Image of t-shirt, “Olympics Da, Moscow nyet.” (Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry
records, Box 363, Yeshiva University Archives.)
This piece is a response to our Call for Submissions: Histories of Political Protest in the U.S. For our submission guidelines, click here.
In 1974, when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded Moscow’s bid to host the 1980 Summer Olympics, it set off a wave of protests among activists who felt that the Soviet government’s history of human rights violations should disqualify the country from hosting. This activism came five years before the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led the United States and sixty-four other countries to boycott the 1980 Olympics.
An American activist group named Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) was one of several organizations which protested the decision to hold the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, but its particular focus was the Soviet Union’s ongoing persecution of its Jewish population. First, SSSJ called on the IOC to relocate the Games. When this was unsuccessful, it pressed the United States to boycott and urged Olympic sponsors to cancel their support. While SSSJ’s efforts were not the deciding factor in the eventual boycott, the group’s work illustrates how the Olympic Movement served as a protest venue for the myriad critics of the Soviet government. Deployed during détente, SSSJ’s campaign also demonstrates how the momentary thawing of the Cold War could open space for grassroots human rights activism.
SSSJ was founded at Columbia University in 1964. Its mission was to force the Soviet government to end its persecution of the country’s Jewish population and to allow more Jewish people to emigrate freely. At the time, very few Soviet citizens were allowed to emigrate and the application process for leaving was difficult and risky. Those who were refused permission, termed refuseniks, were ostracized and punished for expressing a desire to leave. They often found themselves barred from promotions at work or blocked from further involvement with the Communist Party, which was an important gateway to social, political, and economic advancement.
SSSJ’s founder, a German immigrant named Jacob Birnbaum, became alarmed by what he called “a concerted effort at spiritual and cultural strangulation” of the Soviet Jewish population.[1] He wanted to create a student-led campaign of Jewish Americans to pressure the Moscow government to end its persecution and increase access to emigration. He selected students as his base because he believed they would be more willing to take direct action in support of their cause. However, the group came to include activists of all ages—many, but not all, of whom were Jewish. SSSJ’s goal of championing human rights appealed to college students and activists involved in other social activism campaigns, and fueled a steady stream of enthusiastic members.[2] The group was active until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. SSSJ was neither the first nor the only Jewish activist group to call attention to the plight of the Soviet Jewish population, but it benefitted from having a simple organizational structure, which allowed it to act quickly during crises and moments of opportunity.
Birnbaum’s idea found an audience immediately: more than 250 students attended SSSJ’s first meeting in April 1964 and more than 1,000 protestors marched in front of the Soviet embassy in New York a few days later. After these initial gatherings, SSSJ embarked on a wide-ranging campaign, including lobbying members of Congress to support legislation that would apply economic and political pressure on Moscow. SSSJ held myriad protests and social events, including a demonstration at the Soviet diplomatic compound in the Bronx and a Hanukkah event at Madison Square Garden that drew 20,000 attendees.[3]
When Moscow won the hosting rights for 1980, SSSJ set its sights on the Olympics, understanding that the Games’ visibility could draw attention to its campaign. The Olympics were a frequent Cold War battleground that offered high international visibility (global audiences reached one billion by 1968) and the chance for several potential superpower sporting matchups in a two-week period. But the stakes were relatively low because neither superpower was likely to use its nuclear power if it lost the all-important medal count. The IOC’s awarding of the 1980 Games to Moscow—and of the subsequent 1984 Games to Los Angeles—set the Olympic Movement squarely in the Cold War crossfires of the early 1980s rather unintentionally. The IOC assigned these Games in 1974, arguably the height of détente, a cooling of tensions from 1968 through the late 1970s, during which the superpowers focused more on their respective domestic problems. However, by the late 1970s, the Cold War had returned, setting the stage for political as well as athletic contests in Moscow and Los Angeles.
Valtman: The Editorial Cartoons of Edmund S. Valtman, 1961–1991 (Baltimore, 1991), 24.
SSSJ quickly understood how the Moscow Olympics could help its cause. In choosing the Olympics to highlight its activism, SSSJ was following a pattern set by other human rights groups and activists. For example, American track athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith famously raised black-gloved fists on the medal podium for the 200m final at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, protesting racial inequality in the United States. The two men were consequently evicted from the Olympic Village, but the protest drew global attention—and set a precedent for using the Games to draw attention to human rights issues.[4] It had become clear that the Olympics could be leveraged to draw attention to social and political injustices with relatively minor disruption to the athletic events.
