Sage Publications, Ltd. Journal of Contemporary History

The Workers' Sport Internationals 1920-28
Author(s): David A. Steinberg

Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 13, No. 2, Special Issue: Workers' Culture
(Apr., 1978), pp. 233-251
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/260115
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David A. Steinberg
The Workers' Sport Internationals

1920-28
'Sport activity gives the working class an inner spiritual liber

and therefore diverts it from the cares and bothers of life',
Wildung told a sport congress in 1922.1 'We must implant in you
the belief that the world needs a complete cultural renaissance,
that the old nationalist-capitalist culture is about to perish
declared. 'The sport of the proletariat must be placed in the serv
of socialism. It should become a powerful lever of the new cultu
whose bearer will be the proletariat. Sport is a chain-breaker for
youth of the proletariat, a liberator from physical and spi
slavery.'2 To many of Wildung's comrades in the working-
political and trade union movements between the world wars, sp
was merely an activity in which workers wasted time that could
been better used in the struggle for political and economic p
For millions of workers, however, sport was a vital aspect o
revolutionary movement. Workers' sport organizations exist
almost every country of Europe and in some of the countrie
North and South America and Asia as well; by 1928 each of the t
workers' sport internationals, the Socialist Workers' Spo
International (originally the Lucerne Sport International) an
Red Sport International, counted well over two million mem
making the sport movement by far the largest working class cu
movement. Recognizing that as workers won shorter working
and longer vacations they would have more leisure time, the
internationals attempted to organize them during their free tim
isolate them from bourgeois cultural influences, and to make th
aware that sport could be used to advance the revolution
movement. Both sport internationals brought together wor
sportsmen from all parts of the world in several festivals celebr
the new proletarian physical culture. They came to be invo
Journal of Contemporary History (SAGE, London and Beverly Hills),

Vol 13 (1978), 233-51
234 Journal of Contemporary History
however, as much with political problems as with cultural affairs,

with social democrats and communists vying for control of the sport
movement. This struggle, conducted under the guise of trying to
unify the movement and culminating in a complete break between
social democrats and communists, weakened and divided the
workers' sport organizations, hindering the creation of a strong
physical culture movement among workers.
Workers' sport associations were first formed in central Europe in
the late nineteenth century as a reaction to the increasing con-
servatism of the traditional gymnastic societies. By 1900 workers'
sport organizations existed in Germany, Switzerland and the Czech
lands of the Austro-Hungarian empire; shortly after the turn of the
century similar organizations were founded in Belgium, France and
England. Most competition among worker sportsmen was restricted
by national boundaries, but meets took place on a small scale
between Belgian and French workers and Belgian and German
workers and, as a result, Gaston Bridoux, a Belgian, attempted to
organize international competition on a regular basis. In 1913 at
Ghent representatives of workers' sport associations from Germany,
England, Belgium, France and Austria met in a congress sanctioned
by the Bureau of the Socialist International to form an international
workers' sport association.
The new international had accomplished little when the first world
war put an end to its activities. After the war Bridoux, joined by his
countryman Jules Devlieger, began to plan for the resurrection of the
sport international. Preliminary conferences in Seraing, Belgium, in
1919 and in Paris at Easter 1920, led to the convocation of a congress
on 13 and 14 September 1920 at Lucerne, to establish an inter-
national workers' sport association once again.3 Although the work
at Lucerne was made difficult by inadequate translation facilities,
the congress was conducted in the spirit of reconciliation and
brotherhood. The Germans, representing the strongest workers'
sport organizations, obligingly conceded to the wishes of the French
and Belgians that special emphasis on anti-militarism be placed in the
programme and they also agreed to omit the word 'socialist' from
the name of the organization, officially called the Internatiohal
Association for Sport and Physical Culture, because the French
feared that that label would keep non-socialist workers away from
the group.4 The congress easily accomplished its purpose; the
delegates agreed on a programme, created an organizational
framework for the international association and elected an executive
Steinberg: The Workers' Sport Internationals 1920-28 235
committee, headed by Bridoux. The tasks facing the International in

1920 were to re-create among worker sportsmen the unity which had
been shattered by the war, to develop the national workers' sport
movements and to generate among workers sport activity that was
truly international.
The Lucerne Sport International sought to spread 'the cultivation
of physical exercise, sport, gymnastics and hiking within the working
class and especially among the youth of both sexes'.5 It intended to
develop the workers' sport organizations which existed in most
European countries to the level of those in Germany and Czecho-
slovakia and simultaneously to give international workers' sport
meaning and prestige equal to that enjoyed by bourgeois sport.
Special emphasis was placed on training the working youth to
become healthy and strong.6 Building the international organization
preoccupied the leaders of the LSI, making them strive to increase
the membership of workers' sport organizations and to ensure the
success of workers' sport festivals. The thousands of worker
sportsmen in the LSI could have 'no aim other than the
strengthening of our central organization, through which they ar
placed in the position to enjoy the fruits of practical experien
gathered in the course of numerous years', the International Burea
of the LSI asserted.7 This predilection for strengthening the organ
ization and a concomitant desire to protect it from all danger beca
major points of criticism from communists, who were to claim th
the LSI sacrificed revolutionary goals in favour of self-preservatio
Developing the international organization was only one aspect
the LSI. The founders of the organization, believing that sport cou
be revolutionary, wrote that the 'workers' sport movement is no l
important than the political, trade union and cooperative movemen
of the working class.' In all countries the sport movement played a
important role in the struggle against 'capitalist nationalism a
militarism', which pervaded the so-called 'politically neutr
bourgeois sport organizations and through them corrupted workin
youth. Forming separate working-class sport organizations
insulate the young from bourgeois influences was one goal of
LSI,8 but there was, however, a better way to overcome the evils o
capitalist society and militarism. While capitalism fostered mistrus
among people in order to keep workers around the world apart, th
LSI would strive to create international brotherhood, declared Fritz
Wildung, who became one of the ideologists of the workers' sp
movement. He told the third congress of the LSI in 1922:
Our International Association for Sport and Physical Culture differs from the
political and trade union internationals in that it brings its members together to
action. ... In our sporting events we must face each other eye to eye and get to
know that none of the others is an enemy, but rather that all men are
brothers. . . . We have the most powerful interest that the great world-wide lies
spread by capitalism finally be destroyed, that the people learn that they are a
thousand times more unified than divided.9
Because the capitalist system allowed the workers neither enough

