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

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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

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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.

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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. These policy changes included using less harsh punishments to penalize athletes for bad behavior, and granting more rewards (to a broader pool of athletes) in order to keep athletes motivated to win gold medals and prevent them from defecting to the West. The changes in rewards ran counter to the IOC’s amateur rules. The IOC members for the Bloc countries had constantly countered criticism from the press and the IOC about their system of “state amateurism” that paid athletes to train; in the 1960s, however, Bloc members became more involved in the IOC’S decision-making process with regards to the amateur rules. Questions I sought to answer with this research include: to what extent did the IOC rely on the Bloc members to support the existing and/or evolving amateur policies? Why did the IOC involve the Bloc members, when they had to field criticisms themselves from the press about violations behind the Iron Curtain? Just as importantly, I aimed to understand to what extent, if any, the developments in Hungary influenced the Olympic movement’s shift away from investigating cases of state amateurism to incidents of commercial professionalism in the West.

Another topic that I researched involved the position of the ‘middle’ Bloc nations—the countries geographically situated between East Germany and the USSR—within the Olympic movement. Recent work by Jenifer Parks has shown how the IOC members for the Soviet Union played a critical role in shoring up support for the Olympic movement, as well as in pushing the Western-oriented IOC to democratize more thoroughly in order to expand the organization globally.1 In this work, I aimed to understand the role of the smaller, satellite countries in shaping the IOC. It is typically viewed in both contemporary scholarship (as seen in the lack of research on the subject) and during the Cold War itself that these nations were less important players in the global cultural conflict. In order to gain the broad perspective of the region, I understood that I would need to expand my research to include the correspondence and interactions between the leaders of the Olympic movement and the other Bloc countries, in addition to those related to Hungary. What role did the IOC members from Hungary and the other middle Bloc nations play in helping determine IOC actions and policies? In what ways did the common view of these countries as “inconsequential” in the press and by the West influence the sport diplomacy and sport systems of the middle Bloc countries? What examples can be gleaned from the OSC archival materials that illustrate how the GDR and USSR received more scrutiny from the IOC than the middle countries?

1 See Jenifer Parks, The Olympic Games, the Soviet Sports Bureaucracy, and the Cold War: Red Sport, Red Tape, (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016). 8

IV. Academic Significance of the Research Project

The primary academic significance of this research lies in its focus on the small but sport-rich nation of Hungary. As a nation of only ten million people, Hungary has won the eighth-most Olympic medals at the Summer Olympic Games of all participating countries.2 It was also one of the original members of the Olympic movement, and its athletes participated in the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. It is therefore surprising that very little scholarly literature, in English or Hungarian, exists that focuses on Hungary and the Olympic movement.3 Several recent publications have explored aspects of the relationship between athletes and the Hungarian Communist state.4 Yet aside from Tibor Takács’s monograph on football and the state security service, the vast majority of the research assumes that the Hungarian Communist Party exerted an inordinate amount of influence and outright force in order to compel athletes and coaches to serve the state’s needs. This perspective falls in line with the overall narrative of life under communism in Eastern Europe, and with the image of athletes as doped-up victims. Recent research into everyday-life in state socialist Hungary has explored state-society relations during the Stalinist 1950s, and after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.5 A few historians have

2 This statistic does not include the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. “Hungary: Olympic games medals and rankings,” www.olympic.it/english/id_hun/, accessed 28 December 2017. 3 Katalin Szikora has done much to reveal the sport history data about Hungary’s enormous sport success during this time. For her work in English, see Katalin Szikora, “Sport and the Olympic Movement in Hungary (1945-1989),” in The Shadow of Totalitarianism: Sport and the Olympic Movement in the ‘Visegrád Countries’ 1945- 1989, ed. Marek Waic, (Prague: Charles University, 2015), 133-195. 4 Other works on elite Hungarian sport include Tamás Dóczi, “Gold Fever(?): Sport and National Identity – the Hungarian Case.” International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 47 (2), 165-182; György Majtényi, “Czibor, Bozsik, Puskás. Futball és társadalmi legitimáció az ötvenes években,” Sic Itur ad Astra. No. 62 (2011), 219- 231; Nicoletta Onyestyák, “A Sport és politika kapcsolata Magyarországon az 1980- as években a nyári Olimpiai játékok tükrében,” PhD diss. (2010) Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary; Robert Rinehart, “‘Fists flew and blood flowed’: Symbolic Resistance and International Response in Hungarian Water Polo at the Melbourne Olympics, 1956,” Journal of Sport History, 23:2, Summer 1996, 120-139; Tibor Takács, “A Weidemann-ügy, 1961. Sport, hatalom és Állambiztonság a korai Kádár-korszákban,” Aetas: törtenettudományi folyóirat, 30/4. Issue 4, 2015, 5-21; Tibor Takács, Szoros Emberfogás: Futball és állambiztonság a Kádár-korszakban (Budapest: Jaffa Kiádo, 2014); Norbert Tabi, “Futball és politika kapcsolata Magyarországon a II. világháború után – A kommunista diktatúra viszonya a hazai labdarúgókhoz 1956-ig,” Palette: I. Új- és Jelentkortörténi Tudományos Diákkonferencia, (Budapest: ELTE BTK Új- és Jelentkori Magyar Történeti Tanszék, 2014), 57-80. 5 Examples include György Péteri, Academia under State Socialism: Essays on the Political History of Academic Life in Post-1945 Hungary and Eastern Europe (Highland Lakes, New Jersey: Atlantic Research and Publications, 1998); Éva Standeisky, Az írók és hatalom (Budapest: 1956 Institute, 1996); Melinda Kalmár, Ennivaló és hozomány: a kora kádárizmus ideológiája (Budapest: Magvető Könyvkiadó és Kereskedelmi, 1998); János Rainer, Bevezetés a Kádárizmusba: 9 begun to examine how people interacted with the Hungarian state in an attempt to influence its policies and therefore the course of their lives, workplaces, and cities.6 By examining the activities and influence of Hungarian athletes, whether through their defections or in their relations with Hungarian sport leaders, shows how athletes were not mere victims of the Communist state. Rather, athletes acted in ways that could shape their lives for the better. In the wake of 1956, they left for the West in hopes of creating a better life for themselves abroad. From the 1960s onwards however, many athletes chose to stay and enjoy their privileges in Hungary, as they understood that working with sport leaders enabled them to assert agency in their lives. My broader research is thus significant for understanding the nature of the Communist system in Hungary. Although the research for this project relates more to the IOC than to the Hungarian sport system, it adds to the overall picture of people’s lives and experiences during the period.

My work also contributes the necessary and currently-underappreciated perspective of elite sport in a small satellite country—what I call a ‘middle’ Bloc country—to field of Cold War sport history. The vast majority of studies of Cold War sport behind the Iron Curtain focus on the East German and Soviet cases; moreover, most of these analyses use a top-down approach, which perhaps unintentionally has limited their scope to sport diplomacy, repressive state policies, the secret police, doping, and propaganda. 7 Although a few analyses of sport in the middle Bloc states adjusted their frameworks to include the respective domestic context, these mainly

Magyarország a Szovjetunió árnyékában, 1944-1989 (Budapest: 1956 Institute, 2011); James Mark and Péter Apor, “Socialism Goes Global: Decolonization and the Making of a New Culture of Internationalism in Socialist Hungary, 1956-1989,” Journal of Modern History, 87 (December 2015), 852-891. 6 Sándor Horváth, Stalinism Reloaded: Everyday Life in Stalin-City, Hungary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017); Mark Pittaway, The Workers’ State: Industrial Labor and the Making of Socialist Hungary (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012); Tibor Takács, “Them and Us: Narratives of Agents from the Kadar Era,” The Hungarian Historical Review, 4, No. 1 (2015): 144-170; Péter Kende, “Mi történt a Magyar Társadalommal 1956 Után?” Évkönyv XI. (2003), Magyarország a Jelenkorban (Budapest: 1956 Institute), 9-17. 7 Steven Ungerleider, Faust’s Gold: Inside the East German Doping Machine (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2001); Adam Fryc and Miroslaw Ponczek, “The Communist Rule in Polish Sport History,” The International Journal of the History of Sport, Vol. 26, No. 4 (2009): 501-514; Mike Dennis and Jonathan Grix, Sport Under Communism: Behind the East German ‘Miracle’ (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Lucy Grant, Physical Culture and Sport in Soviet Society: Propaganda, Acculturation, and Transformation in the 1920s and 1930s (London: Routledge, 2013); Jenifer Parks, The Olympic Games, the Soviet Sports Bureaucracy, and the Cold War: Red Sport, Red Tape (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016); Robert Edelman, Spartak Moscow: A History of the People’s Team in the Workers’ State (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009); Alan McDougall, The People’s Game: Football, State and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Also see the recent documentary Red Army, directed by Gabe Polsky (2014; Los Angeles, CA; Sony Pictures Classic; 2015), DVD; and 30 for 30: Of Miracles and Men, directed by Jonathan Hock (2015; ESPN Films), Cable documentary film. 10 use the same political history lens as the Soviet and East German-focused works.8 This is not to say that sport diplomacy and political history are not crucial elements in my research; in fact, both aspects underpin my analysis throughout this report. But by studying the backgrounds, decisions, and personalities of the individuals involved in the interactions between the IOC and its members for Hungary, this research seeks to understand some of the human, individual motivations for the actors involved in the story. This follows the work of Jenifer Parks, whose research has revealed much about the complex and evolving relations between Soviet sport bureaucrats and the IOC.9 By including the indirect impact of Hungarian athletes on IOC policies, my research builds on Parks’s work by connecting the realm of non-governmental international organizations to the individuals who bore the brunt of Cold War sport politics: the athletes.

Ultimately, this research illustrates the important role and work that the middle Bloc nations like Hungary played in the development of IOC policies, and in shaping the Olympic movement broadly, during the Cold War. The indirect influence of the defection of Hungarian athletes demonstrates how athletes could and did impact the Olympic movement, even if only to a certain extent. My research moreover serves as a bridge between the fields of Olympic sport and diplomatic history, and domestic sport politics under communism. By combining the two typically disparate fields, I aim to provide a comprehensive yet more nuanced analysis of the individual actors and relationships—specifically Hungarian sport leaders, athletes, and the IOC—that helped constitute Hungarian and Olympic sport during the Cold War.

8 See Adam Fryc and Miroslaw Ponczek, “The Communist Rule in Polish Sport History,” The International Journal of the History of Sport, Vol. 26, No. 4 (2009): 501- 514; and Michaela Wood, “Romania at the Olympics: Women Gymnasts as Ambassadors in Sportswear, 1950s-1970s,” Revista Arhivelor, 84, Issue 3.4, 273- 281. 9 Jenifer Parks, The Olympic Games, the Soviet Sports Bureaucracy, and the Cold War: Red Sport, Red Tape (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016). 11

V. Impact on the Olympic Movement

This research project adds four significant findings to our broader understanding of the IOC and the Olympic movement. First and foremost, my work on Hungary—one of the highest Olympic-champion-producing countries—illustrates the developments and individuals who helped to create the achievements of sport under communism, and explain in part why the nation thrived in this arena. In this light, the work explored here will help the IOC understand how and why countries with small populations can produce Olympic champions. Secondly, this work illustrates the role that a state and political system can play in aiding the development of elite sport. More specifically, it shows how over time, these small nations can work within the Olympic movement to influence policy changes that are favorable to the development of sport in their country. The IOC’s response to the collapse of communism moreover demonstrates the importance of state-supported sport— whether directly or indirectly financed and institutionally-backed or not—to the competitiveness and popularity of the Olympic movement. Lastly, this work underscores the possibility for athletes to impact the Olympic movement. By understanding this factor, the leaders of the Olympic movement could seek more ways to interact directly with athletes, work on their behalf, and protect them from states who seek to politicize their achievements and bodies.

Although this research sits firmly within the context of the Olympic movement during the Cold War, the insights illustrated here can help inform the sport diplomacy efforts of the IOC today. The return of authoritarian-style regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe—even in Hungary—has also meant the rise once again of the politicization of sport and the Olympic Games. The ways that these countries are currently testing the limits of the IOC’s authority is not that dissimilar to what occurred in the same region during the Cold War.

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VI. Methodology

As a project grounded in the field of history, the bulk of the methodology consisted of analyzing primary sources, in the form of archival documents held in the collections of the IOC Historical Archives. This material complemented the research that I conducted in Hungary between 2013 and 2016, which consisted of documents from the Hungarian National Archives, the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security, and over thirty oral history interviews that I conducted with former top athletes, coaches, and sport leaders. For this research report, I only drew on one of the oral histories that I conducted previously, in order to illustrate the changing material and rewards-related conditions in Hungary for athletes following the 1956 Revolution. By conducting research at the IOC’s archival holdings, the work examined here reflects on issues related to the limits of non-governmental international governance and authority, domestic sport policy, Communist sport politics, intra-Eastern Bloc politics, and strategies of agency.

