Red Sport International
[2] Following the bloodbath of World War I, the German workers' sports movement began to reemerge, with a new competitive orientation beginning to take the place of individualistic club activities.
[5] The group issued a public manifesto declaring the establishment of a Red Sport International and elected a governing Executive Committee, consisting of representatives from Soviet Russia, Germany, Czechoslovakia, France, Sweden, Italy, and Alsace-Lorraine.
[4] The only national "proletarian" sports organization to join the German group at that early date was the Czechoslovak Federation of Workers' Gymnastic Leagues, said to represent 100,000 athletes.
[4] The Comintern moved closer to the fledgling Sportintern in November 1922 when, in conjunction with the 4th World Congress, the governing Executive Committee of the Communist International decided to name a representative to the "independent" proletarian sport organization.
[4] The Communist International of Youth (KIM) did not take action until the meeting of its governing Bureau in Moscow in July 1923, when it issued a general recommendation of support for the Sportintern and the national sports organizations affiliated to it as a useful "proletarian class instrument.
[9] The RSI's increased place in the public eye motivated the governing body of the rival international socialist sports authority, meeting in Zurich in August 1923, to discuss issuing an invitation to Sportintern to help organize a joint "Workers' Olympiad" — a proposal which was narrowly defeated, despite indications that a majority of individual members of the socialist organization favored joint participation.
[10] As the membership of Sportintern was formally "open to all proletarian elements which recognize the class struggle" it was not an explicitly communist organization, a situation which the KIM saw as a significant shortcoming.
[10] The RSI was a large and growing organization in this interval, with some 2 million affiliated members in the Soviet Union, joined by others sections in Germany, Czechoslovakia, France, Norway, Italy, Finland, Switzerland, the United States, Estonia, Bulgaria, and Uruguay.
Nikolai Podvoisky was himself a voice for such an insertion of such ideological hegemony, declaring in a lengthy speech to the 5th Enlarged Plenum of the Comintern, held in the spring of 1925, that Sportintern should henceforth adopt as its motto:
[15] As the Comintern was itself in the process of being absorbed as an instrument of Soviet foreign policy in this interval, the RSI likewise gradually lost its ability to function independently as an international entity.
[21] The IOC games also were based upon rigid entrance standards, while the international festivals of the worker athletic movement instead attempted to build mass participation through pageantry, artistic and cultural activities, and unifying political presentations.
[21] Such international competitions should be open to the participation of less privileged national and social groups, without distinction to race or creed, in the view of the radical sports organizations.
The so-called Popular Front against the threat of fascism rendered cooperation with socialists and others through unified workers' athletic festivals not only a possibility but the tactical order of the day.
[24] The 3rd Workers' Olympiad proved to be less successful than previous endeavors, but it still managed to attract 27,000 participating athletes, and put 50,000 people in the stadium for the final day of competition.
[24] With the Soviet Union becoming immersed in the first months of 1937 in a massive and xenophobic secret police campaign against perceived underground espionage networks remembered as the Great Terror, the Red Sport International was summarily dissolved by the Comintern in April of that year.
