Socio-Cultural Factors of the Emergence and Activity of Running Clubs in the USSR

Kannykin Stanislav Vladimirovich PhD in Philosophy Associate professor of the Department of Humanities at Stary Oskol Technological Institute named after A. Ugarov, branch of National University of Science and Technology "MISIS" 309516, Russia, Belgorod Region, Stary Oskol, micro district Makarenko, 42 stvk2007@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Recently, modern Russian society has faced acute problems concerning the health of the masses. Firstly, this is due to the coronavirus pandemic and the severe post-ovoid syndrome inherent in many patients. Secondly, the growth of anxiety of the population determined by political and economic processes, which, according to numerous media reports, significantly increased (compared to previous years) sales of medicines for depression. The "traditional" health problems that cause the high mortality rate of Russians by world standards, primarily from heart and vascular diseases, have not gone away. It is known that one of the most effective means of preventing and overcoming many somatic and mental ailments is optimally selected physical activity, of the many forms of which walking and running are the most accessible and universal in terms of a positive effect on the body. At the same time, the energy consumption during running locomotion is three to five times greater than that of ordinary walking ^{[8, p.7]}, "running gives the greatest physiological effect per unit of time" ^{[16, p. 22]}. Indeed, gentle running practices allow you to quickly restore immunity after diseases, strengthen blood vessels and the heart, optimize the state of the respiratory system, increase mental tone, give a sense of optimism and joy of life. It is also important to note the personality-building potential of running, associated with the development of willpower, endurance, strengthening self-confidence, striving to achieve higher and higher goals. Here 's how Haruki writes about it  Murakami is a world?famous Japanese writer who has been fond of running for many years: "They often laugh at runners, saying that they are ready for a lot just to live longer, but I think that's not why most people run at all. It is important for them not to prolong their life, but to improve its quality" ^{[17, p. 40]}.The same opinion is expressed by L. Markov: "Setting tasks for himself, overcoming the distance, a person abstractly models life. He gets satisfaction from the fact that he can systematically do something. A person searches for the remnants of character in himself and creates his character anew. In something else it is difficult to prove, and running allows you to test yourself at any time and in any weather. And this is very important!" ["Do you like running?" an article from L. Markov's book. URL: http://www.cnopm.ru/athletics/running/1984/february/do_you_like_running_article_from_book_by_markov (accessed: 25.01.2023)].

In modern Russia, organized collective and individual running classes are offered by running schools and fitness clubs. Significant limitations of their activities on a national scale are commercial (marketing) orientation (orientation of club members to a certain manufacturer of running equipment and accessories) and concentration in large cities, some of the clubs can be accessed only by invitation, some of them are focused on specific target audiences and races. This leads to the fact that "... even among people living near a large forest area in Izmailovo, 8-10 out of 1,500 people, that is, only 0.5-0.8% of residents, are engaged in recreational therapeutic running (at different times of the year) at the age of 40-50 years and older. And this is despite the fact that thousands of running centers and clubs have been created in Russia" ^[21].

In this regard, it is relevant to turn to the history of the running club movement in the USSR, largely thanks to which millions of people of different ages and social status systematically ran: "according to statistics, every third Soviet person who is engaged in physical education independently is fond of running. Probably, about the same number of people of different ages engaged in running are organized in various sections, health groups, clubs. On the scale of a country like the Soviet Union, these are many millions, and maybe tens of millions of people" ^{[18, p. 6]}. Running clubs in the Soviet Union began to appear initially as amateur organizations in the late 60s of the twentieth century, gradually turning into mass public organizations (official membership, contributions, charters, centralization of management, etc.) in the 70s of the twentieth century.  Of these, there were at least 350-400 actually operating and existing for several years [Shishkin A. Amateurs for clubs. URL: https://www.sport-express.ru/running/reviews/828590 / (date of circulation: 13.12. 2022)], although "on paper", for example, in 1982, there were more than 2000 KLB ^{[3, p. 3]}. Unfortunately, the experience of the KLB is clearly insufficiently researched by the modern Russian scientific community. Suffice it to say that in the electronic libraries of dissertations we have not found a single work, the subject of research of which would be the activities of the KLB, and a few articles [for example, 3, 11, 14, 15, 19, 20, 22, 23], covering mainly the topic of club running "on a tangent", do not allow you to make a holistic view of the phenomenon of the Soviet running club, which, of course, is a serious obstacle to the dissemination of the experience of organizing therapeutic and wellness running within the framework of the KLB. These circumstances determine the relevance of this article, during the preparation of which the following tasks were set: determining the prerequisites for the emergence of the running club movement in the USSR; revealing the essential features of the KLB as initiative clubs for the self-organization of amateur runners; identifying the external and internal functions of running clubs. The source base of the work is both scientific publications and the memoirs of the organizers and the first participants in the activities of the KLB in the USSR presented on the Internet.  The methodological basis of the research is a philosophically oriented socio-cultural approach, within the framework of which the study of complex social and cultural relations in the area of origin, functioning and influence on the Soviet society of the activities of running clubs is carried out.