time nor enough strength to engage in a rational programme of
physical activity, the goals of the LSI could only be realized fully in a
socialist society. Despite its professed hatred of capitalist society, the
LSI was forced to seek government recognition and assistance for
national workers' sport organizations to enable them to flourish and
to attract large numbers of workers. Such demands as freedom of
movement for workers' sport clubs, freedom to teach sports, equal-
ization of physical and religious education in schools, adequate sport
facilities for all people, enough free time from work, provision of
convenient railway transportation to sporting events, and elimin-
ation of taxes on non-profit-making sporting events were to be
pressed in all countries. To preserve the socialist character of the LSI
in the face of necessary cooperation with bourgeois governments, it
was decreed that no one could be a member unless he shared the view
that the goals of the organization could only be achieved in a socialist
society and no member of an organization associated with the LSI
could participate in a bourgeois sport organization.?1
The leaders of the LSI were not unaware of the danger to the
workers' sport movement posed by the strife between the socialists
and communists. To prevent a split in the sport movement com-
parable to that in the political movement, they embraced a policy of
political party neutrality (parteipolitische Neutralitat), first adopted
in 1919 by the German Arbeiter Turnerbund (ATB), which meant
that in all disputes among socialist parties sport organizations would
remain neutral." In spite of communist denunciation of this policy
and the formation of communist factions in LSI associations, in
1922 the LSI reaffirmed its stance in a resolution which stated: 'The
Workers' Sport International is closed to no one, it wants nothing
other than the complete education of working youth and can accept
in it every national organization which acknowledges the class
struggle.' 12
When the LSI was founded in 1920 there was no separate
communist workers' sport movement, and communist theorists had
paid little attention to the sport movement. In Soviet Russia
working-class sport organizations, which had not existed before the

revolution, were created solely to prepare the young for service in the
Red Army. The Central Department of Universal Military Training
(Vsevobuch), created on 7 May 1918 by the Revolutionary Military
Council after the All-Russian Central Executive Committee had
issued a decree concerning the military training of workers, had
authority over all sport organizations. The rapid growth of the sport
system in the schools and factories between 1918 and 1921 led to the
development of a definite programme of athletic training. Havin
begun its activity without a specific programme, Vsevobuch, aide
by the First All-Russian Congress of Workers on Physical Culture
Sport and Pre-military Preparations, held in April 1919, was joine
in the spring of 1920 by the High Council of Physical Culture, which
soon assumed direction of the sport movement. But there was stil
little ideological basis for Soviet sport. Although Lenin pointed ou
the importance of physical activity to the third congress of the
Komsomol in October 1920, saying that 'The physical education o
the rising generation is one of the necessary elements of the system o
communist education of youth', no real attempt was made to
develop a unique Soviet ideology that would define the role of
workers' sport in a proletarian culture or would prescribe the use of
sport as a revolutionary device.13 The lack of concern with a workers'
sport movement was demonstrated by a Soviet representative in
Brussels, who, when asked in 1920 by Bridoux about Soviet partici
pation in the LSI, replied that there was no workers' sport movement
in Soviet Russia, since the sport system there was controlled by the
Red Army.14
While there may not have been a workers' sport movement in
Soviet Russia in 1920, communist sport groups did exist in severa
countries in central and western Europe. In Berlin members of th
Turnverein Fichte had been active on the side of the Spartacists in the
street battles of January 1919; by 1920 there were also communis
clubs in France, Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Finland, Italy and
Hungary. Sometime in the autumn of 1920 it was decided (by whom
is not clear) that during the third congress of the Communist
International in July 1921 in Moscow, these clubs would unite in a
communist sport international.'5 The Red Sport International (RSI)
in contrast to the LSI which brought long-established workers' sport
associations into a federation, comprised small groups of
communists, some of them acting within LSI organizations. Under
the leadership of Nikolai Podvoisky, a Russian with no previous
experience in the workers' sport movement, the first RSI congress, in

