Who Wants to Permanently Host the Olympic Games?

After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, Andrei Sakharov, one of the world’s greatest nuclear scientists and a Nobel Peace Prize-winning dissident, told Western reporters that he supported an international boycott of the Moscow 1980 Summer Games. On January 22, 1980, Sakharov was ordered into internal exile. His arrest was one of the events that precipitated a boycott by 65 nations, including the U.S.

By the time that Russia hosted another Olympics, the Sochi 2014 Winter Games, it was a changed place. Yet Russia and Sochi were met with much of the same criticism as hosts as the U.S.S.R. and Moscow were in 1980. An escalation of human-rights violations preceded both events, which were attended by security procedures that were at once troubling and insufficient.