I'm not a professional historian, but I'm a big sports fan, and I'm Russian, so I have access to some sources that might not have been translated into English.

First of all, the Olympics were supposed to show the best of USSR and to become the triumph of socialism, so the level of attention to the details was high. As A.Prokhorov explains in his book "Russian model of management", in Soviet times, many parts of the management structure were doubled by Communist party committees, which helped to reduce some downsides and strenghten the control. In Sochi, Russia doesn't have this "back-up management system".

The stadiums, etc. were completed just in time.

В марте 1980 года оргкомитет докладывал в ЦК: "По состоянию на 1 марта т. г. из 97 олимпийских объектов введено в эксплуатацию 48 объектов и 8 пусковых комплексов".

As for March, 1st, 1980, 48 out of 97 objects were put into operation. (The Olympics started on July, 19). However, the works were finished just in time.

It's worth noting that from July, 15 to August, 15 no official conferences, events, etc. were held in Moscow, the domestic tourism was put on hold, school and university students were sent to other regions to pioneer camps, sports camps, etc. source

Specially for the Olympics, new food and drinks were introduced in Moscow, Pepsi and Coca-Cola signed the agreements with the Soviet government, so their products were sold in Moscow before and during the Olympics, which was unheard of (sorry, no official source for that). I hope it gives some perspective to the attention to details on every level.

To sum up, the works were completed just in time, the expenses exceeded the planned amount (see here and here. According to different sources, the Olympics were a financial disaster and became one of the reasons of the fall of the Soviet economy, although I find it sensationalist and will wait for others to clarify the matter and to provide additional sources. Strict control from the Communist party helped overcome many problems that Sochi is facing right now, although the participants remember losses and theft anyways. Many Russian athletes and journalists took part in 1980 Olympics and will visit Sochi 2014, so I think we should wait until the end of the Olympics to get a detailed and unbiased comparison.

This question is getting a lot of traffic after being tweeted by @reddit, so I thought I'd welcome those of you that haven't visited /r/AskHistorians before to the subreddit.

Please do bear in mind that in order to keep the quality of answers here high we have strict rules on comments that are actively enforced by the moderators. We don't want to stifle discussion, but remember that:

• Answers must be informed, detailed and backed up by historical sources. This applies to all top level comments (direct replies to the original post) as well as responses to follow-up questions.

• All other comments must be on-topic and historical, i.e. the current olympics and political discussions about the pros and cons of socialism are both off-limits and will be deleted.

Otherwise, feel free to add answers, expand on existing answers or ask follow-up questions, and we hope you'll stick around!

a better question would be, do all Olympics suffer from these issues, or is there a hyperbole at work?

Follow up, what about the 1984 Sarajevo games?

Fantastic question! It would be interesting to get the perspective of people who were there. Beyond that, let's look at the Soviet Union at that time. My favorite Soviet Historian - Ronald Suny - calls the Brezhnev era "highly dynamic and slowly decaying". The seminal book on this thesis is Seweryn Bailer's The Soviet Paradox: External Expansion Internal Decline.

This era is rather rich culturally with art and film, so it makes sense that such cultural and sport institutions could pull off a relatively efficient Olympic games. There was a lot of effort put to improve Soviet image in the world after the invasion of Afghanistan.

On another note, Sochi is not the same Russia as Moscow. Moscow is much more affluent than the Caucasus. Having lived in the Caucasus myself for a couple years, I can say it is a whole other world. The pictures of the difficulties do not surprise me at all, given that most construction contracts are given out corruptly and done without effort.

There was a black market during the Soviet Union, but not in large sectors of the economy like there is today (Think someone getting rich of the gradual markup of walnuts over a long period of time).

tl:dr No, Moscow 1980 was in a different world, different time, and under a different system. It doesn't mean it didn't have its own problems though.

To some people, the biggest thing WAS the boycott. Sixty-two countries boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Then the socialist countries boycotted the U.S. the next Olympic year. By the way, there are numerous controversies, protests and bans for something or other each Olympic year. For example, South Africa was banned from participating in the Olympics for about 30 years over apartheid. If whole countries are boycotting, or your country is banned (not to pick on any one country), it doesn't matter if things were finished on time and human rights abuses and animal abuses have been eliminated. And plenty of countries have trouble getting prepared to host the Olympics on time.

Wait what? The 1980 Winter Olympics were held in Lake Placid, NY. Am I missing something?