The majority of the research for this report was completed at the IOC Historical Archives (IOCHA) in Lausanne, Switzerland. I began my time at the IOCHA by examining the correspondence of the IOC members for Hungary between 1948- 1989, Ferenc Mező, Árpád Csanádi, and Pál Schmitt. To explore the perspective of the IOC leaders and their reactions to developments in Hungary and across the Bloc, I read through the collections of letters for IOC Presidents Sigfrid Edström, Avery Brundage, Lord Killanin, and Juan Samaranch. I also perused the material in the collection on IOC Chancellor Otto Mayer. In order to compare the situations that the Hungarian members experienced vis-à-vis their Bloc neighbors, I studied the biographical material and correspondence for members Jerzy Loth (Poland), General Stoychev (Bulgaria), Heinz Schöbel (East Germany), Alexandre Siperco (Romania), and Constantin Adrianov (USSR). Additionally, I read the letters housed in the relevant collections for the following NOCs: Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, the USA, East Germany, and West Germany, each for certain periods of time that were relevant to certain developments that occurred. I moreover examined the documents of the Eligibility Commission, as well as the Medical Commission (although I did not find much of relevance in the latter collection). I also drew on relevant IOC Meeting minutes, and the minutes of the Executive Board. Lastly, although I was hoping to find mention of the mass defections of Hungarian athletes in the materials on the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, I did not find anything of note in there.

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VII. Results and Conclusions of Research

Introduction

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and national Olympic Committees (NOCs) sought to rebuild the world of international sport and the strength of the Olympic family. The IOC aimed to expand the Olympic movement globally, believing that increased participation in the movement by nations across the world would boost the organization’s international prestige and cultural clout. IOC leaders, such as presidents Sigrid Edström and Avery Brundage, used the IOC’s motto of “peaceful cooperation through sport” to persuade more nations to join the Olympic family and to ensure that the movement’s apolitical stance remained intact. By 1947 though, the Western leaders of the IOC realized that their plans would be complicated by the encroachment of the Soviet regime across Eastern Europe.

The Communist nations of the Eastern Bloc planned to use the international sport realm to spread its political influence and dominance across the globe. In the late 1940s and 1950s especially, sport administrators from the Eastern European Bloc nations aimed to increase its influence through international sport in two ways. Their first priority was to defeat the athletes from Western nations at the Olympics. In Hungary and her neighboring countries, this entailed giving athletes “sport positions” or paper jobs in the newly-nationalized industries so that they could be paid to train and not need to work a full-time job. The Communist sport leaders also wanted to increase its diplomatic influence in the IOC, in order to shape Olympic policies to favor their athletes and help their political leaders achieve their diplomacy aims. They did this by inserting its Communist-oriented members into the IOC and international sport federations. Both of these aims contradicted the core values of the Olympic movement. As a Western-oriented organization with bourgeois roots, from its inception the IOC leaders believed that athletes should be “gentleman” who pursued sport for the sake of sport and in their spare time, and not for financial gain. The IOC’s apoliticism also contrasted sharply with the politically-minded Communist sport leaders. These differences, which IOC and Communist sport leaders knew would pose problems, plagued both parties’ efforts to work with the other at the beginning of the Cold War.

As Jenifer Parks and other scholars have pointed out, Communist sport leaders quickly realized that the IOC was staunchly opposed to overt Communist influence on IOC affairs, and biased against—if not discriminatory towards—the Eastern Bloc’s government-backed members.10 As a result, Communist sport leaders learned that they needed to ‘play by the rules of the IOC’ in order to expand its influence within the Olympic movement and make the IOC policy changes that they desired. Fortunately for the IOC members for the Bloc nations, by the mid-late 1960s the leaders of the Olympic leaders begrudgingly recognized that they actually needed the Bloc members in the movement. Moreover, IOC President Avery Brundage and

10 See especially Jenifer Parks, The Olympic Games, 2016; and Matthew Llewellyn and John Gleaves, The Rise and Fall of Olympic Amateurism (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2016). 14 his successors learned that they could rely on their Eastern European counterparts to protect one of the core Olympic regulations, the amateur rule, against the commercial professionalism that steadily gained ground in the West.

The results of my research at the IOCHA explores different elements and exchanges between the two groups to illustrates how the Western IOC leaders and the Olympic members for the Bloc nations learned, gradually and haltingly, how to cooperate and work with one another. Although the bulk of this report focuses on the correspondence and interactions between the IOC leadership and the members for Hungary, I also study the exchanges between the IOC and other Bloc countries. Expanding my research at the IOCHA enabled me to develop comparisons between what occurred in Hungary and her neighbors during Communist rule in their actions vis-à-vis the Olympic movement. The last two sections in particularly draw on archival materials in the IOCHA collections in all of the Eastern European nations.

1. Hungarian membership in the IOC, 1948-1989

As in other cultural realms and industries, the consolidation of Communist rule across the Eastern Bloc in the immediate postwar years did not spare the administration of elite sport. Like its neighbors, the Hungarian Communist Party (MKP) drastically reshaped Hungarian sport to maximize their control and politicize sport success on the global stage.11 Domestically, this meant the full-scale nationalization of sport clubs and appointment of Communist sport administrators to leadership positions previously held by men of aristocratic and/or bourgeois background. Internationally, the MKP followed its Soviet counterparts by seeking to install one of “their” men as the Hungarian member of the IOC. Yet one key difference existed between Soviet elite sport, and its counterpart in Hungary and the other satellite countries. The Soviets only obtained membership in the IOC in 1951, whereas Hungary had been a long-standing member of the Olympic family. In fact, Hungary was one of the first members of the movement, beginning in the late 1890s. This meant that the MKP had to contend with Hungary’s legacy of relations with the IOC, including the history of aristocratic Hungarian members of the IOC. This meant that the MKP’s plan to install a Hungarian Communist into the IOC was challenged almost immediately by the IOC.

At the end of World War II, only one of Hungary’s two pre-WWII IOC members remained. He was none other than Miklós Horthy Jr., the son of Hungary’s interwar political ruler, Admiral Miklós Horthy. As the son of Admiral Horthy, Horthy Jr. became politically suspect in post-World War II Hungary even before the Communist takeover was complete. Yet the leaders of the IOC, who were known to tolerate members of fascist orientation, remained hopeful that Horthy Jr. could continue his tenure as Hungary’s Olympic representative. IOC President Sigfrid Edström explained as much to IOC Chancellor Otto Mayer in February 1947, stating that, “I hope that Horthy [Jr.] will come in good standing once again. We ought to keep him in that committee. I wish you would get in touch with him and hear what he has to

11 Katalin Szikora, “Sport and the Olympic Movement in Hungary (1945-1989),” in The Shadow of Totalitarianism: Sport and the Olympic Movement in the ‘Visegrád Countries’ 1945-1989, ed. Marek Waic, (Prague: Charles University, 2015), 133-134. 15 say.”12 Edström wanted Horthy to remain the IOC member for Hungary not necessarily because the Olympic movement favored fascist-leaning people. Rather, it was because Horthy was a known entity to the IOC, as Edström and others knew him and were comfortable with the Hungarian’s aristocratic, Western background. Horthy’s class and cultural background thus made him a desirable member for the IOC to work with in Hungary. Edström also likely believed that Horthy would continue to uphold the values of the Olympic movement.

The IOC, Ferenc Mező, and HOC

Edström and the IOC leadership must have known, however, that they needed a more politically neutral member for Hungary. Immediately following the 1948 Winter Olympic Games in St. Moritz, and two weeks following Edström’s comment above, the IOC welcomed Ferenc Mező as the IOC member for Hungary. It is important to note that IOC members technically served as IOC representatives to their home country, and not as representatives of their country to the IOC. This detail was meant to ensure that IOC members served the Olympic movement first, and not the political aims of their domestic governments. As winner of the Art Competition for his ‘History of the Olympic Games’ at the 1928 Olympic Games, Mező was a known entity to the IOC. As the IOC would soon discover, he was also deeply committed to the history of the ancient Olympic Games. In the 1950s he published a history book of the Olympic Games that the IOC would distribute as the history of the movement for decades. Yet what the IOC really cared about in the late 1940s was Mező’s background as an aristocratic man, with an interest in international sport and a speaker of many languages. In other words, he was exactly the kind of “Western” member with whom the IOC preferred to work. He spoke their language, figuratively and culturally, and importantly, was not a Communist.

Otto Mayer notified Mező of his official appointment in the IOC, explaining that, “It is a pleasure for us to wish [you] a happy welcome to the Olympic family. We are convinced our choice fell on a passionate defender of Olympism who will be able to apply with love the principles of the Olympic ideal which were inculcated by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, renovator of the modern games.”13 Whereas Mayer expressed a belief that Mező would contribute to defending the principles of the Olympic movement—likely in the face of the Communist onslaught— Edström asserted an equally veiled yet important belief to Mező. Edström told the Hungarian that, “I was very pleased to meet you in St. Moritz and have the pleasure to welcome you as a member of the International Olympic Committee. I am very glad that I have a good friend in Hungary again to write to if I want to know something. I hope that we will see each other in London.”14 Taken together, Mayer and Edström’s remarks to Mező illustrate their belief that the IOC could trust Mező to help them safeguard the

12 Sigfrid Edström to Otto Mayer, 3 February 1947, SD3 Correspondence January- May 1947, CIO A-P04/003 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOC Historical Archives (IOCHA). 13 Mayer to Ferenc Mező, February 17, 1948, SD2 Correspondence 1948-1954, CIO MBR-MEZO-Correspondence, IOCHA. 14 Edström to Mező, 17 February 1947, SD5 Correspondence January-May 1948, Edström, CIO A-P04/003 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 16

Olympic movement in the event of a political change. Little did they know how much Mező would be tested by the MKP at home.

The Communists took full control of Hungary in 1948. Barely six months into their rule, the MKP tried to bring the Hungarian Olympic Committee (HOC)—of which Mező was a member—under its wing. The MKP first tried to do this by reorganizing the HOC without prior consent from the IOC. Sometime before June 3, 1948, the IOC received a letter from the HOC that Mező had been removed from the HOC. On June 3, Mayer wrote to Edström about the letter he received. According to the HOC’s letter, Mező was no longer a member of the HOC; rather, “Being a functionary, he has been put on the retired list and has nothing to do anymore with sports in this country.”15 True to his nature, Mayer was forthcoming in expressing his opinion about the manner. He told Edström that, “If this is a political machination I don’t know?16 Mayer correctly identified the MKP’s core aims in removing Mező. By eliminating him from the HOC, the MKP likely believed that he would no longer be able to serve as the IOC member for Hungary. The move would ostensibly give the MKP the opportunity to appoint one of “their” men to the position. This was indeed a political machination of the Hungarian Communist Party.

Edström and Mayer, however, proved willing to play the game and push back against the MKP—at least initially. A flurry of letters passed between Mayer, Edström, and Mező, the last of whom did not know about his removal until informed about it by Mayer. Mező expressed him embarrassment at the news.17 The Hungarian, “…turned to the President and General Secretary [of the HOC]…to demand clarification. They claim that it never happened and they never sent such a message…Also, [Gyula] Hegyi also had no knowledge of my expulsion and at the same time invited the Hungarian Olympic Committee to invite me to his meetings in the future. It has already happened.”18 In his response to Mező, Mayer was “…most astonished to hear that your Olympic Committee claims to have never written that you were excluded. I am, of course, very happy that this is not the case, but I would like to justify it and send you a copy of the letter in which this was mentioned. I have highlighted this in red. You will agree with me that this is clear.” Mayer’s response illustrates his willing to aid Mező in the Hungarian’s attempts to discover the truth about the situation. Edström echoed Mayer’s sentiments to Mező, and explained that he was “very happy” that he will meet with Mező again. Moreover, Edström said that, “In the treatment of the new statues your presence is urgently necessary, since you have personal experiences from most Olympic games.”19 Edström’s remark mimics

15 Mayer to Edström, 3 June 1948, SD6 Correspondence June-July 1948, CIO A- P04/003, (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 16 Mayer to Edström, 3 June 1948, SD6 Correspondence June-July 1948, CIO A- P04/003, (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 17 Mező to Mayer, 4 June 1948, SD2 Correspondence 1948-1954, CIO MBR-MEZO- Correspondence (Written work and correspondence of Ferenc Mezo), IOCHA. 18 Hegyi was the top sport leader in Hungary from the late 1940s through the 1960s. He was the president of the different iterations of the national sport body. Mező to Mayer, 4 June 1948, SD2 Correspondence 1948-1954, CIO MBR-MEZO- Correspondence (Written work and correspondence of Ferenc Mezo), IOCHA. 19 Edström to Mező, 14 June 1948, SD6 Correspondence June-July 1948, CIO A- P04/003 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 17 the sentiments behind Mayer’s willingness to aid Mező. They wanted Mező to continue serving as the IOC member for Hungary, and not be replaced by a Communist member.

The issue of Mező’s exclusion from the HOC was not put to rest. On June 14, 1948, Mayer received a phone call from a Mr. Gedényi, a member of the HOC. Mayer gave Edström the details of the phone call and, per usual, his personal opinion of the encounter. According to Mayer, Mr. Gedényi: He told me privately (that is why he did not write) that the Ungarian [sic] Olympic Comm. who is entirely new formed would like to have a second member for Ungaria. My opinion is that Mr. Mezo, who is not anymore member of the ungarian [sic] Olympic committee, is perhaps not very much ‘persona grata’ in their new [sic] organization? Therefore they want also one of ‘their’ man in the C.I.O. As I could understand during our conversation I think that Mr. Gedenyi has received an order to call me on the subject, but that he does not agree very much to propose somebody else. I replied that for London it would anyhow be too late to have such a nomination done. On the other hand my personal [sic] opinion was that we had just a member nominated and that it is too soon to ask now for a second one. I suggested to Mr. Gedenyi to wait until London and that we could talk with you on this subject. I was of course very prudent in what I said by telephone to that country! As I could understand Mr. Gedenyi was surely controlled.20 The letter demonstrates Mayer’s was awareness of how the HOC—and the Communists as a whole—tried to increase their position within the IOC by manipulating the position of Hungarian member to the IOC. This kind of letter was not atypical of Mayer, as he frequently asserted his opinions openly in correspondence with Edström and with later IOC President Avery Brundage. By deferring to the bureaucratic process of nominating a second member, Mayer effectively used IOC procedures to forestall further efforts from the Communists to use the IOC for political purposes.