Prerequisites for the emergence of the running club movement in the USSR

The running activity of the peoples who inhabited the territory of the Soviet Union has a long history. Running competitions and games were part of folk culture, being used not only for entertainment and physical training, but also (within the framework of the mythological worldview) for ritual purposes. Since the XVII century, the applied use of running practices in military affairs has been noted (mainly for the training of lower ranks of infantry), in the second half of the XIX century, running became an important element of domestic pedagogical concepts of physical education (P. F. Lesgaft, A. D. Butovsky, A. A. Pokrovsky, etc.), and at the end of the XIX century, the first appeared in Russia The running club is the Tyarlevsky circle, named after the place of education – the dacha village of Tyarlevo, located about 30 km from St. Petersburg. It was there that young people vacationing in the summer began to compete in sports running – with timing, rules and measured distances. For them, running was not a means of recovery, they viewed it as an interesting, gambling and fashionable pastime in the West, which they wanted to imitate. It was a form of leisure, the Tyarlevites organized it at their discretion and at their own expense. This hobby was so strong that later for some members of the circle running and sports activities in general will become the main business of life, they will do a lot for the development of athletic club movement and running sports in the Russian Empire. "At the end of the XIX ? beginning of the XX century. sport is firmly included in the life of the army. Representatives of the military department are invited to participate in international competitions in shooting, equestrian sports, fencing, gymnastics, athletics. <...> During the First World War, military sports clubs were created" ^{[10, p. 16]}. S. I. Shoshina defines pre-revolutionary clubs based on four basic concepts: "voluntary association of people, public association (meaning "assembly"), gathering in a certain place (meaning "building") functioning by making membership fees (in the meaning of "fold"), connected by a certain community and different from the social environment surrounding it (in the meaning of "self")" ^{[25, p. 170]}.

