Faster, Higher, Stronger, Comrades! Sports, Art, and Ideology in Late Russian and Early Soviet Culture

Abstract

Around the globe, sports have dominated the twenty-first century in many ways, and the seeds for this cultural sports takeover were sewn by the dawn of the Cold War. While historians and sports fans are familiar with the athletic realms in the US and probably some other nations as well, not many quite understand the twentieth-century origins of sports as a sociocultural phenomenon in Russia. Thankfully, Bryn Mawr provost Tim Harte—in his academic capacity as a professor of Russian in Comparative Literature—provides tremendous insight and analysis with the publication of his latest book, Faster, Higher, Stronger, Comrades! Sports, Art, and Ideology in Late Russian and Early Soviet Culture. Harte argues athletics (as an extension of culture, and “spirit”) and art symbiotically thrived as a dynamic part of contemporary life in both Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, giving readers understanding of fizkul'tura (symbolizing “physical fitness and collective goals above competition”) and idealism during a turbulent period in the nation's history. As a result, Harte's book is complex, albeit fascinating and succinctly focused, in exploring the multifaceted presence of sports in Russian and Soviet art and ideology.Harte blends together several historiographies in this narrative, merging multifaceted, multidisciplinary analysis of sports, physical beauty, art, and Russia itself during revolutionary, turbulent, and violent decades in the nation's early twentieth-century history. In many ways, Harte carves his own niche in researching unique dynamics of Russian culture, as his prior monograph, The Aesthetics and Ideology of Speed in Russian Avant-Garde Culture, 1910–1930 (2009), also explored a distinct piece of cultural development in the nation. This subsequent effort merely continues defining new ground for interested readers and scholars to study while advancing understanding of the global significance of these ideas in relation to other nations during the same time period(s).The book is organized chronologically, roughly by decade, and thematically, starting with popular wrestling in the prerevolutionary, Russian 1900s, as artists captured the “muscular” athlete as a symbol of brewing cultural change. Harte then explores Russian poetry in the 1910s and its focus on sports and the human body as underpinnings to the 1917 revolution that swept away much imperial culture. Yet athletics provided a bridge to the early Soviet period in the form of artistic representations of popular sports like soccer, track and field, and wrestling. These communal activities were a constant while so much of the Russian world changed around the individual. As the 1920s progressed, the government tightened restrictions on art, and thus silent films focusing on sports enabled some semblance of artistic expression and originality in the emerging Soviet culture. By the next decade, there was an ideological endorsement of athletics, as fizkul'tura found mainstream consumption via sports photography, giving some artists relatively significant freedom to express ideas. Finally, Harte explores the latter years of the Stalin era, where state-sponsored “Socialist Realism” featured heroic Soviet athletes in a departure from the earlier artistic expressions of individual athleticism. He concludes with the similarities in the Russian and Soviet artistic and cultural response to the “unique allure and promise of modern sports” by arguing that what started out innocently in prerevolutionary Russia ended up being used for “ideological objectives” by the authoritarian Soviets. There is also a coda that examines the life of Vladimir Nabokov—the author of Lolita—in relation to the arguments and themes of the book, and this piece itself could be the core of a fine journal article someday.There are many strong points in the book that connect to sports history for the audience, and the multidisciplinary approach is useful in understanding the broad reach of athletics as a cultural and political force in history as well. Harte also provides many illustrations for his readers, and the thorough “notes” section and wide-ranging bibliography are a gold mine for scholars in many disciplines. Challenges may arise for readers not well versed in Russian and Soviet art, as in the chapter 2 exploration of poetry, for example. That is Harte's primary discipline and not a well-known subject area for most readers. Overall, however, this is a great read for sport history scholars interested in the specifics of Harte's research or those making connections to their own research, whether it involves Russia, the Soviet Union, or artistic and cultural representations of sport in any nation. As no Russian/Soviet athletes participated in the Olympics from 1916 to 1956, artistic interpretations of sport in those decades, familiar to us now, come to mind, as Harte fills in the gaps of collective historical memory with this examination of athletics and art in a nation shrouded in secrecy for much of the past century. While artistic renditions of Babe Ruth, Jesse Owens, and Rocky Marciano celebrated American culture, we now can learn more about their Russian/Soviet counterparts thanks to Harte's multidisciplinary efforts.