Nikolai Petrovich Starostin

Tomb with a bust of Starostin in the Vagankovo ​​Cemetery in Moscow

Nikolai Starostin ( Russian Николай Петрович Старостин * February 13 ^{. Jul} / 26. February  1902 ^{. Greg} in Moscow ; † 17th February 1996 ) was a Soviet - Russian football players , hockey players , football coaches and -funktionär. He was one of the most successful Soviet footballers of the interwar period and co-founder of Spartak Moscow , of which he also became president for many years. He spent over eleven years in prison, labor camps and exile in the 1940s and 1950s before being rehabilitated after Stalin's death.

Player career

The beginnings

Starostin was born in 1902 as the eldest of four sons of a hunting guide for the Tsarist hunting party. He started playing soccer at the age of nine and attended a business school from the age of 14. When his father died in a typhoid epidemic in 1920, the 18-year-old became the head of the family and earned the necessary money as a soccer player in summer and ice hockey player in winter. The liberalization of the NEP made a certain professionalism possible in these areas and the associations were run like commercial enterprises.

Starostin played in the Moscow Sports Circle in the working-class-dominated industrial suburb of Presnia. At the club headed by a Komsomol functionary , which was soon renamed Krasnaia Presnia , the right winger was able to establish himself quickly and from 1922 played in the Moscow city selection, with which he also won the Russian championship. (There were no supraregional club competitions in the Soviet Union at that time.) His brothers Alexander, Petr and Andrei also gradually joined the club, which, in addition to the regional championship games, also competed on tours that led to Central Asia.

Starostin soon took a leading role in the club, not only athletically, where he became the captain of the team, but also as an organizer who had a number of contacts with politics, business and intellectuals. When the Soviet sports clubs were reorganized in 1926 and were now broken down into branches of industry, Starostin found the union of workers in the food industry as the supporting organization and the club took on its name Pishchevik . In the early 1930s one ran under the name of the tobacco factory Dukat . Starostin, who was meanwhile also the captain of the Moscow selection, won the Russian title two more times (1927, 1931), and twice the Union title (1928, 1932).

National team

From the mid-1920s, the Soviet Union did not play any international matches for several years, after which Turkey was the only association that played unofficial games against the Soviet selection . Nikolai Starostin made his debut in October 1932 in a 2-2 win against the Turkish B team in Istanbul as captain of the team, with his brothers Alexander and Andrei also participating in this game. The right-winger took part in such encounters a total of six times between 1932 and 1934, including a goal in 1933.

Creation of Spartak

In 1934 Starostin used his relationships with Promkooperatsiia , an organization that represented the employees of the service and trade sector and was located in the Ministry of Commerce, and placed the association under its sponsorship, which also led to another name change. This step also gave the club considerable financial resources, which were used to bring suitably good players to the club and to develop a leading role in Moscow football.

Around the same time, the head of Komsomol, Alexander Kosarew , who wanted to extend control of his organization to sport, also managed to interest the club, and so Starostin was commissioned to create a sports association and a new name for it to search. Starostin suggested the name Spartak , which met with the general approval of those involved. There are different versions of the origin of this name, according to one version Starostin came up with this idea while reading a book about the slave leader Spartacus , according to another version the name can be traced back to a game held in 1927 against a German workers' team, which was named after the Spartakusbund was named.

Starostin largely ended his active career in order to now devote himself to the new sports association.

Trainer and functionary career

Reorganization in Soviet football

The Spartak Organization began its activity in April 1935 and was designed as a multi-sport and national sports association. Politically it had the support of the Komsomol, economically that of the Promkooperatsiia, which, according to Starostin, provided around 15% of its income to the association. In contrast to other large sports associations, which, like Dynamo and ZDKA, were subordinate to state organizations such as the police or the army, Spartak was perceived as a civilian association due to its proximity to trade unions and enjoyed great popularity.

