¹ ‘Gyarmati's Story’, Sports’ Illustrated, 8 Apr. 1957, 32.

² ‘Az MTST legfelsőbb fegyelmi és panaszügyi bizottságának határozatai’, NépSport, 24 Aug. 1958, 4.

³ ‘Kijelölte a Magyar Olimpiai Bizottság a római olimpián szereplő magyar versenyzőket’, NépSport, 27 July 1960, 1.

⁴ Caute, David, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy During the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1Google Scholar; Tomoff, Kiril, Virtuoso Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition During the Early Cold War, 1945–1958 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), 11Google Scholar.

⁵ On the IOC's Western values, see Llewellyn, Matthew and Gleaves, John, The Rise and Fall of Olympic Amateurism (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2016), 58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parks, Jenifer, The Olympic Games, the Soviet Sports Bureaucracy, and the Cold War: Red Sport, Red Tape (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016), xxGoogle Scholar.

⁶ Parks, Olympic Games, 12, 14.

⁷ On how Soviet sport bureaucrats balanced these two priorities, see Parks, Olympic Games.

⁸ Robert Edelman similarly discusses the ‘understanding and compromise’ that British and Soviet leaders developed in sport. Edelman, Robert, ‘The Five Hats of Nina Ponomareva: Sport, Shoplifting and the Cold War’, Cold War History, 17, 3 (2017), 223–39, 237–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. György Péteri demonstrates how similar aims motivated Hungarian state organs and cultural figures in the creation of the nation's pavilion at the 1958 Expo in Brussels. Péteri, György, ‘Transsystemic Fantasies: Counterrevolutionary Hungary at Brussels Expo’58’, Journal of Contemporary History, 47, 1 (2012), 137–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My focus on Hungary contributes to a recent call from sport scholars to examine moments of cooperation in Cold War sport in new places in Europe, and not just regarding the major players of the era. Vonnard, Philippe, Sbetti, Nicola and Quin, Grégory, ‘“Divided but not disconnected”: Studying a New “Paradigm” for the History of Sport during the Cold War’, in Vonnard, Philippe, Sbetti, Nicola, Quin, Grégory, eds., Beyond Boycotts: Sport during the Cold War in Europe (Berlin/Boston: de Gruter Oldenbourg, 2018), 5Google Scholar.

⁹ The Disney film enabled viewers to leave with ‘a “moral” message and a feeling of uplift’ about the United States's Cold War victory after 9/11. Silk, Mike, Schultz, Jaime and Bracey, Bryan, ‘From Mice to Men: Miracle, Mythology, and the “Magic Kingdom”’, Sport in Society, 11, 2–3 (2008), 279–97, 281CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Political studies of Cold War sport include Hunt, Thomas M., ‘American Sport Policy and the Cultural Cold War: The Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Years’, Journal of Sport History, 33, 3 (2006), 273–97Google Scholar; Sarantakes, Nicholas Evan, Dropping the Torch: Jimmy Carter, the Olympic Boycott, and the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Rider, Toby, Cold War Games: Propaganda, the Olympics and U.S. Foreign Policy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wagg, Stephen and Andrews, David, eds., East Plays West: Sport and the Cold War (London: Routledge Publishing, 2007)Google Scholar; Dichter, Heather and Johns, Andrew, eds., Diplomatic Games: Sport, Statecraft, and International Relations Since 1945 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2014)Google Scholar. Works that focus significantly on the Bloc's top-down sport politics include Ungerleider, Steven, Faust's Gold: Inside the East German Doping Machine (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2001)Google Scholar; Mertin, Evelyn, ‘Presenting Heroes: Athletes as Role Models for the New Soviet Person’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 26, 4 (2009), 469–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grant, Susan, Physical Culture and Sport in Soviet Society: Propaganda, Acculturation, and Transformation in the 1920s and 1930s (New York: Routledge, 2013)Google Scholar; Szikora, Katalin, ‘Sport and the Olympic Movement in Hungary (1945–1989)’, in Waic, Marek ed., The Shadow of Totalitarianism: Sport and the Olympic Movement in the ‘Visegrád Countries’ 1945–1989 (Prague: Charles University, 2015), 133–95Google Scholar; Tabi, Norbert, ‘Futball és politika kapcsolata Magyarországon a II. világháború után – A kommunista diktatúra viszonya a hazai labdarúgókhoz 1956-ig’, Palette: I. Új- és Jelenkortörténi Tudományos Diákkonferencia (Budapest: ELTE BTK Új- és Jelentkori Magyar Történeti Tanszék, 2014), 57–80Google Scholar; Fryc, Adam and Ponczek, Miroslaw, ‘The Communist Rule in Polish Sport History’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 26, 4 (2009), 501–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wood, Michaela, ‘Romania at the Olympics: Women Gymnasts as Ambassadors in Sportswear, 1950s–1970s’, Revista Arhivelor, 84, 3–4 (2007), 273–81Google Scholar.

