Inside the Big Red Machine

An athletic program for everyone yields Olympic gold

In a Leningrad gym, a class of ten-year-old schoolgirls begins one of its twice-weekly sessions by executing handstands on the parallel bars. In Moscow's Central Army Sports Club, teams of soldiers exchange their combat boots for skates; a hockey puck is soon cracking like gunfire against the wooden boards. Near by, in Luzhniki Park, a group of middle-aged citizens sets out on a supervised 10-km walk, picking berries along the way.

A few vignettes from everyday sporting life in the Soviet Union, where fitness is virtually a state religion and millions of citizens take part in an elaborate system of athletic instruction and awards. Designed for the masses, the Soviet sports machine has nonetheless produced an athletic elite of awesome proportions, with all the international political benefits that implies. Just as do many other countries, the U.S.S.R. views sport as a useful political weapon. Since participating in its first modern Olympiad in 1952 in Helsinki, the Soviet Union has won 685 medals in the Summer Games--more than any other nation during those years (the U.S., in second place, has collected 603). The Kremlin considered this year's Games in Moscow--the first ever held in a Communist nation--not only as another quadrennial chance to demonstrate Soviet athletic prowess, but also as the best possible way to show off its society to the rest of the world.

The Soviet sports program, supervised by the Physical Culture and Sports Committee of the U.S.S.R. Council of Ministers, is organized down to the level of nursery school and factory. At the top are 39 "voluntary sports societies" run by regional labor unions. Each has its own teams, facilities, and badges; Spartak, for example, has 4 million members, mostly white collar workers, each of whom pays 30 kopecks (45-c-) annual dues.

Then come the nearly 1.5 million sports clubs, ranging from the tiny Kolos of the Kalinin collective farm near Pinsk in Belorussia to the nationwide Central Army Club, which draws its members from the armed services. According to official figures, enrollment in the societies and the sports clubs totals 57 million --one-fifth of the nation's population.

To encourage mass participation, Moscow pushes a set of nationwide physical tests for citizens aged ten to 60 called G.T.O. (Gotov k Trudu i Oborone, or Prepared for Work and Defense). To earn a gold badge in the Strength and Courage (ages 16 to 18) category, for instance, a citizen must be able to do twelve chin-ups and toss a grenade 40 meters, among other feats. In 1976, the last year for which figures are available, 20.5 million Soviets of all ages won silver and gold badges.

Starting at age seven, school children must take part in two 45-minute physical education classes weekly. By age ten or eleven, those who show promise attend one of 5,000 "junior sports schools" operated after regular classroom hours. One result of this early introduction to sport and fitness is the development of an enthusiasm for athletics that encompasses the whole society.

The most skilled young Soviet athletes graduate to one of the country's 600 Olympic reserve schools, located in the larger cities. The schools offer complete academic programs as well as athletic training, and their yearly graduating classes form the pool from which members are selected for national and individual republic squads in such sports as basketball and volleyball. Top athletes may also be drafted by the army specifically to play on the service's various teams.

Through this gleaning process the Soviet Union eventually selects its Olympic athletes. The best in team sports are selected through regional and national championships, while the finest in individual sports are determined in the quadrennial Spartakiad, a sort of dress-rehearsal Olympics held in Moscow the summer before the Games. In 1979, 90 million Soviet athletes tried out in local and regional contests, and 10,000 eventually took part in Spartakiad.

The best Soviet athletes win more than just medals. An Olympic-caliber competitor is a kind of professional amateur, with a salary paid by the state and a standard of living roughly equivalent to that of a successful factory manager. Vladimir Yashchenko, 21, a world-class high jumper busily training for the Olympics, receives a stipend of $400 from the government. Irina Rodnina, 30, and Alexander Zaitsev, 28, the 1980 winter Olympic champion figure-skating pair, live in a two-bedroom apartment in downtown Moscow, a privilege seldom granted to a couple so young. Once their playing days are over, many Olympic athletes can look forward to careers as coaches and sport administrators.

Soviet authorities deny that their athletes use steroids, chemicals that promote muscle development but are outlawed in international competition. A few athletes have defected to the West with tales of widespread steroid use, but such charges are difficult to prove. Still the Soviet athletic establishment is under intense pressure to succeed, and athletes are sometimes asked to take up unpopular sports. Several years ago, the Sports Committee decided that Olympic gold could be mined from handball--a sport not seriously pursued in the Soviet Union. Word went out to the local sports schools to set up crash training programs for gandbolisty. "We are proud of such 'interference,' " said Sergei Pavlov, Minister of Sports. At the first Olympiad after that decision, in Montreal in 1976, Soviet players entered both the men's and women's handball matches and walked away with gold medals.

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