(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

Cold War Games shows vividly how the USSR and US exploited the Melbourne Olympic Games for propaganda, turning athletic fields, swimming pools and other sporting venues into battlefields in which each fought for supremacy. The 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games have become known as the ‘friendly games’, but East-West rivalry ensured that they were anything but friendly. From the bloody semi-final water polo match between the USSR and Hungary, to the 46 athletes who defected to the West, sport and politics collided during the Cold War. There were glimmers of peace and solidarity. Cold War Games also tells the love story between Czechoslovak discus thrower Olga Fikotová, and American hammer thrower Hal Connolly, and their struggle to overcome Cold War politics to marry. Cold War Games is a lively, landmark book, with fresh information from ASIO files and newly discovered documents from archives in the USSR, US and Hungary, revealing secret operations in Melbourne and showing just how pivotal the 1956 Olympic Games were for the great powers of the Cold War.

What a great book. I wasn't sure what I was going to get from this - was it going to be primarily a history book about the Cold War? Or was it more a sports book about the 1956 Melbourne Olympics? Was it going to be a bit of both?

It was more than that. It was also a story about people, the pressures they were under to perform for their countries, it was a story of athletes who were planning to defect - or who did indeed defect - during the Olympics. These are personal stories and ones that tell a story of a time far better than just a history of the Cold War period.

My only complaint is that there were times when the pacing was really slow and did feel a bit like a textbook. There weren't many of them and, to be fair, sometimes there is only one way to provide the information you are trying to get across. But it was a bit slow at times.


Paul
ARH

The 1956 Summer Olympic games in Melbourne, Australia had one very memorable event – the water polo match between Hungary and the Soviet Union. The match turned very physical, resulting in a gruesome-looking injury to a Hungarian player. This was a bloody injury to the nose, giving the game the nickname of the “Blood in i Water” match.

Why was this match so bloody? There were hard feelings between the two countries as a Hungarian uprising to break away from the communist rule of the USSR was crushed by the latter’s military. These carried to the Olympics and that match, along with how the Soviet Union became a Olympic super-power, is captured in this book by Harry Blustein.

This book is more than just a sports book – it is a good historical book as well if a reader wants to learn about the inner workings of the Soviet sports machine. The reader will learn how the Soviet Union was able to convince the IOC chairman Avery Brundage that its athletes were true amateurs. Brundage took this position mainly because the United States athletes, in his eyes, were also subsidized with college scholarships and military service. While a reader may not agree, it was an interesting argument.

There are also stories about the athletes. One touching story in particular is what an American male athlete and a Hungarian female athlete had to do in order to marry after the Games as Hungary was concerned about athletes defecting. Also interesting was the role one of the water polo players from Hungary played in the uprising and his concern for his family during the Games.

At times the book was very slow paced and a tough read, but the material kept my interest and by the end, I felt that I learned a lot about one of the most interesting Olympic games during the Cold War era.

I wish to thank Bonnier Publishing Australia for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

An enjoyable and interesting account of the real stories lying under the surface of the Melbourne 56 Olympics. It focuses primarily on the Hungarian revolution that was happening both immediately before and during the games and fascinating tells of how the games were experienced by the Hungarian athletes. The book attempts to untangle the various propaganda and myths perpetuated by both sides of the Cold War.

It jumps around a bit too much - jumping back and forth between the 52, 54, and 56 Games, sometimes confusingly. Overall it is highly enjoyable and readable account of the geo-politics underlying the "friendly" games that were anything but! Recommend.

The modern Olympic movement was the brainchild not of a Greek but of a French nobleman: Baron Pierre de Coubertin. He announced his vision of a revived Olympics in 1894, in the course of an international congress in Paris on the theme of amateurism in sport, and the first modern Olympic Games were held in Greece in 1896, when 11 nations competed.

Both the ancient and modern Olympic games have been subject to political pressures. A sacred truce, initially of one and later of three months' duration, forbade the entry of armies into Elean territory and ordered safe passage through any state for all travellers to and from the ancient games but this truce didn’t stop wars: Sparta was fined for attacking Elean territory in 420 BC, and Arcadians even invaded the Olympic sanctuary itself in 364. The modern Olympic Games have been exploited for their propaganda value (Berlin, 1936); had black power salutes (in Mexico, 1968); boycotts (notably Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984 ) and even a massacre (in Munich, 1972).

Harry Blutstein’s ‘Cold War Games’ (not to be confused with Toby C. Rider’s book of the same name) focuses on the 1956 Melbourne Games, which were billed as the ‘friendly games’ but which were anything but, not only given intense East-West rivalry but also because of the Hungarian Uprising poisoning relations between Hungary and the Soviet Union to such an extent that one had the ‘blood in the water’ match, when the two sides met in the water polo semi-final (the Hungarians defeating the Soviets 4-0, and going on to win gold). The latter story is quite well known - not least because it is the subject of an excellent documentary, ‘Freedom’s Fury” and a superb feature film, ‘Children of Glory’ - but Blutstein retells it with considerable aplomb.

Although the water polo clash represents the centerpiece of Blutstein’s book he has much more to say about the mixture of sport and politics at Melbourne, and is careful and, as far as one can tell, wholly successful, in disentangling the truth from the propaganda, by critically examining not only the secondary sources but also the evidence of participants, spectators and journalists (although scholars would doubtless prefer that evidence to be more formally footnoted).

In short, this highly readable history deserves a wide readership.