¹¹ Edelman, ‘The Five Hats’; McDougall, Alan, The People's Game: Football, State and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dufraisse, Sylvain, ‘Des sordides actes de spéculation: traces de circulations économiques dans les délégations sportives soviétiques (1967–1982)’, Hypothèses, 18, 1 (2015), 165–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parks, Olympic Games; Barbara Cole, “The East German Sport System: Image and Reality, PhD diss., Texas Tech University, 2000; Dennis, Mike and Grix, Jonathan, Sport Under Communism: Behind the East German ‘Miracle’ (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillian, 2013)Google Scholar.

¹² Vonnard, Philippe, Sbetti, Nicola, Quin, Grégory eds., Beyond Boycotts: Sport during the Cold War in Europe (Berlin/Boston: de Gruter Oldenbourg, 2018), 5Google Scholar; Edelman, Robert and Young, Christopher, eds., The Whole World Was Watching: Sport in the Cold War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the special issue, ‘International Sports Organizations’, Sport in History, 37 (2017.)

¹³ This is a point made by Sylvain Dufraisse with respect Eastern European states that I take further. Dufraisse, Sylvain, ‘The Emergence of Europe-Wide Collaboration and Cooperation: Soviet Sports Interactions in Europe. 1945–mid-1960s,’ in Vonnard, Philippe, Sbetti, Nicola, Quin, Grégory, eds., Beyond Boycotts: Sport during the Cold War in Europe (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2018), 71–81, 71Google Scholar. For some examples of the relative agency of athletes in non-Western contexts and what they chose to do with it, see the contribution by Claire Nicolas in Beyond Boycotts, by Annette Timm in The Whole World Was Watching and Alan McDougall's People's Game.

¹⁴ Standeisky, Éva, Az írók és hatalom (Budapest: 1956 Institute, 1996)Google Scholar; Kalmár, Melinda, Ennivaló és hozomány: a kora kádárizmus ideológiája (Budapest: Magvető Könyvkiadó és Kereskedelmi, 1998)Google Scholar; Rainer, János, Bevezetés a Kádárizmusba: Magyarország a Szovjetunió árnyékában, 1944–1989 (Budapest: 1956 Institute, 2011)Google Scholar; Pittaway, Mark, The Workers’ State: Industrial Labor and the Making of Communist Hungary, 1944–1958 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Mark, James and Apor, Péter, ‘Socialism Goes Global: Decolonization and the Making of a New Culture of Internationalism in Socialist Hungary, 1956–1989’, Journal of Modern History, 87(2015), 852–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Horváth, Sándor, Stalinism Reloaded: Everyday Life in Stalin-City, Hungary, trans. Cooper, Thomas (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. One exception in the Hungarian sport literature is Ivan, Emese and Ivan, Dezső, ‘The 1956 Revolution and the Melbourne Olympics: The Changing Perceptions of a Dramatic Story’, Hungarian Studies Review, 35, 1–2 (2008), 9–23Google Scholar. On state–society evolutions, see Jarausch, Konrad, ed., Dictatorship of Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR, trans. by Duffy, Eve (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999)Google Scholar; Fulbrook, Mary, The People's State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (New Haven, NH: Yale University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Dennis and Grix, Sport Under Communism; McDougall, People's State.

