Exhibition "Russia at the Olympics" in the Multimedia Art Museum

On February 5, 2014, in anticipation of the start of the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, the Multimedia Art Museum will open an exhibition of unique archival photographs “Russia at the Olympics”, dedicated to the brightest and most memorable moments of our country’s Olympic history.

The exhibition runs from February 6 to February 23

The exhibition was organized with the support of the global partner of the Olympic Games, PANASONIC, which has been actively disseminating the ideas and values of the Olympic movement throughout the world for 25 years. The exhibition "Russia at the Olympics" tells the story of the participation of Russian athletes in the Olympic Games of the XX - beginning of the XXI century. The exposition presents more than 300 photographs, documentary videos from the RIA Novosti archive and the collection of the Moscow House of Photography museum. During the exhibition, MAMM will have the RIA Novosti online information channel, which will enable visitors to watch the events of the Olympics in Sochi on-line.

Exhibition Information

The Olympic movement has developed and strengthened in Russia since the beginning of the twentieth century. Despite the efforts of enthusiasts such as a military educator, General Alexei Dmitrievich Butovsky (a personal friend of Baron de Coubertin and the first Russian member of the International Olympic Committee) and Count George Ivanovich Ribopier, who replaced him in the IOC, the initial participation of Russian representatives in the Olympic Games was mainly, private initiative. The very first performances of Russian athletes at the London Olympics in 1908 showed a high level of development of sports in the country. The hero of the games was the figure skater Nikolai Panin-Kolomenkin - the first Russian Olympic champion in history, five-time champion of Russia in figure skating, winner of the world championships (1903) and Europe (1904 and 1908), tennis player, rower, yachtsman, and 12-time champion of Russia in firing a pistol. A graduate of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University approached the execution of figures with mathematical precision, fixing everything in the drawings of the motion paths. Of the five participants with medals from London, three returned.

In 1912, the charter of the Russian Olympic Committee was approved, state support and funding were received. Russia, which first presented its team at the 1912 Olympics, sent a total of 178 athletes to Stockholm, becoming one of the largest teams. The tsarist government, to send athletes to Stockholm, hired an ocean-going vessel of the East Asian shipping company Burma, on which the Olympians continued to live until the end of the competition.

However, after 1912, the next participation of the already Soviet team took place only in 1952 at the Olympic Games in Helsinki. In the first post-war years, the football, weightlifting basketball sections received international recognition, athletes, wrestlers, swimmers, skaters, chess players, skiers, volleyball players joined international federations. It became impossible not to notice the achievements of Soviet athletes in international competitions.

To study the experience of organizing competitions, the level of technical training of teams, the specifics of individual equipment of athletes in 1948, a delegation of observers was sent to London for the XIV Summer Olympic Games (shortly before this, it was decided that, following the results of a trip to the Winter Olympic Games in St. Moritz, it’s too early to participate in winter games). The very first result was the conclusion that in most sports for the USSR, the United States of America is the number one rival. For many years, the confrontation between the athletes of the two countries accompanied the competitions of the Olympic Games, world championships, many international tournaments.

In 1950, the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games in Helsinki sent an official invitation to Moscow to participate in the games, and it was accepted. The USSR Olympic Committee was created, which received the recognition of the International Olympic Committee. The accession of our country to the Olympic movement significantly increased interest in subsequent Games.

Participation in the Olympic Games was a powerful political and ideological factor for the USSR. Achievements of Soviet sports are becoming a mass ideology, the subject of well-deserved national pride against the background of the difficult history of the country. The pictures taken by leading photographers amaze with the scale of the events, make the history of the sport visible, capturing outstanding records, faces of champions, emotions of fans. The winners of the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Yuri Tyukalov (rowing) and Viktor Chukarin (gymnast who won 4 gold medals), Maria Gorokhovskaya (gymnastics) and Nina Romashkova-Ponomareva (discus throw) are becoming famous in the country thanks to Anatoly Garanin’s photo reports (Archive RIA News).

Pictures of APN special correspondents - RIA Novosti Dmitry Kozlov, Boris Malkov, Leonid Dorensky, Yuri Somov, Dmitry Donskoy, Sergey Ilyin and others demonstrate the brightest moments of competitions in various sports: skiing, gymnastics, athletics, fencing, biathlon, and etc. And, of course, hockey and figure skating. Photos of skaters and matches of the hockey team of the country is the apotheosis of the success of Soviet sports. Gold medals won by our team in the Winter Olympics 1956, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1976, 1984, 1988, 1992.. No other country can boast such an exciting past, even if it has more medals in the team event. The Olympic podium, occupied mainly by Soviet, later Russian skaters. As in ancient Athens, the country knew the names and faces of its national heroes. The classics of Russian photography by Dmitry Baltermants, Alexander Abaza, Lev Borodulin are distinguished by the subtle psychological nuances of the portraits of athletes and pictures of the acute moments of sports.

Color appears in sports photography in the 1950s, but Olympiad-80 in Moscow becomes truly color. The difficult political situation around the Olympic Games and the boycott of Moscow competitions by a number of Western countries led by the United States, the readiness of all structures before the IOC began voting and the lack of experience in hosting guests at such full-scale events - the Olympics-80 in Moscow took place in such an atmosphere. And it was a real sports festival. The works of Sergey Guneev, Valery Shustov, Andrey Knyazev, saturated with color and dynamic in composition, are a collective portrait of the XXII Summer Olympic Games in Moscow.

In the 90s, the system of mass and professional sports in Russia was subjected to serious tests. Despite the difficulties, in 2007 it was decided that the XXII Olympic Winter Games will be held in Sochi. Those few years, while the construction of Olympic facilities was going on, the debate about the need and desirability of the Olympics did not subside in society. But - Sochi receives the Olympians, in a few days the opening will take place. And there is hope that, like 30 years ago, we will feel it as a personal sports festival, not without reason the slogan of the games: “Hot. Winter. Yours. "