Alexander Larin, Co-founder. Sports Context, General Secretary of Ukraine’s Basketball Federation (2011-2015), Vice-Minister of Sports (2010)

 

The ways and pace of the Ukrainian sport system reformation can be discussed indefinitely. However, in order to achieve some tangible changes, the people in charge must be guided by two criteria. First, they have to appreciate the depth of the gap between the Soviet system existing in Ukraine and the one determining the sport development in Europe. Second, the ambitions of these people in charge must be adequate to their intellectual capacity. If this capacity is insufficient to launch reforms, then other people should be enabled to do that. The participation of representatives of the Ministry for Youth and Sport Affairs in the visionary event of the Coalition for Reanimation Reforms Package “Vision of Ukraine 2030” offered a unique opportunity to explore the outlook and capacity of the Ministry’s top officials. The vision of the Ukrainian sport as articulated by Vice Minister Matvey Bidnyi perfectly describes the agency’s take on sport which they are called to cater for: it is exactly the Ministry that coaches athletes, develops sport federations and is authorized to evaluate “the extent to which this or that non-governmental organization effectively fulfills the public mission delegated to it.” As it turned out, the Vice Minister does not understand that his idea of the governmental functions in the sport domain runs counter to the international principles of the sport’s autonomy, contradicts the Olympic Charter and appears to be an outright interference of the government in NGOs operation which is explicitly prohibited even by Ukrainian laws. The Sport Ministry’s leadership fails to comprehend their state function: it is supposed to create conditions for promoting sport instead of performing operational management of sport as if it is just a giant children’s sport school. Their approaches to addressing problems in sport reveals the striking contrast between their ambitions and the real world circumstances while all of their aspirations are ultimately confined to purely Soviet show-off goals, like building a mammoth-size facility or holding Olympics or a championship while a freshly painted pull-bar is presented as a hallmark infrastructure achievement.

What makes sport unique and different from other sectors is the fact that sport is integrated into the international system and is tightly attached to its ‘coordinates system’. We cannot play basketball with a cubic-shaped ball explaining it as a national specifics. It will not be basketball and all we can expect is the recognition of a new sport discipline. Once again: it will not be basketball even if the Ministry issues a decree on local specifics of this kind of sport. Our problem ensues from the fact that the international sport elements (sport federations, National Olympic Committee) were from the outset established as a nice gift wrapper which the Soviet Union was selling to the outer world. Alongside that, the system of relations between and management of the elements within this wrapper effectively features quite different content and in essence mirror the sport system existing in the Russian Federation. Sport organizations are limited in their capacity to act independently of the state power agencies and are deprived of freedom to make decision associated with sport promotion and management. The way the law requires, forming national teams, appointing coaches and official delegations, setting events venues and timeframes is impossible without the approval from the Sport Ministry. The lion’s share of the Ministry’s intellectual and organizational resources is channeled to drafting, approving and amending decrees for which the modern civilized sport management system there is no room whatsoever. During 2022 alone, the Ministry issued 3,144 documents of this kind each of which required signatures of 10-11 persons within the Ministry plus another 20-25 signatures in its subordinate institution Ukrsportobespechenie (whose annual operational budget equals 70 million UAH of taxpayers’ money).

Launching the Sport Context organization, we pursued the following key objective: federations heads, coaches, athletes must clearly embrace the environment they operate in and understand what can be done in different ways. As we start explaining to federations executives and to coaches how things work and how they are supposed to work to make it right in Ukraine, people discover stunning facts. For instance, a coach and an athlete are not under an obligation to obtain an approval from state bureaucrats while choosing a venue for the training or a swimming pool’s depth, nor should they be required to justify their right to rehabilitation procedures after the competitions. It also comes as a surprise to find out that no ministry appoints or approves a top official at NHL, nominates an NBA coach and prescribes to them how and where trainings should be held. It is really amazing to see that most of our sport executives talking to their peers from other countries fail to extrapolate their circumstances upon our reality.

