In the informative, entertaining, and generously illustrated
Spartak Moscow, a book that will be cheered by soccer fans
worldwide, Robert Edelman finds in the stands and on the pitch keys
to understanding everyday life under Stalin, Khrushchev, and their
successors. Millions attended matches and obsessed about their
favorite club, and their rowdiness on game day stood out as a
moment of relative freedom in a society that championed conformity.
This was particularly the case for the supporters of Spartak, which
emerged from the rough proletarian Presnia district of Moscow and
spent much of its history in fierce rivalry with Dinamo, the team
of the secret police. To cheer for Spartak, Edelman shows, was a
small and safe way of saying "no" to the fears and absurdities of
high Stalinism; to understand Spartak is to understand how soccer
explains Soviet life. Champions of the Soviet Elite League twelve
times and eleven-time winner of the USSR Cup, Spartak was founded
and led for seven decades by the four Starostin brothers, the most
visible of whom were Nikolai and Andrei. Brilliant players turned
skilled entrepreneurs, they were flexible enough to constantly
change their business model to accommodate the dramatic shifts in
Soviet policy. Whether because of their own financial wheeling and
dealing or Spartak's too frequent success against state-sponsored
teams, they were arrested in 1942 and spent twelve years in the
gulag. Instead of facing hard labor and likely death, they were
spared the harshness of their places of exile when they were asked
by local camp commandants to coach the prisoners' football teams.
Returning from the camps after Stalin's death, they took back the
reins of a club whose mystique as the "people's team" was only
enhanced by its status as a victim of Stalinist tyranny. Edelman
covers the team from its days on the wild fields of
prerevolutionary Russia through the post-Soviet period. Given its
history, it was hardly surprising that Spartak adjusted quickly to
the new, capitalist world of postsocialist Russia, going on to win
the championship of the Russian Premier League nine times, the
Russian Cup three times, and the CIS Commonwealth of Independent
States Cup six times. In addition to providing a fresh and
authoritative history of Soviet society as seen through its
obsession with the world's most popular sport, Edelman, a
well-known sports commentator, also provides biographies of
Spartak's leading players over the course of a century and riveting
play-by-play accounts of Spartak's most important matches-including
such highlights as the day in 1989 when Spartak last won the Soviet
Elite League on a Valery Shmarov free kick at the ninety-second
minute. Throughout, he palpably evokes what it was like to cheer
for the "Red and White." For historic film of Spartak Moscow
playing against the Wolverhampton Wanderers (the "Wolves") in 1954
and 1955, click here:
https://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=38828 and here:
https://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=39604
General
Imprint: |
Cornell University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
November 2012 |
First published: |
November 2012 |
Authors: |
Robert Edelman
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 149 x 21mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback - Trade
|
Pages: |
368 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8014-7839-0 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-8014-7839-1 |
Barcode: |
9780801478390 |
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