Tennis under Communism: An Unlikely Journey from Bourgeoise Decadence to a Mass Sport of the People

• In Event: Sporting Histories of East Central Europe I: Hungary and Global Sports, 1920s-1960s

Abstract

This paper examines how and why tennis, a sport initially played by kings and aristocrats and by the 20th century the well-to-do middle classes managed to become a celebrated sport in communist led East-Central Europe. What makes the rise of tennis behind the Iron Curtain remarkable is that when the Communists in East-Central Europe came into power after World War II, they intended to eliminate tennis, which they considered as a sport of the former ruling classes and epitome of bourgeois decadence. Using Hungary as a case study, the paper will trace how communist understanding and conceptualization of tennis changed from the mid 1940s to the 1980s.

Author

• Anita Kurimay, Bryn Mawr College