Sport in the USSR: Physical Culture - Visual Culture by Mike O'Mahony (review)

Abstract

reviews 545 niki exhibition was held not in 1870 (p. 135) but, as noted in the opening sentence of the firstchapter, in 1871.On thewhole, however, this careful and well-written book will enhance the literature available to non-Russian speakers on a seminal period in the history of Russian art. PembrokeCollege Rosalind P. Blakesley UniversityofCambridge O'Mahony, Mike. Sport in the USSR: Physical Culture Visual Culture.Picturing History. Reaktion Books, London, 2006. vi + 221 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. ?25.00: $39.95. If the title was reversed, with Visual Culture first, the book's purpose would be crystal clear, for this is about the visual arts, particularly painting and sculpture, in their representation of sport and sportsmen and women. As such it is an excellent account of the place of art in Soviet sport and fillsa void in the various histories of sports, fans and Olympic events in the Soviet period. Mike O'Mahony highlights a unique feature of Soviet society thatmarks itoff from Western conventional practice: whereas an undeniable gulf exists between art and sport in theWest, sport in theUSSR was 'likely to provide a fitting subject for a poem, a symphony or a monumental sculpture as was any other more conventionally represented theme' (pp. 10-11). Artists, writers and musicians regularly attended sporting events and openly participated in sports programmes. Shostakovich, for instance, was a fully qualified football referee. One has only to explore theMoscow Metro to find ample evidence of the omnipresence of artistic representation of sports people (unlike inAncient Greece and Rome, even Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, however, they are all decently clad). As an example, the first major stations built between 1932 and 1935 ? Maiakovskaia, Ploshchad Revoliutsii, Ploshchad Sverdlova (now Teatralnaia) and Dinamo ? all had prominent paintings, sculptures and life-sized statues offizkultumiki. The author sets himself the overall task of 'analyzing the complex relationship between sport as an officially approved social practice and as a subject for cultural production' (p. 9). He examines this in each of his seven chapters, travelling through the seven decades of Soviet history: from howr representations of sport (or, in the wider Soviet parlance, fizkulturd) originally developed fromwork of the cultural leftand those involved with photography, photomontage and film, to painters and sculptors (likeDeneika, Chaikov and Samokhvalov) who embraced the sports theme for the first time in the late 1920s. In chapter two, he explores what he calls the fusion of modern and traditional styles: how the Russian icon tradition was redeployed to develop a new kind of hero, a 'sporting icon'. Chapter three continues to focus on the productive late 1930s when the reconstruction ofMoscow took place, with fizkultura playing a major role, thereby conflating the labour requirements with the leisure potential of sport. Chapter four focuses on the building of theMoscow Metro inwhich sports 546 seer, 86, 3, july 2008 representations were widely deployed to reinforce the notion that fitness and a healthy body were the civic duty of every citizen. Naturally, paintings and sculptures about sport took a much more militaristic approach during wartime, a theme that continued to dominate post-war reconstruction. It was with adherence to theOlympic movement in 1951 that the emphasis changed: from the idealism and 'sport for all' of the 1930s topragmatic development of elite sport in international competition. The final chapter traces the rise of dissident culture in the 1980s expressed in bitter caricatures of sport and its obsession with world records and champions. The overriding virtue ofO'Mahony's book is that it makes us aware of the significant role played by the Soviet Union in themajor cultural achievements of the twentieth century, especially in regard to sport. It is a role that is largely ignored, underestimated and often derided inRussia and elsewhere today.We are the losers.What the author does is enable us to study official Soviet culture andjizkultura art in all theirbreadth and complexity, set in the historical context of the turbulent and often creative Soviet years. Department ofSportsStudies andExercise Science Jim Riordan Universityof Worcester Kirschbaum, Stanislav J. A History ofSlovakia: The Struggle for Survival. Second edition. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2006. xiv + 397 pp. Maps. Notes. Selective bibliography. Index...