1980+Summer+Olympics

= = =__1980 Summer Olympics__ =



__The Cold War__

Since the end of World War I Eastern and Western civilization were in a silent war, a [|Cold War]. Western culture was dominated by communism that was both an economic and political way of life. Eastern culture was dominated by [|Democracy] (political) and [|Capitalism] (economic). Both culture's wanted their systems to spread throughout the entire world. The two main arguers were USSR (Soviet Union) and the USA.

__Soviet Union invades Afghanistan__

Afghanistan was in serious turmoil. Prime Minister Hazifullah Amin was changing the government to a government based on [|communism]. Amin wanted to change the lifestyle of the Afghanis durastically, by bringing in more Western culture while putting in communism. Most Afghanis strongly believed in their current very traditional Muslim culture and Amin didn't approve or want this lifestyle to persist. As a communist Amin didn't believe in religion. This force of change was creating civil war in Afghanistan between Hazifullah Amin and his believers in the new government and the Mujahideen. The Mujahideen were a group of Muslims who found that it was their religious duty to [|Allah] to overthrow Amin and his new lifestyle changes.

__**DECEMBER 1979:**__ The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. They landed in Kabul, the capitol. The Soviets wanted to protect Amin because they were also a communist country and wanted their idea of government to spread to the rest of the world. It was six months before the Games of the XXII Olympiad (1980 Summer Olympics). The games were to be held in Moscow, Soviet Union.

__United States' Cold Retaliation__
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was the last straw for United States' president Jimmy Carter. In January of 1980, a month after the Soviet Union invasion and 6 months before the XXII Olympiad, President Carter released a statement that Olympics should either be postponed, canceled, or moved to another place until the USSR retreated. The IOC (International Olympic Committee) came to the decision that the Olympics were to go on as scheduled, they argued that politics had nothing to do with the Olympics, that the games were the games and people fighting did not connect to athletes competing on the world's largest platform.

__The Boycott__
On March 21st, 1980 President Carter invited 150 olympic athletes to the White House to de-brief them on the rumors of the boycott. This meeting turned into a lecture from Carter to the athletes on why they could not compete in the Moscow Games. The United States desicion to boycott these olympics resulted in the broadest boycott in olympic history. 145 nations were invited to compete but after the United States announced their boycott 80 other nations followed. Of the 64 nations that did compete s16 were part of the boycott too, they showed this by raising the [|olympic flag] instead of their own countries flag and 10 of the 16 did not attend the opening ceremonies to show that they didn't support Moscow but they were in the olympics only to compete. The boycott was the largest in Olympic History. It wasn't completely successful because the USSR didn't immediatly leave Afghanistan but it deffinitly made an impact and the Soviets got less revenue than suspected.

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__The Reactions__ media type="youtube" key="-gOtwbYiRfM" height="223" width="287" align="center"   =====

__Effects__
The boycott added to the heat of the cold war and was one of the reasons the cold war continued. It was also able to show the USSR how many nations they were up against.