Olympic Gays

Locker type "Gay, Slavs!" opened, and skeletons dozing since the boycott of the Moscow Olympics-80 rained down from there

Locker type "Gay, Slavs!" opened, and skeletons dozing since the boycott of the Moscow Olympics-80 fell from there. After a letter from actor and writer Stephen Fry about the need to ignore the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi due to the violation of the rights of sexual minorities, progressive humanity started talking about the possibility of a boycott of the Olympics.

Comparisons with the games in Berlin in 1936, sung by Leni Riefenstahl, are hardly correct, but the memories of the times of the Olympic Bear are quite. The boycott of the Brezhnev Olympics in connection with the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan by athletes from 65 states, including the United States and Germany, is an example for those who are not ready to put up with the policy of the current Russian leadership. Our officials are indignant: like Brezhenev, who “did nothing, he just entered,” representatives of the Russian nomenklatura say that they will not interfere with anyone, but if gays and other lesbians encroach on propaganda, they will answer to the fullest extent of the laws of the Imereti Valley.

It is hard to imagine Olympic athletes who, instead of breaking records, will start, after catching some stray teenager right in the Olympic village, to publicly agitate for same-sex love. But our superiors were smart enough to focus on this problem. More precisely, to pass the law itself on the prohibition of propaganda (and all other laws) at a time when Russia is preparing to host the Olympics. The games are important for the image of the country; Putin personally pays hypertrophied attention to them. But even this did not deter our leaders from the consistent construction of repressive legislation, which did not raise questions from the West as long as it did not affect the personal freedoms of the guests-athletes themselves. And then the dam broke.

The Olympics, which was supposed to elevate the authority of Putin's Russia to the skies in the external "markets" and provide an unprecedented patriotic upsurge inside the country, as a result played against the Russian Federation and especially its leader personally.

Boycott demands, which at first might be considered eccentric, are becoming commonplace in the West. The image of Russia, and even against the backdrop of freezing relations with the United States, has fallen to negative values. And inside the country, the Olympic construction sites have become a symbol of unprecedented corruption (as if it was not clear from the very beginning!) and wasteful spending of funds. Against the background of the brotherly Brazilian people, who practically rebelled against the cost of the 2014 World Cup of the game, where the Brazilian people are ahead of the rest, our citizens look peaceful, but they are asking more and more questions.

In principle, the majority of respondents surveyed by the Levada Center in June 2013 are proud that Russia will host the Olympics and the World Cup - 64% of them. But at the same time, only 22% assess the cost of the Olympic Games as effective. 46% of respondents consider them ineffective in one way or another, and another 19% believe that money is “simply stolen”. Opinions about whether the country needs this kind of image-building events were divided approximately in half. But over time, even compared to 2012, Russians are showing more and more skepticism.

Historical memory, although short, lives in the subconscious. The people have already slipped the Olympics instead of the promised 1980 communism…