Nikolai Starostin
Nikolai Petrovich Starostin (Russian Николай Петрович Старостин; * 13 Februarjul / February 26 1902greg in Moscow, Russia, .. † February 17, 1996 ) was a Soviet- Russian football player, hockey players, football coaches and functionary. He was one of the most successful Soviet Footballer of the interwar period and co-founder of Spartak Moscow, its president for many years he was also. In the 1940s and 1950s, he spent eleven years in prison, labor camps and exile before he was rehabilitated after Stalin's death.
- 2.1 Reorganization of the Soviet football
- 2.2 The rivalry Spartak - Dynamo
- 2.3 The intelligence chief as opponent
- 2.4 Arrest and judgment
- 2.5 The time in the camps and in exile
- 2.6 Rehabilitation and new achievements
- 3.1 As a player
- 3.2 As a coach and official
Playing career
The beginnings
Starostin was born in 1902 as the eldest of four sons of a hunting guide the tsarist hunt. With the football game he started at the age of nine years and attended from the age of 14, a commercial academy. When his father died in a typhoid epidemic in 1920, was the 18 -year-old head of the family and earned enough money as a football player in the summer and ice hockey players in the winter. Due to the liberalization of the NEP, a certain professionalism was possible in these areas and the clubs were conducted as business enterprises.
Starostin played at the Moscow Sport Circle in dominated by the working class industrial suburb Presnia. In the run by a Komsomolfunktionär association, which was soon renamed Krasnaia Presnia, the Right Wing has established itself quickly and played from 1922 in the Moscow city selection, with which he also won the Russian championship. ( Supra-regional club competitions there were at that time in the Soviet Union did not. ) His brothers Alexander, Petr and Andrei were successively at the club, who also denied tours in addition to the regional championship games, which led to Central Asia.
Starostin soon took a leading role in a club, not just athletic, where he was captain of the team, but also as an organizer, who had a number of contacts with political, economic and intellectual. When the Soviet sports clubs were re-organized in 1926 and now have been grouped by industrial sector, Starostin was the trade union of workers in the food industry as a support organization and the club took their name Pischtschewik. In the early 1930s they ran on under the name of the tobacco factory Dukat. Two more times could Starostin, who is also captain of the Moscow choice was now, the Russian title pick (1927, 1931), moreover, also twice the Union titles (1928, 1932).
National
From the mid- 1920s, the Soviet Union denied for several years no matches, then Turkey was the only association that fought out unofficial games against the Soviet selection. Nikolai Starostin made his debut in October 1932 in a 2-2 draw against Turkey's B team in Istanbul same as captain of the team, which in this game, his brothers Alexander and Andrei participated. A total of six times took the outside right 1932-1934 on such encounters in part, with him in 1933, a goal achieved.
Establishment of Spartak
1934 used Starostin its relations with Promkooperatsiia, a wealthy organization that represented the employees of the service and retail trade and was located in the Ministry of Commerce, and imputed the club whose ownership, which also led to a renewed change of name. By this step the association were also significant financial resources available that have been used to good players to pick according to the club and build a leading role in the Moscow football.
Around the same time it was also possible the head of Komsomol, Alexander Kosarew who wanted to extend the control of his organization to the sport, to be interested in the club and so Starostin was commissioned to create a sports association and for this a new name to Search. Starostin suggested the name Spartak, which met with general consent of the parties. About the origin of this name, there are different versions, according to one version came Starostin while reading a book about the slave leader Spartacus on this idea, according to another version of the name may be due to a 1927 instead found game against a German working team, which Spartakusbund after was named.
Starostin ended his career largely in order to devote himself now the new sports association.
Coach and official career
Reorganization of the Soviet football
The Spartakorganisation began its work in April 1935, and was conceived as a multi-sport and national sports association. Politically, it had the support of the Komsomol, economically those of Promkooperatsiia which presented according Starostins around 15 % of their revenue to the club available. Unlike other major sports associations, which, like Dynamo and ZDKA governmental organizations such as the police or the army were under, Spartak was perceived as a civilian club because of its close union and enjoyed great popularity.
At about the same time were in Soviet Sport also a move away from pure nudism thoughts and an approach to the international competitive sport recorded, which was also due in part to a new orientation in foreign policy. Starostin had already called for raising the class of the Soviet football and stronger international opponents and in the fall of 1934 entered a Moscow city selection under his care in Brno against SK Židenice and was able to remain victorious with 3:2, which commented on the coach with the following statement: "We have secured the right to be regarded as world-class soccer players in international assessment. "
On New Year's 1936 was subject to a combined team of Spartak and Dynamo in the Paris Racing Club de France with 1:2 and although the Soviets had delivered a respectable performance, used Starostin the defeat of a proposal for a radical restructuring of the Soviet football. In a letter to the Sports Authority and the Komsomol, he stated in February 1936:
He suggested a professional league before, which should consist of eight clubs from six cities, and thought that this professionalism that would legalize, " has existed now in our football."
