There are a number of martial arts styles and schools of Russian origin.
Traditional Russian fist fighting has existed since the 1st millennium A.D. It was outlawed in the Russian Empire in 1832, however it has seen a resurgence after the break-up of the Soviet Union. During the Soviet era the government wanted to create both military hand-to-hand combat systems and combat sports. The new styles included Systema, and Sambo.
During the 1980s and after the fall of Communism the interest to the folk martial arts re-awoke. Through ethnographic study, many new styles based on the folk styles appeared. The two most famous new styles of that era are the Russian All-Round Fighting, which is based both on the old folk styles, old Cossack saber fencing and on the Soviet era styles, and Buza, which is based on the old local village fights and dances.
Another modern Russian martial art is the Retuinskih's System ROSS.
Famous quotes containing the words russian, martial and/or arts:
“An enormously vast field lies between “God exists” and “there is no God.” The truly wise man traverses it with great difficulty. A Russian knows one or the other of these two extremes, but is not interested in the middle ground. He usually knows nothing, or very little.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Strike the concertina’s melancholy string!
Blow the spirit-stirring harp like any thing!
Let the piano’s martial blast
Rouse the Echoes of the Past,”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)
“If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay—in solid cash—the tribute which philistinism owes to culture, the arts would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank heaven for hypocrisy.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)