"Oh Sport, You Are Peace!" is the official film of the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics distributed by Mosfilm. Yuri Ozerov, director; Alexandra Pakhmutova, music; Nicholai Dobronravov, script. 1981: Mosfilm, Moscow, U.S.S.R.
Moscow is the largest cultural centre of the USSR. Many Moscow theatres
and museums are well known not only in the Soviet Union but also abroad. Moscow
has more than a thousand magnificent architectural monuments among which there
are many gems of modern style. A harmonious blend of old and new pleases the
eye of many connoisseurs of urban
architecture.
This is what Eduard Dibas from Peru, a member of the IOC Commission on
culture and information, said after visiting Moscow:
"Everything in the USSR
capital amazes me, including the city itself. However, what amazes me most are
the city's friendly people, magnificent museums and
remarkable theatres".
"This is an eminently
suitable place for holding the Olympic Games," said Lord Killanin,
summarising the impressions of the IOC visitors. The International Olympic
Committee, at its regular session held on October 23, 1974, in Vienna, selected
Moscow, the capital of the USSR, as the site of the 22nd Summer Olympic Games.
This news was warmly welcomed by the whole Soviet people.
Many sports
personalities from abroad praised the decision of the IOC. For example, Ivon
Adam, national secretary of the sports association of the "France-USSR" Society, expressed his
conviction that the "Moscow Olympics
would greatly contribute to mutual understanding, peaceful co-existence and the
consolidation of co-operation, peace and friendship among nations."
According to the opinion of foreign observers, the successes scored by
Soviet athletes have made the USSR a worthy contender for the honor of hosting
the Olympic Games. At the last two Games—in Munich (1972) and Montreal (1976)
— Soviet athletes won a total of 99 Olympic gold medals!
This success was the
result of the high standard of the sports movement in the Soviet Union, where
one person in five goes in for some kind of sport. Nevertheless, as Sergei
Pavlov, Chairman of the USSR Sports Committee, stated, "this figure, no matter how impressive it
sounds, does not satisfy us. The main goal of our movement is not the selection
of talent and the training of champions, but the mass participation of wide
sections of the population in various kinds of physical culture."
It is stipulated in the new Soviet Constitution that the right of each
Soviet citizen to rest and leisure is ensured, in particular, by the
development on a mass scale of sport and physical culture, and of camping and
tramping clubs and facilities. It is significant that the preparation for the
Moscow Olympics in the USSR is being conducted under the slogan: "The Olympics are not only for the Games
participants."
The Soviet state's concern for the harmonious development of the
individual can be best seen by the fact that almost every industrial
enterprise, college or office has its own sports club. So everyone can go in
for sport at his place of work or at the place where he is studying. All in
all, there are some 220,000 sports clubs in the Soviet Union, and every one
of*them has qualified coaches and instructors on its staff.
Once, Sovetski Sport, a Soviet national sports newspaper, printed
an article about the "Izhstal"
sports club which belongs to an iron-and-steel plant in the town of Izhevsk, in
the Urals. For example, to enable the family of one of its workers, his wife
and two children, to go in for sports at the plant's club, the plant had to pay
some 1,099 roubles.
Besides clubs at enterprises or offices, there are sports clubs in
almost every urban community, and at secondary schools and Palaces of Young
Pioneers. This widespread involvement of people in physical culture provides
fine training grounds for talented athletes.
At a USSR-USA Juniors Meeting, held in the summer of 1977 in Richmond, Virginia, an 18-year-old
Soviet boy, Vladimir Yashchenko, set a world high-jump record. Vladimir's
ascent into Big-Time sport is typical of any Soviet athlete: first, PT lessons
in school and then training sessions in a juvenile sports club. Now, Yashchenko
is a student and is continuing his training in the college sports club. Like
many other Soviet athletes it is his ambition to participate in the Moscow
Olympics.
