1 See Mangan, J. A. and Dyreson, Mark, eds., Olympic Legacies: Intended and Unintended: Political, Cultural, Economic and Educational, reprint (London: Routledge, 2013)Google Scholar.

2 Lenskyj, Helen Jefferson, Sexual Diversity and the Sochi 2014 Olympics: No More Rainbows (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 See, for instance, the seventy-eight-page report published by Human Rights Watch describing restrictive measures affecting civil society following Putin's return to the presidency in May 2012. Human Rights Watch, ‘Laws of Attrition: Crackdown on Russia's Civil Society after Putin's Return to the Presidency’, report, New York, 24 April 2014.

4 International Olympic Committee, ‘International Olympic Committee Marketing Report Sochi 2014’, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2014, pp. 1–68, esp. p. 8.

5 The worldwide television viewing audience was three billion. Vladimir Kozlov, ‘Sochi: Winter Olympics’ Opening Ceremony Viewed by 43 Million Russians’, Hollywood Reporter, 11 February 2014, at www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sochi-winter-olympics-opening-ceremony-679250, accessed 5 April 2018.

6 Traganou, Jilly, Designing the Olympics: Representation, Participation, Contestation (New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 20–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a selection of studies of Olympic ceremonies see Tomlinson, Alan, ‘Representation, Ideology, and Sport: The Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Los Angeles Olympic Games’, in Jackson, Roger and McPhail, Tom, eds., The Olympic Movement and Mass Media: Past, Present and Future Issues (Calgary: Hurford Enterprises, 1989), pp. 7.3–7.11Google Scholar; Alkemeyer, Thomas and Richartz, Alfred, ‘The Olympic Games: From Ceremony to Show’, Olympika: The International Journal of Olympic Studies, 2 (1993), pp. 79–89Google Scholar; Lee, Jung Woo and Maguire, Joseph, ‘Global Festivals through a National Prism: The Global–National Nexus in South Korean Media Coverage of the 2004 Olympic Games’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 44, 1 (2009), pp. 5–24Google Scholar; Castañada, Luis, ‘Choreographing the Metropolis: Networks of Circulation and Power in Olympic Mexico’, Journal of Design History, 25, 3 (2012), pp. 285–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tzanelli, Rodanthi, Olympic Ceremonialism and Performance of National Character: From London 2012 to Rio 2016 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lee, Jongsoo and Yoon, Hyunsun, ‘Narratives of the Nation in the Olympic Opening Ceremonies: Comparative Analysis of Beijing 2008 and London 2012’, Nations and Nationalism, 23, 4 (2017), pp. 952–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Tomlinson, Alan, ‘Opening Ceremonies and Some Paradoxes of Globalization’, Media, Culture & Society, 18 (1996), pp. 583–602, here p. 590, original emphasisCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 The 1988 Seoul opening ceremony is a key example in the development of the transformational tale of national progress. Its theme of ‘One World’ not only offered a triumphant vision of national reconciliation following the end of conflict during the Korean War, but also marketed Seoul as a modern global city.

9 Samutsevich appealed her guilty verdict and was released from prison shortly after the band's trial. Anna Nemtsova and Shawn Walker, ‘Pussy Riot Duo Defiant on Release from Jail: Freed Women to Launch Plan for Prisoners’ Rights: Activists Warn Russians: “Fasten your Seatbelts”’, The Guardian, 24 December 2013, p. 3.

10 Gessen, Masha, Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot (New York: Riverhead Books, 2014), p. 290Google Scholar.

11 Lucas I. Alpert, ‘Two Russian Band Members Are Freed from Prison’, Wall Street Journal Online, 23 December 2013, at www.wsj.com/articles/pussy-riot-member-is-freed-from-prison-1387783225?tesla=y.

12 Ibid.

13 See Boris Nemtsov and Leonid Martynyuk, ‘Winter Olympics in the Sub-tropics: Corruption and Abuse in Sochi’, trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, report, Institute of Modern Russia, 2013, pp. 1–45, at www.putin-itogi.ru/cp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Report_ENG_SOCHI-2014_preview.pdf, accessed 6 December 2017.

