SPORT 1913 - 2013

VIEW TO THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL WORKERS SPORTS CONFEDERATION (CSIT) Seppo Hentilä / Finland

Introduction The writing of this chapter has been inspired by the celebration of the 100 th anniversary of the international cooperation of worker sport in 2013. According to the prevailing concep- tion of history of the CSIT (Confédération Sportive Internationale Travailliste et Ama- teur), the international cooperation of worker sport roots back to the “Association Socialiste Internationale d’Éducation Physique” (ASIEP) founded in Gent, Belgium on May 10th 1913 (http://www.csit.tv/en/menu_us/history). This study will review the history of the work- er sport internationals from ASIEP to CSIT looking at the movement’s tasks, aims and challenges, such as they were set in time and by the movement itself. In spite of serious breaks caused by the World Wars, the international cooperation of worker sport has been continued until our days. After the First World War, the coopera- tion was re-established by founding, in a meeting in Lucerne (Switzerland) on Septem- ber 14 th , 1920, the International Association for Sport and Physical Culture – the so-called Lucerne Sport International (LSI). In 1928 the name of the organisation was changed to So- cialist Workers Sport International, best known as SASI according to the German ab- breviation of the name. After the Second WorldWar the organisation had to be re-estab- lished again. In a meeting held in Brussels on May 30th 1946, the Comité Sportif Interna- tional du Travail (CSIT) was founded. Since 2011 the official name of the organisation is

Confédération Sportive Internationale Tra- vailliste et Amateur – International Workers and Amateurs in Sports Confederation (CSIT). Major Historical Phases of Organising Worker Sport The process of organising the culture of phys- ical exercise for working people can be divid- ed into three major historical phases: (1) the birth of worker sport as a part of the bour- geois national sport movement in the latter half of the 19 th century, (2) the development of an autonomous worker sport movement as a part of the working class movement in the period between the World Wars and (3) the joint activities of the worker sport movement with the bourgeois sport movement follow- ing the Second World War. Although the organising process of the worker sport was quite different in various countries we can nevertheless consider the above-mentioned breakdown as being gener- ally applicable. The main question that has dominated the history of the worker sport movement in national and international lev- els is its relationship to the bourgeois sport movement. In all periods the forms of the or- ganisation of workers sport have been deter- mined in terms of the solution at any given time to this key question. Historical examina- tions of the worker sport in international as well as in national level show this quite con- vincingly. During the last decades of the 19 th cen- tury, a constantly growing part of working

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