Sport, Kul’turnost, and Physical Culture in the Khrushchev Era Soviet Union, 1953-1964

<p>Sport served many purposes in the Soviet Union, as it has in most modern societies. This study examines the relationship between state-sponsored imperatives for citizens to engage in sport and exercise and cultural norms in the Soviet Union during the Khrushchev years, 1953-1964. It also examines the attempted creation of a class of people who exhibited proletarian engagement with work, but also possessed bourgeois cultural tastes. A variety of visual and text-based primary sources from Russian-language magazines and poster campaigns were analyzed for their tone, content, and cultural signifiers. The sources yielded a view of Soviet society in which the government under Khrushchev was actively attempting to create a socialist middle class who possessed a proletarian work ethic, but also were well-versed in bourgeois culture and taste, heightening contradictions stemming from Stalin’s implementation of the Big Deal. The Cold War informed a great many of these cultural imperatives, and Khrushchev’s stated goal from 1956 onward was to directly compete with the United States through cultural means rather than via full-on military conflict. This work also folds in elements of class and gender history, examining the methods by which the Khrushchev government used sport and fitness to impose gender-normative roles onto the working class.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Year dc:date.available

2021

Author dc:creator

• Jennings, James Henry

Contributors dc:contributor

• Roxanne Easley
• Jason Knirck
• Dan Herman

• USSR
• Khrushchev
• Sport
• Culture
• Visual Analysis
• Gender
• Cultural History
• European History

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/etd/1505

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.cwu.edu:etd-2530