Tag: ussr

Lev Yashin: the heroic gentleman in black

THERE HAVE BEEN many great goalkeepers in the history of the game. They range from the sober, colder types to the theatrical, colourful types and everything in between. But there is one man…

The groundbreaking Dynamo Moscow tour of Britain in 1945

Several months after World War Two had been declared a victory Great Britain and its allies, the English FA, striving to discover the intriguing nature of football behind the Iron Curtain, decided to…

The death match of 1942

BY THE MIDDLE of September 1941, just three months after Adolf Hitler’s army had invaded the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic’s capital, Kyiv, was occupied by the Wehrmacht after a…

This is Russia: a story of west and east

“Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Winston Churchill’s famous words in October 1939 at the breakout of World War Two ring out as loudly today as they did…

Spartak Moscow and the Physical Culture Day of 1936

A WAGON WITH A PORTRAIT OF VLADIMIR LENIN on the front and a huge, white statue of the Soviet Union’s leader Joseph Stalin on the top is rolling through the Red Square. Behind…

A Tale of One City: Moscow

This feature is part of A Tale of One City “Daddy needs vodka, or he can’t ensure victory.” When Oleg Romanstev sent his five-year-old son into the VIP box at Anfield during a…