Politics of the Sporting Body A study of sport as a political tool under Communism

Writing 20 (Spring 2007): Embodying Social Meaning Professor Marcia Rego This paper started out as the final research project for my Writing 20 class, “Embodying Social Meaning” taught by Dr. Marcia Rego. This four-month long course exposed me to the diverse and fascinating ways in which the human body has been used by different cultures to express their unique beliefs and traditions. Our readings and discussions in class about tattooing, the beauty myth, eating disorders, body adornment, cannibalism, etc. and the reasons for these varied types of body modifications were, for me, completely fresh and intriguing ideas. I have never really thought of the body as a locus for power relations, and the new knowledge that the distinctive beliefs of different human communities could have such intimate relationships with the way they use and modify their bodies fired up my desire to learn more. The idea to explore the Soviet sports program spanning the decades of the 1920s to the 1980s through an analysis of the way human bodies were used and trained came to me out of the blue while I was researching possible topics for my final paper. Politics and the human body in sport seemed to be two unrelated fields, yet to proclaim that sport and politics are completely free of each other would be naïve and unrealistic. The deeper I probed this topic, the more I realized that concepts from earlier class discussions were embedded within this historical context. The process of writing this paper excited me, because it allowed me to link politics and history, fields in which I have strong interests, to ideas I had just learnt in class. As someone who grew up in China where the national enthusiasm with regards to competitive sport (which stems from the Chinese sports program adapted from the Russians) and mass displays have become part of the Chinese culture, this is also a journey towards a better understanding of my roots. Exactly ninety years ago, Russia heralded the dawn of the communist era with the 1917 October Revolution. In many ways, the revolution not only changed the course of Russian history, but also set the stage for the global turmoil in the turbulent times which followed. Marxist-Leninist communism introduced radical changes to the way power was distributed and managed. However, behind the violence and confusion of the twentieth century, communist ideology was also adding new dimensions to traditional power relations between the state and society through the effective utilization of a centralized sports program. Indeed, as Howell observed, the USSR “was the first major country in modern times to realize the full extent of the political significance of sport” (1975, p. 137). The efficiency with which centralized sports institutions were created, as well as the fact that the USSR’s own version of the Olympics—the Spartakiads—was inaugurated as early as 1928 (Girginov, 2004, p. 44), attests to the dedication of the communist regime to its sports initiative. The ardent devotion of the communist government to its sports program in the period between the rise and collapse of the Soviet Union appears bewildering at first glance. Russia was beleaguered by problems of starvation, civil war and an utterly dismal economy in the immediate years after the November Revolution. Given the dire circumstances, it was difficult to fathom why the central authority still chose to invest considerable amounts of financial capital and human resources in the development of sporting infrastructure and the design of sports programs. The fact that the communist sports initiative was given such high priority suggests the existence of an agenda which went beyond a simple aim to improve public health, an agenda which possibly involved political dimensions. If this were indeed true, what characteristics of human sport made its politicization possible? More importantly, how did the manipulation of sport under communist rule bridge the space between sport as an “inherently playful activities rooted in basic human impulses” (Girginov, 2004, p. 26) on the one hand, and as a political tool on the other? Early on in the communist rule, the Soviet Union had already begun efforts to create a centralized sports authority and a nationwide sporting initiative. The new sports program brought sparse and scattered sporting infrastructure under the control of the state, and identified the masses as a primary target of the program. In this spirit, the kollektiv, or small exercise units in the workplace, were born (Howell, 1975, p.140). Behind the violence and confusion of the twentieth century, communist ideology was also adding new dimensions to traditional power relations between the state and society through the effective utilization of a centralized sports program.