August 1921, adopted a programme that emphasized taking over
existing workers' sport organizations and using them 'in the service
of the proletarian revolution', as well as struggling 'against the
menshevist Lucerne Sport International'.16
The impetus for the founding of a communist sport movement
probably came from Germany, where a communist position towards
the workers' sport movement was first developed. At the twelfth
congress (Bundestag) of the ATB in June 1919 Paul Weyer, a leader
of the Turnverein Fichte, declared in response to accusations that the
left was destroying the workers' sport movement, 'we propose
... the dictatorship of the proletariat, the soviet system, as the
plank upon which the entire proletariat unite itself for the deciding
blow against capitalism'.17 Speaking for the communists at the
Workers' Sport Congress in Jena in January 1921, Weyer elaborated
upon his earlier statements:
We want to be part of the socialist, revolutionary proletarian movement. We can

achieve that only under the leadership of goal-conscious, revolutionary comrades.
All socialists stand on the basis of the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx, so our
next goal must be the dictatorship of the proletariat. We want no split of the
workers' sport movement.18
Communist sportsmen, Weyer wrote, could not remain neutral in

political struggles, for that would aid the bourgeoisie. Instead they
should be guided by the statutes of the Communist International,
which stated: 'In consideration of the influx of powerful masses of
workers into the workers' sport organizations, communists in all
countries must enter these organizations in order to make out of
them conscious fighting organs for the overthrow of capitalism and
for communism'.19
On the international level little effort had been made to develop a
communist sport programme before the formation of the RSI. In the
Comintern and the Young Communist International there was
general recognition that sport organizations might serve a useful
function, but their exact role was not clear. Sport organizations were
considered auxiliary organizations, bringing the 'masses which stand
on the periphery of the political and trade union struggle' into the
communist movement.20 The extent to which the sport organizations
were to be combined with other cultural associations was the subject
of some debate within the Young Communist International. The
development of international cultural organizations that included
sport clubs as well as hiking clubs, singing clubs, chess clubs and
other such groups was rejected on the grounds that it would create a
third force in the workers' movement that might weaken the political
and trade union organizations. Cultural organizations were not to be
encouraged; they were remnants of petty bourgeois society which
communists should capture and liquidate. But the RSI, Podvoisky
explained, was an organization 'which has to work on a special field
of the labour movement, that of physical culture'; it had nothing to
do with cultural organizations.21
A major objective of communist workers' sport organizations was
to counteract the effect of bourgeois sport organizations. By point-
ing out the true nature of the bourgeois clubs and their pose of politi-
cal neutrality and by stressing the welfare of the working class rather
than the quality of sport facilities, the communists undertook to per-
suade workers to join workers' sport clubs. Where no workers' sport
clubs existed, the communists proposed to form them, either by
inducing 'class-conscious' workers to start separate clubs or by
winning large numbers of supporters in bourgeois organizations and
then splitting those organizations.22
A problem as difficult as destroying the bourgeois sports clubs was
rescuing the workers' sport organizations from 'reformist' leader-
ship and the doctrine of 'the neutrality of physical culture' which,
communists believed, had caused the sport movement to abandon
political and economic goals. Communists were to emphasize the
class character of sport, supporting opposition groups in the
workers' sport movement, engaging in educational work, pointing
out the impossibility of any cooperation with the bourgeoisie, and
opposing all declarations of neutrality. The key to communist work
on behalf of the RSI in the workers' sport organizations was the
formation of factions, which would operate democratically,
convincing majorities in the sport organizations to affiliate with the
RSI. Even non-communist workers were welcome in the RSI, since
its aim was to 'revive' the principle of the class struggle in the
workers' sport movement, rather than create an exclusively
communist sport movement. While insisting that the unity of the
workers' sport movement be preserved (in spite of the creation of
factions), communists in the sport movement were to participate in
all actions of the 'reformist officials' and the LSI without losing
sight of the goal of adapting the activities of the LSI to the 'militant
tasks of the proletariat'. To create a united front, communists were
to demand that all communist sport organizations be permitted to
participate in all activities of the LSI and be admitted to all workers'

sport federations.23 This tactic of fighting the leadership of the LSI
while simultaneously calling for the preservation of unity in the sport
movement eventually made cooperation between the two inter-
nationals impossible. Although the communists always described the
bourgeois sport movement as a great menace and proclaimed the
need to oppose it, they devoted most of their energy to fighting the
workers' sport associations.
Unity became the primary issue with which the sport inter-
nationals grappled throughout the 1920s, even though they had a
basic disagreement about the purpose of workers' sport organ-
izations. The social democrats, represented by the LSI and its
affiliated national organizations, hoped to create a well-developed
sport movement, equal in importance to political and economic
organizations, as part of a proletarian sub-culture. This cultural
movement, highlighted by workers' olympiads that in addition to
sport activities included parades, mass exercises, performances of
plays and the singing of the International, was intended to inoculate
the workers against bourgeois culture, at the same time educating
them in a socialist spirit. Although the socialists realized that their
goals could be attained only in a socialist society, they did not
attempt to make the sport movement into an active revolutionary
force; instead it was to be a strong, independent movement within
capitalist society that was to be prepared, after the revolution, to
implement a fully developed system of physical culture. To the
communists, on the other hand, a separate cultural movement was
anathema. Their sport movement was totally subordinate to the
political and trade union movements. Assigned to lead 'back to the
class struggle the workers' gymnastic and sport movement . . . from
the morass of social patriotism into which it has got, and . . to
build a revolutionary counterweight to the Lucerne Sport Inter-
national', the RSI was from the outset a much more political organ-
ization than the LSI.24 From 1921 to 1928 there was continual con-
frontation between the LSI and RSI at sporting events, local
functions, national congresses and international meetings, which
resulted in considerable animosity between the two groups. But there
were also numerous attempts by the leaders of both internationals to
reach accords which would make cooperation and eventual uni-
fication a reality.
The leadership of the LSI was bewildered at first by the formation
of the RSI. Meeting in July 1922 in Leipzig, for the second congress
of the LSI, some of the delegates, led by the French, wanted to do
everything possible to achieve a union of the two internationals,

