Books, films, numerous publications in the press are devoted to this event, which took place in Kyiv on August 9, 1942. Earlier, in the days of the USSR, everything was clear and understandable: on that day, Soviet football players met with a team of German invaders and won. Only life was the price of that victory ...
Today, what happened then in the capital of Ukraine no longer looks so unambiguous. Let's try to figure out what really happened.
Summer 1942. The Germans have dominated Kyiv for almost a year now. They are sure that this is forever. Moreover, the events at the front are conducive to optimism - the German troops, as in the forty-first, are advancing. Hitler and his entourage are in clouds of unbridled euphoria: the Bolshevik stronghold is about to collapse.
The occupying authorities decide that it is time to establish a peaceful life. They open an opera house, cinemas in Kyiv, arrange concerts. It came to football, fortunately, at the bakery No. 1 they work - some as loaders, some as laborers - famous Russian and Ukrainian football players who in the fall of 1941 could not get out of the besieged city.
They were given uniforms and allowed to train. Soon the idea of matches between Soviet and German football players arose. This was facilitated by the Moravian Czech Jozsef Kordik, who lived in Kyiv. He was classified as a Volksdeutsche, that is, among ethnic Germans, and was appointed director of a bakery. Kordik, by the way, arranged several football players for his enterprise. They began to receive wages and food rations.
Kievans played in red t-shirts and white shorts - the colors of the USSR national team. In the old days, this fact was considered symbolic - they say, the players showed patriotism. However, the reasons were quite prosaic - the occupying city government allocated such a form to the people of Kiev, it seems, without any ulterior motive ...
The most famous team in Kyiv was Dynamo, which participated in the championships of the Soviet Union, including the championship in 1941, interrupted by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.
In his novel Babi Yar, Anatoly Kuznetsov claimed that it was the Dynamo team that formed the basis of the bakery team. However, later it turned out that this was not the case - in addition to Dynamo, there were players from other teams.
In addition to Dynamo players Nikolai Trusevich, Alexei Klimenko, Ivan Kuzmenko and Pavel Komarov, former Lokomotiv Kyiv players Lev Gundarev, Vladimir Balakin, Mikhail Melnik and representatives of other clubs played against the Germans. For example, ex-Dynamo player Makar Goncharenko played for Spartak Odessa before the war.
The story "Alarming Clouds", published in 1957, was also dedicated by the writer Alexander Borshchagovsky to the event in Kyiv. Five years later, according to the script of the writer, the film "The Third Half" was released. Both the book and the tape were very popular in the Soviet Union.
Borschagovsky, like Kuznetsov, believed that Dynamo were the backbone of the team. But he, unlike Kuznetsov (who wrote about a series of matches), built his plot at one meeting - Dynamo with the Germans from the fictional Condor Legion team. It was her Borschagovsky called the "death match". However, according to other sources, this "term" belongs to another writer - Lev Kassil. He used it in an essay published in Izvestia shortly after the liberation of Kyiv from the Germans.
The names of the main characters have been changed in Borschagovsky's story. The writer motivated this by the fact that "we do not know many of the important, essential details, without which it is impossible to create a strictly documentary thing."
But even if such documents were at the writer's hand, the plot could break through, lose its "correctness". It might not have had a clear division into “us” and “them”, as required by the ideology of that time. Residents of occupied Kyiv were forced to submit to harsh circumstances, the cruel dictates of the conquerors. They had to not only accept a power alien to them, but also work for the Germans, so as not to starve to death, to provide - at least crumbs - their loved ones.
In short, Borshchagovsky needed characters without shades - "his own" and "strangers". So he had to introduce fictional, smoothed out types into the plot, to make up reality. This is not the fault of the writer - such was the time, such were his laws.
After the war, many of those who found themselves "under the Germans" were accused of aiding the enemy. It can be recalled that before the collapse of the USSR, people applying for a job filled out a questionnaire, where there was such a question: “Were you or your relatives in the temporarily occupied territory?” If yes, then there are questions ...
By the way, the players were also in the occupied territory and played in matches organized by the Nazis. They, too, could be credited with "aiding" ...
Another book was devoted to the match in occupied Kyiv - "The Last Duel", written by Peter Severov and Naum Khalemsky. And this work was not a documentary - the names of the characters were changed in the story. Probably for the same reason as Borshchagovsky's...
The people of Kiev held ten matches with the invaders - German and Hungarian teams. According to other sources, there were fewer of them: eight. And they all came out victorious!
Part of the games were held at the Zenit stadium. In all meetings confidently, and often with a huge margin, to the great joy of numerous spectators, the bakery team won.
However, it was called that only during the debut game on June 7, 1942 with Rukh (2:0) - its players represented the Ukrainian sports society, created with the assistance of the invaders. Then the "USSR team" performed under the name "Start".
