Exactly 180 years ago, on June 21, 1838, Aleksey Dmitrievich Butovsky was born - the future general of the Russian Imperial Army, a teacher and a well-known sports functionary in the country, who was one of the founders and members of the IOC - the International Olympic Committee (from 1894 to 1900). It so happened that the surname of Pierre de Coubertin, who stood at the origins of the international Olympic movement, is known today to many, but the name of the Russian general Alexei Butovsky today is known only to people who are professionally interested in the history of sports. At the same time, Butovsky's participation in the creation and development of the Olympic movement was significant.
Alexey Dmitrievich lived a fairly long life, which, in fact, ended with the Russian Empire, he died during the February Revolution of 1917. The life of this person contained a large number of events of varying degrees of significance. In the army, he went from a non-commissioned officer to a lieutenant general. He paid a lot of attention to pedagogical work, was a tutor, and rose to the rank of inspector of the State Administration of Military Educational Institutions. He was rightfully considered one of the most educated Russian generals, was a friend and colleague of the Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin. He was convinced of the need to revive the Olympic Games held in Ancient Greece as a global sporting event capable of uniting the whole world.
Alexey Dmitrievich Butovsky came from a poor noble family of the landowner of the Poltava province. He was born on June 21 (June 9, old style), 1838, his childhood was spent in the village of Pelekhovshchina, Kremenchug district, Poltava province. Parents Nadezhda Stepanovna von Kaiser and Dmitry Petrovich Butovsky. The mother of the future general, Nadezhnaya Stepanovna von Kaiser, came from an ancient Ostsee noble family. The Butovsky family was educated and well-read. It was always possible to find magazines and books in the house, the desire of children for knowledge was encouraged here, Alexei himself read the works of Pushkin and Gogol, loved to study Solovyov's "History". From his father, he was able to receive the first lessons in horse riding and fencing, as was customary in such families.
Alexey Dmitrievich Butovsky
At the age of 11, after completing the general course of the gymnasium, Alexey entered the Petrovsky Poltava Cadet Corps, where he studied from 1849 to 1853. After completing his studies in the cadet corps, he entered the Konstantinovskoe artillery school in St. Petersburg, he studied in the 3rd special class of the engineering department. He graduated from college in 1856. In the same year, from a non-commissioned officer, he was promoted to ensign of the Pavlovsk Life Guards regiment. He continued his studies at the theoretical department of the Nikolaev Engineering Academy. At the same time, military service did not particularly appeal to him. The country at that moment was going through a period of rather stormy economic reforms, young people in those years were carried away by new trends in art and literature, people seemed to be awakening from a long sleep.
After graduating from the academy, Aleksey Butovsky did not serve for long in the army, returning to his native Poltava, where in 1856-1861 he served as a tutor of military sciences in his native Petrovsky Poltava Cadet Corps. After some time, he nevertheless returned to the active army, received the next rank of lieutenant. He took part in the suppression of the Polish uprising of 1863. For the valor shown in hostilities, he was awarded the Order of St. Anne. From 1864 to 1865, with the rank of captain, he commanded a company, but this time he did not stay in the active army for a long time, again returning to teaching activities, while he was very closely engaged in military pedagogy.
His career was quite successful, which became a good ground for his new activities. By that time, he had already managed to publish a number of works that were devoted to aspects of physical education and education among young people. We can say that Alexey Butovsky stood at the origins of the popularization of physical education among the population of our country. His career gradually developed, at first he was appointed teacher of the 1st St. Petersburg Military Gymnasium, after which he was transferred to the 3rd St. Petersburg Military Gymnasium, where he was an assistant class inspector. In 1878 Butovsky was awarded the next rank of colonel, he was appointed head of the Main Directorate of military educational institutions.
Since the 1880s, Aleksey Dmitrievich Butovsky finally devotes his life to the issues and problems of physical education and sports. In the 1880s and 1890s, on the instructions of the Russian military department, he made a fairly large number of trips to Europe, where he studied the teaching of gymnastic disciplines in various educational institutions. These trips allowed him to get a very broad understanding of the content and organization of work carried out in European states in the field of physical education of young people.
Members of the IOC (from left to right): 1. Dr. Willibild Gebhardt (Germany) 2. Baron Pierre de Coubertin (France) 3. Counselor Jiri Gut-Yarkovsky (Czech Republic) 4. Demetrius Vikelas (Greece) 5. Ferenc Kemeny (Hungary) 6. General A. Butovsky (Russia) 7. General Victor Balck (Sweden) (Athens, April 10, 1896).
In 1888, Butovsky was appointed a member of the commission for the development of teaching issues in civilian educational institutions of the Ministry of Military Gymnastics Education. In those years, his reflections on pedagogy could be read on the pages of the "Military Collection" and "Pedagogical Collection". At the same time, his theory of education remains relevant today. "Teaching bodily exercises," wrote Alexei Butovsky, "can only be a person who knows how to perform them himself and himself experiences all the meanings of repetitive work both from the side of mastering a skill and from its general psycho-physical impact." Butovsky was a supporter of the idea of his like-minded person and contemporary, as well as the founder of the scientific system of physical education, Peter Lesgaft. These two people had the same views on the most difficult issues that affected the relationship of mental, aesthetic, moral and physical development of the individual.