14 Human Rights Watch, ‘License to Harm: Violence and Harassment against LGBT People and Activists in Russia’, report, New York, 15 December 2015.

15 Putin stated in a televised state-of-the-nation speech in December 2013, ‘This destruction of traditional values from above not only entails negative consequences for society, but is also inherently anti-democratic because it is based on an abstract notion and runs counter to the will of the majority of people’. Vladimir Putin, ‘Russian State of the Nation Address’, simultaneous translation, Cspan, 1 December 2013, at www.c-span.org/video/?419311-1/russian-state-nation-address, accessed 17 April 2017.

16 Joseph S. Nye Jr, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), p. 5.

17 Historically, the concept of soft power emerged in 2004–8 during Putin's second presidency as active economic, political and sociocultural policies towards integrating post-Soviet spaces domestically and abroad. Sergunin, Alexander and Karabeshkin, Leonid, ‘Understanding Russia's Soft Power Strategy’, Politics, 35, 3–4 (November 2015), pp. 347–63, here pp. 347, 349CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Grix, Jonathan and Kramareva, Nina, ‘The Sochi Winter Olympics and Russia's Unique Soft Power Strategy’, Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics, 20, 4 (2017), pp. 461–75, here p. 465CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Barry Lorge, ‘Moscow's Moment: Less-Than Olympian Pageant Kicks Off, Boycott Damaged Olympics Open’, Washington Post, 19 July 1980, p. D1.

20 Allison, Lincoln, ‘The Olympic Movement and the End of the Cold War’, World Affairs Institute, 157, 2 (Fall 1994), pp. 92–7, here p. 94Google Scholar.

21 My translation. The full quote states, ‘Leonid Brezhnev, organizaba en Moscú los primeros juegos en una capital comunista con la intención de convencer al planeta de que en ese lado del telón de acero brillaba más el sol’. Xavier Kolas, ‘Putin se juega su legado en Sochi’, El Mundo, 6 February 2014, at www.elmundo.es/internacional/2014/02/06/52f3f1e3268e3e00228b457c.html, accessed 5 November 2017.

22 Scenario, ‘Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow’, 1980s-Ceremonies, Scripts, Olympic Studies Center, Lausanne, Switzerland.

23 The estimate of the television viewing audience for the entirety of the Games was 1.5 billion. The Official Report of the Games of the XXII Olympiad, Vol. I (Moscow: Fizkultura, 1981), p. 8Google Scholar.

24 Findling, John E. and Pelle, Kimberly D., eds., Historical Dictionary of the Modern Olympic Movement (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), p. 165Google Scholar.

25 The Official Report of the Games of the XXII Olympiad, Vol. II (Moscow: Fizkultura, 1981), pp. 281, 297Google Scholar.

26 Scenario, ‘Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow’.

27 The Official Report of the Games of the XXII Olympiad, Vol. II, p. 281.

28 D'Agati, Philip A., Nationalism on the World Stage: Cultural Performance at the Olympic Games (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2001), p. 151Google Scholar.

29 Ibid., p. 149.

30 Olson relates that Soviet cultural policies designated ‘all workers, industrial and agricultural, equally valuable’. The term narodnyi came to refer to all people as ‘people's’ or ‘popular’ rather than ‘folk’. Olson, Laura J., Performing Russia: Folk Revival and Russian Identity (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 39–42, esp. p. 39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Anthony Austin, ‘U.S. Tourists’ View: Impressive but Grim’, New York Times, 23 July 1980, p. B9.

32 Billington, James H., Russia in Search of Itself (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), pp. 148–9Google Scholar.

33 Natalya Radulova, ‘The Hardworking Women behind the Matryoshkas Hope for the Olympic Boost’, Russia behind the Headlines, 15 July 2011, at http://rbth.com/articles/2011/07/15, accessed 15 August 2017.

34 Kathy Lally, ‘Awaiting the Final Event at the Sochi Olympics’, Washington Post, 22 February 2014, p. A2.

35 Aleksandr Artyomyev, ‘No One Understands Us There’, trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, Interpreter Magazine, 14 February 2014, originally published by Lenta.ru, 10 February 2014, at www.interpretermag.com/no-one-understands-us-there, accessed 20 January 2018.

