Physical Culture as Part of the Soviet Culture of the Working Youth in Western Siberia in the Period of Industrialization and Collectivization (1930s)
Authors:   Tomsk State University of Control Systems and Radioelectronics (Tomsk, Russian Federation), Sarycheva Tatiana V. 
Published: March 2021

The study analyzes the transformation of physical education in the 1930s, the involvement of the working youth in it, and the implementation of the social functions of physical education on the example of Western Siberia. The development of physical culture during the period of rapid economic transformations, which predetermined a multiple increase in the industrial capacity of the USSR, is considered on the basis of regional archival material and periodicals. The study showed that the years of industrialization and collectivization became a period of essential transformations in the field of physical culture, including: the creation of a normative basis for physical education and the All-Union Council of Physical Culture and Sports, the inclusion of physical education in socialist competition, the transition to the production principle of building physical education organizations, the creation of labor physical education links, etc. Exercises in the workplace and physical training breaks were recognized as the most appropriate forms of physical culture activities. In accordance with specific economic tasks, the restructuring of the departments activities in the field of physical culture in the region became the agenda of the III Plenary Session of the West Siberian Regional Council of Physical Culture in 1930. Physical training shock-brigades, overfulfilling production plans, were to become the main power to turn Siberian Krai into an industrial-agricultural and cultural territory. Trade unions and the Komsomol had an active position in this issue. In 1932, in Western Siberia, there were 75 thousand members of shock-brigades, combined in 356 self-supporting physical training brigades. Despite its great socioeconomic role, the organization and distribution of physical education in the agricultural sector were faced eith significant difficulties. Some improvement in the situation of the region resulted from measures taken to increase the number of physical education movement members: restructuring of the management of physical education of peasant youth; creation of political departments, introduction of rates for physical education workers in the staffing of machine tractor stations and state farms; holding of mass events. However, the simplest sports facilities appeared only in very few economically strong collective and state farms, the staffing was minimal, and the physical culture movement at the end of the decade was in the process of organizing collectives. Thus, in the 1930s, serious transformations took place in the field of physical culture. They became the prerequisite for the formation of physical culture as part of the Soviet culture and lifestyle of workers, for the solution of economic, social, and political problems. The involvement of Siberian peasant workers in this sphere, increases in workers’ labor productivity and health, among other factors, contributed to the industrialization and collectivization of the state in the short term.