After the revolution of 1917, the popularization of running classes, in addition to those introduced in 1926 in secondary schools of a higher type of physical culture, was promoted by the complex "Ready for Labor and Defense of the USSR" approved in 1931, whose badge depicted a runner overcoming the finishing tape, and the complex itself included, among other things, sprinting, cross-country, march-throw, long "light running" and mixed movement (walking-running). Thanks to this complex, millions of Soviet citizens began to run systematically, primarily young people, among whom it was prestigious to have a TRP badge. In the pre-war period in the USSR, running was a sphere of manifestation of women's emancipation (for example, competitions of runners in six types at the First Championship of the RSFSR in athletics in 1922) and equality (mixed relay races), part of cultural construction (organized running classes and competitions contributed to the development of hygiene, the formation of ideas about rational nutrition and discipline), was a means of propagandizing the achievements of the Soviet system (mass crosses, propaganda runs, as well as world-class national sports records, unique for the world sports movement of that time). In the post-war period, the Soviet state began to pay increased attention to the health and physical development of the broad masses of the people, who had to solve the most difficult tasks associated with the construction of a communist society: "In Soviet times, the CPSU set various goals and tasks for the people, among which were both the cultivation of physically and mentally healthy children, and the re-education of those adults who were not used to monitoring their health. Few people needed to explain for a long time that healthy human capital is a promising present and reliable future of a huge country" ^{[9, p. 48]}. For the greatest involvement of the population in the sphere of physical culture, various forms of agitation were used: paintings, posters, documentaries and feature films, later – television programs ^[7]. The formation of the club running movement in the USSR was greatly influenced by the joint resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers adopted in January 1959 on the reorganization of the structure and leadership of the Soviet physical culture movement. On its basis, the Union of Sports Societies and Organizations of the USSR was created, to which the leadership of physical education and sports in the country was transferred. In this regard, N. S. Khrushchev emphasized that: "Until now, the leadership of the physical culture movement in our country has been carried out by a state body... Now a more expedient form of organizing the physical culture movement has been found, in which public organizations will play a decisive role" [Khrushchev N. S. Report at the extraordinary XXI Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union // Truth. 1959. january 28th. URL: http://oldgazette.narod.ru/pravda/28011959/text9.html (accessed: 20.01.2023)].  Such a decision was considered as another step towards the communist formation, which assumed, as is known, the "withering away of the state", the stage of movement towards which was the development of amateur organizations – unions, societies and clubs, including physical culture and sports. It should also be noted later regulatory legal acts that contribute to the widespread spread of the KLB movement. For example, the 1977 Constitution of the USSR enshrined the provision that the state encourages activities that promote health, and the joint Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR on Physical Culture and Sports of September 11, 1981 "On further the rise of the mass of physical culture and sports" provided for the intensification of work on the development of the physical culture club movement on a voluntary basis. In 1982, the All-Union Council of Running and Walking Clubs was established, and the Committee on Physical Culture and Sports under the Council of Ministers of the USSR presented a Model Regulation of the organization and activities of the Club. 1983 was marked by such a significant event for the development of amateur running in the USSR, as the holding of the I All-Union Conference on recreational Running and Walking, participation in which was attended by representatives of more than 500 clubs of all Union republics. Thus, it is possible to state the state interest in organizing a club running movement in the USSR, which, on the one hand, was an element of civil society, and on the other hand, contributed to the implementation of state policy, which is why it had the support of government structures at various levels.

What motivated the inhabitants of the Soviet Union to organize themselves into running clubs? First of all, taking care of your health. As indicated in ^{[12, p. 11]}, a survey of 200 members of various clubs showed that the main purpose of their stay in running clubs was to promote health and prevent diseases. Despite the programs and slogans, mass physical culture in the USSR in the second half of the twentieth century was in the shadow of Olympiads, major international competitions and sports contests designed to demonstrate to the whole world the achievements of the Soviet system and focused on actually professional athletes capable of outstanding results (officially professional sports did not exist in the Soviet Union until the late 80s) or at least to get credit points for the implementation of the plan of the republic, region, enterprise "by medals". Attention to sports hopeless athletes, especially middle-aged and older, was sufficient only in the reports.  At the same time, the scientific and technological revolution that swept the USSR at the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century significantly reduced the physical activity of a significant part of the population, which led to inactivity and, as a consequence, the growth of "diseases of civilization":  hypertension, heart attacks, obesity, diabetes, neuroses, osteochondrosis, etc. A decrease in physical activity contributed to oxygen starvation of the brain, hence the deterioration of performance, memory and concentration, dizziness, drowsiness or insomnia. First of all, all these negative consequences of the NTR affected the urban population belonging to the category of engineering and technical workers, as well as an increasing number of scientists, teachers, drivers, accountants, programmers and other professionals whose work is sedentary. It was this part of society that was the first to face the need to change the way of life, and it was not by chance that Oleg Yulianovich Los (1923-2010), a mathematician, senior lecturer at the V. I. Ulyanov (Lenin) LETI (1923-2010), who organized the work of the club in February 1968 in the Leningrad Specific Park, became the founder of the first club in the USSR at the voluntary sports society of trade unions "Spartak".. At the same time, as stated on the personal website of O. Y. Moose [URL: http://www.oj-los.narod.ru / (accessed: 8.01.2023)], "in search of the organizational structures of the KLB and the physiological foundations of heavy loads in sports, Oleg Los turned to the primary sources of cybernetics by Norbert Wiener", using "ideas of self-organization and self-improvement of living matter".

