Dynamo (sports society)

Dynamo, also Dinamo, (Russian: Динамо; Ukrainian: Динамо, Belarusian: Дынама) is a sports and fitness society created in 1923 in the Soviet Union.

The name given to the society was supposed to mean "Power in Motion", taken from the Greek: δύναμις; dynamis -power, and Latin: motio, -motion. Not coincidentally, this term was first coined earlier by a German inventor Ernst Werner von Siemens for the electrical generator. Dynamo, together with Armed Forces sports societies and Voluntary Sports Societies, made up the universal system of physical education and sports of the USSR. Forty-five sports disciplines were sanctioned by the society in 1971. It had some 6,000 sports facilities and 43 Children and Youth Sport Schools.

The "Dinamo" society was officially created on April 18, 1923 on Felix Dzerzhinsky's initiative and under the sponsorship of the State Political Directorate (GPU), the Soviet political police, the predecessor of other later created Soviet security structures such as KGB, NKVD and MVD. For the rest of the society's history in the Soviet period, it maintained some connection with the state security apparatus.

The name of the society also became well-known internationally through many clubs in various sports, initially created under the auspecies of the Soviet Dynamo society (only a partial list of sports includes football (soccer), bandy, ice hockey, basketball, volleyball, handball) or just bore the name "Dynamo", with many such clubs attaining much international acclaim, such as in football: KF Dinamo Tirana, Dinamo Baku, FC Dinamo București, Dinamo Sofia, FC Dynamo Kyiv, FC Dynamo Moscow, FC Dinamo Tbilisi, FC Dinamo Minsk, FC Dinamo Brest, JK Dünamo Tallinn, NK Dinamo Zagreb (Croatia), Sportvereinigung Dynamo (Germany: including Berliner FC Dynamo and Dynamo Dresden), in ice hockey: HC Dynamo Moscow, Dynamo Kyiv (now Sokil Kyiv), HC Dinamo Minsk, and Dinamo Riga. Similarly-named clubs were created in many countries of the Eastern bloc. Many clubs, now transformed into the regular private clubs of their respective national leagues, still function under their original Dinamo or Dynamo name but their history is the only connection with the old Dynamo society.

...
Wikipedia