Some Russians lament that their Olympic athletes have been stripped of national flag and anthem. Even the competitors' uniforms are bare of insignias.
"The team of champions . . . doesn't even have a name," noted Komsomolskaya Pravda commentators N. Dolgopolov and V. Kozin. "Our official name is the `Unified Team.' This nonsense is even on the press cards of accredited journalists.""Unified Team of what? The Arab Emirates?" they hissed.
As they have in previous Olympics, TV commentators and the millions of Russians following this month's Winter Games refer to the skaters, skiers and sledders now competing in France simply as "our team."
Still, Muscovites interviewed Wednesday bemoaned the loss of national symbols for their athletes. The team representing the infant Commonwealth of Independent States in Albertville is competing under the Olympic flag and anthem.
"My wife is disgusted with the absence of the flag," said Konstantin Voitsekhovich, an editor at the ITAR-Tass news agency. "She says they should have created some sort of new flag. I'm happy as long as they win."
Nikolai Mikhayev, a 73-year-old sports fan born the year after the Bolshevik Revolution, said "there should at least be a Russian anthem."
He wanted to see competition between Russia and other members of the commonwealth, such as Ukraine. Others, however, said the team should be united the way it was before the Soviet breakup.
"It's better to be together. Ukraine has a lot of good athletes," said Sasha Naida, 31.
Others consider the loss of country identification as positive.
"These are the first `civilized' Olympics in our history," columnist Yevgeny Bilkis wrote in the respected Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
With the Soviet breakup, athletes are no longer compelled to uphold Soviet socialism before the rest of the world, Bilkis wrote.
In the past, the prodigious achievements of Soviet athletes were glorified as proof of the superiority of the Communist system. In the worst of times, defeat was not tolerated.
"Stars of previous Olympics understood what happened in the case of defeat," Bilkis wrote.
"In the time of Stalin, it meant social ostracism, if not prison; in the time of Brezhnev, bitterness and shame for moral humiliation of our great country."
He pointed to the example of figure skaters Artur Dmitriev and Natasha Mishkutienok, who last week won the gold medal in the pairs competition - the eighth-straight Olympic victory for skaters turned out by the Soviet sports machine.
Had they lost, Bilkis wrote, "it would have affected only them, their coaches who trained them, and the fans. No one - except for a madman - would consider this to be an event of state importance."