Russian russians were extremely popular with the books of world?famous promoters of recreational running Arthur Lydiard "Running to the heights of Mastery" (first edition in Russian ? 1968) ^[13] and Garth Gilmore "Running for Life" (first edition in Russian - 1969) ^[5]. About the book by G. Gilmore , the author of the preface to the third edition K. Nikitin reports the following: "Garth Gilmore, speaking in the language of sports reporters, thus broke several records at once. He became the only foreign author of the book, which for a short time sustained three editions in the publishing house "Physical Culture and Sport". His book has received almost the largest circulation in sports literature in recent years. Finally, he became the most widely read New Zealand author in the Soviet Union" ^{[18, p. 5]}. Gilmore focused readers' attention on the fact that of the three most important systems of the body (respiratory, cardiovascular and muscular), the first two are the most important for maintaining health, so you should not build mountains of muscles (what did the incoming ones do then bodybuilders became fashionable), and to do exercises for the development of circulatory and respiratory systems, the best of which is running, and offered a method of healing running classes, developed jointly with A. Lydiard.  In the wake of the success of the books by A. Lydiard and G. Gilmore, such mass Soviet media as the newspapers Pravda, Izvestia, Soviet Sport, the magazines Athletics, Health, Science and Life, Physical Culture and Sports and others began to publish materials about the benefits of running. Articles and books by the outstanding cardiac surgeon, Doctor of Medical Sciences, academician N. M. Amosov (1913-2002) ^[1], who developed a health improvement system based on proper nutrition and physical activity, and believed that the development of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems was necessary first of all to strengthen and preserve health, enjoyed great popularity. A great response was received by the academician's conviction that most diseases are caused by the person himself, his wrong way of life. N. M. Amosov proved, including by personal example, that medicine can save lives, get rid of some ailments, improve well-being for a while, but it is in vain to rely entirely on its capabilities: you need to get health yourself. And further, in the mass consciousness (primarily in the consciousness of the urban intelligentsia as active readers of newspapers, magazines and novelties), a certain "Russoist" train of thought is born: if NTR generates "diseases of civilization", and scientific medicine is not omnipotent, then getting rid of them is possible on the way back to nature as the antipode of civilization, and also natural and "non-scientific" means of recovery. Hence the widespread fascination with raw food, "walrus", fasting, acupuncture, yoga practices, Tibetan medicine, Porfiry Ivanov's "Baby" system, the use of mummies, ginseng, sea buckthorn, meltwater, tea mushroom infusion, etc. In this paradigm of healing naturalness, therapeutic ("jogging") running, which perfectly fit into this paradigm of healing naturalness, which there is no need to study, it is suitable for all ages, especially good in nature, you can run at any time and in any weather, even barefoot, and in popular science literature they wrote about the benefits of biomechanical resonance inherent only in running, reducing the risk of cancer for runners, increasing the amount of testosterone in men, as well as about the fact that some Indian tribes, who foraged for food by hunting and chasing animals, amazed ethnographers with their health and longevity ^{[3, 12, etc.]}.      

Also among the prerequisites for the intensive development of the KLB in the 80s, the Moscow Olympics of 1980 should be noted. Brightly dressed foreign fans jogging attracted attention, and given the fashion for everything Western, they caused a desire to imitate. "After the Moscow Olympics, running became a status hobby, took to the streets of cities, acquired the features of the "correct" behavior of a resident of a megalopolis" [Kozlov A. The history of the Moscow Marathon. URL: https://www.kant.ru/articles/1742527 / (date of request: 28. 12. 2022)]. It was after the Olympics, since 1981, that Moscow organizes the MMMM ? Moscow International Peace Marathon, which until 2013 was one of the most massive races in our country.

The citizens who embarked on the path of running health improvement understood that not all urban space is favorable for running activity. This is associated with heavy automobile and pedestrian traffic, polluted streets, their concrete or asphalt pavement, lack of illumination, etc. Therefore, runners concentrated in parks, on embankments, at stadiums, where they most often got by public transport. Physical education students had problems finding a place to change and store clothes, hygiene procedures and rest after training.  To solve these problems, the runners, united, appealed to the authorities with a request to allocate premises for the duration of classes, where they could change clothes, take a shower and talk with like-minded people over a cup of tea. As a rule, the authorities reacted positively to these requests: firstly, it is the support of the "people's initiative", the "amateur activity of the masses"; secondly, this initiative fits perfectly into the mandatory party programs for the development of physical culture; thirdly, it does not require significant funds: runners do not need to build anything, they are quite satisfied with securing a small amount of time for them to use park, stadium and similar premises, even utility rooms: "There was a group of enthusiasts ? inveterate zozhnikov from among scientists, academics and military officers who lived and worked near Gorky Park. For the time being, they just ran around the park, and then decided to join a club to get some shelter over their heads. <...> they allocated a damp, cluttered basement in the park administration building near the Crimean Bridge. Runners put things in order there, equipped changing rooms, showers, a rest room and so on. When all this was done <...>, people immediately rushed to the club. 500 people came to the training sessions" [Lyutykh S. "People rushed to the streets." The story of Russian runners who survived the collapse of the USSR and the dashing 90s, but did not give up. URL: https://lenta.ru/articles/2021/06/04/marathon2 / (date of request: 29. 12. 2022)]. This is how clubs of running enthusiasts began to form.      