including sending a delegation to the second RSI congress, scheduled
for late July in Berlin. None of the delegates opposed unity. Some,
however, who recalled the activities of Bruno Lieske, a member of
Turnverein Fichte and the central European secretary of the RSI,
who travelled around Germany agitating against the ATSB (the ATB
had changed its name to Arbeiter-Turn- und Sportbund in late 1919)
in the autumn of 1921 and the communist-inspired split of the
Czechoslovak workers' sport movement in July 1921, questioned the
sincerity of RSI desires for unity and the propriety of French
attendance at an RSI function. A Belgian resolution, reflecting the
mood of the congress, established the basic policy toward the RSI
that the LSI pursued until the end of 1925:
As physical education is a means by which the proletariat can fight against

capitalism and militarism and as this fight must be conducted with as much unity as
possible, the congress expresses its regret that this unity in the field of physical
education is broken through the existence of the Red Moscow International side by
side with the Workers' Sport International, and it empowers the Bureau of the
International to seek a way which could lead to cooperation between both pro-
letarian organizations. The Workers' Sport International is closed to no one, it
wants nothing other than the complete education of the working youth and can
accept in it every national organization which acknowledges the class struggle.25
The RSI did little to promote unity during the first years of its
existence. Its second congress, which was not attended by Russian
delegates, issued a manifesto declaring that the LSI worked 'for class
reconciliation, for the cooperation of the workers with the capi-
talists, and therefore for the interests of the bourgeoisie', and that it
embodied 'the contradictions of the imperialists fighting for war
booty, the victors, and the vanquished.'26 In 1923 the RSI enjoyed its
greatest success. When the national congress of the French
Federation Sportive du Travail met on August 4 in Montreuil the
delegates, in a rejection of the LSI policy of neutrality, voted by a
narrow margin to leave the LSI and to apply for admission in the
RSI. Failing to reverse their defeat the socialists, led by Anton
Guillevic, a member of the LSI International Bureau, walked out of
the congress and formed a new organization which, they hoped,
would some day regain control of the FST.27 Thus for the second
time in two years a major workers' sport organization had been
divided; this time the socialists took the initiative towards a split.
Communist tactics operated on two levels. Within national and
local workers' sport groups communists organized factions which
agitated against the socialist leadership and demanded that these

groups affiliate with the RSI rather than the LSI. At sporting events
they displayed placards that denounced the LSI and demanded
Russian participation in workers' sporting events. The communists
hoped through their factional work to bring entire national organ-
izations affiliated with the LSI into the RSI. Although their actions
might lead to schisms in the sport movement, the communists main-
tained that social democrats were responsible for destroying unity if
they quit organizations simply because communists had won control
of them. On the international level the RSI demanded that the LSI
International Bureau allow it to participate in events sponsored by
LSI clubs. Demands that the LSI join the RSI in a demonstration
against a festival of the nationalist Deutsche Turnerschaft in July
1923 in Munich and for RSI participation in a Swiss workers' sport
festival in August of the same year in Zurich were unsuccessful, but
the RSI continued to insist that it be included in LSI activities.28
The LSI moved cautiously in dealing withi the RSI. Soon after the
LSI began in 1922 to plan for a workers' olympiad in Frankfurt in
1925, it was confronted with an RSI demand that the four RSI
sections (Russia, Czechoslovakia, France and Norway) participate
with full privileges. Although LSI rules specified that participation in
its activities be restricted to national organizations that were
members of the LSI29 there were indications that the LSI might be
flexible. In June 1923, Wildung revealed that an International
Bureau meeting in Zurich in August would decide whether Russia
would be allowed to take part in the olympiad. The LSI wanted
Russian participation, he said, and was ready to invite Lieske, as the
RSI representative in Europe, to a preparatory conference in April
1924 in Frankfurt to discuss RSI participation and the possibility of
establishing a unified international movement.30 In spite of a lack of
enthusiasm for Wildung's proposal, it was decided at Zurich that
preliminary discussions with RSI representatives would be held in
Frankfurt.
Two questions were put to the RSI representatives, Lieske and
Richard Ellrodt, at Frankfurt: (1) would the RSI agree to unification
with the LSI? and (2) if not, would it cooperate in building a
'working union of both internationals for the accomplishment of
ullited actions?'31 When the RSI representatives claimed that they
had no niandate and were not empowered to enter into protracted
negotiations, the LSI delegates urged them to get in touch with their
superiors so that another meeting could be scheduled soon.32 No
further meetings took place, however, and the secretaries of the two
internationals, Devlieger and Lieske, tried to resolve differences
through correspondence. Devlieger maintained that the problem of
unity would be resolved if the member organizations of the RSI
joined the LSI, whereupon they would be accorded all rights of LSI
membership including the right to participate in the olympiad and all
other LSI activities. This proposal, which he felt would satisfy both
sides, was rejected by Lieske.33
If the communists' unwillingness to accept Devlieger's proposal
did not convince the LSI leadership that RSI sections should not be
present at Frankfurt, RSI actions in the summer of 1924 gave them
ample reason to exclude the RSI from the olympiad. At the Karlsbad
festival of the German workers' sport association in Czechoslovakia,
communists protesting at the government's refusal to allow twelve
Soviet sportsmen into the country carried signs in the festival parade
denouncing the social democrats. This led to an altercation and
during the welcoming speeches they vehemently condemned the
Czechoslovak social democrats.34 The turmoil of the Karlsbad
festival certainly indicated to the LSI that it could not trust the RSI
not to disrupt its festivals, and the conduct of Bruno Lieske raised
grave doubts about the communists' desire for cooperation with the
social democrats. At the Kassel Bundestag of the ATSB in June,
Lieske launched a series of attacks on both Cornelius Gellert, the
chairman of the ATSB and a member of the LSI International
Bureau, and Fritz Wildung. Failing to persuade the Bundestag either
to schedule a referendum on joining the RSI or to order the national
board to enter into joint actions with the RSI, Lieske called on
communist sport factions to take part in a 'week of struggle'
organized by the KPD in July, and directed communists to denounce
social democrats at various meetings of workers' sport organizations
in late summer.35 This divisive conduct, as well as Lieske's role as
leader of the communist group at the Karlsbad festival, convinced
the leadership of the ATSB that it could no longer have anything to
do with Lieske.36
Having witnessed the communist disruption in Czechoslovakia
and Germany in the summer, the members of the International
Bureau, meeting in Vienna on 14 September, confirmed that the
Frankfurt Olympiad would be open only to clubs that were members
of the LSI. Communists would still be able to attend, for, as
individuals, communist members of LSI organizations would be
welcome at Frankfurt; the International Bureau hoped, however,
that they would refrain from political activities.37 By maintaining its

