Voluntary Sports Societies Of The Soviet Union
Voluntary Sports Societies (VSS) of the USSR (Russian: Добровольные спортивные общества (ДСО) СССР, Dobrobolvolnye Sportivye Obshestva SSSR (DSO SSSR)) were the main structural parts of the universal sports and physical education (fitness) system, that existed in the USSR between 1935 and 1991, together with already well established Dinamo, society in cooperation with Army, Aviation, and Fleet (DOSAAF), and CSKA sports societies.
VSS united working people and students going in for sports, physical culture, hiking, mountaineering, boating, and various other sports. The societies provided a sponsorship for various sport events and often existed on the volunteer donations from the workers of the certain industry with which they were associated. Their goals were to develop mass physical culture and sports and to provide facilities and conditions for sports training and improvement in athletes' skills. Most of the VSS were governed by trade Unions and often were closely associated with a certain ministry. Twenty five million athletes were members of such societies in 1970.
One of the most important features of VSS were Children and Youth Sport Schools (Russian: Детско-юношеские спортивные школы, ДЮСШ), which numbered 1,350 in the 1970s and 7,500 in 1987. Later some of them were reformed into more elite Olympic reserve schools. There were also specialized sport clubs, groups of improvement athletes' skills, etc. More than 50,000 trainers and instructors worked there in these institutions.
Read more about Voluntary Sports Societies Of The Soviet Union: Creation, Structure, Governing Body and Its Functions, Financing, Facilities and Symbols, VSS At The Olympics
Famous quotes containing the words soviet union, voluntary, sports, societies, soviet and/or union:
“If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“Her voluntary fruits, free without fees;”
—Torquato Tasso (1544–1595)
“...I didn’t come to this with any particular cachet. I was just a person who grew up in the United States. And when I looked around at the people who were sportscasters, I thought they were just people who grew up in the United States, too. So I thought, Why can’t a woman do it? I just assumed everyone else would think it was a swell idea.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 85 (June 17, 1991)
“The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modelled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators. Even the lonely savage, who lies exposed to the inclemency of the elements and the fury of wild beasts, forgets not, for a moment, this grand object of his being.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“We are constantly thinking of the great war ... which saved the Union ... but it was a war that did a great deal more than that. It created in this country what had never existed before—a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union, it was the rebirth of the Union.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)