Soviet (USSR) Ready for Labor and Defense badge 2nd level

Ready for Labour and Defence of the USSR (Russian: «Готов к труду и обороне СССР» Gotov k trudu i oborone SSSR), abbreviated as GTO (Russian: ГТО) was the All-Union physical culture training programme, introduced in the USSR on March 11, 1931 on the initiative of the Komsomol. It was a complement to the Unified Sports Classification System of the USSR. While the latter provided Soviet physical education system requirements only for athletes, GTO was a programme for all Soviet people of almost all ages. By the year 1976, 220 million people were awarded GTO badges, while in 1986 the tests were passed by 33.9 million people.