policy that 'every country is free to join the Lucerne Sport Inter-
national if it accepts its basic principles and obliges itself to act
according to them', the International Bureau left open the possibility
of a Soviet organization's joining the LSI and sending a delegation to
Frankfurt.38
Despite the LSI decision, the RSI was determined to participate in
the olympiad. In October the executive committee called on the
'worker gymnasts and sportsmen of the entire world' to 'demon-
strate their solidarity with the RSI' and thereby force the leaders of
the LSI to change their decision.39 Demands were coupled with
threats. Blaming the leaders of the LSI for a 'furious splitting
campaign' designed to rid the LSI of revolutionary elements, the RSI
declared that it would not enter into the 'provocation politics of the
Lucerne bureaucrats', but would, if it did not receive an invitation to
Frankfurt, plan a world olympiad of all 'proletarian physical culture
organizations' for 1926.40 To the RSI, the stipulation that its sections
affiliate with the LSI, which Devlieger had reiterated in a letter to the
RSI executive committee on 17 June 1925, was unacceptable. It was,
according to a member of the RSI, a demand for 'the simple
liquidation of the RSI'. He explained the RSI position: 'Unity is not
an act of simply joining another organization. The establishment of
unity is a process in which a basis for conducting joint action and
struggle must be created. The best guarantee of real unity lies in the
common work of the masses'.41 While rejecting participation in the
olympiad under the conditions outlined by the LSI, the RSI sent an
uninvited delegation to Frankfurt. Its announced purpose was to
discuss questions of unity with the leaders of the LSI, but it probably
really intended to try to force its way into the festival for a
confrontation with the LSI. Instead of resolving differences, the
unsuccessful attempts of the RSI delegation, composed of Soviet
sportsmen and a small group of sympathizers, to organize counter-
demonstrations to the official events, and the false reports in the
communist press of dissension among LSI clubs during the olympiad
deepened the rift between the internationals.42
Joint participation in the olympiad might have been possible had
the LSI, in the interest of working class solidarity, invited the RSI
sections as guests and had the RSI shown through its conduct that it
was seriously interested in establishing true unity. As a festival of
international socialism, the olympiad combined athletic and cultural
events. The LSI had no intention of eliminating competition from
the olympiad as, indeed, the programme was dominated by trad-

itional athletic events such as track and field contests, gymnastics
and wrestling, but it planned to avoid the quest for records and the
idolization of individual athletes that pervaded the bourgeois
Olympics. Through opening ceremonies overflowing with red flags,
mass free exercises in which hundreds of participants engaged in
simultaneous choral movements, the mass pyramids with which the
festival ended and the Weihespiel 'Kampf um die Erde' (Struggle for
the World), a powerful dramatic presentation using large speaking
and acting choruses that portrayed sport as the source of strength for
the creation of a new world, the olympiad demonstrated proletarian
solidarity and brotherhood.43 Although the leaders of the LSI had
hoped that both internationals could find common ground in this
demonstration of proletarian culture, as well as in their opposition to
bourgeois culture and the capitalist system, the RSI would not enter
into any situation in which communists would not be dominant. Its
calls for unity were based on the assumption that if the communists
could get into LSI activities, they could radicalize the LSI and make
its members active in the political and trade union movements.
Though the LSI leadership probably recognized the differences
between the internationals and the dangers of united action with the
RSI, they continued to seek cooperation with it. To have acquiesced
in RSI demands for unconditional participation in the Frankfurt
Olympiad and then been subjected to massive communist
disruptions might have spelled disaster for the LSI. A much less
dangerous route toward cooperation was allowing teams from RSI
sections and LSI clubs to compete against each other in local
matches. At the third congress of the LSI, which met in Paris on 31
October 1925, after listening to a plea from an RSI representative,
Fritz Reussner, for gradual unification and immediate cooperation
in sporting events, with the goal of building a working union of both
internationals, the delegates agreed to allow LSI clubs to engage in
sport activities with clubs from countries in which there were no LSI
associations, so long as the teams refrained from political activities.
At the time the LSI did not believe that unification with the RSI was
possible but if cooperation in sporting events proved successful it
was prepared to consider unification at its Helsinki congress in
1927.44
The RSI failed the test the LSI devised for it. During 1926 and
1927 at numerous contests between LSI and RSI clubs throughout
Europe and the Soviet Union, it became clear that, while it was
feasible to arrange cooperation in sport activities, it was impossible