Mayer and Edström’s later responses to the HOC’s political maneuvers constituted more decisive attempts to safeguard the Olympic movement from the encroachment of the Communists from Hungary. Within days of the phone call from Mr. Gedényi, Mayer told to Mező that his exclusion from the HOC, “…cannot be possible as long as you are a member of the International Olympic Committee. As you know, our members must be affiliated with the National Olympic Committees in all countries. For this reason I wrote today to the HOC to draw attention to these anomalies and asked to consider your re-entry. I wanted to tell you about my intervention with this letter.”21 Mayer’s response shows how the IOC leaders were “feeling out” the MKP and still deciding how to deal with the Communists more generally. Although he explained how Mező needed to be affiliated with HOC because of his membership in the IOC, Mayer simultaneously asked—and did not

20 Mayer to Edström, 15 June 1948, SD6 Correspondence June-July 1948, CIO A- P04/003 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 21 Mayer to Mező, 16 June 1948, SD2 Correspondence 1948-1954, CIO MBR- MEZO-Correspondence (Written work and correspondence of Ferenc Mezo), IOCHA. 18 state or demand—that the Hungarian remain in the HOC. Moreover, Mayer’s willingness to use the word ‘intervention’ is key here. It denotes the IOC’s acceptance that they needed to interfere in the domestic politics of Hungary as it concerned the position-holder of Hungarian IOC member. This move contradicted the IOC’s apolitical stance and efforts to avoid meddling in its members’ domestic affairs. Yet for Mayer and Edström, by interfering, they likely believed they were protecting the integrity of the Olympic movement.

Edström proved more decisive than Mayer in his response to the situation. He told Mayer that the IOC policies dictated that Mező must remain in the HOC: “Our rules state so plainly. Mezo is our representative in Hungary and cannot be turned out by the Hungarian Olympic Committee. Kindly inform the National Olympic Committee in Budapest about this fact. Inform them also that we wish Mezo to come to London together with the Hungarian team, just as he did in St. Moritz.”22 After this point, the matter of Mező’s membership in the HOC appeared to be settled. The HOC and MKP backed down from their initial expulsion of Mező. The HOC wrote to Mayer that although Mező was no longer Vice-President of the HOC, the initial letter about his expulsion was not written properly because he was still part of the HOC.23 For his part, Edström continued to insist that it was necessary for Mező to accompany the Hungarian Olympic team to the 1948 London Olympic Games that summer.24 Mayer persisted in proving to Edström and Mező that the HOC had indeed written to him in early June 1948 that Mező was “removed from sporting life.”25 Ultimately however, Mayer expressed his sincere “happiness” that Mező was still part of the HOC.26 Edström appeared relieved as well. Even though he disagreed with the proposals that Mező planned to put forward to the IOC in London, Edström voiced his “…hope that Dr. Mezo [sic] will be present in London.”27 His comment illustrates that although Edström may not have agreed with the Hungarian’s ideas about the shape of the Olympic movement, he considered Mező a valuable—and trustworthy—IOC member for Hungary. As for the HOC and MKP, it was important to focus on the 1948 Summer Olympic Games, which would be the first test for Communist Hungary.28

22 Edström to Mayer, 1 July 1948, SD6 Correspondence June-July 1948, CIO A- P04/003 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 23 Mayer to Edström, 5 July 1948, SD6 Correspondence June-July 1948, CIO A- P04/003 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 24 The fact this letter was dedicated solely to the issue of Mező’s position and trip to London illustrates the importance of the matter to the IOC at the time. Edström to Mayer, 7 July 1948, SD6 Correspondence, June-July 1948, CIO A-P04/003 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 25 Mayer to Mező, 9 July 1948, SD2 Correspondence 1948-1954, CIO MBR-MEZO- Correspondence (Written work and correspondence of Ferenc Mezo), IOCHA. 26 Mayer to Edström, 10 July 1948, SD6 Correspondence June-July 1948, CIO A- P04/003 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 27 Edström to Mayer, 12 July 1948, SD6 Correspondence June-July 1948, CIO A- P04/003 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 28 The 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz occurred in January-February of that year, which were too early for the MKP to have completely controlled and politicized. 19

Yet the HOC continued to contest Mező’s membership in the IOC and HOC. First, they did not allow him to attend the 1948 London Olympics. Then in December 1948, Mayer received a letter from a Professor Werner Kunz. Kunz had received an “S.O.S.” from Mező. Through Kunz, the Hungarian requested an official invitation from the IOC asking him to come to Lausanne, which Mező believed, “…would help him in his flight out of his country.”29 In explaining Kunz’s letter to Edström, Mayer said that that Mező had been “eliminated by the Popular democratization” (durch die Volksdemokratisierung ausgeschieden worden) and “his situation begins to be tragical.”30 Mayer understood that Mező’s request required the political engagement of the IOC. Mayer relayed to Edström that, “…he will only get a short permission to stay in Switzerland and even for this I must make the necessary steps near the swiss [sic] political department. It is a very delicate situation as he might be considered in Switzerland as a political refugee.” Mayer admitted to Edström that “I really do not know what to do and I am very sorry for Dr. Mezo. This shows us again that we must be very prudent with the new members we accept from those countries.”31 Mayer’s letter illustrates the diplomatic difficulties that the IOC faced when trying to counter the Communist presence in IOC affairs. Mező’s request would have required the IOC to ask the Swiss government to intervene, which potentially could ignite tensions between the Swiss and Hungarian governments. Even when IOC leaders sympathized with their fellow members’ situations, the constraints of the growing Cold War tensions restricted the IOC’s capacity to intervene directly in a member nation’s political affairs.

The IOC stood by its position that it could not involve itself too closely in the domestic matters of the Eastern Bloc nations. This was not only because of the IOC’s apolitical stance. The IOC leaders knew that if they truly wanted to expand the Olympic movement globally, they needed to strategize and determine who were the most diplomatic people with whom to work from behind the Iron Curtain. The case of the HOC and Mező’s situation after the Communist takeover in 1948 served as a trial run for the IOC in its relations with the Bloc countries. In a February 1949 letter to Edström, Mayer laid their cards on the table vis-à-vis the new Bloc countries, saying, “Personally I don’t think it wise to elect new members in Poland and Czechoslovakia. You can judge f.i. our member Mezo who has been put out by the Hungarian Olympic Committee; he is of no use for us at the moment, and so it will be for news members of the above mentioned countries.”32 Mayer’s comment about the Hungarian being “of no use” to them may seem like a sharp contrast from his sympathetic statement about the Hungarian three months prior. His later remark, however, reveals the IOC’s true priorities when it came to the Eastern European Communist counties. The IOC leaders may have wanted “their” kind of men as IOC members. But at the end of the day, they also needed to work with the Communists in the region in order to expand

29 Mayer to Edström, 8 December 1948, SD8 Correspondence November-December 1948, CIO A-P04/003 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 30 Mayer to Edström, 8 December 1948, SD8 Correspondence November-December 1948, CIO A-P04/003 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 31 Mayer to Edström, 8 December 1948, SD8 Correspondence November-December 1948, CIO A-P04/003 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 32 Mayer to Edström, 16 February 1949, SD1 Correspondence January-February 1949, CIO A-P04/004 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 20 the Olympic family globally. The comment also underscores the limits of the IOC’s willingness to help out members in dire situations.

A Comparison: Poland’s Jerzy Loth

The IOC watched as other Communist parties in the region attempted similar political maneuvers within their NOCs and vis-à-vis the IOC. The IOC member for Poland, Professor Jerzy Loth, saw his turn come in late 1950. The situation in Poland and in her neighboring countries during this time was characterized by Stalinist policies and harsh, repressive measures against anyone whose actions were perceived as harmful to the state. This contrasted with Mező’s circumstances in 1948, when he could still send letters rather freely to the IOC. Loth did not send a direct message to the Olympic leadership. Rather, he gave a message to the Swiss Embassy in Poland to give to the Swiss Political Department in Geneva, to pass to the IOC.33 According to Mayer: Loth explains the situation there as we all know it. The National Olympic Committee of Poland has been dissolved and all its members replaced by people who are under the communistic [sic] obedience, in words all politicians. Loth is not anymore member of the new Olympic Committee of Poland. I…wrote him a letter to be shown to its Committee informing same that Loth being not member of this National Comm. is against our own rules; but they did not take any notice of this fact. This new Committee has been formed, says Loth in his communication, in view of the Helsinki Games in 1952. Further, what my letter was concerned, the National Olympic Comm. of Poland agrees to reinstate Loth in this Committee under the conditions [sic] that the I.O.C. agrees to nominate a new member (a second one) for Poland, this member being one which will be proposed to us by the Poland O.C. This is the report of Loth.34 Loth’s message reveals how the NOC of Communist Poland (POC) had adapted its tactics vis-à-vis the IOC from Mező’s situation in 1948. Whereas the HOC tried to remove Mező and replace him with a Communist member, the newly-formed POC proposed keeping Loth and adding a second Polish member for the IOC. By electing a second member, the POC aimed to install a Polish Communist in the IOC while allowing the Olympic family to keep one of “their” men in the organization. This proposal shows how sport leaders in the Communist countries gradually learned the rules of the Olympic movement, if only in an effort to increase their political leverage within the international organization.

Mayer refused to allow the POC to nominate a second member, and maintained that Loth would remain the IOC representative to Poland. When

33 Mayer also made use of the Swiss government’s Political Department. He used their help in determining the background and political orientation of Alexander Siperco in 1951. Mayer to Edström, 8 March 1951, SD2 Correspondence, March- April 1951, CIO A-P04/006 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 34 Mayer to Edström, 9 December 1950, SD7 Correspondence November-December 1950, CIO A-P04/005 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 21 describing the situation to Edström, Mayer conveyed an additional message from Loth to Edström to not write anything about the Pole’s communication in their letters to him. This was because Loth’s letters were being read by the Communists before he received them.35 This development demonstrates the changing circumstances within the Bloc, as the various Communist governments were strengthening their grip on their domestic populations, while at the same time learning how to cooperate with the necessary rules and culture of an international organization like the IOC.

Edström responded to Mayer’s lengthy letter in a concise but to-the-point manner, saying, “I shall of course give this important letter confidence, but this matter and the situation of all the satellite states must be studied…From an Olympic point of view the world seems soon to be devided [sic] into two big sections: East and West.”36

Both Mező and Loth remained on their respective Olympic Committees, although the extent of their role in the NOCs is not clear. Within the IOC meetings, they voted along Communist lines, and at times advocated for Communist policies to the IOC. In May 1951 Mező wrote to Mayer that the HOC had been redesigned, and that the “harmony is impeccable” in the HOC.37 Mező also urged the IOC to elect a second member for Hungary, citing its history of having two IOC members from 1909-1939. Moreover, Mező wished to know about the progress in the negotiations between the East and West German Olympic delegate, stating he would like to inform his “comrades” in the HOC about the details.38 Mező ended the letter by returning to his academic, non-political interest in Olympic history, explaining that he was busy preparing a new edition of his Olympic book.39

Thanks to the unreserved manner of Mayer in his letters, it is possible to examine how the IOC leadership attempted to understand and respond to the Communists’ efforts in ways that bolstered the authority of the IOC. Mayer forwarded the above letter from Mező to Edström, writing “This letter may interest you” at the top. Mayer moreover wrote a large question mark next to Mező’s request for a second Hungarian member. It is clear that Mayer and Edström tried to “feel out” the non-Communist IOC members for the Bloc countries. They aimed to determine the

35 Mayer to Edström, 9 December 1950, SD7 Correspondence November-December 1950, CIO A-P04/005 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 36 Edström to Mayer, 12 December 1950, SD7 Correspondence November- December 1950, CIO A-P04/005 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 37 Mező to Mayer, 16 June 1951, SD2 Correspondence 1948-1954, CIO MBR- MEZO-Correspondence (Written work and correspondence of Ferenc Mezo), IOCHA. 38 Mező to Mayer, 16 June 1951, SD2 Correspondence 1948-1954, CIO MBR- MEZO-Correspondence (Written work and correspondence of Ferenc Mezo), IOCHA. 39 Mező wrote numerous letters to Mayer and the IOC over the next ten years about the Olympic history that he was writing, asking for help in finding material for it. Although Olympic history was undoubtedly a genuine passion for him, it also helped Mező illustrate his trustworthiness to the IOC, as a man who was not primarily occupied with Communist political matters. Mező to Mayer, 16 June 1951, SD2 Correspondence 1948-1954, CIO MBR-MEZO-Correspondence, IOCHA. 22 extent to which the Eastern European leaders served the IOC under the influence of their Communist parties.