Around the same time, Soviet sport also turned away from the purely physical culture and moved closer to international competitive sport, which was partly due to a reorientation in foreign policy. Starostin had already called for stronger and international opponents to raise the class of Soviet football and in autumn 1934 a Moscow city selection under his supervision competed against SK Židenice in Brno and could remain victorious with 3-2, which the coach commented with the following statement: "We have secured the right to be viewed as a first-class football player in the international assessment."

On New Year's Day 1936, a combined team from Spartak and Dynamo lost 2-1 to Racing Club de France in Paris, and although the Soviets had done a respectable job, Starostin used the defeat to propose a radical restructuring of Soviet football. In a letter to the Sports Authority and the Komsomol in February 1936, he stated:

“Over the past two or three years, Soviet football has shown that it is on a par with the best European teams. (…) At the same time, a better acquaintance with the working conditions for foreign professional footballers - and all of the best teams in Europe are made up of professional footballers - showed us that professional football has a number of advantages over amateur football. "

He suggested a professional league consisting of eight clubs from six cities and said that this would legalize the professionalism "that already exists in our football."

Starostin's proposal was accepted by the authorities and in the same year a national league was introduced, which consisted of master demonstration teams, each under the leadership of a sports association or a factory. Although the term professionalism was not officially used, it was common knowledge that the players and coaches were paid. Starostin and his brothers received monthly salaries of 2,000 rubles at Spartak, around ten times the average wages of industrial workers.

The rivalry between Spartak and Dynamo

From the beginning, the new league developed into a duel between Spartak and Dynamo . As a result of the contact with foreign teams, the two clubs had geared their tactics to the World Cup system . The spring championship in 1936 went to the police club, in the autumn championship Starostin's team was ahead.

In the summer of this year, a football match took place on Red Square for the first time . A demonstration game between Spartak and Dynamo was originally planned for the day of physical culture, but those responsible for the dynamo withdrew their consent because they feared a ball could mistakenly hit the Kremlin wall or even Stalin himself. So then two Spartak teams competed on a playing surface made of green felt. Nikolai Starostin was the captain of one team, his three brothers were also there. During the entire game, Starostin kept an eye on Kosarev, who was standing next to Stalin and with whom a sign with a handkerchief had been agreed in order to end the game in case Stalin should get bored.

In 1937 they switched to a year-round championship, which Dynamo won by one point over Spartak. In the following year, however, Spartak was successful in both the championship and the cup. As early as 1937, the Basque football team toured the Soviet Union to promote the cause of the Spanish Republic and raise funds. In six out of seven games, the Basques were clearly superior. Although Spartak was the only team able to achieve a victory, the sports authorities took the shown class difference to Western European football as an opportunity to investigate Spartak and his leadership in addition to various organizational changes. The Starostins were accused of buying and selling players, doing insufficient political work, wasting public funds, bringing foreign goods from tours and "introducing bourgeois working methods in sport." In the course of these studies, Nikolai Starostin was also used by athletes from the Denounced Spartak organization, which accused him of capitalist methods, among other things with the statement: "Nikolai Starostin's behavior is not that of the chairman of a Soviet sports association, but that of the owner of a private sports club, like the owner of the Palais de Sport in Paris." Despite these allegations, Starostin was able to continue working for the time being - probably also due to his political connections.

The intelligence chief as an opponent

In November 1938, after the Great Terror , Lavrenti Beria became head of the Ministry of the Interior and thus also de facto chairman of Dynamo. Beria was a fanatical football fan and had also played football himself during his time in Georgia. He also met Starostin on the field, who later described him as a “technically weak but very rough left runner”. When the two later met again in Moscow, Beria is supposed to tell the chairman of Spartak with the words “Here is the little so-and-so who escaped me in Tbilisi. Let's see if you can get away with it now. " Shortly after taking office, Beria also had Kosarev arrested as part of the Great Purge , who was ultimately executed . As a result, Starostin had lost its most important political advocate.

