THE POLISH OLYMPIC COMMITTEE DURING THE STALINIST ERA (Polski Komitet Olimpijski w okresie stalinizmu)

• Authors: Pasko Artur
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

In the wake of the Second World War the Polish Olympic Committee (PKOl) formally inaugurated its activity on 24 March 1946. Although officially the head of the Olympic movement in Poland was the pre-war sports activists Alfred Loth, and the PKOl - just as before the war - was organisationally associated with the Union of Polish Sport Federations (ZPZS), there was no true continuation of pre-war structures. The ruling authorities were most interested in producing such an impression since it created the illusion of the democratic nature of 'People's Poland'. A PKOl not connected with the ZPZS structures was established on 24 February 1947, a year prior to the Olympic Games in London. Its 'activity' ended on 1 September 1948, slightly more than two weeks after the conclusion of the Games. A re-establishment of the PKOl took place upon the basis of a resolution issued by the Presidium of the Main Committee for Physical Culture (GKKF) on 1 June 1950. For all practical purposes, the authorities regarded the PKOl as an inconvenient institution, which after 1948 comprised 'the sole remnant of a bourgeois sports structure'. At the same time, it was an institution without which the propaganda impact of sport would have been considerably weaker. Since without the official existence of the PKOl Polish sportsmen could not take part in the Olympic Games, the work performed by the Committee was limited to functioning in the years preceding successive Games. Throughout the whole Stalinist era the authorities controlled the functioning of the PKOl, in which the retention of a suitable 'political line' was guaranteed by 'representatives of the authorities' within the structures of the institution. In 1950, when the function of the chairman of the PKOl was entrusted to Lucjan Motyka, the communists finally abandoned all appearances of an active participation of pre-war sports activists in managing the Committee. In 1951-1952 the chairman of PKOl was Apolinary Minecki, a Russian of Polish decent, followed in 1952 by Wlodzimierz Reczek. The functioning of the PKOl was linked with the probably only significant failure of the 'people's authorities' at the time of 'introducing order into relations within Polish sport'. The communists proved incapable of introducing their own man into the International Olympic Committee, and W. Reczek did not become its member until 1961.

Keywords

EN

POLISH OLYMPIC COMMITTEE

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla PAN w Warszawie
• Journal: Dzieje Najnowsze
• Year: 2010
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 105-120
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Pasko Artur

• Artur Pasko, Uniwersytet w Bialymstoku, Instytut Historii, pl. Uniwersytecki 1, 15-420 Bialystok, Poland.

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

10PLAAAA082433