Russian fencing and the Soviets

[drippingwet]

Wasn't the current Russian fencing system part of a Soviet desire to proove its own greatness in the world, short of actually launching a war? This fencing system being the result of a fast-track methodical process in order to churn out champion after champion with the simple goal of winning medals? Is it not true that the old Russian masters were 'gotten rid of' by the Government along with many others suspected of having intelligence, perhaps due to their potential for stirring trouble? Without these masters, the Russians realised that they didn't have anyone to train these champions and so they invented thier own system, contributing to the current athletic style of fencing? I can certainly see how this athletic style may have helped in the early days against the French and Italians who were more refined. Perhaps this athletic style was one of the only ways that this fast-track system could work, because there is certainly no fast-track method today, unless you're born with spiderman reflexes! Today we only have to look at the olympic medal tables to see the apparent effect of communist government on sport. Look at the success of Chinese fencers. China is hardly a traditional fencing nation!

This is not just something I've made up in my head and wanted to know if by any chance it was true. I read something once, about how these masters were eliminated, but I don't think there was anything about how the soviets were so successful.

Any opinions/facts?

[LUDICROUS]

Hmm, glory through sport helps people forget bad living conditions/whatever. The communist system is uncompromising, and I daresay they trained ALOT. Look at the chinese sports system, kids are now taken from a VERY early age and put into state run sporting schools, with the sole intention of winning medals. Plenty of them don't like it, but what can they do?

[Lemberg]

Being the student of the Soviet school (not the best one) and a soviet citizen by birth I would disagree with the stateenst about Soviets inventing their own school from scratch.... their school is rather a combination of styles - I've read a lot of books in Russian where old masters talk about teh coaches from different countries coming and teaching in early Soviet Russia, especially Hungarians who have had a great fencing tradition for much longer than did the Soviets. So I would argue that Russian school is a refined combination of many different schools that suceeded primarily because of enormous resources the Soviet state allocated for athletes' and coaching development making the sport their full-time and pretty well-paid job. A fencing coach even in the 1980s when it was all slowly but surely moving towards "the big crunch" of '91 was still making teh same or even bigger money than an average engineer, and perhaps rightfully so, as to become coach oen had to complete a 5 year university degree something akin Human Kinetics here in North America, except much more focused, yet making sure the coach knows enough about physiology, psychology and teaching methodics in general to supplement his superior technical/tactical skills. As to Russia's native coaches being shot - I highly doubt they were singled out as a dangerous demographic. Perhaps, in a sense that pretty well all of them were the officers of Csar's Army as you could only learn fencing in the army until well into the 1930s... But at that time everyone was dangerous and one did not need much to justify an exile or execution sentence. I don't think a lot got lost even if all represenatives of Russia's ethnic fencing system were "gotten rid of". That ethnic system if such a thing indeed existed, by most accounts I've read was not very good - Russians kept losing badly most of their friendly matches to Hungarians, Italians etc in teh pre- and early post-revolutionary times... Plus I don't think there was much in terms of foil and epee at all - these weapons were never used by Russia's military and teh only people who may have had any acquaintance with them at all were the representatives of the nobility educated in Europe. They had an interesting 4th kind of fencing in Russia, if I'm not mistaken - the bayonet (sp?) but that existed primarily in the tsarist times and died out as fencing was becoming a competitive sport rather than practical military skill. In a sense you're right, Russians at some point did come to realization that they needed coaches with a succesful system, but I doubt that stemmed primarily from all the ethnic masters being eliminated as enemies of the state. They just plain sucked at fencing as it wasn't really their own thing. So they wanted to get good and fast. Just like in everything else in the Stalinist times and later on, at any price that needed to be paid. Except, i would argue that they succeeded in building a strong fencing program a bit better than they did in their industrialization and collectivization policies, for it's been 14 years since Soviet economy ceased to exist while Russian fencing school is still up there with the best of them, except now it's producing champions across the globe, even though post-Soviet coaches in North America or even contemporary Russia or Ukraine do not possess the same resources they did back in the day. The success of that school, I would argue, even today, rests on its scurpulous attention to the smalest details... When I started working with my present coach he spent first 3 months of our lessons teaching me "how to thrust" even though I've been fencing for good 4 years at that point. He just wanst satisfied with position my guard returned to after I finished my attacks - it was "half a centimetre too high" and until I fixed that minor detail he would refuse letting me do anything else during the lessons. Also, most Russian coaches are highly selective as to their students and discriminate between them on teh basis of commitment. When I started fencing back in Ukraine as a 15-year old, the first montsh of fencing practices our group of 30 kids wouldn't even get to touch a blade - we were just shown it from teh distance, instead first two weeks we spents playing speed and coordination game, until slowly being introduced to basic footwork. A month later there were only 12 of us who stuck around to actually hold the blade for teh first time - the rest, frustarted of not getting to fence, have quit. Next half a year or so were spent doing target practice and partner excercises, no bouting whatsoever. 16 months later there were only two of us left and only then we got to fence with pistol grips. Now I'm not saying that any of it is good in terms of generating the interest to the sport in current conditions, but in terms of producing a dynasty of champions, which as I understand is your main question - I think it's not the worst way to do it.
Anyways, sorry for rambling for so long. Not sure if all of the info I provided is factually correct or representatives of coaching methods of other Russian coaches, but most of it shoudl be pretty accurate. Hope that was at leats a bit helpful.
Dimi

[rivers]

lemberg, interesting post. A little fencing history lesson from Russia.