# Friendship Games **Domain:** Cold War / Parallel institutions **Doc Type:** Developed Event Node **Maturity:** Developed **Collection:** [[collections/Gamification|Gamification Collection]] ## Definition The **Friendship Games**, formally *Friendship-84*, were a series of international competitions hosted in 1984 by the Soviet Union and other states whose teams did not attend the Los Angeles Olympics. They offered elite competition outside the Olympic event from which those delegations had withdrawn. ## Significance Friendship-84 is a model of institutional fork. When actors reject or are absent from a common tournament, they may not abandon competition; they may reproduce its events, scoring, prestige, and internationalism under a rival administrative frame. The case therefore connects boycott to splinter league, alternative legitimacy, and order succession. The Friendship Games were not identical to the Olympics and should not be treated as a simple replacement. Their meaning depended on the very Olympic system they contested. ## Sources - Wilson Center Digital Archive, [Soviet boycott of the 1984 Olympic Games](https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/topics/soviet-boycott-1984-olympic-games) - Olympedia, [Friendship Games](https://www.olympedia.org/competitions/863) ## Routes [[wiki/1984 Soviet Olympic Boycott|1984 Soviet Olympic Boycott]] · [[wiki/1980 Moscow Olympic Boycott|1980 Moscow Olympic Boycott]] · [[wiki/Non-Substitutability|Non-Substitutability]] · [[wiki/Western Order Succession|Western Order Succession]]