SSSJ’s Olympic campaign was well-organized and aware of its limits, not wanting to provoke the Soviet government into imposing harsher punishments on its Jewish citizens. SSSJ’s members were adept at getting the attention of the mainstream (as opposed to solely the Jewish) media, Congress, and corporations and organizations connected to the Olympic Movement. They knew that their actions alone would not persuade the Soviet government to liberalize its emigration policies or stop its persecution tactics, so they measured success by degrees, celebrating any increase in emigration numbers or the release of a political prisoner. Their petition to have the Games removed from Moscow also gained the support of members of Congress, like Representatives Jack Kemp and Robert Drinan and Senator Edward Brooke, demonstrating that their campaign had some legislative support.[5]
SSSJ held creative and unusual events in the 1970s and 1980s to spotlight its cause. One event was its annual “Run for Freedom” in Manhattan, which drew crowds and widespread press attention despite consistently poor weather. Other recurring protests were very simple. For instance, at U.S. sporting events with Soviet athletes competing, SSSJ members held up banners that read, “Volleyball Da, Soviet Anti-Semitism Nyet.”[6] According to Avi Weiss, SSSJ National Chairperson during the 1980s, SSSJ’s National Coordinator Glenn Richter devised many of the organization’s more creative events. Some of these included “an exorcism ceremony at Aeroflot Soviet Airlines office to drive out the evil spirits of Kremlin anti-Semitism…[and]A birthday cake inscribed with ‘Let my people go’ delivered to the Soviet UN mission for a Kremlin leader’s birthday.”[7]
Concerning the Moscow Olympics specifically, after NBC won the U.S. broadcast rights for the Games SSSJ protested outside the network headquarters in Manhattan during an RCA (NBC’s parent company) stockholders’ meeting. Group members marched around the building with signs bearing messages like “No Soviet control of American TV” and “No communist control of the Olympics.” [8] They also penned an open letter to RCA stockholders, asking for more information regarding NBC’s Olympic broadcasting contract and warning about the parallels between the Moscow Games and the infamous 1936 Nazi Olympics in Berlin.
The Soviet leaders are planning the 1980 Olympics on the 1936 Berlin model. They rate the award of the Games to Moscow as their biggest propaganda bonanza. They are already planning to use the Games for the glorification of the Soviet Union and communism—and to cover up their failures, crimes, violations of human rights, massive weapons program, and aggressive international policy.[9]
The committee warned that NBC would be enabling Soviet propaganda with the money it paid for broadcasting rights and would become “the Kremlin’s electronic megaphone for Operation Olympics,” recommending that Congress investigate the details of the broadcast contract.[10] The House of Representatives Communications Subcommittee ended up holding hearings on network coverage of sports in October and November 1977, and secured an assertion from NBC that it did not give the Soviet Union editorial rights for its Olympic coverage.[11] And after a follow-up letter from Richter on the subject, NBC’s director of audience services assured SSSJ that NBC would “not be a party to Soviet propaganda…. There is nothing in our arrangements with the Russians that would interfere with the honesty of our coverage.”[12]
One of SSSJ’s more creative protest ideas was an “Olympics of Oppression.” Outlined in an undated “Q&A on the 1980 Olympics,” the event was listed as a means of demonstrating opposition to the Moscow Olympics by holding farcical sporting events, like the “Soviet Jewry Decathelon [sic].”[13] Some of the contests described included, “Run-In-Place Endurance Race- who can run in the place the longest just as a refuseniks [sic]have to, often for years, without job, money, support. …Letter Writing- who can write or type the most appeals to Soviet government officials within a set amount of time.”[14]
The SSSJ campaign was intended to appeal to a wide audience, providing information and ways to get involved in a cause that came to have wide popular appeal. American public support for a Moscow boycott peaked shortly after President Jimmy Carter’s administration gave the Soviet Union a one-month deadline to withdraw from Afghanistan in January 1980. A series of polls conducted by newspapers including the Washington Star, the Boston Herald American, and the San Francisco Chronicle all showed support in excess of 75 percent among respondents for a boycott.[15] Congressional resolutions approving of a boycott passed with similar levels of backing.[16]
Then, improbably, an American men’s hockey team composed of college players shocked the Soviet team—and the world—when it beat the Soviets 4–3 in the medal round at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics on February 22. Suddenly, Americans could not wait to compete against the Soviet Union again that summer. Polls conducted in early March showed double-digit drops in support for the boycott.[17] While a slim majority still backed staying home, these numbers were nowhere near the 85 percent recorded by the Washington Star back in January.[18]
While the United States Olympic Committee’s decision to boycott Moscow resulted from Carter’s political pressure and not SSSJ’s activism, the group saw it as a victory and considered its campaign successful. “It was wonderful because Soviet Jews were being oppressed. This helped to squeeze the Soviet government. There’s a greater good than sending athletes to the Games,” Glenn Richter said in a phone interview in August 2022. “We kept to a very specific point because we were only interested in one thing. It was not reforming the Soviet Union, but just to help Soviet Jews who wanted out. We were not saying publicly that the USSR should dissolve. But we were happy to talk to anyone and people did call up and ask how we did it. We spent a lot of time trying to get people to write articles. The effort was definitely worthwhile.”[19] SSSJ members knew that a boycott alone would not end persecution of the Soviet Jewish population, but it did draw attention to their plight.