Starostins proposal was received by the authorities and in the same year a national league was introduced, which consisted of masters demonstration teams, each under guidance of a sports association or a factory. Although the concept of professionalism was not officially used, it was generally known that the players and coaches have been paid. Starostin and his brothers received at Spartak months' salary of 2,000 rubles, about ten times of the average industrial worker salary.
The rivalry Spartak - Dynamo
From the outset, the new league has developed into a duel between Spartak and Dynamo. As a result of contact with foreign teams, the two teams had focused their tactics on the WM system. The Spring Cup in 1936 went to the police club, in the autumn championship Starostins team had the lead.
In the summer of this year, a football game on the Red Square was held for the first time. For the day of physical culture, a demonstration match between Spartak and Dynamo was originally intended, but the Dynamo leaders withdrew their commitment back because they feared a ball might mistakenly take the Kremlin wall or even Stalin himself. So then came two Spartakmannschaften on a playing surface made of green felt. Nikolai Starostin was captain of a team, his three brothers were also set up. Throughout the game Starostin always had an eye on Kosarew standing next to Stalin and with the a sign had been agreed with a handkerchief in order for the case that Stalin should be bored to finish the game.
1937 was converted to a year-round championship, which was won by Dynamo with one point ahead of Spartak, the following year, however, Spartak was successful in both the championship and the cup. As early as 1937 there was a tour of the Basque football selection by the Soviet Union in order to promote the cause of the Spanish republic and raise funds. In six of seven games, the Basques showed clearly superior. Although calculated Spartak could reach only team to win, the sports authorities took the indicated class difference to the Western European football as an opportunity to be strict in addition to various organizational changes and investigations against Spartak and its management. In this case, the Starostins was accused of players buy and sell to make insufficient political work, to squander public funds to bring foreign goods of tours and " introduce bourgeois ways of working in sports. " During these investigations Nikolai Starostin was also used by athletes from Spartak organization denounced him capitalist methods accused, among other things, with the statement: ". Nikolai Starostins behavior is not that of a chairman of a Soviet Sportvereiningung, but as that of an owner of a private sports clubs, such as the owner of the Palais de Sports in Paris" Despite these allegations could Starostin - probably due to his political connections - but first continue working.
The intelligence chief as opponent
In November 1938, after the Great Terror, Lawrenti Beria was appointed head of the Interior Ministry and at the same time also the de facto chairman of Dynamo. Beria was a fanatical football fan and had played in his time in Georgia and even football. He was met on the field with Starostin, who later described him as a " technically weak but very rough left runners ". When the two later met again in Moscow, Beria to the Spartakvorsitzenden with the words "Here is the little so-and- so, who has escaped me in Tbilisi. Have Let 's see if you 'll get away now. " Addressed. Shortly after taking office, was arrested Beria also Kosarew in the Great Purge, which was eventually executed. This Starostin had lost his main political advocate.
As Spartak also won the championship in 1939 after the Double in 1938, sent to you to repeat the double success when you defeated in the Cup semi-final Dinamo Tbilisi. Beria intervened in the competition and set a repeat of the game through due to a dubious gate, although time between the final had been played out already, the Spartak won against Stalinez Leningrad. However, Starostin was not intimidated and Spartak won the replay against Beria home team. The latter is said to have thrown his chair from the stands during the game and have angrily left the stadium.
Beria then tried to arrest the Starostins due to the allegations raised two years earlier, but was so unsuccessful because the then Prime Minister Vyacheslav Molotov refused to sign the warrant. Reason for this was said to be that the daughters of Molotov and Starostins were friends.
Arrest and judgment
It took another three years before it succeeded Beria, Starostin to arrest his brothers as well as a number of other Spartakmitglieder in March 1942. Starostin spent nearly two years in the Lubyanka. First, those arrested were accused of being involved " in the criminal activities of the enemy of the people Kosarew ", including the alleged attempt to have planned an attack on the life of Stalin during the parade on the Red Square. Furthermore, claiming the charges that they had embezzled 160,000 rubles and illegally obtained food for military service exemptions exchanged.
