Sport in Soviet Society
Development of Sport and Physical Education in Russia and the USSR

This book examines the evolution of sport in Russia from its association with health and hygiene to its post-war purpose of raising Soviet prestige abroad.

James Riordan (Author)

9780521280235, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 June 1980

446 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.5 cm, 0.53 kg

The role and development of sport in Soviet society received little contemporary attention, in the West or in Russia. Although it was widely banned after the Russian Revolution, and viewed as a tool developed by the bourgeoisie for the training of body and mind during the rise of capitalism, the USSR was among the world's sporting powers. This 1977 book examines the evolution of sport in Russia from its early association with health and hygiene, through a period of functional association with labour and defence, to its post-war importance as a means of enhancing the prestige of Soviet communism abroad. The historical role of Soviet sport is followed from the considerable part that sport played during the period of rapid industrialisation, through its strange fate during the years of mass repression, to its emergence as a major institution after the Second World War.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The beginnings of an organised sports movement, 1861–1917
2. The ideological roots of Soviet physical education and sport
3. Militarisation of sport, 1917–1920
4. Years of physical culture. 1921–1929
5. Industrialisation and competitive sport, 1929–1941
6. World War II, 1941–1945: the supreme test of physical training
7. Restoration and consolidation, 1945–1958: aiming for world supremacy in sport
8. The later post-war years: urban life and leisure
9. Contemporary organisation of Soviet sport and physical education
10. Social aspects of sport: the military, peasants, nationalities, women and schoolchildren
11. Soviet sport and Soviet foreign policy
Conclusions
Appendix
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Sociology & anthropology [JH]