When Spartak won the championship in 1939 after the double in 1938, it was time to repeat the double success when they defeated Dinamo Tbilisi in the semi-finals of the cup . Beria intervened in the competition and pushed through a repetition of the game due to a dubious goal, although in the meantime the final had already been played, which Spartak had won against Stalinez Leningrad . Starostin was not intimidated, however, and Spartak also won the replay against Beria's home team. The latter is said to have thrown his chair from the stands during the game and left the stadium angrily.

Beria then tried to have the Starostins arrested on the basis of the allegations made two years earlier, but was unsuccessful because the then Prime Minister Vyacheslav Molotov refused to sign the arrest warrant. The reason for this is said to have been that the daughters of Molotov and Starostin were friends.

Arrest and verdict

It was three more years before Beria succeeded in arresting Starostin, his brothers, and a number of other Spartak members in March 1942. Starostin spent almost two years in the Lubyanka . The detainees were initially charged with "participating in the criminal activities of the enemy of the people Kosarev", including the alleged attempt to have planned an attack on the life of Stalin during the parade in Red Square. The prosecution also alleged that they embezzled 160,000 rubles and traded illegally obtained food for exemption from military service.

The verdict came in November 1943 and the Starostin brothers were found guilty of “praising bourgeois sports and trying to introduce bourgeois morality into Soviet sports” and each received a ten-year sentence in the labor camps. Starostin later described this verdict as “for these times almost a not-guilty verdict.” And “The Starostins did not exist on their own. They personified Spartak in people's minds. Beria had to grapple with the hopes of millions of fans, ordinary Soviet people. "

The time in the camps and in exile

First, Starostin was transferred to a camp in the oil fields near Ukhta . There it quickly became apparent that the camp commandant intended to use him not as a warehouse worker but as a coach for the local Dynamo football club. After a year he was taken to a camp in Khabarovsk on the Chinese border and then to Komsomolsk-on-Amur . In these camps, too, he worked as a football coach for dynamo clubs, which meant considerable privileges for him, he did not have to live in the barracks, but could settle down in the respective stadiums, did not have to do the heavy physical work of other inmates, and could go to away games and occasionally received visits from his family. Starostin describes this time as “I don't want to make a martyr out of myself. A lot has happened there, but essentially I didn’t spend my time under any difficult circumstances. "

In 1948 he was woken up in his Siberian prison by the local party secretary who informed him that Stalin was on the phone and wanted to speak to him. It was about Vasily Stalin , the son of the dictator. The two knew each other from the 1930s when Starostin's daughter and Wassilij both belonged to the Spartak Riding Club. Now he had been appointed by his father as the commander of the Moscow Military District Air Force, and as such was also responsible for the WWS Moscow Air Force Sports Club , where he tried to bring together some of Russia's best players. At the suggestion of a player, he decided to use Starostin as a coach.

Vasily Stalin sent his private plane to the Far East and brought Starostin to Moscow. There, Beria's successor as Minister for State Security and Dynamo Chairman, Viktor Abakumov , learned immediately of his return and sent secret police to Starostin, who gave him 24 hours to leave Moscow. Thereupon Vasily Stalin took the trainer into his residence and placed him under his personal protection. Starostin wrote about this in his memoirs: “I recognized the tragic-comic situation in which I found myself - under the personal protection of the offspring of the tyrant. We were destined to become inseparable. We went everywhere together: to the Air Force headquarters, to training, to his dacha . We slept in the same large bed ourselves. And every time we went to bed, Wassilij Josifowitsch put his revolver under the pillow. "

Once, when Stalin was drunk, Starostin climbed through the window to visit his family. The very next morning plainclothes police were waiting for him and put him on a train to the northern Caucasus. But the air force chief had also heard of the action and so he had Starostin fetched from the train and brought him back to Moscow. With Starostin at his side, Stalin then went to a Dynamo game. Stalin called Abakumov's deputy and shouted into the phone: “Two hours ago you said you didn't know where Starostin was. (...) He's sitting here next to me. Your boys kidnapped him. Remember that in our families we never forget an insult. Let General Stalin tell you that. ”Nevertheless, Starostin was able to convince Stalin not to use him in Moscow anymore. Stalin agreed to make him coach of the Ulyanovsk Dynamo team . On the way there he was intercepted by the secret service and taken into exile in Akmolinsk on the Kazakh steppe.