In his response to Mayer’s forwarded letter from Mező, Edström refused to allow a second IOC member for Hungary. This would set a precedent for the Eastern bloc, which could create a “very disagreeable minority in our Olympic Committee.”40 Just as importantly, Edström correctly acknowledged the reason for the shift in tone in the letters from the Bloc countries in 1951. According to the IOC president, the NOCs in the satellite states were “acting much nicer” now that the Soviets had been accepted as a member of the IOC.41

The leaders of the Olympic movement continued to feel out the people whom the Communist members nominated to the IOC. As the incoming president to the IOC in 1952, Brundage began receiving correspondence about the Bloc members in 1951. For example, Mayer discussed with Brundage the Bulgarian Olympic Committee’s nomination of General Vladimir Stoychev as the IOC member for Bulgaria. Although he was a noted member of the Bulgarian Communist Party, General Stoychev had the background of a sportsman, having competed in the equestrian events at the 1924 and 1928 Summer Olympic Games. Mayer explained to Brundage that Stoychev “In fact…seems to be a good man for us ?”42 These actions demonstrate the IOC’s attempts to decipher the Communists’ diplomatic maneuvers within the IOC. Ultimately, the IOC had no choice but to learn to work with and trust—to some extent—the Communist IOC members from the region.

Árpád Csanádi

The career of Hungarian Árpád Csanádi within the IOC demonstrates the changing relationship between the Olympic movement and IOC leaders for Bloc countries. The IOC not only grew to trust some of their Communist colleagues; IOC members from some of the Bloc members successfully ingratiated themselves within the IOC administration and family. As a former football player, coach, physical educator, and member of the MKP, Csanádi was the perfect candidate for the MKP to nominate as their member following Mező’s death in 1961. He was officially elected as the IOC member for Hungary in January 1964. Despite being the first “Communist” IOC member for Hungary, within a few short years the top members of the Olympic movement identified Csanádi as someone whom they could trust to work for the organization’s administration.

In 1968, he became the president of the Olympic Program Committee. In this role, he was in charge of analyzing and deciding which sports and events to include in the Olympic program for the Winter and Summer Olympic Games. The importance of this role should not be underestimated. The ability to help determine the kind and number of sports in the Olympic Games offered a significant opportunity for the Bloc

40 Edström to Mayer, 21 June 1951, SD3 Correspondence May-July 1951, CIO A- P04/006 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 41 Edström to Mayer, 21 June 1951, SD3 Correspondence May-July 1951, CIO A- P04/006 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence), IOCHA. 42 Mayer to Avery Brundage, 27 December 1951, SD6 Correspondence 1951, A- P05/014 (IOC Presidents: Avery Brundage: correspondence), IOCHA. 23 states to influence the success that their athletes could achieve at the Olympics. For example, Brundage famously did not believe that the Winter Olympic Games were worthwhile, due to their perceived lack of popularity compared to the Summer Games. Moreover, in Brundage’s view, athletes in winter sports seemed more prone to accepting commercial contracts with companies than those in summer sports. Brundage wrote to Csanádi in 1971, voicing his concern that The rank commercialization of the alpine skiing, which is becoming worse and worse, and the outrageous scandals in this sport during the last 25 years, cannot be ignored. We must not allow the Olympic image to continue to be tarnished by these scandals.43 Yet many of the Eastern European countries, such as the USSR and Czechoslovakia, excelled at winter sports such as hockey and ice skating. Csanádi was thus well-poised to ensure that the sports and events in which socialist athletes succeeded remained on the Olympic program.

The fact that Csanádi was appointed to such a high position within a few short years of his membership is not the only indication that he was more than just a “Communist” sport leader. The language he used in correspondence with Brundage and other top IOC members showed a clear dedication and respect for the core values of the Olympic movement. His letters also illustrate how his personality, namely his amicability and diplomatic manner, enabled the Olympic family to trust him. While reporting to Brundage on a recent meeting of the Olympic Program Committee, Csanádi wrote that, “We went through—in a relatively very short time—a rather strenuous agenda, requiring concentration and marked sense of responsibility. This was due—I believe—to the fact that the Members of this small group, which we call the Board, are both specialists and very good friends, which enables them to reduce the time of discussion and to make concessions whenever necessary.”44 Csanádi ended the letter by showing considerable deference to Brundage, saying “I wish to thank you for your valuable support once more on behalf of the Members present in at the Meeting in Budapest.”45 By using this kind of language, Csanádi demonstrated his respect for the “specialist” knowledge held by his fellow colleagues, the close working relationship that he enjoyed with them, and the role of Brundage in supporting the Hungarian’s Olympic duties.

The Hungarian’s position as president of the Olympic Program Committee also afforded him access to and knowledge about the other IOC committees’ work. For example, Csanádi was kept up-to-date about meetings of the IOC Medical Commission. He not only knew when the meetings would occur, but attended them, and thus was kept abreast of the topics to be discussed. In March 1971 Artur Takac, the IOC’s member for Yugoslavia and president of the Technical Committee, described to Csanádi how the Medical Commission would discuss the instructions for

43 Brundage to Árpád Csanádi, 20 February 1971, SD2 Correspondence 1971, CIO MBR-CSANA-Correspondence (Correspondence of Arpad Csanadi), IOCHA. 44 Csanádi to Brundage, 5 March 1971, SD2 Correspondence 1971, CIO MBR- CSANA-Correspondence (Correspondence of Arpad Csanadi), IOCHA. 45 Csanádi to Brundage, 5 March 1971, SD2 Correspondence 1971, CIO MBR- CSANA-Correspondence (Correspondence of Arpad Csanadi), IOCHA. 24 the doping and sex control at the 1972 Sapporo 1972 Munich Olympic Games.46 Being privy to these conversations undoubtedly allowed the Hungarian to pass along the necessary information to his colleagues at home in the Hungarian Olympic Committee and the MTST.

Even though Csanádi and other Communist IOC members gained respect and prestige within the Olympic family, their positions did not entirely shield them or their countries from being scrutinized by the IOC. For example, IOC President Lord Killanin wrote to Csanádi in March 1979 about how the Hungarian Olympic Committee had not followed IOC procedure in electing István Buda to president of the HOC. Killanin explained how according to the HOC’s meeting minutes, “In your case, Mr. Buda was co-opted by the Presidency and not elected by the general assembly and then again appointed President by this restricted body. This constitutes a double derogation from the said bye-law.”47 The infringement enabled Buda to be appointed by a select committee—likely under orders from the top Communist leadership—and not by a larger, potentially less-politically controlled general assembly of the HOC. Killanin continued, “It seems that the infringement of the Olympic Charter stems from articles III and IV of your Statutes and it is essential that these articles should be amended to comply with the Olympic rules.”48 Killanin finished the letter in a friendlier tone, noting “We are of course at your disposal to assist the Hungarian NOC in bringing its statutes into line with our Charter, especially as these Statutes require the IOC’s approval.”49 The IOC President’s letter illustrates how Communist IOC members like Csanádi not only served as middle men between the IOC and the NOCs in the Eastern bloc; the incident also demonstrates the IOC’s attempts to ensure that even its trusted members followed the rules of the Olympic movement.

The incident over the non-compliance of the HOC’s bylaws and Buda’s appointment did not influence the IOC’s opinion of Csanádi. People continued to respect the Hungarian, and individuals within the international sport community requested his help with navigating the sport bureaucracy in Hungary. In 1981 Arne Mollén, chairman of the Norwegian Olympic Committee, requested Csanádi’s assistance in obtaining permission for a Hungarian canoer to come to Norway as a coach for the Norwegian Canoeing Federation. Mollén asked for the “Hungarian’s “support in getting the formalities or order.” The Norwegian continued, “I consider this to be a way of making good the relationship between our sportsmen from our two countries even better.” Mollén finished the letter, saying, “Dear Arpad, I hope you do

46 Although Yugoslavia is considered a “special” case and not technically part of the Eastern Bloc after the Stalin-Tito split, the fact that he had a high-ranking position and was well-respected in the IOC administration illustrates similar details about his relationship with the top IOC leaders as does Csanádi’s position. Artur Takac to Csanádi, 29 March 1971, SD2 Correspondence 1971, CIO MBR- CSANA-Correspondence (Correspondence of Arpad Csanadi), IOCHA. 47 Michael Killanin to Csanádi, 5 March 1979, SD2 Correspondence 1979-1980, CIO MBR-CSANA-Correspondence (Correspondence of Arpad Csanadi), IOCHA. 48 Killanin to Csanádi, 5 March 1979, SD2 Correspondence 1979-1980, CIO MBR- CSANA-Correspondence (Correspondence of Arpad Csanadi), IOCHA. 49 Killanin to Csanádi, 5 March 1979, SD2 Correspondence 1979-1980, CIO MBR- CSANA-Correspondence (Correspondence of Arpad Csanadi), IOCHA. 25 not mind my bothering you with this problem, but as an old friend I thought I could try to involve you in the matter.”50

When the IOC appointed Csanádi the IOC’s Honorary Sport Director in late 1981, it was another sign of the respect that the top members of the Olympic family held for the Hungarian. In this role, Csanádi accompanied then-IOC president Juan Samaranch to different meetings around the world. His appointment reflected the great trust that Samaranch and other top members held in him to complete his duties for the IOC, as well as their belief that he was appropriate to represent IOC in meetings with sport leaders worldwide. People thus continued to turn to him for help with different problems. In August 1982, he received a confidential request from a member of the US Olympic Committee (USOC), Nina Pappas. Pappas explained that a delegate from the Olympic Academy had submitted an application for a position in the IOC. She explained, I hope you will not be upset with me for taking the liberty to comment on this. Because you are a friend of mine, I feel the obligation to caution you not to offer this young man a position. He is very self-serving, being loyal only to himself. This was discovered when he was a volunteer for Lake Placid. Also, not too many people like him.51 Pappas continued, saying, “I only offer this information to help you make the correct choice. Please, please keep this letter confidential and do not make reference to it in any communication with the young man.” The repeated pleas for confidentiality, and Pappas’s bold request for Csanádi to prevent a “self-serving” man of whom “not too many people like” in the IOC shows how Csanádi was not viewed—at least entirely— by people outside of the IOC as a “Communist.” Rather, he was referred to as a friend in both instances. The fact that Pappas, who represented an NOC from the other side of the Cold War, approached Csanádi for help in safeguarding the integrity of the Olympic family reflects on the Hungarian’s esteem within the movement.

In late 1982, Csanádi fell ill and died in early 1983. The outpouring of heartfelt condolences and grief that the Olympic family and leaders in the international sport federations was immense. It is worth drawing attention to these reactions to Csanádi’s death. The letters illustrate just how much people revered Csanádi, his expertise, and friendly persona. Monique Berlioux, who was the Director of the IOC from 1971 until 1985, wrote a lengthy and touching report on her fondest memories of Csanádi. She called him, “A man of high athletic stature, elegance and efficiency, in both body and soul. Arpad Csanádi had class.” She said that when he became a member of the IOC’s Executive Board, “…his advice is sought throughout the world; he has become a figurehead of international sport. How could anyone fail to appreciate his intelligence, his loyalty, the reliability of his analyses, the cogency of his work?” She noted how: He used to say to me, ‘I want to be positive.’ He was essentially

50 Arne Mollén to Csanádi, 20 February 1981, SD1 Correspondence January-August 1981, CIO MBR-CSANA-Correspondence (Correspondence of Arpad Csanadi), IOCHA. 51 Nina Pappas to Csanádi, 21 August 1982, SD2 Correspondence July-December 1982, CIO MBR-CSANA-Correspondence (Correspondence of Arpad Csanadi), IOCHA. 26

so. What mattered to him was to convince or be convinced, and then to act accordingly. When he maintained his options…he never sought to impose them, but rather to demonstrate patiently their validity, and he took all the time that was needed.52 Berlioux’s remembrances suggest that in his service and achievements within the Olympic movement, Csanádi successfully crossed the barrier from being a “Communist” member to an essential member of the Olympic movement. He was highly revered and seen as an equal within the leadership of the Olympic family.

Mayer and the other IOC leaders may have seen through the Bloc nations’ diplomatic moves. The exchanges over Mező’s attempts to gain a second IOC member for Hungary, and about the election of Buda to the presidency of the HOC, show how the IOC and Bloc sport leaders tested the limits of each other’s authority. Yet in order to achieve their respective goals of spreading the Olympic movement and politicizing international sport success, members of both sides had to trust one another, even if only to a certain extent. As the next section will show, the IOC had to rely on its members to enforce the Olympic policies at home.

2. The Relation Between Domestic Hungarian Sport Politics, the IOC, and the Amateur Rules

As an international non-governmental body, the IOC did not have the bureaucratic strength to strictly impose and investigate whether nations followed its policies. Due to the restrictions on the press and the government control of the national sport bodies, the IOC had no way of ensuring for themselves whether their policies were being followed or not in the Bloc. The IOC’s purposeful reliance on the NOCs to police its Olympic rules domestically, combined with the fact that the IOC predominantly worked out a small office, made it difficult for the organization to investigate and penalize violations of its policies, such as the amateur rule.53 The IOC members for Eastern Europe knew this, and as a result only needed to give the image that they were following IOC rules. Killanin’s letter to Csanádi in the last section shows how the IOC tried to check that the NOCs followed the rules when electing members to their NOCs. But whereas an NOC’s meeting minutes could show whether or not it followed correct electoral protocol, there were no similarly- concrete documents or materials that the IOC required of its member nations regarding the amateur rules.

