Turning the pages back...

July 15, 1961

It was 30 years ago that The Weekly on July 18, 1976, published a special issue dedicated to the Olympic Games held in Montreal. The front page article was on Ukraine's exclusion from the 21st Summer Olympic Games and how Ukrainian athletes were forced to compete under the Soviet banner.

According to the article, Ukrainian athletes had competed under the Soviet banner since the Games were held in Helsinki, Finland, in 1952. That was the first time the Soviet team was admitted to the Olympics; prior to this, the team was known as the Tsarist Russian Olympic group.

The article underlined that Ukraine had a legitimate right to have a separate representation under its own flag at the Games. The reasons given were as follows: first, Ukraine's constitutional position in the Soviet Union gave it an autonomous nature, albeit on paper; second, Ukraine's membership in the United Nations and various other international organizations in which it takes part and is recognized as an independent state; third, provisions in the Charter of the Olympic Games that recognized the individual competitor, not the country, but stipulated that a National Olympic Committee must be established and be recognized by the International Olympic Committee (the Soviet government never allowed for the establishment of a Ukrainian Olympic Committee). Plus, there was the success of Ukrainian athletes in previous Games.

However, even with all of these legitimate arguments for Ukraine's separate participation in the Games, the Soviet government would never allow a non-Russian republic to participate independently in the Olympics. According to the article, this was due to Russian chauvinism and Russia's need to reaffirm its role as "master nation" of the USSR.

Montreal newspapers reported that the "Ukrainian Olympic Committee," a group formed by Canadian and American Ukrainians to bring awareness to the concerns of Ukraine at the Games, organized protests and demonstrations with members from the SUM, Plast and ODUM youth organizations.

In a show of support for a free Ukraine, protesters wore T-shirts, each emblazoned with one letter, to the venues where Ukrainians were competing. They would sit in sequence to spell out "Svoboda Ukraini" (Freedom for Ukraine). In another instance, a Ukrainian spectator was arrested for waving the Ukrainian flag and taunting the Soviet coaches, calling them propagandists. Similarly, an Ontario man was charged with disturbing the peace after he waved the Ukrainian flag and briefly performed some traditional Ukrainian dance steps for his fellow countrymen on the Soviet team, before resigning himself to the custody of the local police.

In another show of unity against the Soviets, the Ukrainian Olympic Committee held a demonstration with over 250 participants outside the Velodrome in Montreal. One of the protesters climbed the flag pole, removed and burned the Soviet flag. Other demonstrators handed out pamphlets titled "Colonialism in Sports" and "Ukrainian Olympic Medal Winners" to spectators, focusing the spotlight on Ukrainian athletes.

To remind the Ukrainian athletes on the Soviet team of the diaspora's support, members of the Ukrainian Olympic Committee threw Ukrainian-language leaflets at various events. However, according to Montreal newspapers, the athletes feared picking up the leaflets.

Source: "Olympic Games and Ukraine's Exclusion," The Ukrainian Weekly, July18, 1976.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 23, 2006, No. 30, Vol. LXXIV

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