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Abstract: The article examines the state policy in regards to the development of physical education and sport popularity among the people, and the changes that took place in this period in physical education and sport both in the city and in the countryside. The specificity of these processes in the period under study in the countryside was associated with the unanimous collectivization of peasant farms. The authors aim to trace changes in government policy in this area and the results of these changes on the example of the Urals region, since this region in the late 1920s and early 1930s included the districts involved in industrialization and large-scale collective farm construction. In the late 1920s, regional and district sports competitions began to be held in the Urals. The organization of these competitions was far from perfect, but even then they attracted attention of the rural population and contributed to the promotion of physical education and sports. Under the conditions of the new economic policy, some of the leaders of physical education and sports movement proposed transferring the control over physical education and sports in the USSR to a voluntary sports society independent of state and public organizations, primarily financially. However, the transition to the new administrative system was incompatible with any autonomy of physical education organizations. Physical education received both financial and organizational support from the state. However, with the transition to mass collectivization, administrative intervention in the lives of the villagers, including the sphere of culture and sport intensified. The Soviet administration defined and regulated physical education movement, the Bolshevik leaders made attempts to involve sports groups to solve political and industrial issues. Sports competitions have largely acquired the features of political agitation and propaganda campaigns. In the early 1930s people suffered from hunger, and thus there was a decrease in the number of peasants involved in physical education and sports as compared to the 1920s.