¹⁵ See Neuberger, Mary, Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013)Google Scholar; Bren, Paulina and Neuberger, Mary eds., Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Victor Petrov, ‘A Cyber-Socialism at Home and Abroad: Bulgarian Modernisation, Computers, and the World, 1967–1989’, PhD diss., Columbia University, 2017; Péteri, György, ‘Nylon Curtain – Transnational and Transsystemic Tendencies in the Cultural Life of State-Socialist Russian and East-Central Europe’, Slavonica, 10, 2 (2004), 113–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ For another perspective on how Hungarians interacted with developments in the global Cold War following the Hungarian Revolution, albeit with those in the ‘global South’, see James Mark and Péter Apor, ‘Socialism Goes Global’.

¹⁷ Kende, Péter, ‘Mi történt a Magyar Társadalommal 1956 Után?’ Évkönyv XI. (2003), Magyarország a Jelenkorban (Budapest: 1956 Institute), 9–17, 12Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Kende, ‘Mi történt’, 11–2; Majtényi, György, ‘What made the Kádár Era? Two Books on Hungary's Recent Past’, The Hungarian Historical Review, trans. by Campbell, Alan, 2, 3 (2013), 667–75Google Scholar; Takács, Tibor, ‘Them and Us: Narratives of Agents from the Kadar Era’, The Hungarian Historical Review, 4, 1 (2015), 144–70, 167Google Scholar.

¹⁹ The ‘3-T’ phrase comes from the Hungarian words for support, toleration and prohibition. Révész, Sándor, Aczél és korunk (Budapest: Sík Kiadó, 1997), 146–7Google Scholar; Oikari, Raiki, ‘Discursive Use of Power in Hungarian Cultural Policy during the Kádár Era’, Halmesvirta, Anssi ed., Hungarologische Beträge: Kádár's Hungary-Kekkonen's Finland, 12 (Jyväskylä, Finland: University of Jyväskylä, 2002), 133–58, 149–50Google Scholar.

²⁰ György Péteri provides an excellent analysis of how Hungary's concerns about its external legitimacy impacted the state's participation in a 1958 international exposition, and the handling of a writer who had contacts with Imre Nagy but was tasked with creating a Hungarian pavilion at the 1958 show. György Péteri, ‘Transsystemic Fantasies’.

²¹ On the American side of the defections, see Toby Rider, Cold War.

²² On two athlete-defectors’ experiences in the United States, see Mellis, Johanna, ‘Cold War Politics and the California Running Scene: The Experiences of Mihály Iglói and László Tábori in the Golden State’, Journal of Sport History, 46, 1 (Spring 2019), 62–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²³ Horváth, Stalinism Reloaded, 7.

²⁴ For a more thorough explanation, see Johanna Mellis, ‘Negotiation Through Sport: Navigating Everyday Life in Socialist Hungary, 1948–1989’, PhD disst. University of Florida, 2018, 57–8, 320–1, 334–5.

²⁵ Moreover, as the interviewer co-creating the oral histories and the scholar analysing the materials, I cannot ignore the fact that my background and lenses influenced this analysis on several levels. Nickel, Sarah, ‘“You'll probably tell me that your grandmother was an Indian Princess”: Identity, Community, and Politics in the Oral History of the Union of British Columbian Indian Chiefs, 1969–1980’, Oral History Forum d'histoire orale, 34 (2014), 19Google Scholar; Raleigh, Donald, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia's Cold War Generation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 13Google Scholar; Verdery, Katherine, Secrets and Truths: Ethnography in the Archive of Romania's Secret Police Force (Budapest: CEU Press, 2014), 17Google Scholar; Horváth, Sándor, ‘Life of an Agent: Re-energizing Stalinism and Learning the Language of Collaboration after 1956 in Hungary’, Hungarian Historical Review, 4, 1 (2015), 56Google Scholar. On how I conducted and examine these and other sources, see Mellis, ‘Negotiation Through Sport’, 52–67.

