Carles Viñas, Football in the Land of the Soviets (London: Pluto Press 2022)

It is always pleasant to read new books on the yet understudied field of sports history, in particular European football history. This recent work is no exception. Dr. Carles Viñas offers up a journalistic account of Moscow and St. Petersburg football that is easy to comprehend and leaves the reader wanting more. Despite its stated claim to be a book on Soviet football, the actual focus of his study is primarily Imperial Russia and its football. The timeline ends roughly in the 1930s, with the 1920s and 1930s being covered briefly.

As for geographical scope, there is little information about important football activity that unfolded outside of Imperial Russia’s political centres, Moscow and St. Petersburg. Cities farther afield, such as Odessa, Tbilisi, and Kyiv, among others, also played an integral part in the development of Soviet football. They produced a plethora of distinct playing styles (i.e., Georgia) and star players. For example, the absence of Kyiv in this work is a pity, considering the city’s unique football beginnings, innovative football thinkers (i.e., Valeriy Lobanovskyi), three Ballon d’Or winners, and Dinamo Kyiv, the most successful team of the Soviet era. Consequently, the author perpetuates the misconception that the Soviet Union was Russia.

Nevertheless, this work is an excellent introduction to the early days of Moscow and St. Petersburg football for the uninitiated. The story begins with the introduction of football in Russia and how football reflected the modernization and industrialization drive of Tsarist Russia. In addition, the author clearly argues that the Imperial period is essential for understanding the development of Soviet football. The book is then organized into three sections: Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth.

Childhood centres on the individuals who brought football to Moscow and St. Petersburg, followed by an examination of the relatively affluent locals who eventually adopted the game. Dr. Viñas pays special attention to the individual actors who enthusiastically brought football from Britain to Russia, with helpful commentary in the footnotes providing a brief biography of the various actors. For example, there are the amusing difficulties faced by Henry and Clement Charnock, who introduced football to their factory workers. The workers were not keen on the sport at first, scattering in fear after their first acquaintance with an English football (29–30). The story shifts from the early pioneers, mostly British expats, to the rise of the Morozov factory football team, which Dr. Viñas considers the first great team of Russia (34). In this section and the next, several pages are set aside for the Russian aristocrats, who challenge the dominance of expat teams in the local city leagues.

Boyhood begins with the Olympic Games of 1912 in Stockholm, Sweden, and ends with World War I. Russian football’s first foray at a major international tournament ended in disgrace in 1912. A 1–2 loss against Finland was a political humiliation due to Finland raising its flag before the match despite being under the control of Russia at the time. This defeat was followed by a hiding at the feet of the Germans (49–50). Back on the home front, the workers fought against Tsarist authorities and the local bourgeois to form their own football teams, which were condemned to compete in separate “Wild” leagues at first due to barriers of entry into the official city competitions. World War I brought further changes, with Russian authorities finally keen to promote sport in an effort to produce soldiers with strong bodies for the battle against the empire’s enemies on the battlefield (61–62).

Youth covers football’s role in Russia during the Bolsheviks’ rise and their early rule. Most of the former authorities of Russian football, the Europeans and the Russian bourgeois, were forced to leave Russia after Lenin’s triumph and lost their former power in the sport. Thus, a new generation of Russians would finally not just play football but also dominate the administration of the clubs and the sport (85). Moreover, the Bolsheviks came to understand that perhaps they had been mistaken to disregard this “bourgeois” sport and actively reshaped and “militarized” it (94). Pre-revolutionary clubs were either rebranded or forced to disappear, while new entities with closer ties to state institutions and the workers were formed (82). These alterations granted the majority of the populace wide-ranging access to the sport for the first time. Though the Soviet record-chasing and medal count mania is noted, Dr. Viñas also highlights the importance of other sporting movements, such as the hygienists and mass sport, in the early days of Soviet rule.

As a work of journalism for the curious sports fan, this is a timely, eloquent book about a topic that is shrouded in mystery for many residing outside of Eastern Europe. However, Football in the Land of the Soviets is limited by its sources. The author largely relies on English and Spanish secondary sources, but rarely uses primary sources or Soviet historiography. Except for a couple of online websites, Dr. Viñas cites no sources in Russian or in any other language native to the Soviet Union. The voices of numerous insightful football experts, including journalists and academics, from the former Soviet Union are largely absent from the book. Citations are also sparse, with long sections that clearly sprang from other secondary literature left without a corresponding footnote. There are also minor factual errors, such as the famous German 16–0 thrashing of the Russian national team at the Olympics of 1912 being noted as a 7–0 loss.

Notwithstanding these slight drawbacks, this well-written book is a welcome contribution, considering the potential mass appeal and resonance that it brings to a subject that deserves more attention. Dr. Viñas deserves praise for spreading the fascinating subject of Soviet football to new audiences. After all, he wrote the original version in Catalan. A book that fosters interest in Moscow and St. Petersburg football history in a mecca of football, Cataluña, is always welcome, as is this excellent translation by Luke Stobart.

Yacov Zohn

University of Wisconsin-Madison

DOI: https://doi.org/10.52975/llt.2023v92.0029.