Young People's Participation in Sport and other Leisure Activities in the Former Soviet Union

Abstract

This paper uses evidence from surveys in 1997 among a total of 900 young people (aged 20–26) in Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine to assess the impact of post-communism on their participation in sport and other leisure activities. Despite the rundown of public facilities and organized youth sport, participation was holding up reasonably well.Young males (and rather fewer females) were creating their own opportunities to play sport in parks and other open spaces. However, the main trends in young people’s leisure were towards home-centredness, which was associated with rising investment in home entertainment equipment, towards spending money on ‘quality’ holidays, and towards making regular visits to the bars and restaurants that private commerce had opened in all three countries.It is argued that participant sport is highly vulnerable to, rather than a likely beneficiary of, the reforms in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and that this situation is likely to continue into the 21st century.