Spartakiad (Soviet Union)

Spartakiad of Peoples of the USSR

First event	1956
Occur every	4 years
Last event	1991
Purpose	Olympic reserves exhibition
Headquarters	Moscow, Soviet Union

Spartakiad of Peoples of the USSR (Russian: Спартакиада народов СССР, Spartakiada narodov SSSR) were mass multi-event competitions in the Soviet Union in 1956-1991, descendants of the 1928 All-Union Spartakiad that took place in Moscow. The competitions were conducted between constituent republics of the Soviet Union, while the Russian side was represented by three teams and included separate teams from Leningrad and Moscow. The competitions also were organized as winter and summer. There were 10 summer Spartakiads and 7 winter Spartakiads.

In 1952 the Soviet Union decided to join the Olympic movement, and international Spartakiads ceased. However the term persisted for internal sports events in the Soviet Union of different levels, from local up to the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR. The latter event was held twice in four years: Winter Spartakiad and Summer Spartakiad, with international participation.

The first Soviet Spartakiad was held in 1956. These events were of huge importance for Soviet sports. Everyone could participate in them - from ordinary people to top-level athletes. The number of participants, for example, in the 6th Summer Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR, was 90 million people (twice the number of athletes in the USSR in that time), including 8,300 Masters of Sports of the USSR. And in the 3rd Winter Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR 20 million people took part, including some 1,000 Masters of Sports of the USSR. The Winter and Summer Spartakiads of the Peoples of the USSR were each commemorated on a series of postage stamps, released in millions of copies (an example of such a stamp is pictured). Until 1975 all summer finals were held in Moscow, later in other cities throughout the Union. The winter editions final were often held in Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk).

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