A book talk by author Harry Blutstein
Sunday, February 27 at 4 pm EST ONLINE
Harry Blutstein will introduce the US edition (McFarland 2022) of his book and discuss the cold war climate of the post-war Olympics focusing on two Czechoslovak cases that made the international news. The 1948 London Olympics saw the first defection, as Czechoslovak gold medal-winning women’s gymnastics team leader, Marie Provazníková, refused to return home. In 1956, in defiance of her government, Czechoslovak discus thrower, Olga Fikotová, refused to renounce her love for US athlete Hal Connolly, creating an international incident. The book also exposes the activities of the KGB and secret police from Eastern European countries to spy on their own athletes and countermeasures taken by the West.
Link to the book Cold War Olympics: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/cold-war-olympics/.
Harry Blutstein, PhD, former Adjunct Professor in the School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning at RMIT University, is a fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Since 1972, he has been a freelance journalist and published feature articles in op-eds in major Australian newspapers on a wide variety of topics. He is also the author of Games of Discontent on the 1968 Olympic Games. harryblutstein.com.
