One doesn’t have to be a huge sports fan to notice: from Olympics to Olympics, the Russian team does worse. First we talked about our chances of victory; then about our chances of a good result; then about our chances of a mediocre one. Now we prefer to talk about worthy performances in some specific types of sports - that is, about avoiding disgrace. And we can’t even say we are not presently embarrassed. But meanwhile, strange as it sounds, there is something reassuring about our slow descent from Mount Olympus. Even if it’s not in terms of sports.
The Olympic Games are set up in such a way that the winners are either the national teams of full-scale market democracies, or the national teams of consciously-authoritarian countries, or (more recently) athletes from transitional powers that succeed in combining a manageable market with bureaucratic party government. Like China, for example. Back in the day the American, Soviet, and East German teams used to compete at the Olympics. Then the East German teams got absorbed into the overall German medal count; the Soviet ones fell apart and gave way to the Chinese ones; and the Americans stayed in place. And there is a type of athletic-political logic in this.
The market rationale is obvious: you compete for a spot in the top three not because you want to get a one-time bonus for your medal or the keys to a good car from the hands of your favorite leader. You compete because by winning, you increase your own capitalization. You are a part of the trading process; paraphrasing Karl Marx, it can be said that the “money – medals – even more money” formula is at play here. As for the country that you represent, a personal victory proves that the system that placed a bet on the individual was indeed in the right. “America, America!...” and so on down the text of the anthem.
The authoritarian rationale is also understandable. You are not striving for a specific result; the myth about the potent party power triumphs with your victory; the glory of your medals is not yours, but your country’s. “The unbreakable union of free republics…” Here it is not Marx, but Vladimir Lenin who is relevant: endless gears, bolts and transmission belts. An athlete’s consciousness is shaped by a greater goal, going far beyond the limits of a specific competition. He is a messenger, a hero and a warrior. And all the privileges that he is entitled to for this are like the money books that used to accompany military medals, something like tear-off coupons, which, I think, were eventually annulled.
It is possible to build a powerful athletic system that will aid in the selection and promotion of talented people both with the market motivation and the sovereign one. I am not talking about the flaws of either model right now; I am simply stating that they have a certain logic to them. In one case athletes are bought and sold. In the other they are forbidden to leave. While in intermediate constructions - where a market is not a market, a sovereign power is not a sovereign power, there is no freedom yet no un-freedom, and where although there is a ruling party it is unclear what it rules over - there is no logic by definition. And where there is no logic, any long-term projects are impossible. Only a quick build up of energy and its momentary outburst. As a rule, it goes from nowhere to nowhere. Once every two years, in winter or in summer, we warm up, start fidgeting, pronounce pompous words about biased refereeing (which may well be unjust, but is not the deciding factor). And then we pause until our next outburst into the glowing emptiness.
Question: so what can be good about this? Answer: let’s try to ponder it. Let’s for a second imagine the unthinkable: comrade Leonid Tyagachev, chairman of the Olympic Committee, reports back to the leaders on our team’s pure and unquestionable victory. All of the gold medals that we hoped for are ours. And the ones we didn’t count on are also ours. We pushed America aside, outdid China, and the hosts of the Olympics got nothing at all. What does this mean? That Russia has become a full-fledged democracy and has shaped up a social market? Or is the opposite more likely to be true? That all the threats that plagued the country in 2007 have come true? That the political system is no longer ambivalent? Authoritarians of all countries, unite! “Hooray, the nomadic despot is galloping to Russia.”
In some sense the current disgrace is evidence of the fact that our poor-rich country has not degraded into unequivocal tyranny. Nor has it arrived at equivocal tyranny. It keeps living in the space between. Between the past and the present. Between stagnation and development. Between democracy and its utter absence. It is uncomfortable to live this way, just as it is inconvenient to sit between two chairs. But an uncomfortable life is better than comfortable death. There is a way out of the current situation toward freedom, and it is much more likely than falling through to totalitarianism. Although first we will have to fall hard if the chairs do slide apart, but that’s all right – we’ll get back up, brush ourselves off and keep moving.
So the Winter Olympics have not evaluated present-day Russia’s athletic potential, but its political state. Of course we want certainty. But if we have to chose between a Manichean, unambiguous regime of all-encompassing subordination to the rulers on the one hand and hazy contours without strict rules on the other, we’ll chose the latter. It is possible to survive without Olympic gold. But not really without hope for free development.