²⁶ After Stalin's death, the MKP installed Imre Nagy in power, whose policies aimed to soften repression and base state policies on research, and not on Stalinist dogma. Péteri, György, ‘External Politics-Internal Rivalries: Social Science Scholarship and Political Change in Communist Hungary’, East Central Europe, 44 (2017), 309–39, 313CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ Hoffman, David, ‘Introduction: Interpretations of Stalinism’, in Hoffman, David ed., Stalinism: The Essential Readings (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2003), 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ Szikora, ‘Sport and the Olympic’, 150–1.

²⁹ See Kornai, János, Economies of Shortage (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1980)Google Scholar.

³⁰ Brown, Karl, ‘The Extraordinary Career of Feketevágó Úr: Wood Theft, pig Killing, and Entrepreneurship in Communist Hungary, 1948–1956’, in Bren, Paulina and Neuberger, Mary eds., Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 277–97, 278CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³¹ Ember, Mária, magyar, ‘A kis ‘focialista forradalom”’, Eső 4, 1 (2001), 40–5Google Scholar. See also Majtényi, György, “Czibor, Bozsik, Puskás: Futball és társadalmi legitimáció az ötvenes években” Sic Itur Ad Astra, 62 (2011), 219–31Google Scholar; and Mellis, ‘Negotiation Through Sport’, 91–5.

³² L. Kutassi: A magyar szakszervezeti sportmozgalom a felszabadulás után 1945–1963 (Budapest: SZOT), 222; cited in Szikora, ‘Sport in the Olympic’, 21.

³³ Szikora, ‘Sport and the Olympic’, 133–4.

³⁴ Attila Császári, interview with the author, Budapest, 20 May 2015.

³⁵ Mertin, ‘Presenting Heroes’, 469.

³⁶ Soviet sport leaders acted similarly, using connections and rules to achieve their Olympic goals within a socialist framework. Parks, Olympic Games, xvii–xx, 4.

³⁷ This contributes to Kiril Tomoff's point about the same phenomenon in the Soviet music realm. Tomoff, Kiril, ‘“Most Respected Comrade. . . ”: Patrons, Clients, Brokers and Unofficial Networks in the Stalinist Music World’, Contemporary European History, 11, 1 (Feb. 2002), 33–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ People used different kinds of connections to obtain access to hard-to-find goods and services. See Ledeneva, Alena, Russia’s Economy of Favors: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Valuch, Tibor, ‘“A kéz-kezet mos”: A szocialista összeköttetések a Kádár-korszakban’, Bárka, 6 (2008), 1–9Google Scholar.

³⁹ Mellis, ‘Negotiation Through Sport’, especially Chapters 3 and 6.

⁴⁰ See Tabi, Norbert, ‘Futball és politika kapcsolata Magyarországon a II. világháború után – A kommunista diktatúra viszonya a hazai labdarúgókhoz 1956-ig’, Palette: I. Új- és Jelentkortörténi Tudományos Diákkonferencia, (Budapest: ELTE BTK Új- és Jelentkori Magyar Történeti Tanszék, 2014), 57–80Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Most other sports, such as swimming and fencing, did not enjoy the same professional status. This drastically decreased the chances of their athletes defecting from Hungary.

⁴² Tabi, ‘Futball és politika’, 64.

⁴³ They were both married to other people, and he had two children. XXI. Század, ‘Halál a szerelmért’, RTL Klub, http://rtl.hu/rtlklub/hirek/XXI_szazad/videok/314174, 8 Sept. 2010; Tabi, Futball és politika’, 64.

