Sportintern
스포르틴테른
The Red Sport International was a Comintern auxiliary that coordinated communist workers' sports organizations from 1921 to 1937 as a proletarian rival to the bourgeois International Olympic Committee and the social-democratic Lucerne Sport International. Founded by Nikolai Podvoisky, it staged Spartakiads as a counter to the Olympics, linking physical culture to military training under the slogan 'Convert sport into a weapon of the class revolutionary struggle.' It was dissolved by the Comintern in April 1937; its final act was the joint Spartakiad with the social-democratic sports body in Antwerp that summer.
Related people
Sources
- Wikipedia (RU) Russian Wikipedia: founding date (23 July 1921), Podvoisky as first chairman (1921–1927), Spartakiads, dissolution by Comintern in April 1937
- Wikipedia (EN) English Wikipedia: origin as Podvoisky's initiative at the 2nd Comintern Congress, rivalry with IOC and Lucerne International, membership composition, 1928 ultraleft turn, 1937 dissolution
- johnriddell.com John Riddell: founding conference of ~20 Communists in Moscow on 23 June 1921, Comintern ECCI official support in November 1922, Spartakiad timeline (1928/1931/1937), 277,500 non-USSR members in 1931, joint Antwerp Spartakiad with Lucerne International in July 1937, dissolution three months earlier