Initiative club as a form of self-organization of amateur runnersAs previously indicated, there were more than 2,000 running clubs in the USSR, but some of them existed only in reports, and some for various reasons stopped working during the first year of their existence.

At the same time, a number of KLBS, having appeared in the 60-80s of the last century, successfully continued their work in the 2000s. These are, for example, "Ural-100" (Sverdlovsk-Yekaterinburg, established in 1969), "Sormovich" (Nizhny Novgorod, 1972), "Enthusiast" (Revda, 1973), "Ant" (Kaliningrad-Korolev, 1976), "Parsek" (Moscow, 1980 G.), "Mir" (Moscow, 1981), "Swallow" (Novokuznetsk, 1982), "Gandvik" (Arkhangelsk, 1982), "Cedar" (Tomsk, 1983), "Youth" (Omsk, 1983) "Sibiryak" (Kemerovo, 1984) "Selmashevets" (Morozovsk, 1988) and others.

Obviously, each KLB had a specific education and functioning. Speaking about the running club movement in the USSR in general, we will use the methodological technique proposed by M. Weber for constructing a genetic "ideal type", applying it to the Soviet club and using the theory of the club as a public organization, developed primarily by V. V. Tuev and his scientific school ^[24]. In a generalized presentation , the main features of the KLB of the USSR can be presented as follows:

1. The reason for the association of people in the club was the desire to use running with the greatest efficiency to achieve therapeutic, healing and personality-building goals, which is why most of the participants of the clubs were people 30-60 years old who faced age-related and lifestyle health problems.  Ensuring this efficiency for single amateurs was difficult, since it required knowledge in the field of medicine and physical culture, access to appropriate infrastructure and a friendly, comfortable social environment that motivates to achieve these goals and supports on the way to them ("some <...> were ashamed to just walk around the city in sports uniform, run slowly around the city" [About the experience of the running club "Ant". URL: http://kocmap.ru "klb/Muravey35.doc (date of application: 01. 02. 2023)]. This whole set of optimal conditions could only be provided by an organization – an association of running enthusiasts in the form of an initiative club, whose representatives themselves determine the forms, methods and tasks of their activities, finding the necessary resources for this. As a rule, KLBS were clubs attached to organizations: universities, research institutes, stadiums, dormitories, housing and communal services, etc., which provided premises to running enthusiasts and often interacted with them, for example, during campaigning, memorial and festive events.

2. The area of the "life world" of the KLB was the sphere of leisure (opposed to the spheres of work and life, but related to them), which was considered by the participants of the clubs as an environment of multidimensional human development based on running practices, that is, as a leisure activity. KLB, thus, were both collective subjects and new forms of such activity for the USSR.

3. Significant in number, developed KLB existed in the form of an initiative club, about which V. V. Tuev wrote: "The initiative club is <...> a widely branched multifunctional amateur leisure organization of enthusiasts (according to V. I. Dahl, "enthusiastic people"), whose initiative can move towards the creation of circles, the formation of amateur associations and the development of other active forms of socio?cultural activities focused on satisfying the needs and interests of not only themselves club members, but also other categories of the population" ^[24]. There are obviously two semantic centers in this definition: the organizational independence of the club and its focus on transformation through club practices and values of the masses. Let's consider these semantic centers in more detail. 

