BOOK / FOOTBALL AND POWER IN STALIN'S USSR. Mario Alessandro Curletto

ESSAY In the early 1920s, a group of young people living in a working-class neighborhood of Moscow and avid football fans decided to create their own team in this novel sport. They created it in the broadest sense of the term, because, in addition to founding the club, they built all the sports facilities (field, stands, locker rooms, etc.) with their own hands and at their own expense. This neighborhood team, whose popularity grew rapidly, had the good fortune to compete, starting in the mid-1930s, with the major military sports clubs, led by Dynamo (Commissariat for Internal Affairs) and CDKA (Red Army). Its protagonists did not escape unscathed by the extensive Stalinist repressions, nor by the fury of the terrible General Beria. But those same personal dramas (sometimes tragedies), coupled with their sporting victories, helped create the legend of Spartak Moscow, the epic poem of the people's team. Title: Fútbol y su poder en la URSS de StalinAuthor: Mario Alessandro CurlettoPages: