The Emergence of Soviet Sports
MORTON, HENRY W.
Under the Parry's guidance, the last 10 years have seen THE EMERGENCE OF SOVIET SPORTS By Henry W. Morton ONLY A DECADE ago Soviet athletes were an unknown quantity. Today they rule the...
...Despite recent reductions in the Soviet armed forces there has been no indication that corollary de-emphasis in the military application of sports is taking place...
...Every Soviet sports triumph is pictured as yet another proof of the superiority of the Soviet system over the decadence of the West...
...Party slogans since the 1930s have demanded of Soviet athletes that they beat bourgeois sports records...
...Soviet sports successes gained abroad are even more important for domestic considerations...
...The sports program is of heroic proportions...
...In 1959 the Committee was dissolved on Party orders only to be transformed (with some minor changes) into the USSR Union of Sport Societies and Organizations, ostensibly with a democratically elected leadership...
...Sports are used by the Party as a lever of social control, offering the Soviet regime a wonderful opportunity to exploit genuine enthusiasm and at the same time channel leisure-time activity toward Party-inspired goals...
...Soviet writers claim that sports participation (as everything else) should nurture positive character trails: a spirit of collectivism, courage, will power, the determination to win, patience, endurance and discipline...
...The drive's slogan, "One Plus Two," signifies that every physical culturist is expected to enlist at least two persons into the physical culture movement...
...PARTY LEADERS realize that with more leisure time available, and with a radical reduction of working hours planned (the Seven Year Plan calls for a 30-35 hour week by 1965), it will be more difficult to control and channel the activities of millions...
...Because sports, viewed through Red lenses, have attained new qualities non-existent in other historical periods...
...Republics, provinces, districts and cities have to meet specific membership and proficiency goals...
...Throughout the year the broadcasting day begins with the announcer cheerily calling out morning exercises...
...The present Seven Year Plan calls for 50 million sportsmen by 1965 (there are approximately 24 million at present), 30 thousand "Masters of Sport" (there were 13,520 as of January 1, 1959), and 17 million athletes who will have achieved one of the six sports categories below the master level...
...The Committee was in fact a complex ministry responsible for the over-all direction, planning and financing of sport...
...of play determine division championships in soccer, hockey and basketball...
...Russian athletes are portrayed as active champions of peace and friendship, generously received by people of foreign nations, who are spreading good will and strengthening cultural ties...
...These two basic aims have been combined since 1931 in a mass physical fitness program appropriately called "Ready for Work and Defense" (Gotove k Trudu i Oborone, or GTO...
...Subsequent sports triumphs have given the Soviet Union much favorable publicity and have inflated Soviet prestige abroad...
...After many years of preparation the Soviet sports machine was ready to challenge the world's top athletes...
...In addition to providing a mass physical culture base, the primary purpose of the GTO system is to attract those who are physically able to participate in a program designed to provide Soviet leadership with soldier-workers, militarily trained and in glowing health...
...This contention has remained more myth than reality...
...It was a Central Committee resolution of December 1948, however, which launched the Russian sport offensive of the 1950s...
...Sports participation and events are under strict Party supervision...
...Soccer is Russia's most popular spectator sport...
...This is probably one of the reasons behind the most recent drive to enlist many more workers in sports societies under Party control...
...In accordance with the Marxian imperative, Soviet physical culture and sports are to play an important part in forming the "New Soviet Man...
...More important to the Party is enlisting millions into active sports participation...
...In a society that does not yet provide a great variety of recreational facilities, sports are truly all-pervasive...
...THE SOVIET SPORTS program, which dates back to the early years of the Revolution (there was little sports activity under the Tsar) has always been conducted under Party auspices and control...
...Spectator sports are only one aspect of the total sports program...
...All the evil features of bourgeois sports (diverting the worker from the class struggle, arousing base instincts, developing undesirable traits: egoism, individualism, chauvinism, etc...
...And a unique program, on-the-job-calisthenics, is a device typical of the Party's utilitarian attitude, to improve labor productivity...
...Since its inception, more than 50 million persons have successfully mastered the GTO requirements...
...National championships are held in 46 different sports (from track and field to gliding) and leagues graded according to caliber HENRY W. MORTON teaches in the political science department at Queens College and has written for Soviet Survey and Problems of Communism...
