Sochi's opening ceremony will be a political affair

Sochi will debut as host of the 2014 Winter Olympics with an opening ceremony on Friday designed to merge Russia’s artistic and cultural traditions with the country’s embrace of modernity, which many observers say reflects President Vladimir Putin’s preferred narrative of Russian resurgence since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

But while the show transpires on stage, the geopolitics of the ceremony will unfold in the stands.

Among the 3 million in attendance on Friday evening will be 65 world leaders, according to the 2014 Olympic Organizing Committee. “This is a record for Winter Games, three times the number in Vancouver,” committee head Dmitry Chernyshenko said in his final update to the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Though the Sochi Organizing Committee has revealed little about the ceremony itself — as is traditional — the committee on Thursday flaunted that, despite all the controversy surrounding Russia’s anti-gay propaganda law and even calls to boycott this year’s games, Russia has scored what seems to be a political victory for the most embattled games in recent history.

With the majority of Western leaders skipping the opening ceremony, the biggest names in Sochi will be Chinese President Xi Jinping, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed the ongoing dignitary head count altogether, labeling it as “nonsense.” But his defensiveness at the question revealed the unusual politicization of an event meant to celebrate athleticism and friendly competition.

“No one has ever counted,” he was quoted as saying by Russian news agency RIA Novosti. “They started counting when they decided that they should spoil things for Russia, so that Russia would feel uncomfortable.”

The guest list for Friday has emerged as a sensitive issue in the wake of rumors that Western leaders would snub Sochi in protest of Russia's alleged anti-gay crackdown or anti-Muslim discrimination in Russia’s security operations in and around Sochi. There has been widespread speculation that President Barack Obama, along with his British and German counterparts, were boycotting the games.

But David Wallechinsky, the president of the International Society of Olympic Historians, called a world leader boycott “a phony issue” and pointed out that the expectation for the U.S. president to attend every Olympic Games is a very new phenomenon.

President George W. Bush was the first to attend a foreign Olympics when he visited the games in Beijing — to the chagrin of human rights advocates wary of supporting what they say is Chinese repression.

Still the IOC has repeatedly jumped to Russia’s defense when queried about a potential boycott. As he praised Putin’s efforts over the past seven years, IOC President Thomas Bach on Tuesday denounced politicians who used the Sochi Olympics for their own purposes "on the backs of the athletes."

“We are grateful to those who respect the fact that sport can only contribute to the development of peace if it's not used as a stage for political dissent or for trying to score points in internal or external contexts,” he said.

“We are asking, try not to politicize the games,” echoed Russian human rights commissioner Konstantin Dolgov last month.

Such pleading from Russian officials falls flat to those who say Putin has contributed as much as anyone to that politicization. Putin has invited the leaders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the breakaway territories in neighboring Georgia whose citizens Russia has offered to give passports. Georgia, accordingly, has refused to send a delegation.

In the history of the Olympics, “I can’t think of anything as politicized as those invitations,” said Wallechinsky, who is in Sochi for his 16th Olympic games. “He’s taunting Georgia, so that’s definitely a political gesture."