Through 1988, athletes from within the borders of the USSR competed for the USSR. In 1992, for both the Winter and Summer Olympics, there was a "Unified Team" of athletes from Russia and a set of the newly independent republics.

One of the most famous demonstrations of the significance of a USSR team, at least from an American point of view, is probably men's hockey at Lake Placid in 1980. The U.S. team defeated the USSR in a fairly substantial upset in the semifinals and went on to win the gold medal. Occuring in the same year as the U.S. wholesale boycott of the Moscow-hosted Summer Olympics, you could say this rivalry and game put the "cold" in Cold War.

Eastern Bloc European countries and countries elsewhere with Communist governments, like North Korea and Angola, competed separately from the USSR. However, most of them did join the USSR's subsequent boycott of the Los Angeles-hosted 1984 Summer games.