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Dramatic changes have occured in the every day life of Eastern Europe, in the world of sports as well as in politics: the breakdown of state top sports, the public attention to doping, the uncovering of deficiencies in "mass sports", the emigration of a professional sport elite...But when analyzing beneath the surface of the events, things are not so simple. Some very different and contradicting theses are possible.1. The change of systems: The Western world has won the cold war of sports, and a commercial sport system is being established with capitalist sponsorship, media market, sale and migration of professionals, etc.2. A delayed modernization: The Eastern countries are "underdeveloped" and now trying to catch up (in vain?) in the same way as Western sport did before them: Sport for all. An evolutionist interpretation.Both interpretations - dominating the public discourses today - ignore the fact that "the Western sports" is not monolithic either, but is also changing fundamentally since the 1960/70s:- Top sport is changing from the production of individual results towards a media circus, the putting on stage of a - often fascinating - show sport.- A commercial market of body culture is expanding, threatening the traditional system of club sports.- New alternative movement cultures have arisen, redefining - repractizing - the popular (in Nordic language: folkelig) grassroot aspect of sports.3. Therefore a third interpretation is obvious: Are the events happening in the East (and the West), rather a revolution of body culture? A fundamental change creating something structurally new that has never been seen before? In this perspective - and maybe only in this one - the Eastern European peoples have the chance of non-synchronicity. We learn today, that popular games in Georgia and Kazakhstan have not disappeared as they did in Denmark and West-Germany. The peoples of Eastern Europe and Soviet Asia can use an experience - of resistance, of change, of underground alternatives in sports - which they have, whilst the Western countries have not.Or have we, too? New problems are rising at the horizon of sports sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]