Communism and Football

For more than half of the 20th century,

Eastern Europe was gripped in the iron fist of Communism.

Imprisonment without trial, torture and political assassinations became commonplace,

as brutal dictators used every means necessary to maintain their stranglehold on power.

Under totalitarian rule, the state reached into every corner of life.

In the Communist heartland of the Soviet Union, and its satellites across Eastern Europe,

all aspects of culture became politicised,

including the continent's most popular pastime - football.

But right from the start, Communist hardliners considered football

bourgeois and anti-revolutionary, and many wanted to see it abolished.

But it would prove much harder than they ever imagined to gain full control of The People's Game.

In the years after Lenin led the Communists to victory in the Russian Revolution,

his Bolshevik Party took control of all aspects of culture.

Yet despite their reservations about the bourgeois nature of football, even hard-core Communists

were wary about denying the people their chance to enjoy the beautiful game.

Instead of opposing football, in the mid-1920s, the Communist leaders sought to control it.

After the Revolution, Moscow had four main clubs,

each of which was the footballing arm of a powerful Soviet institution,

funded and run by an organ of the state.

CDKA Moscow belonged to the fearsome Red Army.

ZIL, the city's giant car plant, controlled Torpedo Moscow.

Locomotive was owned by the Rail Ministry.

And most notoriously of all, Dynamo Moscow was the creation of the dreaded secret police.

The patronage of Dynamo Moscow by the secret police was most evident

when the KGB was run by one of Stalin's most brutal henchmen, Lavrenti Beria.

Beria was one of the most vicious and powerful men in the Soviet Union.

He personally ordered the execution of many thousands he considered to be enemies of the people.

As head of the KGB, Beria was also the honorary President of Dynamo Moscow.

He'd been a keen amateur footballer and passionate supporter and he was determined to use

every means at his disposal to ensure Dynamo's supremacy.

But soon, Beria faced someone who was prepared to resist his attempt to control Russian football.

Alexander Kosarev was the Secretary of the Young Communist League.

An aspiring member of the Politburo, Kosarev recognised the importance of football's popular appeal.

Everybody needed a patron.

You needed to be in with someone with political influence

to get through in a terribly totalitarian society.

And Kosarev was very close to...

one of the Soviet Union's leading players who was also the captain

of the Soviet football team called, Nikolai Starostin.

Nikolai Starostin was the eldest of four brothers.

A natural athlete, Starostin was captain of the Soviet Union at both football and ice hockey.

Together with Kosarev, Starostin wanted to create a team to challenge

the supremacy of Dynamo, a club for the people, that would cater for white-collar workers and civilians.

Starostin suggested a name inspired by Spartacus, the slave who rebelled against the power of Rome.

Spartak Moscow was born.

Starostin and his three brothers Alexander, Andrei and Pyotr

were the core of a side that proved it could match the best.

They also established the club's reputation for defiant independence.

To support Spartak became a small act of resistance against Beria, Stalin and Soviet tyranny.

As a young man, Jim Riordan joined the British Communist Party,

and in the 1960s, he went to study in Russia.

A tough-tackling centre half, Riordan was spotted by scouts

and eventually played two games for Spartak.

There's no doubt that a lot of the Spartak supporters were actually genuine oppositionists,

who didn't dare perhaps show their opposition in other areas of life.

The football stadium was really the only location where you could be yourself,

where you could shout, smile, laugh, cry,

where you could call the opposition - and that often meant the government,

party, police chief - all the names under the sun.

To Beria, any act of defiance was intolerable.

Spartak's flagrant refusal to bow to Dynamo was a direct challenge to Beria's control of Soviet Sport.

Beria would neither forgive nor forget Kosarev's affront to Dynamo's supremacy.

Beria's anger might have been sharpened even further by memories of a humiliation some years earlier,

when, as an amateur player, Beria first encountered Nikolai Starostin on the football pitch.

Starostin remembers playing him in Georgia

and describes him as a very crude and dirty left half who left some rather

nasty bruises on Starostin.

In 1936, they met again with even more at stake.

Dynamo were scheduled to play a match against Spartak in front of none other than Stalin himself.

Although he modestly described himself as "the great friend of all athletes",

Stalin had little interest in football.

A green carpet was specially laid in Red Square.

But at the last minute, the KGB pulled out,

afraid there would be a bloodbath if the ball hit the hallowed walls of the Kremlin,

or worse still, Stalin himself!

Instead, Spartak and the Starostins played an exhibition game among themselves for 43 minutes,

a quarter of an hour longer than scheduled because, surprisingly, Stalin seemed to enjoy it.

Starostin later claimed that Spartak had made more of an impact in those 43 minutes

than Dynamo had made in the previous 13 years.

Stalin had given Spartak his tacit seal of approval.

But Beria was furious.

And it was another thing that made more enemies for Spartak.

Of course such figures as Beria

could not...

..allow somebody, er... to beat him all the time.

Beria's revenge was swift and decisive.

In 1938, Kosarev was arrested on trumped-up charges, branded by Beria

as an enemy of the people, and summarily executed.

Despite the dangers, the Starostins' Spartak team refused to surrender.

In 1939 Spartak was on the verge of an unprecedented League and Cup double

when they faced Beria's Dynamo side in the semifinals.

It was Dynamo versus Spartak.

