The Russian style of play

On Sunday, June 10, a large stage was erected in Red Square and a big screen placed beside it. Bleachers were lined at the other end of the courtyard, below the imposing Kremlin wall. An empty space stretched between the bleachers and the stage — presumably for the spectators. Everything appeared to be set for the public screening of a World Cup match. Only it was not.

I approached a polite guard standing near the fence, and he told me in the little English he knew that the arrangements were for ‘Russia Day’. This does not come as a total surprise; in fact, it was in keeping with the mood in Moscow. An impending festivity is in the air, but it was taking extraordinarily long to come alive. The World Cup in Russia appears to be a party the hosts are hesitant to welcome. The shadow of the Sochi Winter Olympics and the ensuing international disgrace still looms large.

One need not have worried, though. The foreign tourists brought in the colour and cheer soon enough. Two days before the World Cup kicked off, security was heightened. Steel barricades lined Teatral’naya street, not far from Red Square. The statue of Karl Marx facing the Bolshoi Theatre was flanked by World Cup banners, although nobody was allowed to walk up to it anymore.

The festivities began soon after. On the drizzly night of June 12, Iranian and Peruvian fans sprung up in numbers to rent the air with chants and songs, decking the place with flags of the two countries. In a nearby bar, about 10 Peruvians stood around a table and bellowed a song for their home team. Fears of violence remained overstated. All worries that this was going to be a dull show was erased at that moment. The World Cup had finally arrived.

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Slow warm-up: The FIFA World Cup in Russia appears to be a party the hosts are hesitant to welcome, particularly after the Sochi Winter Olympics fiasco

Excitement among the local people slowly peaked as the opening day came around. Football, of course, is an immensely popular sport in Russia. The Luzhniki Stadium, venue for the opening game as well as the final of this year’s World Cup, is a site of the myths and reality that surround Russian sport and society. In 1980, it hosted the opening and closing ceremonies for the Moscow Olympic Games, a spectacle marred by the boycott by a few Western countries. Nevertheless, it proved to be a major event, a statement of strength by the communist regime of the then Soviet Union.

Two years later, when the venue was still known by its former name — Lenin Stadium, it became the site of Russia’s biggest sporting disaster — a stampede that left 66 dead, according to official figures, although unofficial estimates put it at 300. If the accident was a low point in Soviet society, the subsequent cover-up by the government became an embarrassment. Despite the dark episode, the Luzhniki is also a repository of fond memories for Russian football. In 1991, when Spartak Moscow — the club played its home games at the Luzhniki then — made it to the European Cup semis, crowds of close to 1,00,000 came to watch its famous victories over Napoli and Real Madrid.

Similar bursts of interest could be expected during this World Cup at the overhauled stadium, which can now hold 81,000 spectators. The initial plan was to accommodate 90,000, but a smaller capacity was preferred once renovation began and the preservation of the old structure became a concern. A fawn-hued façade lends a sober look to the renovated Luzhniki. Eight other new stadiums have been constructed for the World Cup. The overall budget for the tournament is pegged at $11 billion — a significant outlay for a nation that spent no less than $50 billion for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

The financial outlay, particularly after the experiences of the previous two hosts — Brazil and South Africa — is a cause for worry. Whether Russia will be able to sustain the momentum built during the World Cup is a moot question at this point. Even though Russian football has better financial prospects compared to the previous hosts, serious questions persist over the project’s financial viability.

While a few stadiums are home to some of Russia’s most illustrious clubs, many others face an uncertain future. Sochi, a host city, does not have a professional club, while the cities of Nizhny Novgorod, Volgograd, Samara, and Kaliningrad have no presence in the top division — the Russian Premier League. Furthermore, FC Rostov (Rostov-on Don) and FC Ural Yekaterinburg (Yekaterinburg) are not exactly the biggest draws.

There might be a few white elephants once the show closes on July 15. It is argued that the disadvantages are offset by the gains to the host’s soft power. That claim, however, is not quantifiable or even estimable. In fact, there might be unintended consequences at play. As the Brazilian government realised during the last World Cup, opening one’s doors to the world means greater scrutiny from the media worldwide. The scathing appraisal of the incumbent government led to a coup against the Dilma Rousseff administration.

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Days of glory: West Germany and the Soviet Union face off in the semifinal of the 1966 World Cup in London

Russia has battled greater scrutiny ever since it was chosen to host the 2018 World Cup. Media in the West, continuing a line of commentary from the Cold War days, has stoked fears of an authoritarian regime attaining legitimacy through sporting diplomacy, the racism of Russian fans, and also of censorship, particularly of flagrant issues. While the concerns raised are grave, Russia also remains a country about which much is written but not much is understood very well. The Western disaffection for the state has ensured that popular writing has not budged from the days of the Soviet Union; Russia’s standing in the contemporary world is weaker than it was in the Cold War days. The threats it may pose to the hegemonic West are overstated, as it remains a country grappling with a flagging economy.

The Russian football team in this World Cup is the weakest in its history, a stark contrast from the days of the formidable Soviet Union. The Soviets reached the World Cup semi-final once and quarter-finals thrice before the collapse of the order. Since then, Russia has failed to progress past the group stage in its three tournament appearances. It is a measure of the fall in standards of a team that is not expected to do much better this time either, even though it is grouped alongside Egypt, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia.

