Fencing: How the Smirnov Incident Represented a Decline in the Soviet Union during the Late Cold War

Summary

For a significant portion of the Cold War, the Soviet Union quickly rose to power within the sphere of international fencing, regularly placing their fencers on podiums at World Championships and Olympic Games alike. This winning streak ended at the 1982 World Championships when 1980 Olympic gold medal foil fencer Vladimir Smirnov of the Soviet Union died in the middle of the finals for the men’s foil fencing team event. While Smirnov was fencing his opponent, the opponent’s blade broke. The shard pierced the mesh of Smirnov’s mask, then his eye, and then his brain. This death, which shocked the fencing world, spurred on advocacy for equipment reform in the sport of fencing. These equipment reforms ranged from having the metal mesh of masks being made of fiberglass, to changing the metal used to manufacture blades. This public death not only sparked the need for changes in equipment but also coincided with Leonid Brezhnev’s death and the short reigns of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. The Soviet Union paid little attention to this tragedy, despite this death happening to one of their top fencers, instead, focusing their energy on training for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The LA Games were not only an opportunity for the Soviet Union to redeem themselves from Smirnov’s death by winning Olympic medals, but they were also expected to supply electric scoring equipment for the fencing events, much to the chagrin of United States fencing manufacturers. However, due to a government decision by the Soviet Union to boycott the Los Angeles Games (in retaliation against the United States boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics) the Soviet fencing team never got the chance to redeem themselves.