The purpose of the study is to show in a retrospective analysis of the organizational and legal status of voluntary sports organizations in the USSR their role in the physical education of Soviet citizens within the framework of the All-Union Physical Culture Complex «Ready for Labor and Defense of the USSR» (TRP) before the start of the Great Patriotic War and to predict the ways of further development. The paper provides a theoretical analysis and generalization of literature, monitoring of Internet sites, search and analysis of information on the origin and further development of the TRP program in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The method of comparative law, the method of system analysis, the analysis of Soviet and Russian normative legal acts was used. The special purpose of creating voluntary sports societies in the 1930s was to unite citizens to solve the problems of developing mass physical culture and sports, as well as preparing a mobilization reserve for the needs of the defense of the USSR, in the context of the impending World War II. Voluntary sports societies provided the country with sports and military personnel through mass military sports training of the Soviet people. The ways of reforming the current legislation in the field of regulation of physical culture and sports on the basis of Soviet experience to improve the system of physical and patriotic education are proposed.