Jenifer Parks

Ph.D. Student
Parksjl@email.unc.edu

Major Field: Russian and East European History

Other Fields: Soviet History, the Olympics

Advisor: Donald J. Raleigh

Research Interests: Entitled "Red Sport, Red Tape: Sports Bureaucracy, the Olympic Games, and Political Practices in the Soviet Union, 1952-1980," my dissertation examines mid-level, bureaucratic decision-making and implementation in the Soviet Union, by conducting a case study of political practices within the Soviet sports bureaucracy. Using Soviet participation in the Olympic Games as a lens through which to view decision making and implementation in the Soviet Union, my study seeks to shed light on the Soviet sports administration and the role sportsmen-bureaucrats played in the Soviet Union's participation in the Olympic Games. By looking at how informal networks and rational-legal bureaucratic forms interacted within the Soviet sports apparatus, I seek to understand the ways in which Soviet sports bureaucrats—working within a party-state apparatus that has often been viewed as increasingly corrupt, swollen, and stagnant—responded to the conflicting sets of expectations surrounding the Olympic project.