Nikolai Starostin
Nikolai Petrovich Starostin (
Early life and Spartak Moscow
The eldest of four brothers, Starostin was born in
In 1921 the Moscow Sport Circle (later
As a high-profile sportsman, Starostin came into close contact with Alexander Kosarev, secretary of the
In 1936 new league and cup competitions were introduced in Russia. In the first year Dynamo won the league and Spartak the cup. In 1937 the positions were reversed but Spartak won both league and cup in 1938 and 1939, much to the annoyance of
Arrest
In the late 1930s many of Starostin's friends and associates were arrested as part of the Great Purge, including Kosarev. There were also attempts to more closely control sporting matters, including forcing the Semi-final of the 1939 cup to be replayed after Spartak won the first match by a disputed goal. They went on to win the replay, which did not take place until after Spartak had already won the final.[2] On March 20, 1942, Starostin was arrested, along with his three brothers and other fellow players, facing accusations of involvement in a plot to kill Joseph Stalin. Following two years of interrogation in the Lubyanka, the charges were dropped but the Starostins were tried and sentenced to ten years in Siberia anyway, having been found guilty of "lauding bourgeois sport and attempting to drag bourgeois mores into Soviet sport".[2] The sentence was very lenient in view of the popularity of football and Starostin.[3] When details from the actual court sentence were published in 2003, it turned out Starostins were not convicted for political crimes, but rather for stealing sporting goods from the stores they were supposed to oversee and selling those goods on. Nikolai Starostin profited for 28,000 rubles, Aleksandr for 12,000, Andrei and Pyotr - for 6,000 each. Also, Nikolai Starostin was convicted of bribing the military commisar of the Bauman district of Moscow, Kutarzhevskiy. Kutarzhevskiy, using his power arranged so that several people who were supposed to have been conscripted to serve in the Army during World War II were not sent to the front and stayed in Moscow instead. Those people included food distributors and food store managers, who in turn provided Starostin with unlimited food supply during the war time, when food shortages were common (according to the sentence, food store manager Zvyozdkin gave Starostin 60 kilograms of butter and 50 kilograms of meat products).[4]
During his time in the gulags, Starostin's skills were highly sought after and he served as coach at various camps. He was treated benevolently by commanders who looked kindly on football and gave him extensive privileges. Unlike other notable inmates, Starostin was never mistreated and was well liked among both guards and prisoners, who would gather to listen to his football stories.[2]
In 1948 Starostin received a phone call in the camp from Stalin's son
On one occasion when Vasily was drunk Starostin slipped out of an open window to see his family. He was apprehended by the secret police at 6am the next morning and sent to the
Release
Stalin died on 5 March 1953. Beria, who had initially been part of the leading group after Stalin's death, was executed later that year. As part of the movement towards "
Honours and awards
- Hero of Socialist Labour (1990)
- Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 3rd class (19 April 1995) - for services in the development of physical culture and sports and the great personal contribution to the revival and the emergence of the sports society "Spartak"
- Three Orders of Lenin(1937, 1987, 1990)
- Order of Friendship of Peoples (1982)
- Honoured Master of Sports
References
- ^ a b c d e f "A Small Way of Saying "No": Moscow Working Men, Spartak Soccer, and the Communist Party, 1900–1945". The American Historical Review. Retrieved 2008-07-25.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Riordan, Jim. The strange story of Nikolai Starostin, football and Laverentii Beria. Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 46, No. 4 (1994), pp. 681–690
- ^ Kuper, p. 43
- ^ Лагерная планида Александра Старостина - «Молодежь Севера», № 45 за 6 ноября 2003 года
Further reading
- Simon Kuper. Football Against the Enemy. Orion Paperbacks, 2003 (ISBN 0-7528-4877-1).
- Anne Applebaum. ISBN 0-14-028310-2).
- ISBN 0801447429).