to restrict RSI political attacks on social democrats. For the Finnish
and Latvian associations the Paris decisions were easily implemented
and exchanges with Soviet teams began immediately. For others it
was more complicated. The Germans, with the thoroughness typical
of the leadership of the ATSB, demanded a formal agreement on
sport relations with the Russians before any contests were held, so
that they would have a guarantee that Soviet sportsmen would not
engage in political activity while in Germany. Almost as soon as the
agreement was signed in August 1926, difficulties arose, for German
communists used the visits of Soviet teams as occasions for political
demonstrations. Finally in July 1927 relations broke down com-
pletely. During a tour of Germany by a Soviet soccer team, political
demonstrations of the KPD and the Rote Frontkampferbund, which
often overshadowed official greeting ceremonies, were encouraged
by the Soviets as spontaneous expressions of the workers' desire for
unity in the sport movement. Moreover, the Russians caused
problems in other ways, demanding different food, asking for better
accommodation, leaving official functions early and, in one
instance, asking at the last moment that a sleeping car be added to
the Bremen-Dresden train, all of which the German socialists felt was
unproletarian conduct.45 Unable to tolerate such behaviour by its
Soviet guests, soon after the Russians returned to Moscow the
national board of the ATSB decided that since the Russians had not
acted in accord with the Paris decisions, it would prohibit further
sport relations with the Soviet Union.46 Though the Russians must
have realized that their actions in Germany would have a direct effect
on RSI-LSI relations, they did nothing to promote unity between the
internationals.
Other actions of the RSI also hindered cooperation with the LSI.
Soviet teams, which were automatically RSI members, competed
several times against bourgeois clubs in Turkey, France and
England. Advised of these events, the International Bureau decided
in May 1926 that if such things continued there could be no progress
in relations between the two internationals.47 Some Finnish members
of the LSI, whose national organization had been pressuring the
International Bureau to relax the Paris decisions, attended a winter
sport festival in Leningrad in March 1927, despite an LSI prohibition
against attendance, and were astonished at what they saw. Patterned
on the festivals of LSI organizations and the Frankfurt Olympiad,
the winter sport festival was a political and cultural as well as a
sporting event. It ended with an operetta, the thrust of which was an

attack on the LSI, which was portrayed as an elegant man in yellow
clothing, an ally of capitalism and a betrayer of the working class.
While the LSI tried to align the workers' sport movement with the
bourgeois movement, the RSI saved the workers by exposing the
perfidy of the LSI and called on all workers to leave the LSI and to
attend the 1928 Moscow Spartakiada.48
By the time the LSI met in Helsinki for its fourth congress in
August 1927 it could no longer endure the slanders of the RSI. With
opposition only from the Finnish delegates, who wanted to continue
the quest for unification, the congress resolved that as the RSI had
done nothing to moderate its activities and had instead demonstrated
that it did not respect the Paris decisions, a merger with the 'Moscow
International' was impossible. Furthermore, participation in the
1928 Moscow Spartakiada, t6 which LSI clubs had been invited, was
forbidden because the Spartakiada was considered a communist
party event.49 These decisions effectively ended relations between the
LSI and RSI.
In response to the twin rebuffs of the Helsinki congress in Aug
and the ATSB decision in October to rupture relations, the R
appealed to the membership of the LSI to reject the dictates of
leadership. Sportsmen in the LSI should demand from their lea
an explanation of their stance on the question of unity and for
reversal of the Helsinki decision and they should insist upon
resumption of relations between all sections of the LSI, especially
German section, and the RSI, the executive committee of the
declared.50 This appeal failed, and so did subsequent attempts
individual members of the LSI to resume relations with RSI athlet
In Germany members of the LSI who engaged in activities with R
sportsmen, including participating in the Moscow Spartakiada, we
expelled from the ATSB. Others who protested at the actions of t
ATSB national board were expelled for Bundesschddigun
(damaging the club), so that by the end of 1929 the ATSB had
about 32,000 of its 800,000 members.5' In other LSI clubs the brea
between social democrats and communists also widened.
By the end of 1928 the RSI had abandoned its strategy of trying to
force the incumbent leadership of the LSI to agree to a merger of the
internationals. Following the 'united front from below' tactic
adopted by the Comintern in 1928, the fourth RSI congress in
August 1928 decided that the leadership of the LSI had to be
'dethroned' and replaced by 'revolutionaries and class elements'.2

