My guess is this douchebag was young, easily impressionable, and absolutely desperate to fit in socially with the rest of the people in the sport.
This is a bad recipe for socialists in sports, because sports people from capitalist countries are going to continue being the majority for a long time. They travel abroad, want to fit in and end up taking on the role of a pick-me. Everyone joining a new community is going to try to fit into that community and the advantage of capitalist hegemony is going to affect socialist sports people, especially because they’re young.
Communist countries are deliberately isolated, and then western propaganda will go “see, they’re missing out on our 18 different flavors of delicious Chef Boyardee!” and to a dumb teenager during soviet stagnation it would be pretty easy to fall for it.
My guess is this douchebag was young, easily impressionable, and absolutely desperate to fit in socially with the rest of the people in the sport.
This is a bad recipe for socialists in sports, because sports people from capitalist countries are going to continue being the majority for a long time. They travel abroad, want to fit in and end up taking on the role of a pick-me. Everyone joining a new community is going to try to fit into that community and the advantage of capitalist hegemony is going to affect socialist sports people, especially because they’re young.
Communist countries are deliberately isolated, and then western propaganda will go “see, they’re missing out on our 18 different flavors of delicious Chef Boyardee!” and to a dumb teenager during soviet stagnation it would be pretty easy to fall for it.