There he initially looked after a local soccer team again, but was soon brought to the then capital of the Republic of Alma-Ata , where he looked after both the soccer and ice hockey teams of Dinamo Alma-Ata . The soccer team played in the second Soviet league.

Rehabilitation and new successes

After the death of Joseph Stalin, the verdict on the Starostins was revised and the brothers were eventually rehabilitated. Nikolai returned to Moscow, received his awards (including the "Honored Master of Sports") back and in 1955 took over the management of Spartak again.

For the next nearly 40 years, Starostin served as President of Spartak with two brief interruptions. The team was able to achieve a total of ten Soviet and Russian championship titles and nine cup victories. Starostin was one of the most recognized sports officials of this time and was awarded, among other things, the Order of Heroes of Socialist Work .

His methods were by no means undisputed, as an episode from the championship season in 1969 shows, when Spartak won a decisive game against CSKA and shortly afterwards some CSKA players were allocated new apartments by the Moscow city administration, with which the Starostin was said to have excellent relationships.

Starostin also led Spartak in the first years after the collapse of the Soviet Union under new conditions. In an interview given in 1992, he said: "We are growing into capitalism - since we have officially become professionals, we have no shortage of money." Under his leadership, a number of top players were transferred to Western European clubs, such as Igor Shalimov and Alexander Mostovoi and Raschid Rachimow .

In 1989 he published his memoirs Futbol skvoz 'gody , which also dealt with the years in the GULag for the first time , after an earlier book left this period out.

He worked for Spartak until shortly before his death and was also honorary president of the international Spartak organization.

Successes (soccer)

As a player

• 2 × Soviet champion: 1928, 1932
• 3 × Russian champion: 1922, 1927, 1931
• 6 × Moscow champions: 1923F, 1924F, 1927F, 1927H, 1929F, 1934F
• 6 (unofficial) games and 1 goal for the Soviet national team

As a trainer and functionary

• 10 × Soviet champions: 1936H, 1938, 1939, 1956, 1958, 1962, 1969, 1979, 1987, 1989
• 3 × Russian champions: 1992, 1993, 1994
• 7 × Soviet Cup winners: 1938, 1939, 1958, 1963, 1965, 1971, 1992
• 1 × Russian cup winner: 1994
• 3 × CIS Cup winners: 1993, 1994, 1995

literature

• Robert Edelman : A Small Way of Saying “No”: Moscow Working Men, Spartak Soccer, and the Communist Party, 1900-1945 . In: The American Historical Review , Vol. 107, Issue 5, December 2002, historycooperative.org ( January 8, 2005 memento on the Internet Archive )
• Thomas Heidbrink: The favorite game of the masses. Football in the Soviet Union from the late 1920s to winning the European Cup of Nations in 1960 in Dittmar Dahlmann , Anke Hilbrenner , Britta Lenz (eds.): The ball is round everywhere. On the past and present of football in Eastern and Southeastern Europe . Klartext Essen 2006 ISBN 3-89861-509-X
• Barbara Keys: Soviet Sport and Transnational Mass Culture in the 1930s in Journal of Contemporary History , Vol 38, Issue 3, pp. 413-434, July 2003
• Simon Kuper : Football against the enemy . Orion, London 1994 ISBN 978-0-7528-4877-8
• Simon Sebag-Montefiore : Stalin: At the court of the red tsar , Fischer, Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 978-3-10-050607-8
• James Riordan : The Strange Story of Nikolai Starostin, Football and Lavrentii Beria - Soviet Sports Personality and Soviet Chief of Intelligence . In: Europe-Asia Studies , July 1994, findarticles.com
• Nikolai Petrovich Starostin: Futbol skvoz 'gody . Sovetskaya Rossiya, Moscow 1989
• Thomas Urban : The football brothers Starostin - Beria's victims in the GULAG , in: Diethelm Blecking , Lorenz Peiffer (ed.) Sportsmen in the "Century of the Camps". Profiteers, resistors and victims. Göttingen: Die Werkstatt, 2012, pp. 280–285
• Jonathan Wilson : Behind the Curtain. Travels In Eastern European Football . Orion, London 2006 ISBN 978-0-7528-7945-1
• Gate in the gulag . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1989, pp. 166-169 ( online ).
• New tricks from Moscow . In: Der Spiegel . No. 48 , 1992, pp. 232-234 ( online ).