In 1890, Aleksey Dmitrievich organized in Russia the first summer courses for the training of officers - educators of cadet corps and leaders of various spheres of physical education. He will lead these courses for 16 consecutive years. Also during these years Butovsky read the author's course in the theory and methodology of bodily and gymnastic exercises, published a textbook, and visited abroad many times, where he tried to study the advanced experience of physical education and physical culture.
On one of his trips abroad, he met with the Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin, this happened in the spring of 1892 in Paris. Despite the significant age difference (Butovsky was 25 years older), they were able to make friends. These two people had absolutely the same views on sport, as well as its place in the education and upbringing of youth, on the future of the Olympic movement. Coubertin, who at that time headed the sports union of France, already knew and studied some of Butovsky's works, especially on army training. In the person of the Russian, General Pierre de Coubertin found a man who could support him in the revival of the Olympic Games. At that time, this idea seemed utopian to many of his contemporaries. At the same time, Alexey Butovsky was not only well acquainted with the theory and practice of physical education of young people, he understood ancient history, knew a lot about the Olympics and other sports competitions of that period. For Coubertin, the opinion of his senior comrade was quite important, which was reflected in their personal contacts and correspondence. The views of Alexei Dmitrievich could not but leave their mark on the then young idealist Coubertin.
Alexey Butovsky assessed the idea of reviving the Olympic movement in the world in the following way: “The idea of holding international games was excellent, it corresponded to the needs of humanity, the moral and physical revival of the younger generation”. For this reason, the election of Aleksey Dmitrievich as the first IOC member from Russia was not accidental. On June 23, 1894, at the International Congress in Paris, Pierre de Coubertin, among other members of the IOC, presented the Russian General Butovsky, who signed the historic protocol of the first Congress, which decided to revive the Olympic Games.
First Olympic Games in Athens, 1896
In 1896 Butovsky attended the first Olympics in Athens. The book “Athens in the Spring of 1896”, written by him, became not only the first, but also the only edition in Russian dedicated to this event. Returning to Russia from Athens, the general made a lot of efforts in order to transfer the ideas of Pierre de Coubertin to Russian soil, seeking for the country to participate in the next Olympic Games. His acquaintance with Coubertin allowed Butovsky to better understand the essence of the Olympic ideas, so he purposefully tried to implement them, dealing with the problem of mass dissemination of the ideas of physical education of the population. In 1899 Butovsky founded the Main Gymnastics and Fencing School, and in 1904 he created the All-Russian Society for the Promotion of Physical Development in the country.
Unfortunately, Butovsky's efforts were in vain. He had few like-minded people in Russia, especially among high-ranking patrons. The development of the Russian Olympic movement was hampered by many reasons, among which were the lack of financial support from the government, the disunity of the sports organizations existing in the country, and massive skepticism about the success of Pierre de Coubertin's undertakings. For this reason, Russia was not represented at all at the first three Olympic Games. Already in 1900, Aleksey Butovsky, who had been a member of the IOC for six years, voluntarily resigned and resigned. He did this in protest against the indifference of the royal court to the problems of physical education of young people, as well as numerous bureaucratic obstacles.
At the same time, the Olympics themselves won more and more prestige in the world. Therefore, 8 athletes from Russia arrived at the IV Olympic Games in London in 1908: four wrestlers, two athletes, a cyclist and a figure skater. The results of the games are well known Panin-Kolomenkin became the champion of figure skating games, and wrestlers Petrov and Orlov won silver medals in the competition.
On March 16, 1911, the National Olympic Committee (NOC) was finally formed in Russia, headed by Vyacheslav Sreznevsky, a native of the famous Kharkov professors, who was also the head of the Society of Ice Skating Lovers. A year before the V Olympic Games, which took place in 1912 in Stockholm, the selection of participants began. Since the Russian delegation performed unsuccessfully at the games, having taken the penultimate, 15th place in the unofficial team competition, it was decided to hold competitions in Russia according to the Olympic program. Already on August 20, 1913, the First Russian Olympics was held in Kiev on the initiative of Alexei Butovsky. According to the magazine "Beauty and Power", these games gathered almost 500 athletes from 12 cities of the empire. Among the participants were 285 officers of the gymnastics and fencing schools of the military districts, as well as 25 Russian Olympians of 1908 and 1912.
Commemorative coin of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation
The echo of the Kiev Olympics swept across the Russian Empire. For the first time, the sports organizers of the country were faced with the massive interest and craving of the common population for physical culture and sports. Much credit for this belonged to Alexei Butovsky. In 1915, General of Infantry Aleksey Butovsky was appointed inspector general of military educational institutions. Moreover, in the last years of his life, he almost completely lost his sight. But even in such conditions, he did not stop working, dictating his memoirs and various texts to his wife Anna Vasilievna. After his death, he left more than 70 works on physical education and physical education, their history.
Alexey Dmitrievich Butovsky died on February 25, 1917 in Petrograd with the rank of lieutenant general at the age of 78. Fate took pity on him and saved him from the opportunity to watch the collapse of the empire, which he served with faith and truth for decades, and the subsequent civil war, which divided the country into two irreconcilable camps. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in St. Petersburg. At the same time, the death of the general in those days passed unnoticed, the February Revolution literally raged in the city, less than a week remained before the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II.