36 World coverage of the Sochi Games exceeded the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, with more than 100,000 hours’ total output. Television coverage averaged approximately 48,000 hours, with 464 channels showing coverage around the world, while 230 dedicated digital channels, including 155 websites and seventy-five apps, carried a total of 60,000 hours of digital broadcast coverage. International Olympic Committee, ‘Factsheet: Sochi 2014 Facts and Figures’, February 2015, Lausanne, Switzerland, p.2, at https://stillmed.olympic.org/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/Games/Winter-Games/Games-Sochi-2014-Winter-Olympic-Games/Facts-and-Figures/Factsheet-Facts-and-Figures-Sochi-2014.pdf, accessed 12 November 2017.

37 Lally, ‘Awaiting the Final Event at the Sochi Olympics’, p. A2.

38 Descriptions of the segments and staging of opening ceremonies are based on notes from my viewing of the NBC broadcast as well as video highlights on the Olympic Channel.

39 The director's early career is theatrically rooted in the world of performance as director at the Royal Court Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1980s. He also served as director for BBC Northern Ireland before turning to filmmaking in the 1990s. For Boyle's thoughts on directing the 2012 London Olympics see Raphael, Amy, Danny Boyle: Creating Wonder (London: Faber & Faber, 2013), pp. 388–440CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 David Atkins Enterprises (DAE), at www.daeglobal.com/about-dae, accessed 15 August 2018. For Alfa Bank's twentieth anniversary and Moscow's 864th birthday celebration in 2011, DAE created a three-dimensional video-mapping show over the 25,500-square-metre surface of Moscow State University, setting a Guinness world record. See Marian Sandberg, ‘David Atkins Enterprises Sets Guinness World Record for Largest Video-Mapping’, Live Design, 3 November 2011, n.p.

41 Joshua Yaffa, ‘Putin's Master of Ceremonies’, New Yorker, News Desk, 5 February 2014, at www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/putins-master-of-ceremonies, accessed 22 February 2017.

42 Lally, ‘Awaiting the Final Event at the Sochi Olympics’, A2.

43 Annie Karni, ‘Pulling Back the Curtain on the $65 Million Spider-Man on Broadway’, New York Post, 20 February 2011, at http://nypost.com/2011/02/20/pulling-back-the-curtain-on-the-65-million-spider-man-on-broadway, accessed 15 February 2017.

44 Quoted in Peter Rutland, ‘A Putinkin Opening Ceremony in Sochi’, Moscow Times, 13 February 2014, at https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/a-putinkin-opening-ceremony-in-sochi-32078, accessed 3 May 2018.

45 Ibid.

46 ‘International Olympic Committee Marketing Report Sochi 2014’, p. 8.

47 Quoted in Liz Clarke, ‘Sochi Olympics Played Differently to Different Audiences’, Washington Post, 22 February 2014, at www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/sochi-olympics-played-differently-to-different-audiences/2014/02/22/c689f4c6-9bd7-11e3-9080-5d1d87a6d793_story.html?utm_term=.c71129ba4424, accessed 7 August 2017.

48 Paul Sonne, Pia Catton and Gregory L. White, ‘A Dazzling Distraction of a Ceremony’, Wall Street Journal, 8 February 2014, p. A10.

49 Ian Chadband, ‘Sochi Opening Ceremony: From Russia with Love – Swan Lake, War and Peace and the Russian Revolution’, Telegraph Online, 7 February 2014, at www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/10625635/Sochi-opening-ceremony-From-Russia-with-love-Swan-Lake-War-and-Peace-and-the-Russian-Revolution.html, accessed 7 August 2017.

50 Philippe Gélie, Le Figaro, quoted in Aleksandr Artyomyev, ‘The Absurdities of Double Toilets and Sochi Problems’, trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, Interpreter Magazine, 14 February 2014, at www.interpretermag.com/the-absurdities-of-double-toilets-and-sochi-problems, accessed 10 April 2018.

