Video: 'The 1980 Moscow Olympics Boycott | Flashback | NBC News'

(Saturday, July 19, 1980, 4:00 p.m. Moscow Standard Time; during the 1980 Summer Olympics boycott) — Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev opened the XXII Olympic Games today at Central Lenin Stadium in a ceremony ringed in by tens of thousands of uniformed soldiers and policemen and marred by the boycott by the United States and scores of other countries protesting Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan.

The Soviets had invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 to bolster the country’s pro-Soviet regime against Islamic insurgents.

Sixty-five countries that were invited to the 1980 Olympics, including the United States, Canada, Japan, Israel, West Germany and China, did not participate for various reasons.

Another sixteen nations participated in the Games under some adjustment to full conventional participation in the Games activities.