The Unified Team

The 1992 Olympics coincided with major changes to the political map of Eastern Europe. With a number of new states in the process of forming, the International Olympic Committee had to come up with a temporary solution to ensure that athletes from the former Soviet Union could participate. The Unified Team was made up of athletes from twelve former Soviet republics. The Unified Team represented the collapse of a powerful, communist state and the new beginnings that nations faced in building and ensuring an independent future. Although the Unified Team was very successful at the 1992 Olympics, earning more medals than any other country, it also experienced internal problems throughout the Games, a result of former Soviet republics’ social and political change and above all, major economic difficulties.

What was the Unified Team?

Despite existing for seventy-four years and being a world superpower for almost fifty years during the Cold War era, the communist Soviet Union collapsed in December of 1991, resulting in the formation of fifteen independent states. The 1992 Winter Olympics held in Albertville, France started in early February, so each former Soviet republic did not have enough time to affiliate their own National Olympic Committee with the International Olympic Committee.

The map of the Soviet Union and its administrative divisions prior to the collapse in 1991.

As a result, the countries collaborated one last time in 1992 as the Unified Team, made up solely by former Soviet republics, also known informally as the Commonwealth of Independent States: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. The Unified Team continued on to compete in the Summer Olympics as well. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were able to compete on their own because the three Baltic states previously competed as independent members of the IOC before the Soviet Union incorporated those states following World War II.[1] The Unified Team finished the 1992 Summer Olympics as the most successful team by winning the most medals, 45 gold and 112 total.[2] Although the Unified Team “was the first team from the former empire to train and perform with minimal government money,” it still dominated competition in the sports they usually performed well in, like wrestling, gymnastics, and weightlifting.[3]

Embed from Getty Images

Leila Meskhi (left) and Natasha Zvereva compete for the Unified Team against the Americans in the semifinals of women’s doubles at the ’92 Games.

The decision to form a Unified Team was controversial in the midst of the political ambiguity, and Russian fans believed that “there was still something intrinsically sad about watching their athletes … performing without a flag, a state or a hymn.”[4] Nationalist tensions sometimes boiled over among organizers who had to compete together, despite brewing rivalries. The president of the Unified Team’s Olympic Committee, Vitaly Smirnov, complained about nationalist politics affecting the decisions of picking teams for competition. Smirnov “complained bitterly about nationalist politics interfering with the selection of team athletes, with some Ukrainian rhythmic gymnasts … being chosen ahead of a Russian woman.”[5] On the other side of the equation, 1992 was the last year that athletes from separate former Soviet republics could play on the same team. For example, Leila Meskhi of Georgia and Natasha Zvereva of Belarus competed together for the last time in women’s doubles tennis and earned a bronze medal. Subsequently, they would only be eligible to compete against one another in international competition on two different national Olympic teams. The Unified Team thus represented the end of an era of sporting cooperation for better and worse.

Embed from Getty Images

The 1988 Soviet Union Olympic Basketball team after winning the gold medal.

Post-Soviet Politics on the Basketball Court

Although a principal goal of the Olympics is to keep politics and war out of sport, the 1992 Olympics highlighted tensions between sporting nations as pervasive political changes made it difficult to avoid publicizing existing rivalries. In the 1988 Olympics, the Soviet Union won gold in basketball after upsetting the United States in the semifinals. However, in 1992, the Unified Team lost to Lithuania, a former republic of the Soviet Union, in the Bronze Medal match. Lithuania had players, including Arvydas Sabonis and Sarunas Marciulionis, on the 1992 team that had competed for and helped the Soviet Union win gold in 1988. Many Lithuanians, including Marciulionis, believed that winning the bronze medal in 1992 “mean[t] more than winning gold at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.”[6] He stated that a loss to the Unified Team “would have been a tragedy.”[7] The pain and suffering from living under Soviet oppression for 54 years motivated the Lithuanians to intensify their play on the court. The Lithuanian team wanted to defeat the Unified team by 54 points, to symbolically erase those 54 years of lost independence. They managed to soundly defeat the CIS team, but only by a score of 116-79, falling short of their goal.[8]

Embed from Getty Images

The 1992 Lithuanian Olympic Basketball team after winning the bronze medal.

Economic Collapse and Financing Sport

After the Soviet Union collapsed in December of 1991, Russia and all of the former Soviet republics experienced financial hardships due to the sudden end of state-controlled, communist economies. Because the Soviet Union funded sporting development with the state socialist government, the new states in the former Soviet Union struggled to continue the success of the former communist powerhouse. Although large states like Russia and Ukraine still found ways to continue sporting development after the collapse of the Soviet Union, less wealthy nations, including Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, did not spend “much tax money on keeping up their superb, inherited sports facilities.”[9] Because newly democratic states relied on funding from the communist government, it was doubtful that “Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, where so many of the good weight lifters and wrestlers seem to come from, [would] worry much about them in the midst of ethnic warfare and economic chaos” in the 1990s.[10] Many former Soviet athletes left Eastern Europe after the 1992 Olympics in search of better financial opportunities because the communist regime limited personal finances throughout the Cold War. For example, Vitaly Shcherbo, who won six gold medals at the 1992 Olympics, planned to leave immediately after the Games, stating that he would “go for the most money.”[11]Athletes from the former Soviet Union eventually left the region to train in the West in order to earn larger wages and experience better living conditions. Without the Iron Curtain dividing the East from the West, Eastern European citizens and athletes were free to travel abroad and see the benefits of Western society and capitalism.

Embed from Getty Images

Vitaly Shcherbo, a Belarusian, competes for the Unified Team on the pommel horse before winning a gold medal in the event.

The 1992 Olympics coincided with important changes in Europe’s political geography, and the uniqueness of the situation presented the former Soviet republics with one last opportunity for a united team. Although the Unified Team sparked great controversy after its formation, it competed in a dominating fashion in Barcelona.

– Zach Olmsted

Works Cited

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/1991-08-28/sports/sp-1216_1_summer-olympics

[2] https://www.olympic.org/barcelona-1992

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/12/sports/olympics-break-up-the-unifieds-it-s-now-history.html

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/25/sports/albertville-a-unified-feeling-of-ambivalence.html

[5] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/12/sports/olympics-break-up-the-unifieds-it-s-now-history.html

[6] http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/ISOR/isor2014t.pdf

[7] http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/ISOR/isor2014t.pdf

[8] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/27/sports/sports-of-the-times-lithuanian-makes-point-but-not-54.html

[9] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/12/sports/olympics-break-up-the-unifieds-it-s-now-history.html

[10] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/12/sports/olympics-break-up-the-unifieds-it-s-now-history.html