ABSTRACT
Introduction In his excellent article on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and sport, Carter Elwood concludes that the leader of the world communist revolution did not pursue his passion for active leisure in order to make himself a ‘better revolutionary’, but rather because he more than likely enjoyed the physical challenge of climbing, skiing, skating or cycling.1 In the Soviet Union, quite a different view prevailed. Lenin’s actual motivation became irrelevant. His love of sport and exercise was portrayed as being not ‘an end in itself’ but rather a means of increasing his labour capacity, his physical strength and will, and, importantly, ‘helping him in the revolutionary struggle’.2 Yet, this view was part of an important discourse construct, one that indelibly bound Lenin, the revolutionary struggle, and physical culture and sport together. As I argue here, this discourse did not just emerge as some form of late Soviet nostalgia, but was also an important facet of Bolshevik revolutionary discourse from the outset. Moreover, the nexus between sport and revolutionary struggle was often tied to a larger Bolshevik psychology. Sport and physical culture, inextricably connected to emotion and feelings, became a key component of this new Soviet psychology. Perhaps even more significantly, in Bolshevik terms, sport could provide a site for both individual and collective emotional expression. With the Bolsheviks in power, sport and physical culture became part of the revolutionary discourse, a vital political, social and cultural tool with which to introduce and promote the new communist lifestyle.