In present-day Russia, football has moved away from the state’s influence towards private players, a change that mirrors the transfer of wealth in the country since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the oligarchy, football clubs are dependent on private benefactors. CSKA Moscow, the army’s team in the Soviet Union, is now privately owned, with the defence ministry holding just a stake in the club. Spartak Moscow, the workers’ side, is under complete private ownership, headed by the billionaire Leonid Fedun.

The political changes are reflected in the life of the average footballer. In Jonathan Wilson’s book The Outsider , legendary goalkeeper Rinat Dasaev shed light on an athlete’s experience in the Soviet Union. “I talk not only on my behalf, but also on the behalf of other big athletes who represented the Soviet Union. A kind of pressure existed but it was not so difficult or so heavy that you suffered. For we football players, the fact that the USSR was a closed country wasn’t a reality because we were travelling often. We lived a different USSR to others.”

In the Soviet Union, sports often intertwined with politics, and the club Spartak Moscow features in one of the most intriguing episodes of Russian football. A match between the club’s first team and its reserves was organised at Red Square in 1936. The guest of honour was a man who went by the name Josef Stalin. Although Stalin was not known to be a football fan, it is said that he enjoyed the match so much that the half-hour show went on for 43 minutes.

But that was not the end of it. The seemingly straightforward demonstration match soon turned into a plot for political intrigue. Football clubs in the Soviet Union were controlled by different political interests — Torpedo (automotive industry), Lokomotiv (railways), Dinamo (interior ministry), and Spartak (labour union). The division often led to clashes, especially when sporting interests began to affect political projects.

Nikolai Starostin ended up getting caught in the mesh of political and personal rivalry. Starostin, apart from being a star footballer, was instrumental in the establishment of Spartak. Unfortunately for him, Laventii Beria, head of the NKVD (The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs), the precursor to the KGB in the Soviet Union, resented the all-conquering Spartak side for the humiliation it heaped on the interior ministry’s Dinamo.

Beria also held a personal grudge against Starostin, for he not only embodied Spartak’s indomitable spirit, but had also embarrassed Beria on the pitch when they both were players. After the demonstration match, Starostin was accused of involvement in a plot to assassinate Stalin. The football star was sent to the Gulag, the dreaded labour camp, on the flimsiest pretexts more than five years after the exhibition match. The two referees were shot dead in 1937 on the same charge.

Though nothing was ever proved, allegations of fraud were also brought against Starostin. It was not until Stalin’s death that he could again walk a free man. Starostin was just one among many athletes whose lives were turned upside down by politics in the Soviet Union.

Today, we are unlikely to witness a political drama that originates in a football field and plays out through such twists and turns. But football enjoys a rich and strong cultural currency in Russian society, and the association goes back in time. In Speak, Memory , Vladimir Nabokov writes at length about his days as a goalkeeper in Cambridge. He elaborates on why the goalkeeper stands out in Russian society. Nabokov was keen to separate the Russian fascination with the goalkeeper from the English predilection for goal scorers. “In Russia and the Latin countries, that gallant art has always been surrounded with a halo of singular glamour. Aloof, solitary, impassive, the crack goalie is followed in the streets by entranced small boys. He vies with the matador and the flying ace as an object of thrilled adulation.”

As Wilson neatly outlines in The Outsider , football enjoys a special place in Russian literature too. Yury Olesha’s Zavist features a goalie who held his team above everything else. Leo Kassil’s novel Vratar Respubliki — which came out in 1936, the year the Spartak Moscow demonstration match was held in Red Square — features a footballer corrupted by foreign influences. The novel went on to inspire a musical film.

The social commentary in these works was overtly in favour of the communist regime, as the song ‘Vratar’ from the musical-comedy adapted from Vratar Respubliki shows:

Hey, keeper, prepare for the fight

You are a sentry in the goal.

Imagine there is a border behind you

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Story field: Luzhniki Stadium, venue for the opening game and final, is a site of the myths and reality surrounding Russian sport and society

The World Cup will be an occasion for Russian nationalism to assert itself. However, at its core, the tournament remains a paean to universalism, its ever-expanding base making it a platform for everyone. At this World Cup, Iceland will become the smallest-ever nation (population-wise) to participate, while Panama makes its debut. Egypt returns to the tournament after 28 years, so too Peru, after a gap of 36 years.

Though the Russians may not impress, there is still plenty to watch out for. An underwhelming group stage draw means that it might take a while for the World Cup to warm up. But the quality of the contenders — Brazil, Spain, Germany, and France — offers a promising knockout stage.

As for Russia, hosting the World Cup is not exactly an opportunity for it to redress its position geopolitically. FIFA’s exacting demands often mean that the greatest beneficiary of the event is the governing body itself. Russia, though, will seek to send across the message it often delivers to its citizens — ‘There is no place like it.’ Of course, the West may choose to read that statement differently.

To alter perceptions may not even be an objective — hosting the World Cup is usually about strengthening the narrative a country crafts for itself. In the current political climate, it is an opportunity Russia does not want to miss.

Priyansh is a Delhi-based independent sports writer

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