Organized 'from below', worker sportsmen were to fight for the
readmission of expelled members and associations into LSI organ-
izations, which were then to be used to destroy the leadership of
theLSI.53 These new tactics brought the RSI no closer to unity with
the LSI than had its previous actions.
From 1928 to 1934 there were essentially no relations between the
two internationals. The LSI (its name changed to the Socialist
Workers' Sport International at the Helsinki congress) turned its
attention inward, working to enlarge and improve its national
organizations and to increase international activity among its
members. Mention of the RSI practically disappeared from its con-
gresses and festivals. Although the RSI strengthened its sections, it
remained unable to win over large numbers of members from the
SWSI or to displace the SWSI leadership. Not until Hitler destroyed
the ATSB, the core of the SWSI, were any attempts at reconciliation
between the two internationals made.
Unity between the sport internationals in the 1920s was never
much more than something to quarrel about. The LSI was willing to
agree to unification only on its own terms, which required that RSI
sections join the LSI, but at least it made concrete suggestions about
a basis for a merger with the RSI. Because the LSI thought of itself
as the purveyor of a new culture, based on brotherhood and inter-
national solidarity, it wanted to avoid political activities that might
fragment the working class. The LSI feared chiefly that, in a merger
with the RSI, it would be converted into a political action group and
thereby lose its identity. Thus when provisions for cooperation with
the RSI were adopted in 1925, safeguards to forestall political
activity were included. Although cooperative undertakings with the
communists were unsuccessful, LSI sections always allowed com-
munists to be members as long as they accepted the basic tenets of
the LSI and did not violate the rules of the association. Of para-
mount concern to the LSI was the development of a strong cultural
and educational movement, rather than the creation of a revo-
lutionary international.
The RSI made no secret of its purpose. Born out of opposition to
both bourgeois sport clubs and what it called 'reformist' workers'
sport associations, the RSI tried to build a sport international that
was a political instrument of the class struggle. It could not seriously
have desired to be united on an equal basis with a social democratic
cultural organization that was preparing to fill the void that would
exist after a revolution, nor could it have taken part in an