As expected, the boycott did not lead to Soviet policy changes. And after 1980, SSSJ and its affiliates moved away from using sport to draw attention to their cause.[20] However, though SSSJ only engaged with the Olympic Movement for a relatively short span (six years), its work helps demonstrate the Games’ value as a protest venue.[21] The boycott campaign also tells us about the status of the Cold War in the 1970s. SSSJ’s campaign against the Moscow Olympics largely took place during détente, the decade-long cooling of Cold War tensions, which only ended definitively with the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Détente created an atmosphere where human rights groups felt more comfortable criticizing the Soviet Union for myriad abuses, including religious persecution, failure to adhere to the 1975 Helsinki Accords, and denial of autonomy to some of the Soviet Socialist Republics. The stakes were lower for potential dissidents during the 1970s because there was less fear of Soviet retaliation against the refusenik population for these criticisms while the Moscow government dealt with issues like increasing economic and political stagnation. SSSJ recognized this opening and used it to promote its cause with a campaign that was nimble, deliberate, and specific. It could hold headline-grabbing protests to draw attention to its causes that posed little risk to the demonstrators or the population they were trying to support—while recognizing that real freedom for the Soviet Jewish population was likely still years away. The gains they fought so hard for did not come until after détente ended and the Olympic torch was extinguished in Moscow, but the temporary thawing of the Cold War signaled a crucial opening in which SSSJ could act—and the Olympics provided a useful venue for SSSJ’s creative and attention-grabbing demonstrations.
Erin Redihan, Ph.D, MLIS is a lecturer in the history department at Salve Regina University in Newport, RI. She is the author of The Olympics and the Cold War, 1948–1968: Sport as Battleground in the U.S.-Soviet Rivalry (McFarland, 2017).
The author would like to thank Shulamith Berger, Renee Dube, and Charles Redihan for their invaluable assistance in sourcing and shaping this narrative.
[1] Jacob Birnbaum to Jewish Americans, 1964, in Modern Orthodox Judaism: A Documentary History, ed. Zev Eleff and Jacob J. Schacter (2016), 297.
[2] Stuart Altshuler, From Exodus to Freedom: A History of the Soviet Jewry Movement (2005), 27.
[3] Avi Weiss, Open Up the Iron Door: Memoirs of a Soviet Jewry Activist (2015), 33–34.
[4] In 1976, for instance, twenty-nine countries boycotted the Montreal Summer Olympics because the IOC chose not to ban New Zealand—even though New Zealand had defied an international sports embargo by hosting a tour of the rugby team from apartheid South Africa.
[5] “Drinan-Brooke Back Action for Soviet Jewry on Olympics Petition,” Jewish Times, Sept. 7 1978, folder 9, box 44, Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry Records (Yeshiva University Archives, Mendel Gottesman Library, New York, N.Y.).
[6] Altshuler, From Exodus to Freedom, 79.
[7] Weiss, Open Up the Iron Door, 47.
[8] International Monitoring Committee for the 1980 Olympics, “The 1980 Olympics Questions and Answers,” undated, folder 8, box 44, Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry Records (Yeshiva University Archives).
[9] Ad Hoc Committee of Concern on NBC/Olympics, “Attention RCA Stockholders,” May 1977, ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Neil Amdur, “TV Networks Now Know Congress is Watching,” New York Times, Nov. 6, 1977.
[12] Glenn Richter to NBC-tv Network,” May 2, 1978, folder 8, box 44, Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry Records (Yeshiva University Archives); Michele Sofios, May 9, 1978, folder 8, box 44, ibid.
[13] International Monitoring Committee for the 1980 Olympics, “The 1980 Olympics Questions and Answers.”
[14] Ibid.
[15] Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, Dropping the Torch: Jimmy Carter, the Olympic Boycott, and the Cold War (2011), 86.
[16] U.S. Department of State, “The Olympic Boycott, 1980,” USA.gov, https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/qfp/104481.htm#:~:text=Within%20the%20United%20States%2C%20there,vote%20of%2088%20to%204.
[17] Sarantakes, 133.
[18] Ibid., 86.
[19] Glenn Richter interview by Erin Redihan, Aug. 30, 2022, notes (in Erin Redihan’s possession).
[20] There were still protests demanding a ban of the Soviet team at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles before the Soviet government announced its decision to skip the Games in May 1984. Due to ongoing Soviet human rights violations, the Baltic American Freedom League and Ban the Soviets Coalition worked to prevent the Soviet Union from sending a team to the Los Angeles Games. See Erin Redihan, “Winning for Themselves, Not for Moscow”: Baltic Independence and the Olympic Games During the 1980s,” Journal of Olympic Studies, 2 (2021), 110–28.
[21] There were protests and campaigns staged prior to the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles targeted at banning the Soviet Union from attending, but these were led by west coast organizations who did not identify as Jewish cultural groups, including the Baltic American Freedom League and the Ban the Soviets Coalition.