The specifics of the KLB (unlike state and trade union clubs) is that their work has been politicized and ideologized to a much lesser extent. This is their essential feature, since in Soviet times "the club is no longer a public organization based on self-government and bright individual traits, self, but a mass cultural and educational institution that organizes the leisure of the population and has communist education as its task" ^{[25, p. 170]}.  Yes, KLB members took part in agitation and propaganda runs, focused on state programs and documents in the field of physical culture, but at the same time, KLB did not give lectures on the international situation and tasks of the CPSU, they did not have ideologically charged "club workers" and passive visitors as "objects of educational work in the club." KLB has largely managed to preserve initiative subjectivity as the most important feature of a classic leisure club.  

The core of the club was a socially active group of enthusiasts, which, on the one hand, made the decision to create a club and interacted with the external environment of the club, and on the other hand, was responsible for its internal life, starting with the construction of a schedule of joint training, the distribution of spheres of activity and ending with the organization of "off-race" club events, such as joint tea parties or excursions. The "ideal core" of the KLB management, capable of ensuring its effectiveness and sustainable development, should have included running enthusiasts belonging to local government authorities; to the management structures of the organization that allocated the premises and was able to support the KLB in the future; having a coaching education in athletics (including former athletes familiar with the methodology running training, as well as physical education instructors at work), doctors who provide KLB members with medical advice, economists (accountants) who are able to organize financial control of the self-supporting club, as well as managers of various levels, teachers, trade union workers and other "social activists" whose functions as organizers of the KLB included the promotion of running activity and the involvement of to the club of new members. Already by virtue of their statuses, these people had high organizational and communicative abilities, turning them to the benefit of the KLB. The club was given weight by former famous athletes, participants of the Great Patriotic War ("There was a group of veterans of the Great Patriotic War. They ran marathons barefoot to the music, passing the accordion or accordion to each other. It's a fantastic sight!" [Lyutykh S. "People rushed to the streets." The story of Russian runners who survived the collapse of the USSR and the dashing 90s, but did not give up. URL: https://lenta.ru/articles/2021/06/04/marathon2 / (date of request: 29. 12. 2022)]), renowned leaders of production, bright representatives of the creative intelligentsia. Thus, the Soviet running club was a unique social structure that attracted, on a voluntary basis, important "resource" people from almost all spheres of life of Soviet society, united by a passion for running, as organizers. At the same time, if a person did not want to engage in organizational activities and wanted to be in the status of an ordinary member of the KLB, then he had such an opportunity: "... except for the chairman of the club Council, who carefully keeps questionnaires of club members, almost no one knows about the profession of those involved. He does not know who he is – a doctor of sciences or a worker, a department head or a plumber, a kindergarten teacher or a designer. A person is perceived as he is, what is his character and relationship with people" [About the experience of the running club "Ant". URL: http://kocmap.ru "klb/Muravey35.doc (date of application: 01. 02. 2023)].

 Another important component of the club's independence was its economic self-sufficiency. KLB were self-supporting organizations that assumed small membership fees for all club members (mainly for the purchase and reproduction of methodological literature, conducting runs and making club paraphernalia) and sometimes a subscription fee for members of those groups who are constantly engaged with the coach. This money was used to pay for coaching.  

Referring to the focus of the KLB on the expansion of its values and practices, we note that the members of the club were focused on attracting new members to it (for example, the motto of the KLB "Ant" read: "You're running. You feel good! Don't be selfish, bring your friend, let him be well!"), the clubs were publicly available, and the most famous of them developed "correspondence" activities, advising running enthusiasts ? "singles" or newly formed clubs in various regions of the USSR on methodological aspects of organizing running classes. One of the most effective ways of co-opting new members and presenting their activities for the KLB were various kinds of spectacles, mainly addressed to the external environment. These spectacles were mass runs, which were carried out, as a rule, along city streets or between settlements by participants of one KLB or their associations. On the one hand, these runs were linked to public holidays and memorable dates, being a form of manifestation of the commitment of the members of the KLB to the ideological values of the Soviet state, and on the other hand, they had the purpose of attracting spectators to running activity, to the activities of the club, demonstrating both the accessibility of running (the participants of the runs were people of different ages) and its usefulness (about this was evidenced by the tightness and cheerfulness of the club members). The spectacular component was enhanced by the fact that many clubs practiced after the runs (or at their intermediate points) concert performances of their participants, who sang, danced, read poetry, told interesting stories about running, their club, etc. Thereby demonstrating the complex impact of running activity and club life based on it on various spheres of personal development. development. The strength of the impact of these events on the public was such that there were frequent cases of the organization of the KLB in those settlements through which the routes of mass runs passed.