As Brundage explained, “Scores of articles alleging that these countries are not following the amateur rules have been received, but as yet we have failed to

52 Monique Berlioux, “Article on the late Dr. Arpad Csanadi,” 7 June 1983, SD2 Correspondence June-December 1983, D-RM01-HONGR/004 (Correspondence of the NOC of Hungary), IOCHA. 53 Edström, Brundage, and later IOC President Lord Killanin worked from their home countries. Juan Samaranch, who was the IOC president in the 1980s-2001, was the first IOC president to take up residence in the organization’s home in Lausanne, Switzerland, and to work directly from the IOC offices. 27 receive any evidence.”54 When an IOC leader received word of a violation of the amateur rules –usually through the press, which made the allegations hard to corroborate—the IOC contacted the IOC member for that country to address and report on the issue to the IOC.55 For example, in June 1952, Mayer wrote to Mező regarding a recent press report. The article stated that Russian and Hungarian gymnasts and track athletes had been practicing in training camps from since April 1952, in preparation to the Olympic Games that summer in Helsinki. This violated the IOC’s rules on the limits to how long athletes could spend in training camps before the Olympic Games. Mayer asked Mező, “Would you be so good and tell me immediately by airletter whether this is the truth so I, if this is not the case, can immediately intervene in this press. If this was true, I would also be very much obliged if you would tell me exactly.”56 The IOC thus needed to rely on its members to investigate violations and enforce its policies. As Mayer’s letter to Mező above shows, amateurism became a particularly difficult issue for the IOC to navigate. The IOC’s organizational constraints limited its power as a body to rule over international sport. It also ultimately gave more power to its members, and thus to national Olympic Committees and member nations.

“State Amateurism,” The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and Rewards for Athletes

The IOC’s amateur rules created a problem for the Eastern European nations during the Cold War. After the Communist takeover in 1948 in Hungary, sport leaders created a system that aimed to control, and later motivate, athletes to win gold medals on the Olympic stage and behave.57 In the early 1950s, top Hungarian Communist sport leader Hegyi developed a carrot-and-stick system of rewards and punishments to use vis-à-vis Hungarian athletes. During this time, the Hungarian sport leadership mimicked the harsh, Stalinist orientation of the government by relying heavily on punishments to keep athletes in line. Athletes could be suspended or banned from sport, and thrown in repressive labor camps if their behaviors were perceived as harmful to the state.58

54 Brundage to Roy Moore, 24 July 1956, SD1 Correspondence 1955-1958, D-RM01- ETATU/003 (Correspondence of the NOC of the United States of America), IOCHA. 55 The IOC also relied on the international sport federations for help in investigating violations of the amateur rule. 56 Mayer to Mező, 19 June 1952, SD4 Correspondence 1948-1954, CIO MBR- MEZO-Correspondence (Written work and correspondence of Ferenc Mezo), IOCHA. 57 The Communists’ desire to politicize sport success on the global sports stage found a ripe environment in Hungary. This is because Hungarian athletes had begun dominating several sports during the interwar period. Its football players, fencers, water polo players, and swimmers in particular achieved great success between the world wars, winning the third-most medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. When the Communist Party took control in 1948, they may have altered the administration of sport and nationalized the sport clubs, but they sought to capitalize on the wealth of sport expertise and talent that remained in Hungary after World War II. For more athletes’ expected behavior, see Evelyn Mertin, “Presenting Heroes: Athletes as Role Models for the New Soviet Person,” International Journal of the History of Sport, 26:4, March 2009, 469-483. 58 One athlete, footballer Sándor Szűcs, was executed after being caught trying to defect to the West in 1951. Although this is the only known case of an athlete being 28

Yet many athletes received the best that the nationalized, Communist system could offer. Top athletes “worked” paper jobs, which only required them to show up to receive their paycheck. With their sportállás, or sport position, athletes could focus solely on training, and oftentimes trained twice a day. The press, which quickly caught wind of the state-paid athletes, called them “state amateurs.” Athletes also received prized privileges of which the average Hungarian could only dream. They could travel beyond the Iron Curtain to the West for competitions. Sport leaders sometimes instructed the customs’ authorities at the borders to “turn a blind eye” to athletes’ bags so that they could smuggle goods across borders for profit. Athletes also turned to Hegyi and the National Physical Education and Sport Committee (OTSB) for help with obtaining access to universities, and to “jump the line” so that they could buy a car or flat without needing to wait the requisite five-to-years that their compatriots waited. Below Communist Party leaders and top officials, elite athletes enjoyed an unparalleled status in Stalinist Hungary—as long as they played by the rules of the sport leadership, and avoided punishment. The OTSB used the combination of rewards and punishments to compel, and also persuade, Hungarian athletes and coaches to participate in sport and contribute to the state’s sport diplomacy goals.59

The 1956 Hungarian Revolution profoundly impacted the Hungarian sport system and sport community in Hungary. The timing of the Revolution and 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games one month later enabled many athletes to defect to the West. Fortunately for those wishing to defect, several Americans and Hungarian- American émigrés had already started formulating a plan. Individuals from Time Inc., Sports Illustrated, and the Free Europe Committee convinced the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency to coordinate efforts to bring willing Hungarian athletes to America. The mission, called Operation Griffin, was one of the reasons why one-third of the Hungarian Olympic team to defected to the United States.60 Another factor was Hegyi. The Hungarian sport leader was likely worried about the post-1956 state’s retribution measures against the athletes who supported the Revolution, and about

killed for defecting from Hungary, the harsh punishment illustrates the lengths the Communist state was willing to go to control and monitor its athletes during this time. For more about the Szűcs case, see Norbert Tabi, ‘A Futballistaper: Szűcs Sándor válogatott labdarúgó kivégzésének története,’ Rubicon: Történelmi Magazin, XXV, 262, (July 2014), 28-33. 59 The confluence of Hungary’s interwar sport expertise and knowledge, the Communists’ centralization of sport resources, and the system of punishments and rewards worked together to create the golden years of Hungarian sport between 1948-1956. The Hungarian Olympic team earned an incredible number of Olympic medals considering the small size of the country. At the 1948, 1952, and 1956 Summer Olympics, the team won the fourth-, third-, and fourth-most medals respectively of any country. At the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, Hungarian athletes were only bested by the American and Soviet Olympic teams—who came from countries with populations more than ten times the size of Hungary. 60 Their goal was to find them homes in the States, utilize their expertise to improve American sport, and benefit from the Cold War propaganda. See Toby Rider, Cold War Games: Propaganda, the Olympics, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2016). 29 being purged himself when they returned—or worse. Rather than force the athletes to return home, Hegyi offered some of the would-be defectors a shot of pálinka and sausage as a parting gift.61 His response to the defecting athletes helped to keep the door open with them in case they decided to return to Hungary. His approach to the athletes helped to set the stage for how he and other sport leaders softened their tactics vis-à-vis athletes upon returning to Hungary.

The “brawn drain” prompted Hungarian sport leaders to alter its international and domestic sport policies. Internationally, sport leaders aimed to rebuild the nation’s image as a leading sport superpower who was firmly committed to the Olympic ideal of peace.62 Hegyi already began this process in Melbourne, when he left on good terms with the defectors and kept the door open to their potential return. The mass defections taught Hungarian sport leaders that athletes could and would leave the country—and spread news of the nation’s harsh repression—if they did not treat athletes well.63 The Stalinist-era punishments were no longer a top priority.64 Hegyi’s approach enabled athletes to decide on their own accord to come back to Hungary. This demonstrated to the international sport world Hungary’s benevolence after the violence of 1956.65 Just as importantly, athletes who returned of their own accord would be more motivated to win gold medals, and contribute to sport diplomacy goals, than those who returned under more difficult conditions. The shift in sport leaders’ carrot-and-stick system thus persuaded, rather than compelled, athletes to cooperate willingly with the state.

As part of their shift to using softer measures vis-à-vis athletes, Hungarian sport leaders began offering athletes more rewards than before, and awarded them to a broader pool of athletes, and not just Olympic competitors. The life of fencer Gábor Erdős illustrates this shift. Although Erdős never competed on the Olympic team, he fenced numerous times on the national team, and traveled abroad frequently for club competitions. He gradually developed a vast smuggling enterprise across Europe, buying, smuggling, and selling goods in various European cities for profit. For ten swords, Erdős explained, he received $30 from the West Germans. He then spent the $30 on Italian goods in Milan, which he subsequently sold for $60 in Hungary.66 Erdős jokingly commented how, “I have said that the three goods which I

61 Attila Ághassi, “Egy elmaradt kézfogás törte ketté az életét,” 19 August 2006, http://index.hu/sport/2006/08/19/060816bg/, accessed 18 June 2017; Lídia Sákovics, interview with the author, 1 April 2015. 62 See Parks, The Olympic Games, 2016. 63 For example, see “Gyarmati’s Story,” Sports’ Illustrated, 8 April 1957, 32. 64 Retribution seemed limited to requisitioning the apartments of the defectors, and family members could even remove the personal effects beforehand. This contrasts with the experience of athlete-defectors from East Germany. András Kő, László Tábori, A Biography: The Legendary Story of the Great Hungarian Runner (Sarasota: First Edition Design Publishing, 2015), 93. See Jutta Braun and René Wiese, “‘Tracksuit Traitors’: Eastern German Top Athletes on the Run,” The International Journal of the History of Sport, Vol. 31, No. 12, 1519-1534. 65 This is demonstrated by the International Fencing Federation’s support for Hungary in not allowing Lidia Dömölky to compete at their championships for the US. János Soproni, “Új csillagok a tőrvivás egén,” NépSport, 19 September 1957, P. 1. 66 Gábor Erdős, interview with the author, 11 July 2013. 30 have not had any activity [with] are arms, drugs and girls. But all others [goods].67 The fencer’s privileges from sport did not end there. He received a small business permit in 1971—a rare opportunity in Hungary, but one that numerous athletes enjoyed—and opened a clothing store that he ran with his wife.68 He used sewing machines that he had smuggled home after a competition to make the sweaters he sold in the store.69 The permit not only legitimized his sport-related smuggling endeavors; it also enabled him to obtain an extremely comfortable standard of living within the confines of socialist Hungary.

IOC’s Amateur Policies: Challenges, Investigations, and Shifts

Even though the sport leadership’s decision to alter their tactics greatly benefitted Hungarian athletes, these rewards conflicted with the IOC’s amateur policies. The IOC’s 1949 rules on eligibility stated that an amateur, “...participates and always has participated in sport solely for pleasure and for the physical, mental or social benefits he derives therefrom, and to whom participation in sport is nothing more than recreation without material gain of any kind direct or indirect...”70 The IOC used this phrasing to define amateurism and Olympic eligibility throughout the 1950s. The short and vague language of the definition served a clear purpose amidst the growing Cold War: it proved difficult to interpret on both sides of the Iron Curtain, thereby proving flexible enough to sustain criticisms from each side without specifically penalizing either one. If someone participated in sport for money, such as through gambling or in return for pay, then he constituted a professional athlete.

The absence of bureaucratic might within the IOC administration crippled attempts to enforce the amateur regulations. The IOC could only write diplomatically- worded letters to national Olympic committees about reported violations. Moreover, since the leaders of the IOC did not believe that it was their duty to involve itself in the domestic affairs of member countries, they also did not try to intervene in issues between athletes and their national sport bodies. As future IOC president Lord Killanin wrote to Brundage in 1969, “I am glad we are in agreement in regard to dealing with NOCs in the first instance in regard to any question of disciplining individuals in their respective countries.”71 Killanin reiterated the point to Brundage one month later, saying, “As you know our responsibility is to deal with the Olympic Games as such and we cannot interfere with the political or internal administration of sports within the countries.”72 Killanin’s remark illustrates the limits of the IOC’s willingness—and power—to discipline and protect athletes, and the IOC’s reliance on the national Olympic Committees to ensure that the domestic sport systems and athletes abided by the IOC rules. As a result of these limitations, Bloc sport leaders

67 Gábor Erdős, interview with the author, 11 July 2013. 68 The ability to obtain a small business permit became available with the passage of the New Economic Mechanism in 1968. 69 Gábor Erdős, interview with the author, 11 July 2013. 70 “Olympic Rules,” 1949, http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Olympic Charter/Olympic_Charter_through_time/1949-Olympic_Charter.pdf 71 Killanin to Brundage, 7 May 1969, SD3 Correspondence May-June 1969, A- P06/016 (IOC Presidents: Michael Killanin: correspondence), IOCHA 72 Killanin to Brundage, 29 June 1969, SD3 Correspondence May-June 1969, A- P06/016 (IOC Presidents: Michael Killanin: correspondence), IOCHA. 31 eventually realized that they only needed to provide the IOC with superficial proof of abiding by the amateur rules. What emerged after an initial burst of vigor from Brundage was a system in which both sides ultimately paid little more than lip service concerning state amateurism. Sport leaders slyly picked up on the rules of the game as it related to amateurism and the IOC.

Throughout the 1950s, Brundage diligently investigated and pursued rumors regarding violations of amateurism. Brundage collected material on the rumors, and subsequently corresponded to NOC’s on both sides of the Iron Curtain about potential violations with a passion that went unmatched by his predecessors or successors.73 Brundage proved firm in his unwillingness to help with the democratization of sport, even though that formed one of the initial foundations of the Olympic movement. Fortunately for Eastern Bloc sport leaders, Brundage’s vigilant enforcement of amateurism began to waver in the mid-1950s.

