Physical Culture and Sport in Soviet Society

Susan Grant is an Irish Research Council CARA Postdoctoral Mobility Fellow, University College Dublin and University of Toronto, and Alice Fisher Fellow, Barbara Bates Center for the History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania.

"The effort to create a New Soviet Person in 1920s and 1930s Soviet Russia targeted the body as much as the mind. Yet most historical investigations into the New Soviet Person focus on the former. So much so that the prevalence of the ‘soul’ in our academic lexicon gives the impression that the Bolshevik effort to engineer new people was merely pneumatological. But, as Susan Grant’s study of Soviet physical culture and sport reminds us, the corporal was just as much an object of Bolshevik concern. In fact, as Grant details, the body and mind of Soviet man were braided together, making physical culture one of the many ‘programmes of identity’ in revolutionary Russia." – Sean Guillory, University of Pittsburgh, Revolutionary Russia, 2014, Vol. 27, No. 1, 67–89

• 1. Culture of the Body 2. The Genesis and Organization of Soviet Fizkul’tura 3. The Creation of an Ideal Young Citizen 4. The Quest for an Enlightened Female Citizen 5. The Pursuit of a Rural Civilized Citizen 6. Visualizing the New Soviet Citizenry 7. The New Soviet Citizen in Reality Conclusion Appendix 1: Biographical Index Appendix 2: Organizational and Institutional Index