Sports and the Cold War.

The Cold War, which lasted for almost 50 years from 1946 to 1991, is a crucial subject of study for historians and international relations specialists who have published thousands, if not tens of thousands, of works describing various events of the Cold War and the interactions between countries during these five decades. At the same time, the years of the Cold War became a period of phenomenal growth and development in the field of international sports: the increasing involvement of more countries in the Olympic movement, the regular hosting of world championships and continental championships in various sports, the expansion of demographic and geographic boundaries in both amateur and professional sports, the growing role of sports in the social and economic development of countries, and so on. It is no secret that for the Soviet Union, international sports became another crucial sphere in which they could vividly demonstrate the achievements of the socialist development model and gain additional points in the Cold War. The goal of the first book of the monograph "Sport and the Cold War" is to describe and analyze the most significant and interesting sports events directly related to the Cold War from 1946 to the early 1970s. The book pays particular attention to the history of the USSR's entry into the Olympic movement in the early 1950s, the description of key events of individual Olympics, the intense sports rivalry between the USSR and the USA, as well as how both superpowers fought for influence in Asian, African, and Latin American countries through sports. Readers will be intrigued by the narrative of the role of sports in Soviet-Chinese relations in the 1950s and 1960s and how the USA and China used sports to normalize relations in the early 1970s. The book will help historians, political scientists, international relations specialists, students, and enthusiasts of sports to form a more comprehensive understanding of how closely international sports were intertwined with the Cold War and how often sports were used as a tool of the Cold War.