Sports in the Soviet media: between policy and representation

Figure 27. Table showing overall differences in selected topics presence for in Soviet sports media. "TRUE" stand for the statistical presence of difference, "FALSE" stand for the statistical absence of difference

There is a table showing the overall results of the ANOVA tests for all the topics:

Overall, it can be said that there is, indeed, a statistical difference in the presence of some of the topics in Soviet sports journals throughout the time. There is a proof of the hypothesis regarding the dramatic falling coverage of the Stalin and Lenin figures and the overall socialistic agenda in the Thaw period and in the periods of late USSR. And I was not able to prove that the “Red Militarism” in 1930 caused a higher coverage of the military topic after 1930: in fact, after this year the share of the topic started to fall until the 1935. However, it is still hardly possible to tackle the true nature of some changes and it was seen above in the result with the Western countries: the sense of the shift is rather positive in relation to the attitude regarding the western countries or they are used as the propaganda tool? That is still the question to be answered and it would require a complex qualitative analysis, but it is seen that some topics do shift in importance and coverage in the sports journals.

Discussion

There are many studies exploring the nature, goals and the political agenda of the sports in the Soviet Union (Washburn, 1956) (Riordan, 1974). Those studies mainly put an accent on the political directives from the power elite, and on the data about infrastructure and historical events related to sports. Some of the researchers explain the ways different regimes, mainly totalitarian ones, work by using the USSR's example devoted to the model of political athletes guided by the government, where sports itself is needed for handling the tasks and physical education along with sporting practices themselves are mostly utilitarian tools (Girginov, 2004:32).

Other researchers explore the propaganda and political agenda in the USSR using the analysis of the media (Remington, 1988). In Remington's study devoted to the USSR's mass media, he points out the idea that the Soviet media have been changing in different periods by showing wider picture of discussions and opinions, while still maintaining the “shadowy general interest” (Remington, 1981). That said, with time, USSR's media were creating an outer image of a more independent, while in fact the media carried the general idea outlined by the government in Stalin, Khrushchev, or Brezhnev times.

In this article I have combined both media and the sports subjects in order to analyze how the general changes of sports-related priorities for power elite can be proven statistically. The goal of the study was to trace the changes of the individual and grouping sports coverage, because these differences could foreshadow changes in the general policy of the USSR's sports. But, besides this goal, I was also interested if the sports media was only either a neutral health-educational source and sports events bulletin, or it also had an underlying agenda, hidden or not, that refers to the government's policy. And the results do show that the sports media in the USSR had their own agenda that is not only reflecting the shifts in the sports movement around the world or in the USSR, but also depict some of the topics that converge with changes in society. Be it a less amount of mentions related of Stalin or Lenin in later periods of the USSR or the general shift to the popularity of grouping sports under previously dominating individual sports.

There are some limitations of the study, mainly connected with sparse data on some periods of the USSR. Besides in order to understand clearly the prevailing importance of individual or grouping sports under another ones on different periods it would be useful to have broader data related to the political decisions forming the sports movement in the USSR and to have data about sporting infrastructure which would point to the actual rising importance of some kinds of sports for the government. However, the data of that kind found by me are mostly too sparse and impossible to implement on the chronological analysis.

Conclusion

Combining the text mining and statistical methods I was able to find the differences in the representation of different types of sports in certain Soviet Union time periods. Also, I was able see the patterns of representation of the Olympic Games and various topics in the Soviet sports media. The results point to continually changing political agenda that is followed by the main sports publications, and the results obtained from the topic modeling can point that the sports journals in the USSR were not merely magazines describing different sports events, tactics and exercises, they also had their developing vector reflecting the general path of evolution of society.

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Appendix

App. 1. Link to the Sports dictionary: https://yadi.sk/i/3uUonh4sO36lsA

App. 2. Link to the Open Corpora dictionary: http://opencorpora.org/dict.php

Figure 28. Changes of mentions of Soccer in 'Physical Culture and Sports" journal

Figure 29. Changes of mentions of Basketball in 'Physical Culture and Sports" journal

Figure 30. Changes of mentions of Handball in 'Physical Culture and Sports" journal

Figure 31. Changes of mentions of Volleyball in 'Physical Culture and Sports" journal

Figure 32. Changes of mentions of Water Polo in 'Physical Culture and Sports" journal

Figure 33. Changes of mentions of Hockey in 'Physical Culture and Sports" journal

Figure 34. Changes of mentions of Swimming in 'Physical Culture and Sports" journal

Figure 35. Changes of mentions of Athletics in 'Physical Culture and Sports" journal

Figure 36. Changes of mentions of Skiing in 'Physical Culture and Sports" journal

Figure 37. Changes of mentions of Biking in 'Physical Culture and Sports" journal

Figure 38. Changes of mentions of Gymnastics in 'Physical Culture and Sports" journal

Figure 39. Changes of mentions of Tennis in 'Physical Culture and Sports" journal

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