Social scientists dealing with the relationship between sport and collective identity in totalitarian regimes usually tend to highlight the subordination of sport to the prevailing political order. In these conceptualizations, the national identity created and reproduced through sport is directly influenced by the leading ideology. Less attention has been paid to the potential subversive role that sport could have against the dominant political regime. At this point, sport does not function as a tool to confirm a political order but as a way to jeopardize it. In my contribution, I try to elaborate mainly this less developed standpoint in social scientific explanations by showing how sport stimulated a wider societal protest against the main political power, using the case of the Czechoslovak ice hockey team’s victories against the Soviet Union in the World Championship in March 1969. The victories, accompanied by the Czechoslovak players’ symbolic anti-Soviet gestures, resulted in massive celebrations in the streets of Prague that were transformed into a protest against Soviet occupation. That this happened shortly after the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia starting in August 1968 is significant; this paper discusses the context of these events and their impact on Czechoslovak politics.
Sport as Resistance: "Ice Hockey Protests" in Czechoslovakia in 1969
NUMERATO, DINO
2007
Abstract
Social scientists dealing with the relationship between sport and collective identity in totalitarian regimes usually tend to highlight the subordination of sport to the prevailing political order. In these conceptualizations, the national identity created and reproduced through sport is directly influenced by the leading ideology. Less attention has been paid to the potential subversive role that sport could have against the dominant political regime. At this point, sport does not function as a tool to confirm a political order but as a way to jeopardize it. In my contribution, I try to elaborate mainly this less developed standpoint in social scientific explanations by showing how sport stimulated a wider societal protest against the main political power, using the case of the Czechoslovak ice hockey team’s victories against the Soviet Union in the World Championship in March 1969. The victories, accompanied by the Czechoslovak players’ symbolic anti-Soviet gestures, resulted in massive celebrations in the streets of Prague that were transformed into a protest against Soviet occupation. That this happened shortly after the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia starting in August 1968 is significant; this paper discusses the context of these events and their impact on Czechoslovak politics.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.