Soviet physical culture was a soft power tool used to create healthy and
patriotic citizen-soldiers and help modernise the urban Soviet Union: one key
strand of this was modern sports. Josef Stalin (Communist Party leader from
1925 to 1953) imposed the physical culture and sports culture on society and
had it institutionalised. Moreover,…[Read more]

Traditional sports and recreation in Central Asia are deep-rooted and
ancient. The Central Asian Turkic people participated in physical culture for
different reasons; horse races, wrestling, archery, and hunting had combat
training elements—while fairs, circuses, and home entertainments allowed
people to be distracted from everyday i…[Read more]

This paper assesses the modern and traditional sports of the Soviet Union
shortly before its collapse in 1991. The case study is the Central Asian republic
of Uzbekistan under the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU,
established 1917). Central Asia is a crucial historical case because it was a
Muslim-majority region that Moscow wished…[Read more]

The Cold War Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev (d. 1971) and Leonid Brezhnev (d. 1982), between
1953 and 1982, continued with Vladimir Lenin’s (d. 1924) and Joseph Stalin’s (d. 1953) physical
culture policy designed to create healthier citizen-workers and soldiers. The underlying concept was
to construct a communist society. In the process, the…[Read more]

Lenin commenced Soviet physical culture and sports during the mid-1920s, and Stalin organised it significantly during the 1930s and 1940s. It was part of
Stalin’s Cultural Revolution and the implementation of Soviet modernity. This qualitative and quantitative research paper investigates physical culture and sports 33 years after its founding w…[Read more]

My short essay investigates Lundy Island (England) and its brief occupation by the
Barbary corsairs circa 1625 to 1632 CE. They are also known as the Turkish corsairs,
Turkish pirates, Ottoman corsairs, and North African corsairs. These agents of the
Ottoman Empire sailed from North African seaports to raid shipping and coastal
villages…[Read more]