⁴⁴ ‘Szücs Sándor rny. fhdgy. Deák Ferenc rny. fhdgy, és Magyari Sándor rny. fdhgy. disszidálási ügye’, 3 Mar. 1951, P. 10–11, 3.1.9. V-71031, Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára, Budapest (ÁBTL).

⁴⁵ ‘Szücs Sándor’, 3 Mar. 1951, P. 6, ÁBTL, 3.1.9. V-71031.

⁴⁶ Norbert Tabi, ‘A Futballistaper: Szűcs Sándor válogatott labdarúgó kivégzésének története’, Rubicon: Történelmi Magazin, XXV, 262, (July 2014), 28–33, 31.

⁴⁷ Szűcs was tried in an accelerated procedure by the military court, with soldiers standing along the corridor. XXI. Század, ‘Halál a szerelmért’.

⁴⁸ XXI. Század, ‘Halál a szerelmért’; Miklós Fejér, interview with the author and Péter Galambos, 4 June 2015, Budapest, Hungary.

⁴⁹ The additional penalty never appeared in the Magyar Közlony, which informed the public about changes to the Hungarian penal code. The prosecution found evidence of Szűcs's signature on forms that acknowledged his understanding of these laws. Tabi, ‘Futballistaper’, 31.

⁵⁰ XXI. Század, ‘Halál a szerelmért’.

⁵¹ Tabi, ‘Futballistaper’, 33.

⁵² Blutstein, Harry, Cold War Games: Spies, Subterfuge and Secret Operations at the 1956 Olympic Games (Melbourne: Echo Publishing, 2017), 55–6Google Scholar.

⁵³ Several swimmers and a cyclist were shot at while attempting to defect in August 1956, although it is not clear if the authorities knew that they were athletes. L. Rab, ‘A társait szitává lőtték, a Magyar úszótehetség túlélte az ugató halált’, 21 Aug. 2016, available at http://nol.hu/kultura/a-tarsait-szitava-lottek-a-magyar-uszotehetseg-tulelte-az-ugato-halalt-1628457 (last visited 24 Nov. 2017).

⁵⁴ ‘A forradalom vértanúinak szellemében’, Magyar Népsport, 1 Nov. 1956, 1.

⁵⁵ Their goal was to find them homes in the United States, utilise their expertise to improve US sport and benefit from the Cold War propaganda. See Toby Rider, Cold War. Interestingly, all of the four Romanian players who defected were of Hungarian ethnicity and from the Transylvanian region of Romania.

⁵⁶ Blutstein, Spies, 197, 219.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 197.

⁵⁸ Dániel Magay, interview with the author, 11 Mar. 2019, Cupertino, CA.

⁵⁹ Nick (Miklós) Martin, interview with the author and Toby Rider, 6 Nov. 2017, Pasadena, CA.

⁶⁰ A. Ághassi, ‘Egy elmaradt kézfogás törte ketté az életét’, 19 Aug. 2006, available at http://index.hu/sport/2006/08/19/060816bg/, (last visited 18 June 2017); Lídia Sákovics, interview with the author, 1 Apr. 2015, Budapest, Hungary.

⁶¹ László Tábori, interview with the author and Toby Rider, 5 Nov. 2017, Los Angeles, CA.

⁶² Fédération Internationale de Football Association to National Associations, ‘Information to the National Associations Affiliated to FIFA – Transfer of Hungarian refugee footballers’, 17 July 1957, Fédération Internationale de Football Association Archives (FA), Zurich.

⁶³ Minutes of the FIFA Emergency Committee Meeting, London, 13 Oct. 1957, P. 2–3, FA.

⁶⁴ On the experiences and legacies of two sporting defectors, see Mellis, ‘Cold War Politics’.

⁶⁵ In comparison, more than 10 per cent of the Hungarians who left the nation after 1956 returned in 1957. Kende, ‘Mi történt’, 9.