Brundage quickly found himself caught in the middle of the two sides, especially after returning from a series of successful visits to Hungary and the USSR between 1953-1954. Neither Eastern nor Western sport leaders found the vague definition of amateurism satisfying. The Bloc sport leaders found the IOC’s stance on amateurism discriminatory, believing it favored American college athletes.74 In 1953, Brundage admitted in a letter to Mező that: I did make the remarks about State amateurs which appeared in L’Equipe, but I did not apply them to the Hungarian football team as indicated in the article. What I said was no different than what appeared in my circular letter No. 12 which was sent out to all the members of the IOC… Brundage continued: As you know, I did not go to Budapest to make an investigation of Hungarian sport. I have heard that there are State amateurs in Hungary as well as in a number of other countries, including France, so it is a problem that appears on both sides of the Iron Curtain… Even though political systems are different, there is no difference in the definition of an amateur in any country, and in my opinion there is no reason why Olympic rules and regulations cannot be followed just as well behind the Iron Curtain, and perhaps even better than in countries with other political conceptions…we have the same thing here in the United States, in the case of boys who are given scholarships and other inducements to go to college to play football. In my opinion…they are not amateurs. College football is not an Olympic sport, however.75 Brundage issued a subtle reprimand to Mező, while at the same time offering the Hungarian an opportunity to provide assurance that the they were following IOC

73 Matthew Llewellyn and John Gleaves, The Rise and Fall of Olympic Amateurism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016), 99. 74 Parks, The Olympic Games, 92. 75 Brundage to Mező, 22 October 1953, SD2 Correspondence, D-RM01-HONGR/001 (Executive Board of the NOC of Hungary), IOCHA. 32 regulations. This type of letter was typical of Brundage and the IOC.76 By noting that state amateurism existed in other countries Brundage was able to deliver the message more diplomatically. Brundage’s wording exemplifies the IOC’s attempt to govern by way of sending a diplomatic “warning,” and not a more authoritative alternative.

Brundage and Mayer tried to tackle the Bloc countries’ state amateurism issue more directly in 1961. During a meeting of the IOC Executive Board that May, the top IOC leadership arranged for a special meeting specifically with the Bloc members. In the meeting Brundage requested an official statement from the Eastern European members “…with a view of destroying the existing prevailing impression concerning state amateurs.”77 He explained that articles had criticized the IOC about how it handled the issue. IOC representative for the USSR Nikolai Romanov countered Brundage’s request by asking if the IOC intended to meet with the representatives of other countries who received similar criticisms. Brundage responded by explaining his difficult position, as someone who needed to field complaints about Eastern European and American athletes, and how he objected to the scholarship program in the US. USSR member Constantin Adrianov then agreed to supply all the documents “which may prove of interest to the IOC” in the matter. None of the IOC members for the Bloc states denied Brundage’s claims, nor offered any evidence disproving the allegations.

The special meeting was instructive for another reason. Armand Massard, the IOC member for France, took the opportunity to point out that at each IOC Session, “…when the USSR members make a proposal, they are backed by the members of the Eastern European counties who, one after another, raise from their seat to punctuate their assent.” Adrianov outright denied the claim, explaining that there was no “Eastern block or coalition” because such a block was not necessary. Loth and Mező confirmed Adrianov’s point. Interestingly, only two years prior to this allegation, Adrianov had submitted a proposal to reorganize the IOC. His proposal would have allowed for a more democratic process for electing new members to the IOC. The proposal, which would have deprived the current IOC members of the ability to select members who were the “same general type as them,” was rejected.78 Between the submission of Adrianov’s proposal in 1959 and its rejection at the 1961 meeting, the Bloc members had begun to realize that the best way to assert their influence in the Olympic movement was to cultivate contacts beyond the Iron Curtain.79 Massard’s accusation about the “Bloc coalition” was likely further proof that the USSR and satellite countries needed to expand their contacts and take more of a broad-based approach to influencing the Olympic movement to better suit the conditions in their countries.

76 Avery Brundage did the same thing when he received word of the Soviets defying IOC rules on amateurism, by appealing to Constantin Adrianov and Nikolai Romanov, the top two sport leaders. See Jenifer Parks, The Olympic Games, and Matthew Llewellyn and John Gleaves, The Rise and Fall. 77 International Olympic Committee Executive Board Meeting, 15 -18 June 1961, Athens. 78 Parks, The Olympic Games, 49-51. 79 Parks, The Olympic Games, 35-38. 33

Mayer and Brundage followed up with Adrianov two months later about the official statement addressing the state amateurism rumors. Mayer reiterated the reasons for the statement, saying, “We would be very much thankful to you if you could let us have such a statement which would help us stop all the wrong informations [sic] which are given by the Press from time to time, if not periodically. I wish to add that you should write it in such a way that we can publish it widely and forward it to the Press.80

By the early 1960s, the IOC believed it worthwhile to revise its eligibility rules, in hopes of appeasing its many critics.81 In 1962 the IOC introduced a more nuanced explanation of its rules on amateurism, called Article 26. The two main stipulations of the new regulations required that amateur athletes maintain a normal occupation to pay for their current and future livelihood, and that they never receive payment for participating in a competition.82 The revised rules gave some concessions to Olympic athletes. They could receive broken-time payments for the time off work spent preparing in the month immediately preceding the Olympic Games, money for traveling and per diem expenses, as well as for equipment. The updated version of Article 26 also included a section titled “Pseudo Amateurs,” which seemed to target two groups. The first comprised the Bloc countries, for employing athletes in various branches of the military and security forces, such as the Army and Police teams. The second was the United States, which struck at the United States for the scholarships and inducements they offered to “outstanding athletes. It thus mimicked Brundage’s comments in 1953 to Mező.”83 The section on “Pseudo Amateurs” highlights the IOC’s knowledge that nations on both sides of the Iron Curtain violated the tenets of Olympic amateurism. It shows that they also sought to identify specific situations in which participating countries defied the rules, regardless of their political orientation.

The IOC’s changing stance towards state amateurism and Olympic eligibility meant one main thing: socialist sport leaders could continue support their athletes from state funds, as long as they gave the appearance of abiding by those rules. In order to comply with those rules on a superficial basis, the sport leadership focused on preventing concrete evidence of athletes’ salaries and material awards from escaping their meetings and reaching Western critics.

In 1968, the IOC called for the creation of the Eligibility Commission. The charge of the commission lay in updating the definitions and regulations for the

80 Mayer to Adrianov, 18 August 1961, SD3 Correspondence 1961-1964, CIO MBR- ADRI- Correspondence (Biography and correspondence of Constantin Adrianov), IOCHA. 81 Albert Mayer led the charge for revision, who believed that the IOC’s current rules were so restrictive and arbitrary that average working-class athletes were forced to either stay at home or completely violate the rules in order to finance their Olympic endeavors. Llewellyn and Gleaves, The Rise and Fall, 128-129. 82 Llewellyn and Gleaves, The Rise and Fall, 129-130; cited from 58th IOC Session, Athens, June 19-21, 1961, Annex 5, IOC Historical Archives. 83 “Eligibility Rules of the International Olympic Committee,” 1964, accessed via http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Olympic Charter/Olympic_Charter_through_time/1964- Olympic_Charter_Eligibility_Rules_of_the_IOC.pdf 34 amateur code. By this time Brundage and the IOC’s focus had begun to shift from investigating cases of state amateurism in the Eastern Bloc to ones of commercial professionalism in the West. As shown by Simona Ionescu and Thierry Terret, Alexander Siperco, the IOC member for Romania, quite forcefully inserted himself into the ongoing discussions within the IOC about the amateur rule.84 Despite the fact that the Eligibility Commission had already been established to examine the amateur problem, Siperco created an additional ad hoc commission, called the Mixed Committee II, to do his own research into the problem. Brundage and the IOC tolerated Siperco’s efforts and allowed him to become a member of the Eligibility Commission in 1972. Throughout the 1970s, Siperco’s repeated proposals to amend Article 26 to favor the Bloc sport systems and athletes were not successfully implemented. But his position as the only Bloc member on the Commission ensured that the Communist IOC members were kept abreast of the developments regarding amateurism. He thus served as an important bulwark between the Eligibility Commission and the Bloc states, seeming to protect these sport systems from being heavily scrutinized by the Commission.

In March 1972, the Eligibility Commission sent notices to numerous national Olympic Committees asking for details of their elite sport system, including those in the Eastern Bloc and in Western Europe. The Commission explained that it had “been informed from various sources that a system of material support is given to the best athletes of your country, in order to ‘facilitate’ and ‘encourage’ their preparation for the Olympic Games and other important international competitions. In some case this kind of support is called ‘scholarships,’ and in others, ‘national sport assistance.’”85 The notice requested specific information, such as the highest payments made to athletes, the purpose of the payments, and who or which body paid the athletes. The letter also wanted the NOCs to reflect on the assistance given to athletes by the system in their country, and how it related to the IOC’s eligibility rule.

Despite the Eligibility Commission’s request for information regarding the system of support for athletes, Brundage had already realized that state amateurism no longer loomed as large of a threat as in the 1950s. Rather, Brundage viewed the issue of athletes receiving sponsorship deals with commercial entities as more dangerous to the purity of the Olympic movement. In a letter to Csanádi in November 1969, Brundage appealed to the Hungarian for his help in dealing with the amateur issue as it related to Csanádi’s work with the Olympic Program. He explained to Csanádi that: While it is said that there is no professional sport in Eastern European countries, in the West several sports are very highly commercially developed. These sports have become, in these countries today, more of a business than a sport…in some cases players are paid as much as $250,000 a year. It is

84 Simona Angela Ionescu and Thierry Terret, “A Romanian within the IOC: Alexander Siperco, Romania and the Olympic Movement,” The International Journal of the History of Sport, 29:8, 1177-1194, 1183-1184. 85 Takac to the National Olympic Committee of the German Democratic Republic, 23 March 1972, SD1 Correspondence 1969-1972, D-RM01-ALLRD/004 (Correspondence of the NOC of the German Democratic Republic), IOCHA. 35

my opinion, which is shared by many, that sports of this kind, with such a highly commercialized development, are impossible to keep amateur on an Olympic level. The only solution, in view of the tremendous sums of money involved, is to drop these sports from the Olympic programme. You will remember that when I mentioned this fact at the Dubrovnik meeting there was considerable applause.

In my opinion, action of this kind must be taken promptly if we are to save the Olympic Games from disaster and if any such action is taken by the International Olympic Committee many of our problems will be solved.

Your report indicates that you have given a great deal of study to the Olympic programme and I trust that you will not fail to give attention to my ideas as expressed above.86 Brundage’s wording shows how he sought Csanádi’s help not only because the Hungarian was the president of the Olympic Program Committee. The IOC president approached Csanádi due to his position as an IOC representative from Eastern Europe, where professional sport did not exist. Brundage therefore viewed Csanádi as an ally in the fight against commercial professionalism.

These developments in the IOC illustrates how the leaders of the Olympic movement understood the value of the Bloc states in helping to bolster its policies. Brundage even voiced his concerns about the negative impact of commercialization to Bloc members who were not part of the IOC administration. For example, he wrote Heinz Schöbel, the East German IOC member, in 1971 that “The rank commercialization of alpine skiing, which is becoming worse and worse, and the outrageous scandals in this sport during the last 25 years, cannot be ignored. We must not allow the Olympic image to be tarnished by these scandals.”87 For Schöbel, Brundage’s stance on the commercialization of sport provided an opportunity to demonstrate his dedication to the Olympic movement, and to denigrate the West German NOC and sport system to the IOC. In March 1972, Schöbel wrote the following to Willi Daume, the FRG’s IOC member, and sent a copy to the IOC: We have come to the knowledge that some companies in the FRG, z. B. Chocolate Factory, B. Sprengel & Co. Hanover, use photographs and the names of Olympic athletes of different countries for advertising purposes, including athletes of the GDR …this happens without our knowledge and without our consent.88 To further prove his point that the companies were violating the IOC’s rules, Schöbel referred specifically to the conditions of Article 26. The two letters between Brundage and Schöbel in 1971-1972 illustrate on the one hand how the IOC used their relations

86 Brundage to Csanádi, 3 November 1969, SD1 Correspondence 1964-1970, CIO MBR-CSANA-Correspondence (Correspondence of Arpad Csanadi), IOCHA. 87 Brundage to Heinz Schöbel, 20 February 1971, SD1 Correspondence 1966-1973, CIO MBR-SCHOB-CORR (Correspondence of Heinz Schöbel), IOCHA. 88 Schöbel to Willi Daume, 29 March 1972, SD1 Correspondence 1969-1972, D- RM01-ALLRD/004 (Correspondence of the NOC of the German Democratic Republic), IOCHA. 36 with the Bloc countries to shore up support for IOC policies. On the other hand, the amateur policy offered the Bloc countries a tool with which to show their dedication to the Olympic movement, improve relations with top IOC leaders, and thus increase their leverage in the organization.

The IOC’s changing perspective on amateurism worked to the advantage of the Hungarian state and its brethren. Importantly, it helped to protect and sustain the privileges and rewards that Hegyi and the National Council of Physical Education and Sport (MTST) offered to athletes after the 1956 Revolution and mass defections.89 Hungarian sport leaders understood the importance of keeping their athletes satisfied enough to remain in Hungary so they could win gold medals, and not defect to the West. Without the mass defection of Hungarian athletes to the West following 1956, Hungarian sport leaders might not have softened their policies. The IOC’s shift away from focusing on state amateurism and towards commercial professionalism in the late 1960s follows the shift in Hungarian sport leaders’ tactics vis-à-vis athletes after the 1956 Revolution. The kind of material awards that the state awarded athletes— such as the business permit that Gábor Erdős received in 1971—evaded the gaze of the IOC not only because of the restrictions on the press in Eastern Europe. Material awards and career opportunities did not leave behind the same kind of evidence as did professional contracts and advertisements. Moreover, the appointment of Siperco to the Eligibility Commission and Brundage’s requests for help and complaints to Eastern Bloc leaders about commercial professionalism in sport shored up the position and influence of Bloc leaders within the Olympic movement. Without the mass defection of athletes from Hungary in 1956, sport leaders across the Bloc may not have had reason to influence the IOC’s stance on amateurism so directly. From this perspective, the evolution of the IOC’s amateur rules can be indirectly traced to the actions of Hungarian athletes in 1956.

