The Trip of Football Players from Kharkov to Germany in 1925 in the Context of the Development of International Sports Relations

The objective of this study is to characterize the mechanisms and goals of the establishment and development of international relations of the Soviet physical culture movement in the first half of the 1920s as a significant component of cultural diplomacy. The focus is on international sports meetings in which Soviet athletes participated abroad, with a particular emphasis on the 1925 trip of Kharkov footballers, which was of special signifi cance. The growing interest among researchers in the issues of cultural diplomacy is evident, with the majority of works focusing on the USSR’s confrontation with the capitalist world in the sports sphere during the Cold War. However, it was in the 1920s that the institutional foundations of Soviet sport and the forms of its interaction with the outside world were formed. A distinctive characteristic of the period under consideration is the class approach to sport, within the framework of which the working-class physical culture movement was opposed to the bourgeois one. The primary objective of fostering proletarian sports was to cultivate combatants for imminent revolutionary confrontations. International sports meetings between Soviet and foreign proletarian athletes were primarily a means of forging closer ties with them in order to attract them to the Soviet side and thereby expand the ranks of the communist forces, so the actual results of sports competitions were not so important. A further distinctive characteristic of this period was the presence of two organizations, Red Sports International and the Supreme Council of Physical Culture, which were responsible for coordinating interactions with foreign workers’ teams. However, these two entities oft en experienced discord, resulting in the disruption or inadequate promotion of international events. The 1925 football tour of the Kharkov team to Germany represented a pivotal moment in the development of international relations. This event provided the Soviet leadership with a valuable insight into the potential political benefits of triumphing in international sporting competitions, should these victories be accompanied by a well-executed propaganda campaign. Subsequently, these events would be used to enhance the prestige of the USSR in the eyes of the world community.