Beria versus Starostin.

Spartak won - a victory in a time of brutal purges and unspeakable hardship.

But Beria wouldn't let his beloved Dynamo be denied so easily.

Incensed by the result, he ordered the game to be replayed a whole month later.

But Spartak and the Starostins failed to take the hint, and won again, 1-nil

To antagonise Beria even further, Spartak went on to win the cup.

It was unfortunate because Lavrenti Beria was the honorary president of Dynamo.

But went to every home game and was absolutely incensed

when Spartak took over the crown from Dynamo.

Starostin, he looked up to the dignitaries' box

and saw Beria in absolute fury, kicking chairs all over the place, before he stormed out.

For the Starostins, the victory partially avenged Beria's arrest

and execution of their patron, Kosarev the previous year.

Even though they'd made an enemy of one of the Soviet Union's most powerful and ruthless men,

the Starostins were seemingly untouchable.

The power of football was such that it was beyond the grasp

of Joseph Stalin and his henchman, Lavrenti Beria.

You could arrest any poet you liked, you could arrest any artist, musician, any composer,

but you couldn't...

you couldn't with impunity arrest a footballer,

and that was the power of football.

But Beria was simply biding his time.

Eventually, the perfect opportunity did come.

In March 1942, when the people of the Soviet Union were distracted by Nazi Germany's invasion,

and the entry of their country into the Second World War, Beria made his move.

In the middle of the night, Starostin was woken in classic KGB

with a torch shining in his eyes and two pistols pointing at his head.

It's part of the megalomania of Beria.

There's no doubt that in many ways he was unhinged.

He was a sadistic paedophile for example.

And I guess Beria thought it...safe

in terms that the population may have other things on their minds,

to arrest the Starostin brothers

for the affront of beating Dynamo in 1939.

That's certainly is what Nikolai Starostin said to me.

Football is so important - that's really the point -

that it needs that sort of total revenge.

All four brothers were arrested and faced a litany of charges,

from the obligatory one of making anti-Soviet statements,

to the more unusual accusation of playing football in a bourgeois way.

Most alarmingly, these hugely popular players were branded with Beria's favourite label,

enemies of the people.

He fulfilled his...target just to take them out of Spartak.

He thought that without them, Spartak would be ruined.

They were not terrorists, they were not politicians.

They were just football players.

OK, very popular, very powerful, but football players. They were heroes.

The Starostins escaped the death penalty that Beria would usually serve upon his victims,

but still they were sentenced to ten years in a Siberian gulag.

In the Russian state archives, researchers have uncovered a letter sent from Starostin's mother

to Stalin, pleading clemency for her sons.

Beria had intercepted the plea for mercy. There would be no reprieve.

But for Nikolai, at least, the time spent in the Gulag was far from typical of the experience

of most inmates living in the harshest prison regime in the world.

Football helped him to survive

in these gulag camps, because even criminals...

respected him.

He never failed to be amazed how the camp commandants

regarded him as a hero, as somebody to please as much as they could.

These were beasts, these were sadistic monsters with other prisoners.

But with him, they just were in awe.

Without Nikolai Starostin and his brothers, Spartak were a weakened force in Soviet football,

clearing the way for the Red Army club, CDKA Moscow to challenge Beria's Dynamo.

But CDKA's days were also numbered.

Many of their players starred in the Soviet team

that played their Eastern Bloc allies, Yugoslavia in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.

Under their dictator, Marshal Josef Tito, Yugoslavia had loosened its ties with the Soviet Union,

so the match became a battle between Yugoslav nationalism and Soviet pride.

For the players and the politicians, there was more at stake than just the result.

When the Soviets lost 3-1, Stalin immediately ordered CDKA to be dismantled.

Overnight, the side that had become the biggest rival to Beria's Dynamo had disappeared.

The demise of CDKA entrenched Beria's Dynamo as the dominant force in Soviet football.

But in 1952, he faced a new challenge,

one that would bring Beria face-to-face with an old adversary.

Stalin's son Vasily, a general in the Soviet Air Force,

wanted his team to be strong enough to rival Dynamo.

In a bizarre power struggle with Beria, he tried to secure Nikolai's early release from the Gulag.

But Beria was reluctant to yield to Vasily's demands.

Vasily was the only one whom Beria couldn't touch.

And Beria didn't like Vasily

because he was the youngest general in the Soviet Army.

He liked to drink vodka, he liked women.

He was the son of Stalin, so even the generals who reported to Beria - they tried to behave very carefully.

Vasily made the first move, by extracting Nikolai from the Gulag

and moving him into his home in Moscow.

But Beria would not be denied.

One night, when Vasily was drunk, Nikolai left the sanctuary of his villa to visit his family,

only to be rearrested by Beria's men.

He was in the centre of the fight of the two...

most powerful people of Stalin's era.

Vasily managed to extract Starostin from Beria's clutches a second time,

but Nikolai, realising that the situation had become dangerous,

pleaded with Vasily to let him finish his sentence.

His wish was granted and Nikolai was sent to a gulag in a remote corner of Kazakhstan.

In the following year, Vasily's father died.

Beria's bid to succeed him failed, and when Nikita Khrushchev became leader, Beria's fate was sealed.

Charged with being a capitalist spy, Beria was found guilty.

He was condemned as an enemy of the people,