INTERVIEWS AHEAD OF KRYNICA FORUM 2023

Robert Korzeniowski: People taking Western values seriously stood by the Ukrainian people

‘Our Ukrainian peers didn’t give up for a single moment, and Polish athletes, who used to compete with them numerous times, kept helping their rivals-cum-friends in a way that was very obvious to them and to all of us’ – says Robert Korzeniowski, four-time Olympic champion, three-time world champion in 50-km race walk, engaged in supporting Ukrainian sportspeople.

 
Is the world of Polish sports reacting to Russia’s atrocious aggression in Ukraine the right way?

We have at least two dimensions here: human and sporting. In either, the Western world was forced to face a very tough examination. I can say with full conviction that in both these dimensions Polish sportspeople are passing the exam with flying colours. In the first days after the Russian incursion, they reacted just as most Polish citizens did, that is trying, in a spirit of solidarity with the invaded nation, to help the victims – not only the sportspeople from Ukraine they were friends or acquaintances with, but simply all the people in need. Over the next days and weeks, this help took a more organised form. We’ve cemented were strong, friendly ties with Ukrainians and as we maintain wherever it’s needed the relief aid, we have been and are trying to help also on a purely sporting level, too, e.g. with organising training or tournament participation but also rebuilding the sports facilities, equipment and everything that’s needed.

Some Ukrainian sportspeople went to the front…

That’s true. Our Ukrainian peers didn’t give up for a single moment, and Polish athletes, who used to compete with them numerous times, kept helping their rivals-cum-friends in a way that was very obvious to them and to all of us. And we are talking here about sportspeople who are contestants, their coaches, all the rest of the sporting world alike.

At the same time, we have been put to another test: how to behave towards Russians.

Indeed. In our case, we had to take a stand very fast, in an extremely popular discipline to boot, namely in football: let’s recall that our players were to have a match against Russia on 24 March 2022 in the World Cup play-off semi-finals. The stand we took was unequivocal: Polish Football Association asserted that the white-and-red team would not participate in the match owing to the Russian aggression in Ukraine – even if it was to cost them the Qatar World Cup qualification.

The other semi-finalists – Swedes and Czechs – announced their boycott of the Russian team.

As we recall, due to this joint pressure FIFA punished Russia with a forfeit, and the match in Moscow didn’t come to pass. Our posture led to a strategic mental change. Please consider the fact that just a moment earlier every citizen and football fan thought about the showdown on the pitch against the Russians, and so did the players. And here we were, all of a sudden facing a moral challenge. As a result, people who took Western values seriously, mentally sided against Russia and stood by the Ukrainian people. Let’s also remember that the process of removing the Russians from the standard contests has been going on for some time, and in a sense we have all got used to them being for many reasons blackballed, subject to restrictions.

Because of a huge doping scandal, IOC allowed only those who hadn’t been sanctioned for using prohibited stimulants to take part in 2016 Games. As a result, except one person, no Russian athletics players came to Rio; part of their rowing, swimming, kayaking, pentathlon roster was missing as well.

Exactly; starting with Rio – however this sounds – we saw that depending on the sport, Russians are either missing or only allowed to compete provisionally. After the Russian aggression in Ukraine, the atmosphere around contestants from Russia soured a lot: hearing that our Ukrainian peers had to go to the front to defend their homeland, we, Polish sportspeople, considered it unimaginable to compete against the Russians at the sports grounds as if nothing happened.

But the West is neither uniform nor consistent in this approach.

Unfortunately, it isn’t. From the start, Russians have been trying to impose the rhetoric that politics is one thing, and sport is another. Their sportspeople sometimes show performative confusion that Ukrainians wouldn’t shake their hands; such a thing happened lately at the fencing championship. At the same time, Russian authorities succeeded in planting their own point of view about the war in Ukraine in many countries of the world. Swaths of societies share their views, other groups don’t openly reject them, others see ‘a dispute’, not entirely clear to them, so they don’t want to get involved. In fact, the group of states which openly share our – let’s put it under the umbrella of ‘Western’ – vision of the war, with all its consequences, is not big. From the IOC point of view, it’s made up of forty national representations at most.

Out of 205 affiliated with the IOC.

Precisely. The result is that the Russians start show up at more and more international competitions, with restrictions or limited, but they do. And then sportspeople from such states as Poland, so boycotting Russian participation for moral reasons, have a big problem: how to protest against the war to not be hurt in the process and be able to feel joy at competing and winning.

Does such hesitation work in the Russians’ favour?

