Red Sport International - Organizational History - Establishment

Establishment

The idea of a rival Red Sport International (RSI) was the inspiration of Nikolai Podvoisky, who at the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern in the summer of 1920 discussed with a number of delegates from around the world the idea of establishing an organization to coordinate the physical training of youth. Podvoisky, a military specialist in charge of Soviet Russia's military training organization, believed systematic physical training to be beneficial for the needs of the Red Army for healthy and fit youth in its ranks. An international sports organization was also seen as a potential ideological counterweight to the Olympic games of the "bourgeois" International Olympic Committee as well as the activities of the rival International Association for Sports and Physical Culture of the socialists.

Podvoisky gathered interested delegates who were already in Moscow for the Comintern Congress and the group constituted itself a founding conference for an international sports organization. It is worthy of emphasis that the Comintern did not itself directly found the Red Sport International, the group being established through independent initiative and the Comintern being preoccupied with other affairs. The group issued a public manifesto declaring the establishment of a Red Sport International and elected a governing Executive Committee, consisting of representatives from Soviet Russia, Germany, Czechoslovakia, France, Sweden, Italy, and Alsace-Lorraine. Podvoisky was elected President of the new organization.

The establishment of an international sports organization in Soviet Russia in 1921 was not without its utopian elements, since no official Soviet sport organizations existed in famine stricken post-civil war Soviet Russia at that time. Germany, on the other hand, had a well-developed workers' sport movement at this time. Consequently, Sportintern from its outset maintained a strong German flavor and it was there in the city of Berlin that the 2nd Conference of the organization was held in July 1922. The only national "proletarian" sports organization to join the German group at that early dates was the Czechoslovak Federation of Workers' Gymnastic Leagues, said to represent 100,000 athletes.

The Comintern moved closer to the fledgling Sportintern in November 1922 when, in conjunction with the 4th World Congress, the governing Executive Committee of the Communist International decided to name a representative to the "independent" proletarian sport organization. The Communist International of Youth (KIM) did not take action until the meeting of its governing Bureau in Moscow in July 1923, when it issued a general recommendation of support for the Sportintern and the national sports organizations affiliated to it as a useful "proletarian class instrument." It did not, however, delve into the contentious issue of in what manner and to what extent these two international bodies should be related.

The governing Executive Committee of Sportintern met in Moscow in February 1923 and decided to establish a satellite bureau of the organization in Berlin, with a view to increasing participation among Western European workers' sports organizations. The maneuver proved successful in helping to build the organization, triggering a split of the French Workers Sports Federation later that year and the affiliation of 80% of its membership with the Red Sport International. The RSI's increased place in the public eye motivated the governing body of the rival international socialist sports authority, meeting in Zurich in August 1923, to discuss issuing an invitation to Sportintern to help organize a joint "Workers' Olympiad" — a proposal which was narrowly defeated, despite indications that a majority of individual members of the socialist organization favored joint participation.