Local Circassian reactions to the 2014 Sochi Olympic Winter Games

Abstract

This paper illustrates how a mega-sports event such as the Sochi Olympics can generate renewed spaces for production of knowledge and counter-branding for marginalized groups. As the indigenous people of the area, the Circassians in different ways, locally and transnationally, used the 2014 Sochi Olympics to promote greater knowledge of local Circassian history. Such knowledge was for many decades suppressed, during the Soviet period as well as afterwards, in the Russian Federation. This paper discusses cases of Circassian counter-branding of local history that were observed in connection with the Sochi Olympics and in opposition to the Russian Olympics project. The paper contends that the processes of counter-branding made visible local indigenous knowledge that even the authorities in Sochi have gradually come to accept.