⁶⁶ Operation Eagle was the mission to resettle athletes. Rider, Cold War, 122, 129.

⁶⁷ Interview with László Tábori; Interview with Nick Martin.

⁶⁸ On the concept of amateurism, see Llewellyn and Gleaves, Rise and Fall.

⁶⁹ For amateurism in the United States, see Turrini, Joseph, The End of Amateurism in American Track and Field (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ The International Fencing Federation did not allow Lidia Dömölky to compete at their championships because she and other athletes were ‘not without a homeland’ and ‘because on the basis of the Hungarian government's decree, they could go home’. János Soproni, ‘Új csillagok a tőrvivás egén’, NépSport, 19 Sept. 1957, 1; for more about citizenship, see Rider, Cold War.

⁷¹ Kő, András, László Tábori, A Biography: The Legendary Story of the Great Hungarian Runner (Sarasota: First Edition Design Publishing, 2015), 103Google Scholar.

⁷² See Jenifer Parks, Olympic Games.

⁷³ In the absence of concrete evidence, retribution seemed limited to requisitioning the apartments of the defectors, although family members could even remove the personal effects beforehand. This contrasts with the experience of athlete-defectors from East Germany. Kő, László Tábori, 93. See Braun, Jutta and Wiese, René, ‘“Tracksuit Traitors”: Eastern German Top Athletes on the Run’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 31, 12 (2014), 1519–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁴ This is demonstrated by the International Fencing Federation's support for Hungary in not allowing Dömölky to compete at their championships for the United States. Soproni, ‘Új csillagok’.

⁷⁵ ‘Hat hónap után ismét a Sportuszodában’, NépSport, 17 May 1957, 2.

⁷⁶ B. Nagy, ‘Kádas Géza, a gyorsúszóből lett példakép’, 6 July 2012, available at http://m.heol.hu/heves/sport/kadas-geza-a-gyorsuszobol-lett-peldakep-450770, (last visited 20 Dec. 2016).

⁷⁷ Nagy, ‘Kádas Géza’.

⁷⁸ Tőkés, Rudolf, Hungary's Negotiated Revolution: Economic Reform, Social Change, and Political Succession, 1957–1990 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 14Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ ‘Gyarmati's Story’, Sports’ Illustrated.

⁸⁰ ‘Kádas Géza sporttársnak’, 31 May 1957, folder 1957 Uszás, 105 box, XIX-I-14-a, Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltár, Budapest (hereafter MNL OL).

⁸¹ Parks, Olympic Games, xiii.

⁸² Sällfors met with Hegyi several times in June–July 1957, but there is no indication that they discussed Kádas. ‘Bárány István urnak’, 5 July 1957, folder 1957 Uszás, box 105, XIX-I-14-a, MNL OL.

⁸³ See especially Llewellyn and Gleaves, Rise and Fall.

⁸⁴ Rainer, János, ‘The Reprisals’, New Hungarian Quarterly, 33, 127 (1992), 118–27, 122Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Nagy, ‘Kádas Géza’..

⁸⁶ For some examples of scholarly work on organisations outside of the IOC that struggled to adjust to Cold War politics and maintain institutional legitimacy, see Cervin, Georgia, Nicolas, Claire, Dufraisse, Sylvain, Bohuon, Anaïs and Quin, Grégory, ‘Gymnastics’ Centre of Gravity: The Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique, Its Governance and the Cold War, 1956–1976’, Sport in History, 37, 3 (2017), 309–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Philippe Vonnard and Kevin Marston, ‘Building Bridges Between Separated Europeans: The Roel of UEFA's competitions in East-West Exchanges (1955–1964)’, in Vonnard, Sbetti, and Quin, eds., Beyond Boycotts, 84–108.

⁸⁷ Blutstein, Spies, 55.

