Nostalgia Canaglia

What do I think of when someone says “Moscow Olympics”?

First, the heart-breaking Mishka (Bear), flying away during the closing ceremony to the lyrics of Alexandra Pakhmutova’s poignant song (“Good-bye, our tender Misha, return to your fairy tale forest”)... Clean streets, a sunny summer, no traffic jams, a feeling of security...

I was finishing up my second year at the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages. I was young, in love and a complete fool. My girlfriend Olga (she was in the teaching faculty, I was in the interpreting faculty) and I were undergoing a difficult training with a seasoned Intourist guide, being taught how to take French tourists around Moscow.

As it turned out, I fell out of love with Olga during the Olympics – her thick Russian accent in French ruined the charm. Ah, volatile student romances… Only later did I learn that one of her classmates – a pushy komsomolka type – “informed” the dean’s office about my “frivolous dumping” of her friend. That apparently barred me from spending a semester at the University of Grenoble (France) on a “linguistic internship,” closing off my dreamed-of career path as a UN interpreter.

We spent long hours memorizing the data on Moscow’s curiosities, and I hit it off with my French tourists because I spoke comme un parisien. A fellow from Bretagne, Jean Lemagouarou, even bought me a ticket to the bronze medal football match (where the USSR defeated Bulgaria). Now that was a coup!

The Olympic “perks” – more goods in the stores (Finnish salami, cherry juice and Fanta aplenty for just 20 kopeks a glass), and free uniforms for us volunteers (I got a nice white suit with a red shirt; some of my luckier peers sported Arena brand wind-breakers) – gave us a taste for things foreign. We all dreamed of landing a job za granitsey with the Foreign Ministry, so that we would have access to everything that was in deficit, everything that the Olympics had exposed us to.

If only we knew… All we had to do was endure the tumultuous 1990s and somewhat cynical 2000s, and all that “stuff” became available here. What is more, we are now free to travel – whether to Grenoble, Vermont or Milan (for which I am learning Italian) – without the approval of some communist hack.

Interestingly, when I think back to 1980, I don’t recall my friends and I ever discussing the US-led boycott of the games, invoked after the “introduction of a limited contingent of Soviet troops to Afghanistan at the request of the Afghani government.” How could we have known it would be our Vietnam of sorts (and continue to the present day, with US forces fighting in that forsaken country, helped by Russian overflight rights)?

Last summer, at the World Athletics Championships, I chanced to meet the great British runner Sebastien Coe. He won gold in the 1500m in 1980, and told me that a boycott had never crossed his mind. Politicians, he said, should solve their differences with other – political – methods…

Yet now again we hear calls for a boycott of Russia’s Winter Olympics for various reasons, ranging from the inscrutable Lady Gaga (because of anti-gay laws) to Republican Lindsey Graham (because Russia gave asylum to Edward Snowden). And German President Joachim Gauck has decided not to come to Sochi, criticizing Russia for its “air of imperialism” (seriously, was WWII that long ago?).

It all leaves me a bit uneasy. Sure, I long for the aura of 1980 (when our country, then the USSR, grabbed 80 medals), and I worry about terrorists and demonstrators disrupting what should be an occasion for spirited competition between friendly international rivals.

But of course I no longer see the world of sports or politics through rose-colored glasses. I realize someone will always have an axe to grind; someone will always want to rebuke Russia for something. C’est la vie…

The good news is that the US team is coming, so we can have an honest competition on Russian soil in a dozen sports, from curling and hockey to speed skating.

I’ll be there, sans white suit. Of course, Fanta and many other “delicacies” will be de rigeur.

* The title of this article refers to a hit song by the Italian duo Al Bano & Romina Power.