Spartak Moscow by Robert Edelman

Author:Robert Edelman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

The Non-Russians Are Coming!

The off-season in the winter of 1948-1949 produced changes that laid the groundwork for Spartak’s eventual return to greatness. Overly demanding as he might have been, Konstantin Kvashnin had begun a transition to younger players that had won the club a third-place medal (along with accompanying secret bonuses). Still, the team’s comparative weakness in the first four seasons of postwar soccer was emblematic of larger trends during this period. It seemed logical that after the war, teams representing the structures of force should dominate the game. On the other hand, it is surprising that as political conditions actually got worse and more repressive beginning in 1949, Spartak found a way to prosper while going against the grain. The Zhdanovshchina had promoted a Great Russian nationalism in cultural matters that grew even worse after 1949. Anti-Semitism intensified, as did disregard for the concerns of national minorities. Faced with a variety of partisan struggles in several borderlands, the regime did not look kindly on the needs of those who were not Russian. 19

Moscow teams had historically been dominated by Slavic players. This was not the result of any consciously exclusionary policy, such as the baseball color bar in the United States. At the end of the war, however, Stalin, ignoring the inclusive discourses of wartime, made clear his belief that Great Russians had made the largest contribution on the battlefield. While nothing was decreed, it followed that they would play leading roles on the football field, a manly activity that had, far from correctly, been seen by many inside and outside the USSR as a surrogate for war. Just as there were hundreds of African American celebrities and successful professionals in the United States, many non-Russians who lived in the capital had made careers in a number of fields. Yet the intensely masculinized bastions of each nation’s most popular game had, in their largest city, been among the last places to accept such outsiders into their ranks.

In 1949, however, Spartak took a different turn, recruiting several non-Russians to its playing and coaching staffs. Already, the team had employed non-Russians as coaches, the Czech Fivebr in 1936 and the Estonian Vol’rat in 1946 and 1947. Having “gone Russian” in 1948, they again looked outside the Slavic heartland for a coach. Minorities were also recruited as players. It is not clear why these choices were made. There is little evidence that this trend signified a consciously inclusive “nationality policy.” One might speculate that the Starostins’ openness to what had been called “Western methods” still imbued the organization, but professional rather than political agendas appear to have driven the search for talent.

Professional actions could, however, have political consequences. By casting its net widely, Spartak expanded the size of the talent pool for elite soccer. During a period of extreme Russian chauvinism, Spartak was not marching in step. This willingness to buck larger trends, if not fully conscious, is worth examining in some detail. Spartak’s disposition to multiculturalism, whether or not intentional, had a profound impact on the club and eventually all of Soviet soccer.

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