Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 19 – The ignominious
defeat of the Russian ice hockey team this week at the hands of much stronger
commands from other countries is not only humiliating for a country that views
itself as the home of that sport but also deprives the Kremlin of the kind of sport
victory it likes to employ to distract attention from its larger failures.
That point has been made by numerous
commentators including SerpomPo on the Telegram channel who argues that “’patriotism,’
understood as faithfulness to the authorities who were Soviet and then the
corrupt Russian bosses” has always been rested “on three elephants – space,
sport and the army” (echo.msk.ru/blog/serpompo2018/2204580-echo/).
They have served, the blogger
writes, as “compensation to you citizens for your low standard of living. In
all these sectors, the USSR and Russia are supposedly in leading positions.
True, we live badly, but on the other hand we are winning in space, war, and
sports. In those places we are the best!”
However, there are problems. Russia
hasn’t had primacy in space for a long time, he writes. And it doesn’t have a
military which can compete with the best the West has to offer as shown by
recent events in Syria. And unfortunately, thanks to Putin and his doping
program -- which showed Russia couldn’t compete honestly -- it has lost primacy
as well.
“The defeat of Russian hockey – the main
kind of sport for the USSR-Russia in its confrontation with the West – yet again
shows that the Russian authorities have ever fewer opportunities to cover their
failures with false achievements,” SerpomPo continues. And worse everyone in Russia and the West can
see this.
Political analyst Aleksey Roshchin
makes similar points in a new commentary (rosbalt.ru/posts/2018/05/18/1704166.html)
as does Sofya Mokhova who says scandals surrounding the upcoming World Cup
where the Russian team is also expected to lose early will only make this situation
worse for the Kremlin (rosbalt.ru/russia/2018/05/18/1704186.html).
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