51 ‘WWII Theme in Olympics Opening Ceremony Show Script Slashed to Satisfy IOC’, Russia & CIS General Newswire, 8 February 2014, at https://advance-lexis-com.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:5BGB-M2M1-DYS4-D513-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed 13 February 2018.

52 Andrei Malgin, ‘Olympic Ceremony without World War II’, Moscow Times, 11 February 2014, at https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/olympic-ceremony-without-world-war-ii-31924, accessed 9 February 2019.

53 Hutchings, Stephen, Gillespie, Marie, Yablokov, Ilya, Lvov, Ilia and Voss, Alexander, ‘Staging the Sochi Winter Olympics 2014 on Russia Today and BBC World News: From Soft Power to Geopolitical Crisis’, Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 12, 1 (May 2015), pp. 640–58Google Scholar.

54 Ibid., pp. 637–8.

55 Alekseyeva, Anna, ‘Sochi 2014 and the Rhetoric of a New Russia: Image Construction through Mega-events’, East European Politics, 30, 2 (2014), pp. 158–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Karl Plume and Jennifer Ablan, ‘IOC's Tolerance Message Cut from NBC's Opening Ceremony U.S. Broadcast’, Sports News, Reuters, 8 February 2014, at www.reuters.com/article/us-olympics-nbc-ceremony-idUSBREA170R320140208, accessed 13 January 2018.

57 ‘Xi Jinping Attends the Opening Ceremony of Sochi Winter Olympics’, State News Service, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, 8 February 2014, at www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/topics_665678/sqdah/t1126885.shtml, accessed 12 April 2018.

58 Andrey Tolokonnikov, ‘Putin Fails to Teach Pussy Riot to “Love the Motherland” at the Sochi Olympics’, Huffington Post, 23 April 2014, at www.huffingtonpost.com/andrey-tolokonnikov/putin-fails-to-teach-pussy-riot-to-love-the-motherland_b_4831033.html, accessed 14 January 2018.

59 Kalb, Marvin, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 2015)Google Scholar; see also Evan Osnos, David Remnick and Joshua Yaffa, ‘Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War’, New Yorker, 6 March 2017 (this article appears in other versions of the issue with the headline ‘Active Measures’), at www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the-new-cold-war, accessed 20 November 2017.

60 Konstantin Ernst, press conference, 2014, International Olympic Committee, Olympic Multimedia Library; Nick Holdsworth, ‘Russia Curbs Press Freedoms in Wake of Ukraine Crisis’, Hollywood Reporter, 6 May 2014, at www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/russia-curbs-press-freedoms-wake-701560, accessed 5 April 2018.

61 Five Chechens were arrested for Nemstov's murder. Yet questions remain regarding who ordered the assassination and whether his death was politically motivated. Andrew E. Krammar, ‘Fear Envelops Russia after Killing of Putin Critic’, New York Times, 1 March 2015, p. A10.

62 Sergey Lavrov, ‘Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Remarks and Answers to Media Questions at the Primakov Readings International Forum in Moscow’, 30 June 2017, transcript from video, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, at www.mid.ru/en/press_service/minister_speeches/-/asset_publisher/7OvQR5KJWVmR/content/id/2804842, accessed 2 August 2017.

63 Péter Krekó, Lóránt Győri, Jekatyerina Dunajeva, Jakub Janda, Ondřej Kundra, Grigorij Mesežnikov, Juraj Mesík, Maciej Szylar and Anton Shekhovtsov, ‘The Weaponization of Culture: Kremlin's Traditional Agenda and the Export of Values to Central Europe’, a study by the Political Capital Institute, 4 August 2016, pp. 1–71.

64 US Defense Intelligence Agency, ‘Russia Military Power: Building a Military to Support Great Power Aspirations’, Report, 2017, pp. 1–111, esp. pp. 37–40, 72.

65 Rachel Donadio, ‘In Culturally Fractious Russia, a Tolstoy Is a Friendly Kremlin Face’, New York Times, 21 March 2015, p. C1.

66 Segunin and Karabeshkin, ‘Understanding Russia's Soft Power Strategy’, p. 349.

67 Ibid., p. 352.