Abstract

This article examines Soviet policies aimed at drawing women into the physical culture movement in the 1920s and assesses their practical outcomes. It considers both the theoretical and ideological premises that accompanied the USSR’s cultural revolution — especially the place of women’s emancipation within it — and the more immediate practical imperatives of postwar recovery that demanded the mobilization of women’s labor. In this context, physical culture in the Soviet Union functioned as an important instrument for educating the masses and preparing them for heightened exertion in both peacetime and wartime. The study traces the reasons for women’s relatively modest participation in physical culture during the decade. By the mid-1920s it had become clear that mass involvement could not be achieved without attention to gendered and national particularities and without addressing women’s everyday material burdens in both urban and rural settings. Various aspects of the effects of physical exertion on the female body began to be studied actively, while a parallel propaganda campaign sought to educate women in sanitary and hygienic norms and in basic skills of health maintenance. The agenda also came to include the training of female instructors and the creation of specialized programs and physical-culture circles for women in the countryside and in non-Russian national regions. The problem of women’s heavy domestic workload, however, proved intractable; statistical evidence suggests that the majority of women engaged in physical culture and sport were under twenty-three years of age. Despite these constraints, certain advances were achieved. Some women attained outstanding athletic results, and young women participated actively in competitions at both the all-Union level and in a number of regions. Norms of propriety likewise shifted gradually, making it increasingly acceptable for women to wear full athletic attire.