...Development of physical culture also figures prominently in two major concerns of the Party: heightening labor productivity and military preparedness...
...For example, when Khrushchev reorganized Soviet industry in 1957, trade union sports societies—previously organized along industrial trade union lines— were reorganized to conform to the territorial principle...
...Soviet sports are beset with undesirable problems and practices found elsewhere, rampant professionalism, preferential treatment of gifted athletes and low sports ethics ranging from malicious roughness on the playing field to the fixing of games...
...Until 1959 sports were conducted by the Ail-Union Committee of Physical Culture and Sports attached to the USSR Council of Ministers...
...Sports excite strong feelings, and support for a Soviet team in international competition arouses strong sentiments of national pride and a sense of satisfaction that in this area Russia no longer has to take second place to the West...
...Spontaneous organization of sports groups is impossible...
...As a further stimulus, in winter skating surfaces in cities are provided by frozen flooded pathways in parks and near large stadia...
...The Premier's reaction to sports is not atypical...
...have been negated and transformed into positive traits under Soviet rule...
...Russians are sports enthusiasts and their natural love for athletics, fostered by the Communist party, has now been "whipped into a tremendous national pastime...
...Nikita Khrushchev, some years ago, confessed to being an ardent soccer fan...
...An active recruitment drive is in progress which has as its minimal goal doubling the present sport membership...
...By systematically organizing sports exchanges with nations from all over the world, the Soviet Union has won valuable footholds of influence which have been exploited in every possible way to create a positive image of the Soviet Union and to influence foreigners to seek advantages in the Soviet system...
...The GTO system contains such test categories (for all divisions and both sexes) as grenade throwing for distance, rifle shooting for accuracy, cross-country skiing and the scaling of physical obstacles...
...These groups are set up under the specific rules of the sports administration and are affiliated either with trade union or non-trade union sports societies...
...The Party's goals in conducting sport on a mass scale differ from sports objectives as we know them in the West...
...Today they rule the international sports scene, having outdistanced the world's leading competitors in the last two Olympic games and having scored triumphs in numerous international sports competitions...
...Thus the Soviet citizen is encouraged to identify team loyalty with state loyalty...
...There are approximately 200,000 sports groups in factories, offices, collective and state farms, as well as in schools, labor reserve units, the armed forces and security police...
...The change has not affected Party control over sport, nor has it significantly altered the mode of administration, but it was an outcome of Khrushchev's statement, made at the 21st Soviet Party Congress in January 1959, that in certain areas the state might begin to wither away as some state agencies (sports were to be the first example) would be replaced by public organizations...
...Sport facilities are made available at a nominal membership fee...
...The Soviet sports program has always had specific political tasks assigned to it...
...From April to November, soccer is followed avidly by millions and it is not unusual to find six soccer games scheduled for different Moscow stadia on a summer Sunday...
...in summer, group hiking is encouraged and hundreds of tourist centers and camps are now being built...
...The Central Committee of the Communist party has issued four important resolutions on sports, the first in 1925, the latest in 1959, which have determined the character of Soviet sports...
...These were stated as early as 1925 in a Party resolution: "Physical culture must be considered not only from the point of view of physical training and health but should also be utilized as a means to rally the broad working masses around various Party, Government and trade union organizations through which the masses of workers and peasants are drawn into social and political life...
...Sports in the Soviet Union are subjected to detailed planning...
...Whenever a player kicks the ball," he said, "it is Khrushchev who kicks it, and whenever a player gets kicked in the shin, it is Khrushchev who gets kicked...
...Sports societies and their groups are formed according to prescribed "model statutes" and training and selection of sports cadres is supervised...
...Individuals are constantly urged to join physical culture groups and to engage in physical exercise...
...To understand the phenomenon of Russia's success it is necessary to examine the role of sports as part of the total Soviet environment and the impact it has made on Soviet society as well as on the outside world...
...Five million workers in 12,000 plants engage in periodic exercises during working hours to stimulate tired muscles...
...Gliding, parachute jumping and other "sports" having military value are greatly encouraged...
...Sports societies, through which most athletic activity is conducted, can be and have been abolished or restructured to serve Party purposes...
...There are approximately 25,000 soccer fields, 200,000 basketball and volleyball courts, 7,000 gyms, 2,200 ski centers and more than 50 indoor pools in the Soviet Union...
Vol. 43 • December 1960 • No. 47
