Informace o publikaci
Sport as Resistance: "Ice Hockey Protests" in Czechoslovakia in 1969
| Autoři | |
|---|---|
| Rok publikování | 2007 |
| Druh | Článek ve sborníku |
| Konference | Sport and the Construction of Identities: Proceedings of the XIth International CESH-Congress Vienna, September 17th-20th 2006, edited by Kratzmüller, B., M. Marschik, R. Müllner, H. D. Szemethy and E. Trink |
| Fakulta / Pracoviště MU | |
| Citace | |
| Klíčová slova | sport, national identity, resistance |
| Popis | Scholars dealing with the relationship between sport and collective identity in the totalitarian regimes tended to highlight the subordination of sport to the prevailing political order. In these conceptualizations, the national identity created and reproduced through sport was directly influenced by the leading ideology. Less attention has been paid to the potential subversive role that sport could have played by supporting national identity. At this point, sport did function as a tool to confirm a political order but as a way to jeopardize it. This contribution aims to grasp this gap in social studies of sport by demonstrating 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 tens of towns across Czechoslovakia that were transformed into a protest against Russian occupation. That this happened shortly after the Russian occupation of Czechoslovakia starting in August 1968 is significant; this paper discusses the context of these events and their impact on national identity awareness. |