Translated material
1980 Olympics: how it happened
January 4, 1980 US President Jimmy Carter called on the whole world to boycott the Moscow Olympics in response to the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan. Of the 144 countries that were members of the IOC in 1980, representatives from 81 countries came to the Olympics in Moscow. The USA, Germany, Canada, Japan, and China completely boycotted the Games. The governments of Great Britain, Italy, Austria and some other Western countries simply recommended (but did not prohibit) their athletes not to go to Moscow.
At the Moscow Olympics, 36 world and 74 Olympic records were set - an achievement that has not been surpassed to this day.
More than five thousand athletes took part in the XXII Olympic Games, and 5,651 journalists were accredited. In addition to Moscow, Olympic competitions were held in four other cities: in Tallinn - a sailing regatta, in Leningrad, Kyiv and Minsk - group tournaments of football teams.
492 athletes competed in the USSR national team. They won 195 medals - 80 gold, 69 silver and 46 bronze.
For the Olympics, 99 facilities were built in the capital, including the Olympic Village in Krylatskoye and the Olympic sports complexes. "Krylatskoye", "Labor Reserves", "Dynamo" Sports Palace, CSKA Stadium, "Bitsa" Equestrian Complex. The Cosmos, Tourist, and Salyut hotels and the Izmailovo hotel complex were built for Olympic guests. An international terminal was built for Sheremetyevo Airport - Sheremetyevo-2.
A new building of the Ostankino television center was built for television journalists, and the writing fraternity received at its disposal a new press center building on Zubovsky Boulevard (now RIA Novosti).
According to unofficial information, the Soviet government invested about $3 billion in hosting the Moscow Olympics. The games brought in 150 million rubles. losses.
Olympic Moscow was striking in its complete desolation. Electric trains and trains arrived at the stations on schedule, but as usual, crowds of hungry provincials from near and far, accustomed to “bayoneting” the sausage and meat and dairy departments of Moscow stores, did not burst out of them. At that time, from a million to two million people came to the capital every day to buy meat, sausage, butter and consumer goods; for a decade and a half they had been deprived of the happiness of even buying a sausage made from toilet paper in their hometowns, not to mention semi-margarine butter and stringy beef. The hours-long queues at GUM and large department stores have disappeared, and a real commodity paradise has arrived for Muscovites: the stores now have an unprecedented assortment of shoes and clothing from the CMEA countries (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, which united the states of the socialist camp) and friendly Finland. It was from this country that cheeses and sausages were brought, which delighted Muscovites for several Olympic days. For the first time in Soviet history, bags with juice and a straw on the side appeared, and on the shelves of deserted wine stores - Finnish liqueurs and liqueurs made from lingonberries, blueberries, cranberries, wild strawberries and even blueberries...
Thanks to the Olympics, Muscovites for the first time tried the legendary Pepsi-Cola, produced at the plant built for the Olympics in Novorossiysk.
Children were completely taken to pioneer camps, having a criminal record, and prostitutes not accredited by the KGB were resettled 101 kilometers away, and the capital was flooded with representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the KGB from all over the USSR. It was recommended to lay up personal vehicles, although almost a decade and a half remained before the first Moscow traffic jams.
Three days after the Olympic mascot, the Olympic Bear, departed for his “fairytale forest,” food and goods disappeared for 12 long years, and the former capital of the Olympics was again filled with millions of crowds of shuttles.