Let me repeat: the posture of Polish sports was crystal clear from the word go, but even when the decision was made for the Polish football team to refuse to play in the play-offs against Russia, it took place after a long debate. The question was: if we don’t play, won’t we lose the World Cup spot, opening up the way for the players from the aggressor country? The unequivocal voices of past-era stars of Polish football proved crucial, especially that of Zbigniew Boniek, but also the current national team players thought it over quite fast and took a stand. Robert Lewandowski was accused of speaking out on the matter too late, but in my opinion the accusation was unfair – the situation surprised everyone and demanded a moment of very serious reflection.

The reflection also was and is needed because – let’s repeat – the conduct of the West and of federations for particular disciplines is incongruous and inconsistent. There is always concern that we’ll end up boycotting Russians alone…

We have sportspeople in our midst who right from the first day of war didn’t have a shred of doubt and knew at once what to do. The most notable example here is Iga Świątek, who used her string of spectacular successes to launch a moral offensive. From the start, she’s been upsetting the tennis world’s blissful business-as-usual attitude, reminding us that the competition she is part of, as are all players, is happening in the reality of war; at the same time, she is crystal clear in pointing who in this war is the innocent victim defending itself, and who is the aggressor. Unfortunately, Iga’s federation didn’t rise to the challenge, and from the very start Iga as a tennis player has been dealing with Russian presence in the tournaments, various forms of manifesting Russian so-called patriotism, and anti-Ukrainian provocations. Our WTA champion is protesting about it, the whole world can see this. I believe Iga is doing everything she should and it’s a very valuable, actually priceless thing.

A sports player should not shut themselves away in the world of sporting competition?

I believe everyone who climbed to the top in sports has a moral obligation to do something more than just collecting medals and cups or setting records. When stepping up to the podium, we receive a special social mandate. We can and should leverage it to voice and spread important values. Nowadays, one of such values is to communicate our dissent against the atrocious aggression and against whataboutism about this heinous war.

Russia is far from the only country whose government policies differ a lot from the Western standards. In Olympic competitions and at world championships we see many contestants from authoritarian, human rights abusing, sabre-rattling states… Isn’t it as opposed to the Olympics ideals as Berlin 1936?

You are confronting a very serious problem. The Russian aggression in Ukraine has reminded us, the Europeans most of all, about the values that for years we’ve kept under wraps. It compels us to react, to make a moral choice, difficult decisions and their justification in the court of public opinion. In such circumstances, what becomes more striking are the practices of the countries and governments that we, in the West, consider unethical or reprehensible. At the same time, we realise that for nations and societies which have different histories and sensibilities, a divergent approach to politics or geopolitical situation, what Russia is doing is OK, and what in our opinion is human rights violation is also OK.

And how will this translate into sports rivalry over the next years?

I’ve been a grown-up long enough to – sadly – be able to imagine some sort of ‘normalisation’ for Russian participation in events, including the major ones, like Olympic Games. Democracy is the rule of the majority while respecting the rights of the minority. Democracy in the globalised sports, most likely in the IOC as well, will function by letting the Russian players come back. An example is given by the sports that have already allowed them to compete. Maybe not with full entitlements and without the glamour Kremlin expects, but this is the first step. Such is the global business and such us the verdict of sports democracy, in which we, with our values, constitute a vocal and important minority, but a minority nevertheless. Of around 20 per cent.

Can we do anything about it? Is it so hard to make, e.g., Africans realise that in Ukraine Russia is the bad guy and the Ukrainian defenders are the good guy?

Ukraine is our neighbour, and our lives sort of depend on its struggle, so everything happening there is important, near, and mostly clear to us. But… you mentioned Africa. So let’s take Niger as an example, where a junta has recently mounted a coup and intends to drag the toppled, democratically elected president to the court for the alleged ‘high treason and undermining the state security’. In response, the members of the Economic Community of West African States imposed sanctions on Niger and threatened military intervention. And it’s worth knowing that, in the adjacent states of Mali and Burkina Faso, the authorities also rule following coups d’état, just as in Niger. And they are protesting against a possible intervention…

On the whole, the number of generals in power is rather big all over the world.

As is the number of governments with official power but no democratic mandate. Is an average Polish person able to say what is fair for Niger? Or Mali? No? Then why would an average African know what is fair in Ukraine?

Sad.

Yes. But I will say clearly and forcefully: this state of affairs does not absolve us of the duty to speak out our truth and abide by our value system. You have to have your ideals, your system of values. At the same time, this loyalty to the ideals cannot be tantamount to an idealism detached from the reality of the complex, globalised world. We thus need to very carefully and precisely engage in a balancing act to clearly show our dissent to evil, but do so effectively at the same time, so as not to fall victims to our idealism.

Robert Korzeniowski is going to take part in one of the Krynica Forum 2023 discussion panels: ‘The marathon of solidarity: How is the Polish sports world helping Ukraine?’