The Soviet Model of Workplace Physical Exercises in the Context of State Social and Labor Policy

There are many bright and significant pages in the history of the formation and development of the physical culture movement in the USSR. A special place in the 1920–1930s is occupied by industrial physical education, the formation of which was directly related to the economic need to increase labor productivity and improve industrial production indicators. The article examines in detail the goals, methods and key aspects of the formation and development of the industrial physical education system in this period. The developed methods for applying various forms of physical education in production were tested at enterprises, subjected to careful analysis, received scientific justification and were subsequently distributed in the form of official instructions for widespread use. Industrial gymnastics was not only a tool for caring for the health of workers, but also an effective means of forming a collectivist identity within the framework of the concept of building a “new man”, which corresponded to the key ideological principles of the Soviet state of that time.

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