And by the way, was there at least one instance when a coach of Ukraine’s national football team was appointed by the Ministry of Sport? The thing is that because of the unique position of this sport worldwide, the Football Federation of Ukraine enjoys enormous financial support and its financial autonomy from the Ministry of Sport transforms into its factual autonomy.

The situation with most of other federations is unfortunately quite different. Given the economic circumstances in the country plus the condition of the market which barely existed even before the war, the state budget becomes the vital source of funding of almost all federations. This true for at least the highest achievements sports and for the nation al teams. The Ministry successfully uses this situation to manipulate with its dominance and keeps the federations on a short leash forcing the federations to make the organizational and cadre decisions convenient for the agency. More so, a whole class of sport bureaucrats has been formed within federations who are absolutely happy with this arrangement with the Ministry.

Here is how it appears to laymen: the Ministry (the minister, vice minister, department head) allots funding. However, in reality this funding is provided by the budget. A formula exists whereby this funding is distributed between sports based on the total volume of sport financing and the federations’ ‘medal performance’, i.e. with account for the number of medals won during the 4-year Olympic cycle. In this process, the Ministry does not have any impact-making function except for its manipulative modus operandi. After all, this or that sport (the federation, athletes, coaches and the whole team involved in preparation and winning the awards) has earned this funding while the Ministry’s job is to create conditions allowing sports to evolve and to promote constructive competition between the evolving sports. However, the only thing the acting bosses are capable of is creating an environment they can control. And inasmuch as it contradicts the principles of international and commonly accepted sport system, all they can do is to imitate management and they will be fighting till the last drop of ink and blood to prove that this system must exist on. In reality though, this system is nothing other than a tumor, a merely Soviet rudiment.

A separate question needs to be addressed to today’s Minister of Sport. After all, he used to be a sportsman, a coach, a federation head and he is definitely aware of the extent to which these rudiments of the Soviet system deviate from the civilized world’s principles. A conclusion can be made that he is leading sport into the abyss of the Soviet system based on his personal persuasions. And as long as these persuasions are parallel to the bureaucrats’ love of money and of suppressing and humiliating professionals, it becomes a pleasant coincidence for them.

Today, the reminiscences of the ‘big brother’ cause nothing but disgust. The Soviet system exactly mirrors the Ministry’s behavior vis-à-vis sport organizations as that of a ‘big chief and teacher’. Our failure to distance at least a step away from the Soviet system is persuasively illustrated by the approval by Russia’s State Duma of a law of integration of Ukraine’s occupied territories into the Russian Federation’s sport system whereby all sport elements of the invaded regions are supposed to fit into the Russian system as bits of a puzzle. It would have never worked with any of the Baltic states in which the sport system has irreversibly distanced from the Soviet one.

Surgeries on cancer tumors are preceded by precise embracing of symptoms, tests, diagnostics and decision making. However, at this time, the focus of attention of opinion leaders and expert community is set not on sport but on other organs featuring a consensus on their problematics. The invariability of the Soviet system in Ukraine and in its sport system was obviously being sustained by a ‘genius collective PR manager’ that made the whole nation believe in two things: first, that this system is so peculiar that no one other than the current functionaries can sort it out. The nation has been convinced that there is no money in sport and that there is nothing requiring public attention. This is why no one ever tries to realize that there is a huge stream of unaccounted and uncontrolled monies flowing within the system. No investigator would undertake a probe into the volumes of property and assets of sport clubs, children’s sport schools and stadiums converted into commercial centers or transferred for civil construction and development projects, into sales of sport facilities for mixed capitals.

Let us be realistic: the de-sovietization of the sport system requires political will and professional competencies. However, politicians capable of making it happen will be rewarded with a remarkable advantage: they will be able to move up the hierarchy of the international community with an undisputed proof of their commitment to the European values and their political impact on large-scale processes.