Creation of the Union of Sports Societies and Organizations of the USSR: Regional Aspect (on the Example of the Penza Region)
The article reveals the reasons and conditions for the transformation of the structure of physical education and sports management in Soviet society in the late 1950s within the framework of the concept of building communism in the USSR — the creation of the Union of Sports Societies and Organizations (Sport Union) of the USSR — a voluntary association that managed the physical education and sports movement with the active assistance of trade unions and the Komsomol. The main goal of the Sports Union was to give the physical education and sports movement in the USSR a mass and then a national character. The theoretical provisions of literature of the 1960s are characterized. On the ratio of state and public principles in management under communism, the transition of individual state functions to public organizations, the strengthening of the role of public structures in communist society, etc. Estimates of modern domestic researchers of the goals and factors of changing the form of leadership in physical education and sports in Soviet society in the late 1950s are considered. The formation of the Sports Union at the regional level is being studied in accordance with the decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR «On the Leadership of Physical Culture and Sports in the Country» of January 9, 1959 — in the Penza Region: the formation of an organizing bureau, the holding of constituent conferences, the state of the physical education and sports movement in the region in the late 1950s.