4. The spheres of running use in quite numerous, developed sports clubs were therapeutic, wellness and sports, which caused the organization of the corresponding groups in them.

 Running for therapeutic purposes was carried out on the recommendation and under the periodic supervision of medical organizations "as an exercise that completes the restoration of support capacity, joint mobility, muscle strength of the lower extremities and the automatism of full-fledged movement by running with residual violations of locomotor movements after operations on the central and peripheral nervous system" [Running in physical therapy. URL: https://www.rostmaster.ru/lib/lfksurg/lfksurg-0018.shtml (date of application: 14. 01. 2023)]. In the treatment groups, the loads were minimal, slow running alternated with walking and passive rest, self-monitoring of the intensity of physical activity was constantly carried out, in this group there were the most frequent medical examinations. The therapeutic use of running covered a large range of diseases: "E. Shestakova prescribes running to her patients in the treatment of hypertension, cardiosclerosis, salt disorders, nervous system disorders, overweight; M. Grinenko ? in the treatment of asthma, infectious polyarthritis, rheumatism, myocardial infarction, atherosclerosis, cardiosclerosis, hypertension; A. Svirsky ? in the treatment of polyarthritis; A. Dibizhev ? in the treatment of scoliosis in schoolchildren; S. Tretyakov ? in the treatment of patients with "small" forms of pulmonary tuberculosis; N. Makeeva ? in the treatment of hypertension, vegetative-vascular dystonia, cardiosclerosis, etc." [Surprises of wellness running. URL: http://www.cnopm.ru/athletics/running/1983/january/surprises_jogging (date of application: 19. 01. 2023)].

The wellness groups included trained athletes capable of sufficiently long running locomotion (at least 30 minutes) and, as a rule, combining running classes with hardening, sports games and general physical training. For them, classes at the KLB were mainly entertainment events, a form of active recreation, they either did not participate in competitions at all, or did it very rarely.

The sports groups of the KLB included former athletes who were used to heavy loads, and the most experienced amateur runners, for whom running became a sphere of self-development, personal improvement: "It began to turn out, it turns out that even those who came to the club only to run for health, and sometimes directly stated that running he (she) hates, but "a figure is needed" or "doctors forced", there was a desire to compete, at least with himself. Sometimes just overcoming the distance on the run brought great joy. The man towered in his own eyes" [About the experience of the running club "Ant". URL: http://kocmap.ru "klb/Muravey35.doc (date of application: 26. 01. 2023)]. It is clear that sports veterans and amateurs with sporting ambitions could not compete on an equal footing with runners – members of top-level athletics teams specializing in distances, which were then held by the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations). Then amateur athletes from Soviet sports clubs began to practice various types of "non-standard" running, uninteresting for professionals oriented to official competitions, primarily super marathon, for example, 100 km and daily. Another example of the KLB's amateur activity was the "running six-race", which involves each runner overcoming six distances (100, 200, 400, 800, 1500 and 5000 meters), while the start for 5000 meters was given no later than 30 minutes after the completion of the 100 m run.

5. The main forms of club life of the club were joint trainings; lectures concerning various aspects of running activity (medical, sports, organizational: the best places to run, nutrition, equipment, hygiene, recreation, etc.), club celebrations (solemn dedication to club members, club birthday, mass runs, etc.), medical examinations and organizational meetings. The work schedule of each club was adjusted to the needs of its members. Typical options were either only Sunday meetings, or weekly joint multi-time running classes.

