Voluntary Sports Societies

Voluntary Sports Societies are the main structural parts of the universal sports and physical education system in the UASR. The VSS unite a wide variety of individual and team sports with the goal of developing a mass physical culture. They provide facilities and conditions for the training and improving of athletes' skills in youth as well as adult sports. Most of the VSS are governed by trade unions or associated with a branch of the military, but the whole system is broadly state-supported through the All-Union Secretariat for Culture.

Facilities of the VSS range from intermural youth athletic facilities, to public recreational centers for activities like hiking, skiing or sailing, to the tiers of the professionalized competitive sports and the elite training facilities of Olympic and Spartakiad level athletes.

Background
The Voluntary Sports Societies have their origins in the pre-revolution trade union sports clubs, of which United Steelworkers "Vulcan" sports club was the first, established on 30 July 1922 in Pittsburgh. The clubs were established in towns and cities where the union had presence, and offered recreational sporting activities to trade union members, their families, and affiliated unions/civic organizations. Other unions in the IWSU federation charted their own clubs, and by the time of the first International Spartakiad in 1928, the clubs had taken to sponsoring athletes as well as semi-professional competitive games in popular working-class sports like rugby.

After the revolution, the ad hoc arrangement was institutionalized in its present form, managed at the top by the All-Union Council of Voluntary Sports Societies. While some professional sports, notably the ever-popular American pastime of baseball would remain outside of the VSS system for professional competition, the amateur, school and collegiate branches of baseball have developed close fraternal links with Major League teams.