Sports and the Russian Revolution

  

"People will divide into" parties "over the question of a new giant canal or the distribution of oases in the Sahara (such a question will also exist), over the regulation of weather and climate, over a new theater, over chemical hypotheses, over two competing trends in music and over a best sports system. "

- Leon Trotsky, literature and revolution

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the sport had not flourished in Russia to the same extent as in countries such as Britain. The majority of the Russian population were peasants who spent hours every day on recurrent agricultural work. Leisure time was difficult to get past, and even then people were often exhausted from their work. Of course, people still played and participated in traditional games like lapta (similar to baseball) and gorodki (a bowling game). A bit of sports clubs existed in the larger cities, but they remained the preserve of the richer members of the community. Ice hockey began to grow in popularity, and the upper levels of society were fond of fencing and rowing using expensive equipment that most people would never have been able to afford.

In 1917, the Russian Revolution turned the world upside down and inspired millions of people with its vision of a society built on solidarity and the fulfillment of human needs. In the process, it unleashed an explosion of creativity in art, music, poetry and literature. It touched every area of ​​people's lives, including the games they played. However, sport was far from a priority. The Bolsheviks, who had led the revolution, were confronted with civil war, invading armies, widespread famine, and a typhus epidemic. Survival, not leisure, was the order of the day. But in the early 1920s, before the dreams of the revolution were shattered by Stalin, the debate over a "best sports system," as Trotsky had predicted, actually took place. Two of the groups to tackle the issue of "physical culture" were the hygienists and the proletarian cultists.

Hygienists

As the name suggests, the hygiene was a collection of doctors and health professionals whose attitude was informed by their medical knowledge. In general, they were critical of sport and worried that its emphasis on competition put participants at risk of injury. They were just as contemptuous of the West's preoccupation with running faster, throwing longer, or jumping higher than ever before. "It's completely unnecessary and unimportant," A.A. Zikmund, head of the Institute of Physical Culture in Moscow, "that everyone set a new world or Russian record." Instead of hygiene, suggested non-competitive physical activities - like gymnastics and swimming - as ways for people to stay healthy and eSports.

For a time, hygiene influenced Soviet politics in matters of physical culture. It was on their advice that certain sports were banned, and football, boxing, and weightlifting were all excluded from the event program by the first union doctors in 1925. However, the hygienists were far from unanimous in their condemnation of the sport. V.V. Gorinevsky, for example, was a proponent of playing tennis, which he saw as an ideal physical exercise. Nikolai Semashko, a physician and People's Commissioner for Health, went much further, arguing that sport was "the open gate to physical culture", which "develops the kind of willpower, strength and skill that must distinguish between Soviet peoples."

Prolet cult

Unlike the hygienists, the Proletkult movement was unequivocal in its rejection of 'bourgeois' sport. In fact, they condemned everything that shattered the old society, be it in art, literature or music. They saw the ideology of capitalism woven into the fabric of sport. Its competitiveness sets workers against each other and divides people according to tribal and national identities, while the physical strain of games places unnatural loads on players' bodies.

Instead of sports, proletarian cultists argued for new, proletarian forms of play based on the principles of mass participation and cooperation. Often, these new games were huge theatrical displays that looked more like carnivals or parades than the sports we see today. Competitions were avoided on the grounds that they were ideologically incompatible with the new socialist society. Participation replaced the spectators, and each event contained a distinct political message, as evidenced by some of their names: Rescue from the Imperialists; Smuggling of revolutionary literature across the border; and help the proletarians.