3. Cold War Politics and the Position of the “Middle’ Bloc States in the IOC

Throughout the Cold War, the biggest and most contentious nations loomed large in the imaginaries of Western governments, international organizations, and the press: the Soviet Union and East Germany especially, and China as well. Within the historical literature on Cold War sport, these countries have received the most attention from scholars. But what about the small satellite states in Eastern Europe, geographically located between East Germany and the USSR? For the IOC, they served as important intermediaries between the IOC and the major Bloc countries. As discussed earlier, Csanádi became an important and trustworthy member of the IOC in the late 1960s until his death in 1983. Brundage in particular went to him for help with the amateur issue as it related to the Olympic Program. At other times, Brundage turned to two other IOC members for the Bloc: Poland’s Professor Loth and Bulgaria’s General Stoychev. These men grew to be important confidants for the IOC in the late 1950s.

At the same time, the ongoing political tensions between East and West Germany meant that these countries sought ways to undermine the sporting legitimacy of the other. As demonstrated by Schöbel’s report to Brundage in 1971

89 The MTST replaced the OTSB as the national governing sport body in Hungary after 1956. 37 about the FRG’s violations of the amateur rule, representatives from East and West Germany used the IOC to levy allegations against one another, and to build their credibility within the Olympic movement. Another, more serious report surfaced in late 1962, when an East German athlete defected to West Germany and reported his experiences to an official notary in West Germany. The report set off a series of letters between the IOC and the East German Olympic Committee. The focus of international organizations and the press on the GDR and USSR meant that their sport systems were more frequently and highly scrutinized than those in the smaller states. As a result, no other such incident emerged about an athlete and Communist sport system in any of the other satellite countries. The sport systems of the middling nations thus enjoyed a more protected or veiled status than their larger counterparts in Eastern Europe.

Middle Men: Loth and Stoychev

Loth and Stoychev became trusted middlemen for the Olympic family between the IOC and other Communist countries in the late 1950s. In a letter to Stoychev in December 1958, Brundage expressed his frustrations with Communist China’s efforts to politicize sports. Brundage appealed to both Loth and Stoychev for help, saying, “Their position [in China] is quite ridiculous – apparently they do not understand that the Olympic movement is not concerned with politics and that we do not deal with Governments but with sportsmen. I have tried to explain it to them a dozen times, but they do not seem to understand.”90 Brundage continued, “Professor Loth had the idea that we might call the other Committee the ‘Formosa’ and ‘Taiwan’ Committee. It might be the IOC would agree. Perhaps you can be helpful in this situation.”91 In the letter, Brundage illustrated his reliance on Loth and Stoychev to help the IOC reach a peaceful resolution with the two Chinese Olympic organizations at this time. His comment that Stoychev could be “helpful in this situation” demonstrates how the IOC purposefully used the men from the small satellite states as middle men.

Brundage reiterated this again to Stoychev in 1963 in reference to Communist Cuba. The IOC president told Stoychev that, “If Cuba intends to use sport as a political weapon, of course it will be barred from all international competition. Perhaps it would be useful if you would advise Senor Llanusa that the Cubans must conform to the Olympic principles if they expect to stay in the Olympic family.”92 The two letters not only highlight the trust that the IOC placed in the IOC members for these small states, but also the power that they stood to wield within the Olympic family by helping the IOC in its diplomacy and teaching of the Olympic rules. The fact that Brundage seemed to trust Stoychev—who was assuredly a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party—shows the broader shift in relations between the Western and Eastern European members of the IOC by the late 1950s-early 1960s.

90 Brundage to General Stoychev, 4 December 1958, SD2 Correspondence 1948- 1968, CIO MBR-STOYT-Correspondence (Biography and correspondence of Vladimir Stoytchev), IOCHA. 91 Brundage to Stoychev, 4 December 1958, SD2 Correspondence 1948-1968, CIO MBR-STOYT-Correspondence (Biography and correspondence of Vladimir Stoytchev), IOCHA. 92 Brundage to Stoychev, 20 February 1963, SD1 Correspondence January-May 1963, A-P05/024 (IOC Presidents: Avery Brundage: correspondence), IOCHA. 38

The Controversy Surrounding the Neuling Case

The political conflict between the FRG and GDR plagued the IOC for decades. Scholars have examined the tensions that ensued over the control of the combined German Olympic team, and whether the countries should have separate NOCs.93 The issues did not end there, however. The flight of East German athletes to the West caused problems for both the GDR and the IOC. The defection of one athlete in particular, a rower named Hans Neuling, was wholly unique because of the fact that Neuling himself—likely with help from the FRG—gave sworn testimony about his experiences to a notary, and sent it to the IOC. His affidavit sparked a significant but telling debate within the IOC leadership. It comprises the largest and most thorough series of documents about any defection within the archival collection at the IOC Historical Archives. This stands in stark contrast to the IOC’s silence about the mass defection of Hungarian athletes after 1956, when hundreds of athletes fled abroad.

Neuling fled to West Germany in July 1962 and described his experiences as an elite athlete in East German in front of a notary. In the affidavit, Neuling explained that he fled because “…the political pressure was intolerable and because I demonstratively wanted to turn away from the sport-conditions of that place.”94 He described how he, “…got gratifications that are not allowed comfortably to the Olympic and other appropriate amateur-definitions.” He received cash payments for winning events, and 2,000 Deutsch Marks for breaking records. Neuling also reported taking “so called artificial stimulants” prior to races. The United German Olympic Committee forwarded the sworn affidavit, with its extremely detailed descriptions of Neuling’s experiences and the violations of multiple IOC rules in the GDR, to the IOC in late 1962.

The IOC immediately wrote to the East German NOC requesting a response. Throughout 1963, Mayer and Brundage remained frustrated with the East German’s unwillingness to respond directly to the accusations. The GDR NOC sent two notarized affidavits to the IOC in early 1963. The first one, written by the German Gymnastics and Sports Federation (DTSB)’s President Manfred Ewald, only gave vague assurances that they followed the rules of the Olympic movement, as it “cultivates and demands the Olympic idea and contributes to bringing its high ideals of humanism, popular support and peace into the hearts of all gymnasts and athletes and is ground in amateur sport.”95 The second affidavit came from the president of the East German Rowing Association. He categorically denied all of Neuling’s claims,

93 For example, see R. Gerald Hughes and Rachel J. Owen, “‘The Continuation of Politics by Other Means’: Britain, the Two Germanys and the Olympic Games, 1949- 1972,” Contemporary European History, 18:4 (2009), 443-474. 94 Hans Neuling, “Affidavit for the National Olympic Committee for Germany,” 16 October 1962, SD2 Athlete Testimonials, D-RM01-ALLEM/007 (United German team at the Olympic Games: FRG and GDR: correspondence, minutes, judicial consultation, press cutting and athlete testimonies), IOCHA. 95 Ewald Manfred to the IOC, 1 March 1963, SD1 Correspondence 1963-1964, D- RM01-ALLRM/015 (Recognition request of the NOC of the German Democratic Republic: correspondence and statutes), IOCHA. 39 stating that they nor the DTSB gave athletes “means of development” (Aufbaumittel) or drugs, nor had they paid financial benefits to athletes.96

Mayer initially ignored the denial from the GDR Rowing Federation. He wrote candidly to Brundage in March 1963 that, “It is of course not at all what we asked for. We wanted to have a reply from what was said by that East german [sic] rowing man before notary in Hamburg. What they give, is a general statement, before notary of course, saying that they respect their rules which are so and so! It is a way to get out of the question.”97 Mayer believed that this would be the extent of the response from East Germany, and thought it best to not push the matter further. He said as much to Brundage, explaining, “I suggest that we consider this as settled otherwise we shall never finish. They shall anyhow do as they wish…as it is done in other parts of the world!”98 Mayer also took it upon himself to tell this to the General Secretary of the East German NOC, saying, “I have taken good note of your explanations, and as you rightly say, it would be best if that matter could be settled, as I have suggested to President Brundage, by the way.”99

Brundage was of a different mind than Mayer about the situation. The IOC President wanted to continue pursuing the matter of Neuling’s statements with the East Germans. He told Mayer to, “…acknowledge the receipt and remind them that they did not reply to the specific allegations in the affidavit from Hamburg. As you say, they will probably do as they please, but nevertheless, we should let them know that we are not deaf and blind both.”100 The American’s last point shows his desire to not appear weak to the East Germans by flexing what little muscle the IOC had in continuing to pressure the GDR NOC to respond more directly to Neuling’s claims. Mayer pointed out the Rowing Federation’s denials to Brundage, and opined that the denials, “means also that they don’t recognize as being true the Hamburg affidavit.” He persisted in trying to convince Brundage to drop the issue, explaining how not only had the West German NOC not mentioned anything further, but that he and Brundage “shall never know the truth.”101

Brundage was not deterred. He wrote to Schöbel in November 1963 in search of an answer. Interestingly, Brundage only mentioned to Schöbel Neuling’s allegation that East German athletes were receiving payments. The IOC president said nothing

96 Karl Nagel to the IOC, 21 January 1963, SD1 Correspondence 1963-1964, D- RM01-ALLRM/015 (Recognition request of the NOC of the German Democratic Republic: correspondence and statutes), IOCHA. 97 Mayer to Brundage, 11 March 1963, SD1 Correspondence January-May 1963, A- P05/024 (IOC Presidents: Brundage: correspondence), IOCHA. 98 Mayer to Brundage, 11 March 1963, SD1 Correspondence January-May 1963, A- P05/024 (IOC Presidents: Brundage: correspondence), IOCHA. 99 Mayer to H. Behrendt, 19 March 1963, SD1 Correspondence 1963-1964, D-RM01- ALLRM/015 (Recognition request of the NOC of the German Democratic Republic: correspondence and statutes), IOCHA. 100 Brundage to Mayer, 26 March 1963, SD1 Correspondence January-May, A- P05/024 (IOC Presidents: Brundage: correspondence), IOCHA. 101 Mayer to Brundage, 29 March 1963, SD1 Correspondence January-May, A- P05/024 (IOC Presidents: Brundage: correspondence), IOCHA. 40 about the doping allegations.102 This shows how Brundage, and the IOC broadly, was much more focused on the issue amateurism and violations of the eligibility rule than the proliferation of performance-enhancing drugs in the early 1960s.

Brundage wrote to Schöbel again in January 1964, elaborating on why he sought a more concrete reply from the NOC: As we have reported to you before, we are subject to much criticism because of articles that frequently appear in the newspapers of various countries relating to the Olympic eligibility of East German athletes…so far as I know, we have never had a reply from you to the allegations made in a sworn affidavit a year or so ago in Hamburg by an ex German athlete. Matters of this kind you must realize are very embarrassing and we should have an official reply from the East German Olympic Committee.103 In this letter, Brundage revealed why he viewed the matter as problematic: because the allegations embarrassed the IOC. The press reports revealed to onlookers the limits of the IOC’s power, and thus the organization’s weakness.

The matter of the sworn affidavit regarding East Germany’s violations of the amateur rules also underscores the ways in which East Germany and its athletes garnered a significant amount of attention and scrutiny from the press and other NOCs. There is no evidence that the USSR experienced a similar incident with one of its athletes who defected. Mayer, Brundage, and other IOC leaders, however, received a considerable number of press reports throughout the Cold War about how the Soviets were violating the IOC’s amateur regulations. In contrast, the archival holdings at the IOC Historical Archives only contain a handful of letters between the IOC and the Hungarian members that attest to reports about violations in Hungary. From this perspective, the fact that Hungary experienced less scrutiny regarding its sport system in the press than its East German and Soviet counterparts shows that its sport system flew under the radar. This dynamic afforded Hungary and the other small satellite states a larger degree of freedom in their sport systems and in the ways they treated their athletes. For Hungary, this enabled the sport leadership to dole privileges and rewards to its athletes without a reasonable fear of discovery after 1956. Moreover, the absence of reports and rumors about violations in the middle Bloc countries further boosted the small nations’ credibility within the IOC. Brundage and other IOC leaders could trust and elect people like Csanádi into the higher echelons of the organization’s administration, and use Loth and Stoychev as confidantes and sport diplomats vis-à-vis other Communist countries.

The Meaning of the Fall of Communism to the IOC

102 Copies of this letter were also sent to Mayer and the FRG’s IOC member, Willi Daume. Brundage to Heinz Schöbel, 20 November 1963, SD1 Correspondence 1963-1964, D-RM01-ALLRM/015 (Recognition request of the NOC of the German Democratic Republic: correspondence and statutes), IOCHA. 103 Brundage to Schöbel, 13 January 1964, SD1 Correspondence 1963-1964, D- RM01-ALLRD/015 (Recognition request of the NOC of the German Democratic Republic: correspondence and statutes), IOCHA. 41

If by the late 1960s the top IOC leadership had begun to rely on its Eastern European members for institutional support, Moscow’s hosting of the 1980 Summer Olympics and Csanádi’s administrative tenure demonstrates the key roles that the Bloc members and countries occupied within the Olympic movement. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, then, meant for the IOC a serious loss of support from one of the most sport-dedicated regions of the world. The existence of Cold War politics undoubtedly aided the Olympic movement. The sporting politics of the Bloc countries convinced Communist leaders to devote an enormous amount of institutional and financial means into the development of elite athletes and successful Olympic teams. Despite the IOC’s desire to keep the movement as apolitical as possible, in reality, the subsequent politicization of the Olympic Games due to the Cold War—and especially to the Eastern Bloc’s devotion to elite sport—helped spread the IOC and its values across the globe. It also helped to legitimize the Olympic Games in the eyes of viewers worldwide, who watched the competitions in part because of the historic East-West showdowns that occurred. When the Communist systems in Eastern Europe collapsed, the IOC worried not only about how the democratic transitions would impact elite sport in each country, but also the competitiveness and popularity of the Olympic Games themselves.