In November 1943, the verdict and the brothers Starostin was the " praise bourgeois sport and the experiment einzuschleppen bourgeois morality in Soviet Sport" were found guilty and each received a ten year sentence in labor camps. Starostin described this judgment later as " for these times almost a non- guilty judgment. " And " The Starostins did not exist on its own. In the minds of the people they personified Spartak. Beria had to deal 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 in Uchta. Here it turned out quickly that the camp commander intended to use him not as a warehouse worker but as a coach of the local football club Dynamo. After a year, he came to a camp in Khabarovsk on the Chinese border and then to Komsomolsk -on-Amur. Even in these camps, he worked as a football coach at Dynamo clubs, what considerable privileges for him meant he did not have to live in the barracks, but could be for the home ground set up, did not have the hard physical work of other prisoners do, was to away games ride and received occasional visits from his family. Starostin describes this time with "I want to make me a martyr. It is there already something happened, but essentially I sat my time under any difficult circumstances. "
In 1948, he was awakened in his Siberian prison by the local party secretary, who made him the message, Stalin would be on the phone and wanted to speak to him. These were to Vasily Stalin, the son of the dictator. The two knew each other from the 1930s when Starostins daughter and Vassily together belonged to the equestrian club Spartak. Now he had been appointed by his father as commander of the air force of the Moscow Military District, and as such was responsible for the Air Force Sports Club WWS Moscow, where he tried to bring together some of the best players of Russia. At the suggestion of a player he decided to employ Starostin as a coach.
Vasily Stalin sent his private jet to the Far East and took Starostin to Moscow. There learned Beriah successor as Minister of State Security and Dynamo- Chairman, Viktor Abakumov promptly of the return and sent secret police to Starostin, which gave him 24 hours to leave Moscow again. Vasily Stalin Then took the coach to his residence and placed him under his personal protection. Starostin wrote in his memoirs: " I recognized the tragicomic situation in which I found myself - under the personal protection of the offspring of tyrants. We were destined to be inseparable. We went everywhere together towards: the Air Force headquarters for training, in his dacha. We slept even in the same big bed. And when we went to bed, Vasily Josifowitsch laid every time his revolver under the pillow. "
As Stalin once was drunk Starostin climbed through the window, to visit his family. The very next morning waited civilian police on him and put him on a train in the northern Caucasus. But the air force chief learned of the action and so he sent Starostin from the train and brought him back to Moscow. With Starostin at his side Stalin then visited a game of Dynamo. Stalin called Abakumov to deputies and yelled into the phone: " Two hours ago you said you would not know where Starostin infected. (...) He is sitting here next to me. Your guys had kidnapped him. Remember that we never forget in our family an insult. You can be yourself told by General Stalin. "Nevertheless Starostin Stalin could convince them to stop using him in Moscow. Stalin agreed to make him the coach of the Dynamo team of Ulyanovsk. On the way, but he was again intercepted by the secret service and taken into exile in Akmolinsk in the Kazakh steppe.
There he initially looked again a local football team, but was soon brought in the then capital of the Republic of Alma- Ata, where he worked both the football and the hockey team Dinamo Alma- Ata. The football team played in the second Soviet league.
Rehabilitation and new achievements
After the death of Joseph Stalin, the judgment of the Starostins one was revised and the brothers were eventually rehabilitated. Nikolai returned to Moscow, received his awards ( including the " Merited Master of Sports " ) back in 1955 and took over the lead again Spartak.
During the next almost 40 years Starostin worked with two short interruptions as president of Spartak. The team was able to reach a total of ten Soviet and Russian league titles and nine cup victories. Starostin was one of the most recognized sports officials this time and won awards including the Order of Hero of Socialist Labor.
Yet his methods were not always without controversy, as an episode from the championship season in 1969 shows as Spartak won a crucial match against CSKA and shortly afterwards some CSKA players new apartments were allocated by the Moscow City Government, to which Starostin excellent relations were accused of.
Starostin led Spartak in the first years after the collapse of the Soviet Union under new environmental conditions. In a 1992 interview given, he said: "We are growing so into capitalism into it - since professionals, we are also officially, we have no lack of money. " Under his leadership, a number of top players was transferred to Western European clubs, such as Igor Shalimov, Alexander Mostowoi Rashid Rakhimov and.
In 1989, he published his memoirs Futbol Skvoz ' gody, which first dealt with the years in the Gulag after a previously published book that period still left out.
Until shortly before his death, he was still working for Spartak next Honorary President of the International Spartak organization.
Success ( football)
As a player
- 2 × Soviet champion: 1928, 1932
- 3 x Champion of Russia: 1922, 1927, 1931
- 6 × Moscow masters: 1923F, 1924F, 1927F, 1927H, 1929F, 1934F
- 6 (unofficial ) games and 1 goal for the Soviet national team