Girls Are Dreaming about the Stars: Women’s Gymnastics, Celebrity Making, and the Cold War

by Timur Mukhamatulin, Stuart Ramsay Tompkins Visiting Professor

Friday March 28, 3:30 PM - 5 PM
Tory 2-58, University of Alberta

Reception to follow – All are welcome!

In the 1970s, Soviet women’s gymnastics became a part of the Soviet cultural export on par with chess and classical ballet. Soviet athletes dominated the discipline winning world championships and the Olympics, but there was a new style they embodied that made Olga Korbut and later Nellie Kim global female celebrities. They not only made money for the USSR by participating in contests and shows in many countries but also served as the state’s cultural ambassadors. Surprisingly, the Soviet side did not focus on providing its own ideological agenda while promoting female gymnasts abroad but retreated to more conventional images. Still, Korbut and her peers’ path to world fame created a set of new, unexpected issues for the Soviet state, dealing with which complicates the existing narratives about the Cold War.   

Speaker's Bio:
Timur Mukhamatulin was born in Moscow. After receiving his BA in history, he combined historical research and a journalist job, covering post-Soviet sports. In 2013, Timur found a way to merge his two passions by becoming a sports historian. In 2016, he joined a grad program in history at Rutgers University (New Jersey, the US), and in 2023 he successfully defended the dissertation about Soviet women’s gymnastics and its complicated relations with Soviet gender order and normative visions of femininity. In 2024, Timur became a Stuart Ramsay Tomkins visiting professor at the University of Alberta. He is currently working on turning his dissertation into a book manuscript. His other research interests include several aspects of Soviet masculinity, the Soviet history of nationalities, and a history of Belarusian emigration in North America.