As a result of these concerns, then-IOC president Juan Samaranch decided to hold meetings with the Eastern European NOCs in 1990. As he explained in a letter that he sent to all the IOC members for the region, “1990 will be a year of significant developments in all areas of sport, including Sport for All.”104 Samaranch described how individual meetings between the IOC and each of the region’s NOCs “would enable us to discuss the possibility of a more intensified cooperation between the IOC and the leading sports bodies in your country.” At first glance, these statements seem innocuous. Samaranch had created a “mass sport” working group in 1983, and the first meeting of the Sport for All Commission met in July 1985. The Commission was an attempt to provide support in developments that would facilitate mass participation in sport. This initiative was not new to the Bloc countries, as they had unevenly pursued mass sport programs for decades; due to their Cold War sport goals, however, elite sport was almost always given a higher priority and more funding than mass sport. Samaranch’s desire to help the former socialist countries in these endeavors, then, may not seem particularly notable.

Once in Lausanne, the IOC met with all of the IOC members for the region as a whole, and then on an individual basis with each country. Although no documentation exists for the larger meeting, the Olympic Studies Centre does have brief reports on the smaller meetings in their archives. In each meeting, the IOC members for Eastern Europe gave a report on the state of sport in their country since the fall of communism, such as the drastic reduction in state subsidies for sport. Some of them also explained how their sport administrative bodies had become independent and disentangled from the government, and how they were committed to rejuvenating mass sport as a corrective for the decades-long focus on elite sport. By and large, each individual meeting primarily focused on the conditions of Sport for All in their countries.

104 Juan Samaranch to Pál Schmitt, 22 February 1990, SD5 Reunion between the IOC and the Sports Authorities of Hungary 1990, D-RM01-HONGR/004 (Correspondence of the NOC of Hungary), IOCHA. 42

Samaranch and the IOC had another aim for the meetings, however. The IOC wanted to ensure that the former Bloc countries would maintain their interest and state investment in elite sport. This second motive is most apparent in the IOC’s discussion with the Romanian sports authorities. Samaranch started the meeting by stressing that the “Romanian sports authorities should consider sport for all and elite sport on an equal footing. Past achievements in sport should not be destroyed.”105 Without addressing Samaranch’s statement directly, the president of the Romanian Olympic Committee, Lia Manoliu, described how there was a significant lack of quality equipment, owing in part to the damages wrought by the December 1989 Revolution. She mentioned how sum of $50,000 worth of audio-visual material and equipment from the IOC could help the Romanian rowing and gymnastics federations. Alexander Siperco, who was still the IOC member for Romania, described how the future “looked bleak” if the Romanian sports authorities were unable to give grants to athletes for training purposes. He also mentioned the possibility of Romanian athletes receiving scholarships to European or American universities to train, “…believing that if Romanian athletes emigrated from their home country, Romania should receive compensation accordingly.” Samaranch promised that the IOC would study the possibility of including the NOCs in question within the scope of Olympic scholarships.

This was the only meeting in which the IOC discussed the necessary of treating mass sport as equal to elite sport—despite Samaranch’s description of the meetings being about “Sport for All” in his initial letter. Moreover, only in the meeting with the Romanians did the IOC directly address the issue of funding from the Olympic movement in specific terms. Finally, Samaranch also said that, “…the IOC always encouraged NOCs to maintain good relations with the relevant governmental authorities…” Considering the fact that each Eastern European nation purposefully sought to disentangle their NOC from the post-1989 government—as a result of the overpoliticization and state control of elite sport during the Communist era—the fact that Samaranch’s statement suggests the opposite reveals the IOC’s belief that NOCs and elite sport broadly should work alongside their respective national government. Importantly, this belief represents a shift from the IOC’s earlier, long- standing position that NOCs and sport be governed independently from the state and national politics.

Samaranch elaborated on these sentiments in a follow-up letter to the governments of each country about the “historic” meetings. He explained that: The IOC firmly believes that whilst the development of sport for all should be strongly encouraged, the progress of high competition sport should be equally supported. Indeed, the practice of sport by the masses will produce Olympic champions; however, similarly, there is no doubt that the example provided by top-level athletes is the key factor in boosting and accelerating

105 Meeting between the IOC and the Sports Authorities of Romania, 21 April 1990, SD5 Reunion between the IOC and the Sports Authorities of Romania 1990, D- RM01-ROUMA/012 (Correspondence of the NOC of Romania), IOCHA. 43

the practice of sport by all.106 The IOC president also emphasized the need for “close and constructive relations” between the NOCs and the governmental authorities;107 for while this would preserve the NOCs autonomy and independence (per the Olympic Charter), “an NOC should cooperate with such organizations in a spirit of mutual respect.”108

When taken together, these statements illustrate two main concerns for the IOC regarding the countries of the former socialist Bloc. On the one hand, the IOC worried that the democratizing processes would damage elite sport in the region. The IOC believed this because throughout the Cold War, the Eastern Bloc had provided a disproportionate percentage of the champion athletes at each Olympic Games. Without the Eastern Bloc athletes’ involvement and near-dominance at the Games, the Olympic movement stood poised to lose much of its competitive and exciting edge that spectators and even opposing nations enjoyed. At the same time, the fact that the IOC emphasized the continuation of close relations between the NOCs and their governments illustrates the IOC’s belief that the government should have a role in promoting and supporting elite sport. This statement contrasts with the Olympic movement’s core principle about the apoliticism of sport. It also stood in direct opposition to the criticisms that Mayer, Edström, and Brundage had levied at the Bloc countries throughout the 1950s.

Conclusion

The research examined here illustrates several key points about the IOC, its members for Hungary and the other middle Bloc countries, the role of athletes in shaping Olympic policies, and the relationship between the IOC and authoritarian states. The experiences borne by the first two IOC members for Hungary during the Cold War show the limits of the IOC leaders’ willingness to intervene on behalf of even its members within their domestic affairs. When it came to Mező, then-president Edström and Mayer could only point to the IOC rules as a way to keep the Hungarian within the HOC. The comment that Mező was “of no use” to them anymore underscores a change in the IOC leaders’ understanding of their position vis-à-vis sport bureaucrats in the Bloc. Edström and Mayer realized that they would need to work with—even if cautiously—the members from Communist Eastern Europe. This shift in thinking allowed them to express sympathy for their non-Communist members behind the Iron Curtain, and withhold from intervening more directly in the Bloc’s domestic affairs. The career of Árpád Csanádi demonstrates how much had changed within the dynamics of the Olympic family by the mid-1960s. Then-president

106 Samaranch to Lothar de Maziere, 8 May 1990, SD1 Correspondence 1989-1990, D-RM01-ALLRD/018 (German Democratic Republic: correspondence, executive board, meetings and statutes), IOCHA. 107 Samaranch to de Maziere, 8 May 1990, SD1 Correspondence 1989-1990, D- RM01-ALLRD/018 (German Democratic Republic: correspondence, executive board, meetings and statutes), IOCHA. 108 Samaranch to de Maziere, 8 May 1990, SD1 Correspondence 1989-1990, D- RM01-ALLRD/018 (German Democratic Republic: correspondence, executive board, meetings and statutes), IOCHA. 44

Brundage understood that he needed to do more than simply work with the members of the Bloc. He knew that he needed their support for IOC policies. Brundage learned to select those whom he and the rest of the Western IOC leaders trusted enough to appoint to administrative positions within the organization. Csanádi’s amicable and dedicated character worked to his benefit and helped him ingratiate himself within the Olympic family. The recollections of Monique Berlioux illustrate the extent to which the IOC leadership had accepted Csanádi as one of “their” men by the 1980s, even though he was a Communist.

At first glance, the IOC’s amateur rule seemed to pose an acute problem for Hungary and the rest of the Bloc members. But as this report illustrates, the HOC gradually realized that its restrictions on the press, combined with the IOC’s bureaucratic limitations, helped to keep Hungary’s violations of the amateur code under wraps. After the 1956 Revolution and the mass defection of hundreds of athletes to the West, Hungarian sport leaders decided to alter their tactics vis-à-vis athletes in order to keep them satisfied enough to not leave the country. These changes consisted of a decrease in harsh punishments, and an increase in the rewards given to athletes. This meant that the Hungarian sport system violated the IOC’s amateur rules even more than before 1956. By the mid-1960s however, the tide had begun to turn within the IOC in regard to the amateur policy. The IOC began focusing more on investigating commercial professionalism, and not state amateurism in Eastern Europe. The changes within the IOC were aided by Bloc members such as Romania’s Alexander Siperco, who created a space for himself within the core members revamping the amateur rules. It also helped that Csanádi was privy to developments in the IOC’s policies, enabled him to keep the HOC abreast of upcoming changes. Brundage eventually began relying on Csanádi and other Bloc leaders to support his increasingly conservative views on amateurismhis in turn gave the Bloc members more influence within the Olympic movement. The changes in the amateur rules helped to shield the increasing violations in Hungary; moreover, the mass defections in Hungary indirectly impacted the IOC’s amateur policy changes, as the events of 1956 convinced sport leaders to redouble its efforts to turn the IOC’s attention away from their state amateur system.

The unique position of the IOC members for Hungary and the other ‘middle’ members afforded them the opportunity to become trusted members of the movement. Whether he needed their help teaching new, more assertive Communist IOC member the rules of the ‘game,’ or in reaching a compromise, Brundage tested the waters and learned that he could trust Poland’s Loth and Bulgaria’s Stoychev to aid him and the IOC. The case of Hans Neuling demonstrates the special status of the GDR’s NOC and its sport system, and brings into stark relief the veiled position of the middle Bloc nations. By virtue of its proximity and geopolitical importance within the Cold War, the East German sport system remained under a spotlight from the media, the IOC, and perhaps most critically, its arch opponent, West Germany. No other case like Neuling exists in the IOC Historical Archives. This may seem surprising, considering Neuling was the only athlete to defect in this situation, compared to the hundreds of Hungarian athletes who defected after 1956. The politicization of Neuling’s case through the sworn affidavit brought the IOC into the matter. Although Brundage in particular wanted to show that the IOC was not “blind and deaf” to the systems behind the Iron Curtain, ultimately there was little that he could do. In comparison, violations of the amateur rule were rife in Communist 45

Hungary, and only got worse with each passing decade. But with no similar affidavit, and no opposing nation who sought to uncover Hungary’s violations, the nation and its middle Bloc neighbors enjoyed a more veiled status with which to reward its athletes.

Finally, the collapse of Communist rule brought the impact of the Bloc countries on the Olympic Games and Olympic movement into sharp relief for then- president Samaranch. His initiation of the meetings with the sport leaders from the former Communist countries indicates his desire to grasp the condition of elite sport in the region; moreover, his offer to help give funding to the Romanian sport authorities, and his pleas for all of the countries to continue supporting elite sport as much as mass sport, reveal the IOC’s concerns about what would happen to the movement without the competitiveness and popularity garnered by the Olympic teams of Eastern Europe.

46

VIII. Key Collections Used in the Report from the IOC Historical Archives∗

Sigfrid Edström: - CIO A-P04/003 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence) - CIO A-P04/005 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence) - CIO A-P04/006 (IOC Presidents – Sigfrid Edström: correspondence)

Ferenc Mező: - CIO MBR-MEZO-Correspondence

Avery Brundage: - A-P05/014 (IOC Presidents: Avery Brundage: correspondence) - A-P05/024 (IOC Presidents: Avery Brundage: correspondence)

Árpád Csanádi: - CIO MBR-CSANA-Correspondence (Correspondence of Arpad Csanadi)

NOC for Hungary: - D-RM01-HONGR/001 (Executive Board of the NOC of Hungary) - D-RM01-HONGR/004 (Correspondence of the NOC of Hungary)

NOC for United States: - D-RM01-ETATU/003 (Correspondence of the NOC of the United States of America)

Michael Killanin: - A-P06/016 (IOC Presidents: Michael Killanin: correspondence)

Constantin Adrianov: - CIO MBR-ADRI-Correspondence (Biography and correspondence of Constantin Adrianov)

NOC for the Germany Democratic Republic: - D-RM01-ALLRD/004 (Correspondence of the NOC of the German Democratic Republic) - D-RM01-ALLRM/015 (Recognition request of the NOC of the German Democratic Republic: correspondence and statutes) - D-RM01-ALLRD/018 (German Democratic Republic: correspondence, executive board, meetings and statutes)

NOC for (United) Germany: - D.RM01.ALLEM/007 (United German team at the Olympic Games: FRG and GDR: correspondence, minutes, judicial consultation, press cutting and athlete testimonies)

Heinz Schöbel:

∗ This is not a comprehensive list of all the archival collections that I consulted at the IOCHA. For the report, I used documents from the collections listed here. 47

- CIO MBR-SCHOB-CORR (Correspondence of Heinz Schöbel)

General Stoychev: - CIO MBR-STOYT-Correspondence (Biography and correspondence of Vladimir Stoytchev)

NOC for Romania: - D-RM01-ROUMA/012 (Correspondence of the NOC of Romania)