⁸⁸ He says he helped pull down a large red star from a building and build a barricade in Budapest. Peterdi, Pál, Gyarmati sors, avagy egy bal kéz története, (Lakitelek: Antológia Kiadó: 2007), 118Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ The Committee's purpose was to determine how to compete and act at the Olympics. Peterdi, Gyarmati sors, 121.

⁹⁰ Peterdi, Gyarmati sors, 121.

⁹¹ I thank Harry Blutstein for sharing this evidence with me. The report says that the Soviet players told this to the Yugoslav players, who then reported it to the Hungarian players. ‘Olympic Games Soviet State Security Colonel to Whom Hungarian State Security Officer(s) Report’, 3 Dec. 1956, XVI Olympiad Melbourne 1956 Counter Espionage Targets (TS), A6122, 2776, National Archives of Australia, Canberra (hereafter NAOA).

⁹² Peterdi, Gyarmati sors, 123, 133.

⁹³ Ibid., 133.

⁹⁴ Székely, Éva, Sírni csak a győztesnek szabad! Tények és Tanúk (Budapest: Magvető Kiadó, 1982), 76Google Scholar.

⁹⁵ ‘Itt Tódor beszék a Sportuszodából’ Sport, 24 Feb. 1957, 4.

⁹⁶ ‘Gyarmati's Story’, Sports’ Illustrated.

⁹⁷ See Saunders, Frances Stoner, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta Books, 1999)Google Scholar; Rider, Cold War Games, 112–3.

⁹⁸ Peterdi, Gyarmati sors, 140.

⁹⁹ Curtis Brooks to Dezső Gyarmati, 31 Mar. 1958; cited from Peterdi, Gyarmati sors, 176.

¹⁰⁰ Peterdi, Gyarmati sors, 151.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 155.

¹⁰² ‘Az MTST’, NépSport.

¹⁰³ Ibid.

¹⁰⁴ Gyarmati faced difficulty finding a team that would accept him, probably due to the stigma around his punishment. Novelist and water polo player Ferenc Karinthy thought to contact József Sándor, a high-ranking party member on the Central Committee, about the issue, through Sándor's masseuse at the pool. The plan worked. Peterdi, Gyarmati sors, 160.

¹⁰⁵ ‘Kijelölte’, NépSport.

¹⁰⁶ ‘Jelentés: a Politikai bizottságnak a testnevelési és sportmozgalom helyzetéről’, 30 Dec. 1958, Imre Terényi, Adminisztrativ Osztály, M-KS 288.30-1958-17 ő.e., MNL OL.

¹⁰⁷ The 2016 unveiling of coach László Kiss's criminal past could besmirch their reputations. As of yet, it has not appeared to so do.

¹⁰⁸ ‘A római olimpia tapasztalatainak mélyreható elemzése és felhasználása újabb előrelendítője less egész sportéletünk fejlődésének’, NépSport, 23 Sept. 1960, 1.

¹⁰⁹ ed., Craig Lord, Aquatics 1908–2008: 100 Years of Excellent in Sport (Lausanne: FINA, 2008), 110Google Scholar.

¹¹⁰ Alena Ledeneva mentions the continued usefulness of connections and blat in the post-socialist era in her seminal work on the topic. See Ledeneva, Russia's Economy of Favours, 4–5. Although there are numerous factors that can influence the development of successful athletes, some of the important possible factors that relate to the parents' socio-economic and cultural background include the athletes' preconditions (coaching resources, training, facilities and finances) and their ability to acquire the necessary psycho-social competencies (sport knowledge and connections). This is similar to academia and other elite milieus. Henriksen, Kristoffer, Stambulova, Natalia and Roessler, Kirsten Kaya, ‘Holistic Approach to Athletic Talent Development Environments: A Successful Sailing Milieu’, Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 11, 3 (2010), 212–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 214.

¹¹¹ ‘Interview with Lídia Sákovics.

¹¹² Kende, ‘Mi történt’, 14.

¹¹³ Majtényi, ‘What made the Kádár Era?’, 675.

¹¹⁴ Interview with Attila Császári.