The 1934 Spartakiad

Short Notes for the 1934 Spartakiads
Excerpt from “The Winning Throw: Spartakiads”, Documentary, 1995
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The Winning Throw was a popular EBC sports programme beginning in 1987, exploring interesting stories from sports history. Starting primarily with a European focus, it expanded to a more international perspective with “Raja Varma*”, about the rise of the titular Indian cricketeer. The following is transcribed from an episode on the history of Spartakiads:_

NARRATOR: With America having ascended to a high position in the Communist International, it was decided that the next Spartakiad would be held in America in honor of this victory.

Arthur G. Lord (Sovietologist): Previously, there was a limitation to the locations of each event. In 1931, Berlin police had actually banned athletes from coming, and they never quite completed the tournaments held there. Whilst the first Winter Spartakiad was held in Oslo, it seemed that they could only hold them in the Soviet Union. Sure enough, the 1933 Spartakiad, set to have been in Moscow, had been postponed, and in that time, America was suddenly the newest Communist state. It was then decided at the next meeting of the Red Sports International that there would be an American Spartakiad.

NARRATOR: The US had already hosted two Olympics, one in St. Louis in 1906 and the previous two in Lake Placid and Los Angeles in 1932. Los Angeles was considered as a location, but the Los Angeles Coliseum had sustained damage during the Civil War and repairs were still underway. Thus, the 1906 location of St. Louis was chosen instead, with Francis Field at then- Washington University in St. Louis serving as the main stadium for the events.

Grace Kelly (1948 Olympic Gymnastics Gold Medalist, Los Angeles Culture Secretary 1975-1990, former Spartakiad athlete): The first Spartakiad in Moscow had been held in the Dynamo Stadium, which was specifically built for those games. However, the American members of Sportsintern [short-hand for Red Sports International] felt that building a stadium specifically for one event might reek of bourgeois hubris, especially since the Germans were doing the same for the upcoming Olympics. So, it was decided just to hold the Spartakiad in the existing sports fields. This became tradition, both for the future Spartakiads and for the eventual Olympic games held in Comintern.

Lord: As the first American Game, many former American Olympians and aspiring Olympians turned up alongside the Soviet and foreign athletes to compete.

NARRATOR: The American Olympic Committee (ironically led by Douglas MacArthur at one point) had fled and set themselves up in Cuba under Avery Brundage’s reign. However, the majority of Olympic athletes stayed, and some who had competed in the 1932 Games as well as those who were training before the Revolution came to St. Louis, only to find a very different culture than the one they had left behind.

Lord: Bare in mind that the culture of the Spartakiads were heavily influenced by the Spartnak and Dynamo cultures in the Soviet Union. Whilst the 20’s Communist countersociety had similar sports clubs and teams with similar focuses, most of the athletes coming into these games were, well, underprepared for that sort of culture and what exactly it entailed. Many of these Soviet athletes had been through the recently inaugurated Ready for Labor and Defense of the USSR program (or GTO), which had been applied to the whole citizenry. Such a program of intensive training made them far superior to their American counterparts.

Martin Glickman (1936 Olympic Sprinter Gold Medalist, PBS-4 Sportscaster, 1934 Spartakiad participant): I had heard of the union clubs and sports teams, of course, going into the Games, but I never really experienced the kind of training or strength needed to really compete on that level. It was jarring when I was soon outmatched by several of the Soviet athletes. It certainly helped people like me, Sam [Stoller], and Jesse [Owens], when the time came to compete in Berlin, but those sessions were [laugh] not exactly easy. Especially when those Soviet athletes were from the military and had gone through GTO, meaning they had been trained to their possible peak.

NARRATOR: The disparity between the Soviet athletes with their GTO training and American athletes led to the adoption of uniform fitness standards for the USSR and America.

Lord: The Dynamo culture had been cultivated by Felix Dzerzhinsky himself as a measure to encourage public health. This went through the Spartakiads as well. In fact, the militarism of the event was always apparent, especially as Stalin rose to power. You had events like the grenade toss, which is exactly what reads. The Americans added a rifle event, which used weapons leftover from the Civil War. My personal favorite was when they had to swim in full military uniform. Some of these had been staples since the 1928 Moscow games.

Kelly: My father helped with the rowing events, and he told me how people struggled to swim with those big bulky uniforms on. He remembered one person almost drowned. I suppose they found a way to make it work, given it’s still around today.

NARRATOR: More in the spirit of the classical Olympics, it was not only a sporting event, but a cultural one as well.

Kelly: There were reenactments of many historical events, like the Paris Commune, Haymarket, the October Revolution, and the Bienno Rosso. There wasn’t any major reenactments of the Civil War at the first one in America, given it was still fresh at that point, but by the time I got there, they had some of the victory of Norman Thomas, the Rose Offensive, and Foster’s declaration. They also have an annual hike for all the athletes, not to compete, but to bond and get to know each other. Given how international it was, it was a nice ice breaker.

Glickman: The day before the football match, I was informed that I was to compete in the Berlin Olympics coming up in two years. This was a practice for the athletes to compete in Berlin in two years.

NARRATOR: It was decided early on to compete in Berlin. The Culture Secretariat had made an agreement with the IOC to compete with the USSR. Sportsintern organized a Soviet Olympic Committee and reorganized the American one (The original, under the lead of Avery Brundage, having left for Cuba with their one-time President Douglas MacArthur). Thus, the Spartakiads that year served also as a practice to test the skill of athletes that were planning to go to Berlin.

Lord: In that sense, it was a rousing success, especially looking at the performances of American and Soviet athletes in Berlin.