Russia and Central Asia in the CIS Multilateral Cooperation in Sport

This article aims to analyze Russia and its Central Asian partners' participation in the multilateral cooperation in sport in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The research is a part of an integrated study of the humanitarian cooperation between Russia and post-Soviet Central Asian countries: the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Republic of Tajikistan, the Republic of Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. In the CIS legislative and political practice, humanitarian cooperation, or people-to-people exchanges, includes partnership in such areas as culture, science, education, sport, tourism, youth policy, and media. Sport is an essential component of this cooperation, and the states pay more and more attention to interaction in this area. The cooperation is carried out at bilateral and multilateral levels. The latter is provided by the CIS. We consider the bilateral ties between Russia and each of post-Soviet Central Asian countries in a separate research, while this research covers the CIS format. We consequently study the institutions, the legal basis, the formats, and the practical implementation of cooperation throughout the recent decade, before the pandemic. The aim of the research is to define the structure of CIS formats for cooperation in sport, and how Russia and its Central Asian partners are involved in it. We have studied such sources as multilateral diplomatic documents, reports, plans, and other documents of the CIS institutions, and relevant online news archives of mass media. The article concludes that the CIS, as an intergovernmental organization, has formed a diverse structure of cooperation in sport, including a specialized institution (the CIS Council on Physical Education and Sport), a detailed legal basis and a large number of formats for multilateral exchanges: not only tournaments, but consultations, conferences, and legal ties as well. The study demonstrates the comprehensive approach of the organization towards multilateral ties in this area. Russia is not only presented in all cooperation formats, but actually is the organizer and the initiator of the majority of them. The representation and the involvement of Central Asian countries in the related CIS institutions, documents and formats of cooperation varies considerably. Among them, during the last decade, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan demonstrated the most active participation, while Turkmenistan has rejected the majority of formats, and sent its teams to a selected number of tournaments. Uzbekistan has also dismissed some formats, but gradually its participation has started to increase. The lesser number of events, organized by Central Asian countries, can be explained by the lesser national budgets; however, the reasons for dismissing the multilateral institutions are far more likely of a political character, namely the political priorities of closeness and neutrality.

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