Pyotr Franzevich Lesgaft (1837-1909): the founder of Russian physical education.

To pronounce the name ‘Lesgaft’ in Western educational circles is likely to evoke puzzled cries of ‘Les who?’. While Ling and Nachtegall, Jahn and Tyrs have received world-wide recognition for their contributions to the development of physical education and schools of gymnastics, Lesgaft’s glory is mostly unsung outside his native Russia.1 Many Western publications have tended either to underestimate or to ignore native Russian sources and to ascribe the formative influences on Soviet physical education to British sports, the gymnastics schools of Germany, Sweden and what is now Czechoslovakia, and Prussian military training. Rare is the Western author who has a good word to say for Russian sources, particularly Lesgaft. One notable exception is the book by Van Dalen and Bennett, but even they claim that “the Soviet programme, both in and out of school, is modeled after the calisthenics of Germany and the Scandinavian countries and the sports and games of England and America”; Morton makes the trite comment on Lesgaft that “his preeminent position in Soviet physical culture rests — aside from his ‘correct’ scientific concepts — on the fact that he held ‘progressive’ political views and was sympathetic to the revolutionary cause.” None of these authors seems to have investigated Lesgaft’s position before 1917.