Not a headline I ever expected to read.

‘Lunacharsky on Boxing’ from Young Worker. Vol. 8 No. 20. October 21, 1930.

(Extracts from a letter of A. V. Lunacharsky. People’s Commissar for Public Education in the Soviet Union, to the sport club of the National Food Workers Union of the Soviet Union).

Dear Comrades:

You asked me to express my opinion on boxing as a form of sport after you at first have demonstrated before me an excellent program of training for boxing.

…when the movement started in the Soviet Union against boxing I was quite indifferent towards this question. But I must say that recently thinking more and more of various forms of bourgeois (boss) sports I came to the conclusion that we can take from the West much more than I originally thought.

Bourgeois (boss) sport, which is exaggerated to absurd dimensions and which diverts broad masses of the people from social interests. still has at the same time two very important and sound sides.

First of all, as any sport, it (boxing) has an excellent physical and healthy training which…contributes a great raising of the general level. From this point of view our working youth and students need the sport very much.

Besides that in bourgeois (boss) sport, side by side with bad features of competition and career-making…there are undoubtedly certain moral and mental qualities which are very important for us and which here acquire quite a different meaning. Such are a firm and resolute will, fearlessness, calculation of each movement, exactness, quickness, capacity to act in collective sport together with your fellows–and this helps…

…That what you have show me on the sporting ground of the National Food Union…discloses for me some new features of boxing, proving that if it is rightly organized it can be also very useful for us…

One can ask: Why fight? But, dear comrades, we must not be sentimental. We shall have to fight yet in this life.

Boxing is the best organized form of a real fight, but under certain strict rules.

…These considerations compel to think that…we must let our youngsters who are not afraid to endure this hard sport to train themselves in the field of boxing.

We don’t want any of our comrades to become famous champions, but it will be quite good if…our workers would get a useful training through this…hard form of sport.

The Young Worker was produced by the Young Workers League of America beginning in 1922. The name of the Workers Party youth league followed the name of the adult party, changing to the Young Workers (Communist) League when the Workers Party became the Workers (Communist) Party in 1926. The journal was published monthly in Chicago and continued until 1927. Editors included Oliver Carlson, Martin Abern, Max Schachtman, Nat Kaplan, and Harry Gannes.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/youngworker/v08a%20n12%20-%2026%20Young%20Worker%201930%20July%20Dec.pdf