence of Hungarian sport politics, developments, and policies on the Olympic movement, and the impact of the IOC on the Hungarian sport environment during the Cold War. I further expanded my research plans to include members for several other Eastern Bloc nations, to serve as a comparison to the experiences of the Hungarian members. During the tumultuous years of the early Cold War, the Hungarian Olympic Committee and the IOC became embroiled in a political battle of wills in order to determine who would serve as the IOC member for Hungary. The IOC leadership initially used its bureaucratic policies to support the membership of Ferenc Mező (1948-1961). But within a few years, the IOC realized the limits of supporting a member who might be “of no use” to them in terms of the IOC’s relations with the Communist state. The career of Árpád Csanádi, who was the IOC member for Hungary from 1964-1983, demonstrates how some Communist-oriented members of the IOC successfully proved their trustworthiness and dedication to the Olympic values to become ingratiated in the sports administration of the organization. From the beginning of Communist rule in 1948, Hungary’s system of rewards—which included the so-called “state amateur” system”—and punishments blatantly violated the IOC’s amateur rules. Yet the Communists’ censorship of the press, combined with the IOC’s bureaucratic limitations, worked in the Hungary’s favor. After the mass defection of athletes to the West in 1956, Hungarian sport leaders were desperate to keep more athletes from defecting and to motivate them to win gold medals for the state. Hungarian sport leaders thus relaxed their repressive policies and began giving athletes more rewards than before. Less than fifteen years after the mass defections, the IOC slowly began shifting away from investigating the Eastern European state amateur systems, and towards penalizing commercial professionalism. This shift was aided by Bloc members of the IOC, such as Romania’s Alexander Siperco, as well as Csanádi. These members were well- positioned to help turn the IOC’s attention away from the Bloc sport systems, specifically from the ways that Hungarian sport leaders kept their athletes satisfied materially. The position of the IOC members for Hungary and other ‘middle’ Bloc nations—such as Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania—enabled them to become trusted intermediaries between the IOC and more problematic members like the GDR and USSR. Brundage in particular turned to the members for Poland and Bulgaria in the 1950s and 1960s for help in teaching other, newer Communist members of the IOC the rules of the ‘game’ in the Olympic movement. The case of East German rower Hans Neuling once more showed the limits of the IOC in tackling violations behind the Iron Curtain. Neuling had defected in 1962 and submitted a sworn affidavit to the IOC of his experiences as a paid, doped athlete in the GDR. Perhaps more importantly, the incident shows how the GDR sport system incurred more scrutiny than the ‘middle’ Bloc states, as a result of its geopolitical status in the Cold War. No other such affidavit exists in the IOC Historical Archives, not even from one of the hundreds of Hungarian athletes who defected in the wake of the 1956 Revolution. 5 Finally, the IOC interpreted the collapse of the Communist systems as a development that could negatively impact the Olympic movement. Then-president Juan Samaranch’s meetings with the sport leaders of the former Communist countries in 1990 illustrates this concern. Samaranch’s insistence that these countries continue to support elite sport just as much as sport-for-all is indicative of the IOC’s worries that the loss of the powerful sport region—which had raised the competitive level and popularity of the Olympic Games during the Cold War—could damage the credibility of the Olympic movement. 6 III. Research Project Subject and Objectives The purpose of this research was to study the interactions and relations between the top leaders of the Olympic movement and the Hungarian sport leadership during the era of Communist rule, 1948-1989. The bulk of my other dissertation research traces the experiences of elite Hungarian athletes during this time, specifically the ways that their relationship vis-à-vis Communist sport leaders changed as a result of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and how these changes impacted athletes’ everyday lives. The research that I conducted at the archival holdings of the Olympic Studies Centre thus provides a necessary, additional perspective to my overall project: the influence of the IOC and its policies on Hungarian sport. By triangulating sources in Hungary, the United States, and Switzerland, my broader research examines how sport policy and changes on the ground level in Hungary impacted developments in the Olympic movement. The research that I conducted for this project at the OSC comprises four main topics. First, I studied the experiences of Ferenc Mező and Árpád Csanádi within the context of their membership and positions in the Olympic movement. Mező’s position as the IOC member for Hungary posed one main problem in 1948. He was not a Communist, and after the political takeover that year, the Hungarian Communist Party (MKP) wanted to replace Mező with one of “their” men in the IOC. Yet Mező was someone with whom the IOC felt comfortable. His background as an aristocratic, educated man with multiple languages fulfilled many of the IOC’s criteria for membership in the organization. If the MKP wanted one of “their” men in the Olympic family, so did the IOC, in the form of Mező. The fact that Mező was elected to the position one year before the political change, in 1947, formed the basis of the IOC’s approach to the MKP’s attempts to appoint a new member. Moreover, unlike the USSR, which formed a completely new National Olympic Committee (NOC) in 1951, the Hungarian Olympic Committee (HOC) had participated in the Olympic movement since its early beginnings. The MKP-oriented HOC thus has to contend with its prior legacy within the IOC after the Communists’ took power. What did Mező’s tenure within the Olympic movement look like after the Communist takeover? How did the leaders of the IOC handle pressure from the Bloc countries? What were their responses to the MKP’s tactics? What role Mező did he play, if any, in the Communist Bloc’s political maneuvers within the Olympic family? Why, and to what extent, was he tolerated by the HOC and MKP? Moreover, how do his experiences compare to those of his fellow non-Communist contemporaries in Eastern Europe? By the time that Csanádi was elected to the IOC in 1964, the tone of the IOC and its membership had changed quite drastically. By 1964 the entire Communist Bloc had been part of the Olympic movement for over a decade. It was thus important to examine Csanádi’s reception within the Olympic movement. How did the IOC leadership perceive Csanádi? What did the IOC gain by electing Csanádi to the post of the director of the Olympic Program in 1968? What can the IOC’s opinions about Csanádi tell us about the extent of the changes within the IOC, and within the NOCs of the Bloc countries? The second subject of this research relates to the IOC’s shifting stance towards amateurism, and the impact of Hungarian domestic sport developments on this policy. The mass defection of hundreds of Hungarian athletes to the West 7 following the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and Melbourne Olympic Games prompted sport leaders at home to change their tactics vis-à-vis athletes.