Russian Marshall Arts (Sambo)
Russia can sometimes be thought of as a place that inherited its unique culture from the combination of people who came to live there. Sambo is not much different and it’s origins are just as perplexing as the cluster of people and customs that made Russia what it is today. Sambo is a modern martial art, combat sport, and self-defense system that was developed in the former Soviet Union in 1923. The word Sambo is an acronym for SAMozaschita Bez Oruzhiya which means “self-defense without a weapon”.
This grappling style has its roots in traditional folk styles of wrestling such as Armenian Koch, Georgian Chidaoba, Moldovan Trîntǎ, Uzbek Kurash, and Mongolian Khapsagay but also in the martial traditions of the West and of the Far East. Sambo was founded by three patriarchs, Spiridonov, Oshchepkov, and Kharlampiev. These men searched deliberately through all of the world’s martial arts available in order to create their military’s hand-to-hand combat system. The primary founder, Oshchepkov, was the first Russian ever to receive a black belt in Judo when he just 19 years old. When he returned to Russia, he taught judo to elite Red Army forces at the Central Red Army House. He used Kano’s philosophy in formulating the early development of his new Russian art. Sambo was in part born of native Russian and other regional styles of grappling and combative wrestling, bolstered with the most useful and adaptable concepts and techniques from the rest of the world. Its early development stemmed from the independent efforts of another Russian, Victor Spiridonov, a combat veteran of World War I, to integrate the techniques of Jiujitsu into native wrestling styles. His “soft-style” was based on the fact that he received a bayonet wound during the Russo-Japanese war which left his left arm lame.
In 1923, Oschepkov and Spiridinov collaborated (independently) with a team of other experts on a grant from the Soviet government to improve the Red Army's hand-to-hand combat system. Spiridonov had envisioned integrating the most practical aspects of the world's fighting systems into one comprehensive style that could adapt to any threat. Their developments were supplemented by Anatoly Kharlampiev who also traveled the globe to study the native fighting arts of the world. Ten years in the making, Kharlampiev’s catalogue of techniques was instrumental in formulating the early framework of the art to be eventually referred to as Sambo.
