Sport or political organization? Structures and characteristics of the Red Sport International, 1921-1937.

At its foundation in Moscow on 23 June 1921, the International Union of Red Sports and Gymnastics Associations, better known as Red Sport International (RSI), defined its mission as “the creation and amalgamation of revolutionary proletarian sports and gymnastics organizations in all countries of the world and their transformation into support centers for the proletariat in its class struggle.” The creation of a revolutionary organization in the field of sport reflected the division of the international labor movement after the First World War into a communist branch that believed that capitalism could only be beaten through revolutions, and a socialist one that believed in a social reform. Thus, the aim of the communist RSI was to act as a counterbalance to the Lucerne Sport International (LSI), established in 1920 by representatives of European worker sports federations and allied, in its ideology, to the socialist labor movement. At the end of the 1920s, the RSI included several national sections in Europe and in North and South America. During the sixteen years of its existence (the RSI was disbanded by the presidium of the Comintern in April 1937), however, it was never able to seriously challenge the LSI’s dominant position in international worker sport. The RSI was founded on the initiative of Nikolai Podvoisky, chairman of the Russian organization for military training (Vsevobuch ), after a series of meetings about sport issues with communists coming from eight countries. Far from being directly involved in the RSI’s founding, the Comintern executive practically ignored worker sport at this time. The RSI, however, considered itself from the beginning an auxiliary organization, conforming to the aims of the Comintern and operating under its political authority in the