6. The existential dimension of the club's activity as a sphere of communication of like-minded people is very important, since it is the club that "... satisfies those human needs that the workshop, family, church, theater cannot satisfy ..." ^[24]. In the bourgeois mind, an amateur runner is, if not crazy, then definitely an oddball. A significant part of the urban population of the USSR, especially those belonging to the working class, came from villages in the first or second generation and for the most part adherents of traditional culture, to which running activity and, generally speaking, maintaining health by means of physical culture were alien: "... due to psychological difficulties, we are not ready to enter the outside and run. Traditions, or rather, backward ideas, are pressing on us" ["Do you like running?" an article from L. Markov's book. URL: http://www.cnopm.ru/athletics/running/1984/february/do_you_like_running_article_from_book_by_markov (accessed: 25.01.2023)]). As already mentioned, the hobby of running initially covered mainly the intelligentsia, although with the development of the KLB movement, representatives of other social groups also came to the clubs. Therefore, club communication with people with similar value orientations made this form of leisure especially significant.: as it was said in the Soviet film "Let's Live till Monday" – happiness is when you are understood. It is obvious that the club not only unites like-minded people, but also separates them from the not always comfortable social environment for a while, and such separation by club members is understood as a benefit. No wonder one of the forms of existence of the club is a "circle" – the very etymology of this word implies internal isolation, isolation, isolation. 

It is also important to note the fact that the club created an environment with which widespread habits were incompatible, the constancy of which often led a person to physical (and sometimes moral) degradation. Socrates also said that "if someone is looking for health, ask him first if he is ready to part with all the causes of his illness in the future - only then can you help him" [Cit. according to: 2, p. 181]. KLB gave examples of organizing interesting, memorable joint holidays and parties without alcohol and smoking, organized meetings with interesting people, various kinds of art contests, hiking trips, excursions, etc., that is, they took care of the harmonious development of the individual and the displacement of negative factors from her life.

KLB FunctionsKLB functions can be divided into internal and external.

Internal functions are aimed at club members and are associated with ensuring their comprehensive development based on running practices, external functions are focused on the social environment outside the club. It is obvious that the external and internal functions are dialectically interrelated, since they are carried out by the same agents.

The internal functions of the KLB include the health-improving function; recreational function; the function of personal improvement as the development of physical and mental capabilities, including labor potential; the function of protection from adverse environmental influences; communicative and cognitive (including self-knowledge) function; the function of ensuring group membership.

External functions can be presented in the form of the following set: propaganda, memorial (for example, Memory Runs to places of military glory), educational (development and provision to interested persons of methods of recreational running for various groups of the population, training of public trainers), socio-cultural functions (holiday runs) and the function of amateur development (including veteran) running sports.

As part of the implementation of these functions, the KLB stood at the origins of international running tourism in our country, participating in veteran competitions and runs held by the countries of the socialist camp; they developed amateur marathon and super marathon running not only among adult amateurs, but also among children and adolescents (Vladimir Volkov from the KLB "Ant" became a record holder at the age of 13 the world among 14-year-olds in running 100 kilometers, and 23 young runners from the royal children's club "Muraveychik" aged 7 to 14 years overcame the marathon distance [About the experience of the running club "Ant". URL: http://kocmap.ru "klb/Muravey35.doc (date of application: 26. 01. 2023)]); attracted women to running activity by holding running matches only for women's teams of the KLB; invented forms of family running practices with the participation of several generations of relatives.

Summing up, we note that the mission of running clubs in the USSR was the improvement of man and society through therapeutic, healing and personality-building running practices, that is, in the context of the activities of the KLB, running is used as an effective way of introducing to the enduring humanistic values: health, kalokagathy, social activity, constant self-development, etc. The most important result of the KLB's activities should be consider the proven effectiveness of such practice, which resulted in the transformation of running into the most popular form of physical culture of the USSR: for example, the All-Union Runner's Day in 1982 united 47 million people of different ages on runs ^{[3, p.3]}. As N. N. Visitey quite rightly believes, "all components of a healthy lifestyle ? intellectual, social, spiritual, physical ? are interconnected. And all of them are components of the whole, the essence of which can be conditionally defined as the existential-semantic (or transcendental, or cultural-bodily) well-being of a person" ^{[2, p. 180]}. For many Soviet citizens, this environment, the place of "binding" these components of a healthy lifestyle, was the running club.

Turning to the present, it should be remembered that "no one pours young wine into old wineskins" (Luke 5:37), but the experience of the Soviet KLB cannot be neglected. Of course, modern running centers have gone far in terms of technical equipment, competitive opportunities and the development of methods of running improvement. But often they replace the commercial, marketing or fitness component of the "soul" of a running club - the holistic development of the individual, depriving running as an element of culture from antiquity of its inherent existential and semantic dimension. Maybe it is this "club" component that modern running schools and centers lack in order to make wellness running as popular as it was in our country at the end of the last century.