organization that abjured political action. Even when the leaders of
the RSI negotiated with LSI leaders, they made it clear that they
relied on the membership of the LSI, not its leadership, to make
unity possible. The RSI wanted to control the LSI; it demanded
concessions such as the right to participate in festivals and con-
gresses, yet offered little in return. It was not the leaders of the LSI
who tried to divide the sport movement, as the communists claimed.
They sincerely believed in a unified international workers' sport
movement and made repeated efforts to create it. The workers' sport
movement, split originally by the formation of the RSI, remained
divided largely because the RSI would not accept anything less than
communist domination of the entire movement.
Notes
1. Arbeiter- Turnzeitung (A TZ), 30, 16 (9 August 1922), 170-71. Wildung was the
leader of the German Zentralkommission fur Arbeitersport und Korperpflege and a
member of the International Bureau of the Lucerne Sport International.
2. Ibid.
3. Comite Sportif International du Travail, 50 ans de sport ouvrier in
(Brussels 1963), 3-4.
4. ATZ, 32, 23 (12 November 1924), 276. See also: Arbeiter-Turn- und
Sportbund, Protokoll uber die Verhandlungen des Ersten Arbeiter-Sport-Kongresses
abgehalten am 15. und 16. Januar 1921 zu Jena (Leipzig 1921), 46-51 and Arbeiter-
Turn- und Sportbund, Protokoll der Verhandlungen des 13. Bundestages abgehalten
zu Munchen vom 10. bis 13. Mai 1921 (Leipzig 1921), 97-101.
5. ATZ, 32, 9 (30 April 1924), 104.
6. Protokoll, Erster A rbeiter-Sport-Kongress, 46.
7. ATZ, 31, 20 (3 October 1923), 212.
8. Ibid., 32, 9 (30 April 1924), 104.
9. Ibid., 30, 16 (9 August 1922), 170.
10. Fritz Wildung, Arbeitersport (Berlin 1929), 56-57.
11. ATZ, 27, 8 (13 April 1919), 48.
12. Ibid., 30, 17 (23 August 1922), 179.
13. I.T. Chubinov, 'Nachalo razvitiia sovetskoi fizicheskoi kul'tury v pervye gody
sovetskoi vlasti (1917-1920gg.)' in F.I. Samoukov, Istoriia fizicheskoi kul'tury
(Moscow 1964), 251-57.
14. Protokoll, Erster Arbeiter-Sport-Kongress, 48.
15. Heinz Timmermann, Geschichte und Struktur der Arbeitersportbewegung
(Marburg/Lahn 1969), 102-03.
16. ATZ, 29, 18 (7 September 1921), 192-93.
17. Arbeiter Turnerbund, Protokoll der Verhandlungen des 12. Bundesturntages
abgehalten in Leipzig zu Pfingsten, 1919 (Leipzig 1919), 40.
18. Protokoll, Erster Arbeiter-Sport-Kongress, 29.
19. ATZ, 29, 6 (23 March 1921), 61-62.
20. Executive Committee of the Y.C.I., The Minutes of the Third Congress of the
Y.C.I., held in Moscow, December 4th-6th, 1922 (Berlin 1923), 130.
21. Ibid., 137.
22. Young Communist International, Bureau, Resolutions and Theses of the
Fourth Bureau Session (Berlin 1923), 84-86.
23. Ibid., 89-95.
24. Sekretariat des EKKI, Bericht der Exekutive der Kommunistischen Inter-
nationale 15. Dezember 1922 - 15. Mai, 1923 (Moscow 1923), 17.
25. ATZ, 30, 17 (23 August 1922), 179.
26. Internationale Jugendkorrespondenz, 3, 15 (15 November 1922), 2.
27. ATZ, 31, 18 (5 September 1923), 200. Not all communist sport factions could
be accused of engaging in divisive tactics. After a communist proposal to affiliate with
the RSI was defeated by a 2-1 margin at a congress of the Sudeten German workers'
sport organization in October, 1922, in Teplitz, the communists pledged their
continued support of the organization and actually kept this promise for more than a
year. Internationale Jugendkorrespondenz, 4, special number (March 1923), 2.
28. Internationale Jugendkorrespondenz, 4, 7 (July 1923), 22.
29. ATZ, 30, 22 (1 November 1922), 222.
30. Ibid., 31, 15 (25 July 1923), 174. LSI officials considered the RSI a Russian
organization. Consequently they believed that if Soviet delegations were admitted to
LSI activities, other RSI sections would rejoin the LSI.
31. Ibid., 32, 10 (14 May 1924), 109-10.
32. Ibid. Communist reports of the conference made no mention of the LSI desire
for further discussions. They claimed that the LSI did not invite the RSI to the
conference, but that a delegation appeared anyway, and that the International Bureau
decided not to invite the RSI to the olympiad even though 1.7 million members of the
LSI favoured an invitation. International Presse-Korrespondenz (Inprekorr), 4, 45 (15
April 1924), 533, and 4, 54 (27 May 1924) 712-13.
33. Letter from J. Devlieger to author, 26 June 1974.
34. ATZ, 32, 17 (20 August 1924), 199.
35. Arbeiter-Turn- und Sportbund, Protokoll des Verhandlungen des 14.
Bundesturntages abgehalten zu Pfingsten, 1924 (7. bis 10. Juni) in Cassel (Leipzig
1924), 9-26. See also ATZ, 32, 18 (3 September 1924), 209-10.
36. ATZ, 32, 18 (3 September 1924), 210. For his activities Lieske was expelled
from the ATSB by the national board on 28 September 1924. The members of the
Turnverein Fichte and the first Kreis, of which Lieske was an elected representative,
were ordered to remove him from all positions or they, too, would be expelled. (Ibid.,
32, 20 [1 October 1924], 237.) As a result of this decision there was a virtual state of
war between the Berlin communists and the national board, which resulted in many
explusions and much recrimination before the national board finally prevailed in early
1925. Lieske's glory in the RSI was short-lived. A Trotskyite and a former supporter of
Ruth Fischer, he lost his power and position in the RSI in 1925. (H. Dass, Die
sportpolitischen und politischen Zusammenhange der deutschen Arbeitersport-
bewegung am Beispiel des Arbeiter-Turn- und Sportbundes [manuscript, n.d.], 31. In
the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn, Germany).
37. ATZ, 32, 20 (1 October 1924), 233-34.
38. Ibid., 32, 23 (12 November 1924), 277.
39. Inprekorr, 4, 139 (24 October 1924), 1,848.
40. Ibid., 4, 151 (21 November 1924), 2,047.
41. Ibid., 5, 102 (30 June 1925), 1,398. See also ATZ, 33, 14(8 July 1925), 162-63.
42. ATZ, 33, 17 (19 August 1925), 197-99.
43. For a discussion of the cultural aspects of the First Workers' Olympiad, see
Horst Ueberhorst, Frisch, Frei, Stark und Treu: Die Arbeitersportbewegung in
Deutschland 1893-1933 (Dusseldorf 1974), 152-55.
44. Internationaler Verband fur Arbeitersport und Korperkultur, Bericht iiber den
I. Kongress zu Paris-Pantin, 31. Oktober. 1. und 2. November 1925 (Leipzig 1925),
13-21.
45. Arbeiter-Turn- und Sportbund, Die Fussballspiele der Landermannschaft der
Union der Sozialistischen Sowjet-Republiken in Deutschland, Juli 1927 (Die
Russenspiele) (Leipzig 1927), 55-56.
46. ATZ, 35, 21 (12 October 1927), 243.
47. Ibid., 34, 12 (9 June 1926) 134.
48. Cornelius Gellert, Der Kampf um den Bund (Leipzig 1928), 15-18.
49. Internationaler Sozialistischer Verband fur Arbeitersport und Korperkultur,
Bericht uber den IV. Kongress zu Helsingfors, 5.-8. August 1927(Leipzig 1927), 51-52.
50. Inprekorr, 8, 2 (6 January 1928), 46.
51. Timmermann, Geschichte und Struktur, 127.
52. Cornelius Gellert, Kampf um die Bundeseinheit (Leipzig 1929), 26.
53. Kommunistische Jugend-lnternationale, Protokoll des 5. Weltkongresses der
KJI, 20. August bis 18. Septekber 1928 in Moskau (Berlin 1929), 372.
Dovid A. Steinberg
a graduate student in modern European history
at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is
currently completing a study of European
workers' sport movements in the interwar
period.

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The Workers' Sport Internationals 1920-28

Author(s): David A. Steinberg

The Workers' Sport Internationals

'Sport activity gives the working class an inner spiritual liber

Journal of Contemporary History (SAGE, London and Beverly Hills),

however, as much with political problems as with cultural affairs,

committee, headed by Bridoux. The tasks facing the International in

Because the capitalist system allowed the workers neither enough

working-class sport organizations, which had not existed before the

experience in the workers' sport movement, the first RSI congress, in

We want to be part of the socialist, revolutionary proletarian movement. We can

Communist sportsmen, Weyer wrote, could not remain neutral in

participate in all activities of the LSI and be admitted to all workers'

everything possible to achieve a union of the two internationals,

As physical education is a means by which the proletariat can fight against

agitated against the socialist leadership and demanded that these

that they would refrain from political activities.37 By maintaining its

the olympiad as, indeed, the programme was dominated by trad-

feasible to arrange cooperation in sport activities, it was impossible

sporting event. It ended with an operetta, the thrust of which was an

'dethroned' and replaced by 'revolutionaries and class elements'.2

exist after a revolution, nor could it have taken part in an

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