Web links

• Biography with photo of Starostins on rusteam.ru ( Russian )

References and comments

1. ↑ In various sources Starostin's year of birth is given as 1898, especially in his court files. In an interview, however, his daughter confirmed the year of birth cited here and justified the indication of the year 1898 as a means of releasing Starostin from hard physical labor during his years in the labor camps for reasons of age.
2. ↑ Edelman, margin no.13
3. ↑ Riordan, p. 1; Little literature is available about Starostin's ice hockey career , according to Riordan he is said to have made it to the captain of the national team, according to redwhite.ru he is said to have won two Soviet championship titles, but the sport is given as bandy there .
4. ↑ ^{a b} Edelman, margin no.16
5. ↑ Edelman, margin no.14
6. ↑ This means Rote Presnia , an epithet the suburb received due to the militancy of its residents during the revolution. See Edelman, margin no.12
7. ↑ Edelman, margin no.17
8. ↑ ^{a b} redwhite.ru (Russian)
9. ↑ rsssf.com
10. ↑ ^{a b c} Edelman, margin no.18
11. ↑ ^{a b} Wilson, p. 283
12. ^ Riordan, p. 1
13. ↑ Edelman, fn. 50
14. ↑ Heidbrink p. 45
15. ^ Keys, p. 415
16. ↑ Keys, p. 421f
17. ↑ Edelman, margin no.19
18. ↑ ^{a b} Keys, p. 428
19. ↑ Keys, p. 429f
20. ↑ Edelman, fn. 123
21. ^ Keys, p. 429
22. ↑ rsssf.com 1936
23. ↑ Kuper, p. 43
24. ↑ rsssf.com 1937 and rsssf.com 1938
25. ↑ Edelman, margin no.31
26. ^ Keys, p. 430
27. ↑ ^{a b} Edelman, margin no.47
28. ↑ ^{a b} Gate in the Gulag . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1989, pp. 169 ( online ).
29. ↑ Kuper, p. 42
30. ^ Riordan, p. 2
31. ^ Wilson, p. 282
32. ↑ Gate in the Gulag . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1989, pp. 166 ( online ).
33. ^ Riordan, p. 3
34. ↑ Edelman, margin no.48
35. ↑ Riordan, p. 3; Wilson indicates that the brothers have been convicted of a simple embezzlement and writes that they have seen the relevant documents, which he cannot disclose for legal reasons (p. 284). In a book review, the same author suggests that there should be evidence that the Starostins may have been convicted of forged food purchase cards. (FourFourTwo 166, June 2008, p. 61)
36. ↑ ^{a b} Riordan, p. 4
37. ↑ ^{a b} Riordan, p. 5
38. ↑ After Montefiore, Starostin is said to have been kidnapped twice by each of the two sides.
39. ^ Montefiore, p. 633
40. ↑ Riordan p. 5f
41. ^ Riordan p. 6
42. ↑ Riordan, p. 6; no evidence could be found for Riordan's alleged activity for the Soviet national football team before this point in time.
43. ^ Wilson p. 284
44. ↑ New tricks from Moscow . In: Der Spiegel . No. 48 , 1992, pp. 232-234 ( online ).