Kuznetsov in his novel mentions the match on July 12, held in the arena, built just before the war, which was named after Nikita Khrushchev, who at that time was the first secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of the Ukrainian SSR. During the occupation, the stadium was renamed Ukrainian. On that day, the Germans organized a sports festival there with the participation of gymnasts, boxers, and athletes. Football was the highlight of the program: "Start" met with a team of German military railway workers. The Kievans won an impressive victory with a score of 6:0.
It was already the fifth game of the bakery team and, accordingly, the fifth victory. Kuznetsov wrote that "the Germans did not like it, but no excesses happened."
A week later, on July 19, "Start" held another meeting - with the Hungarian team "Wal" and won again without difficulty - 5:1. After that, the people of Kiev won two more matches.
The Start players had no problems with their opponents, as they were clearly stronger. But they did not know how the invaders would react to the defeats, especially since they were coming in succession. However, for the time being, for the time being, the Germans were more or less calm, which was largely facilitated by favorable military reports. Wehrmacht troops reached the Volga and began an assault on the city named after Stalin.
It's time for the next match - July 9, 1942, in which Start met with the Flakelf team, representing anti-aircraft units. In that game, the people of Kiev won again, although in a bitter struggle with a score of 5:3.
Before the match, they were hinted that the Germans were already showing dissatisfaction and it was better to lose to them in order to avoid big troubles. But the Start players showed themselves as real athletes.
In addition, they knew what tremendous moral strength gives the inhabitants of the city each of their victory. On Podol, Khreshchatyk, Kurenevka and in other parts of Kyiv, they only talked about how “ours are lathering the neck of the Fritz”.
It is the meeting between "Start" and "Flakelf" that is called the "death match". But, contrary to the legend, the opponents did not play very correctly, but did not cripple each other. A German judge named Erwin was objective and did not goad his compatriots. And one more thing - no one in Kiev forced them to lose, as in Borshchagovsky's story. And there was no episode, as in Kuznetsov's novel: “The referee crumpled up time, blew the final whistle; the gendarmes, without waiting for the players to go to the locker room, grabbed the Dynamo players right there on the field, put them in a closed car and took them to Babi Yar…”.
The Start players calmly went home, having previously taken pictures with their rivals. The picture has survived to this day, and is striking in its appearance: both the people of Kiev and the Germans are smiling into the lens.
On that day, the townspeople, as usual, ardently supported their team. Emboldened, they even allowed themselves insulting cries against the Germans. They looked angrily at the people of Kiev, ordered them to be silent, but did not take any action.
On August 16, "Start" played one more, the last meeting in its short history - with "Rukh" and won again - 8:0. But this time the Germans did not touch the players.
And only on August 18 - nine days after the “death match” they arrested Trusevich, Klimenko, Komarov, Goncharenko, Kuzmenko, Mikhail Sviridovsky, Mikhail Putistin, Vladimir Balakin, Fyodor Tyutchev and threw them into the Syrets camp, located next to the infamous Babi Yar .
In early September, they seized another football player - Nikolai Korotkikh.
They were imprisoned for almost six months. During this time, the situation at the front changed dramatically - the Wehrmacht troops suffered heavy losses, landed in a huge "cauldron" near Stalingrad. The occupiers no longer smiled, they committed atrocities. The Germans were not famous for their mercy before, but now blood was flowing like a river: one mass execution was replaced by another.
On February 24, 1943, three Start players were shot - Trusevich, Klimenko, Kuzmenko. For what? Maybe they were reminded of football? Or were they suspected of something - of stealing, of trying to escape? There are no answers to these questions.
Another footballer, Short, was killed by the invaders later. They learned that he once worked in the NKVD ...
The fate of the rest of the Start players was different. But they all survived. Some of them shared their memories. True, in the days of the USSR they said one thing, after the collapse of the Union - another. For example, Goncharenko claimed that the Germans behaved ugly, having arranged a real hunt for the goalkeeper Trusevich, once they kicked him in the face. A few years later, the veteran "recovered": the Germans were not rude. And no one attacked the goalkeeper.
In 1971, a monument was erected at the Kiev Dynamo stadium, where several matches of the USSR national team with the Germans took place - a granite rock with high reliefs of four players. At that time, the feat of the players was officially approved.
Two decades later, everything has changed. In Ukraine and Russia, publications began to appear in which matches with the Nazis were already presented in a different light. There were also those who doubted at all: were there such meetings?
Of course, those games took place. After all, posters of matches are kept in Ukrainian museums, there are eyewitness accounts. Perhaps some of them are alive.
And it was a feat!
The players were eager to beat the Germans for many reasons. Firstly, they, the athletes, were charged to fight, they wanted to prove their superiority. Secondly, they had an unusual opponent in front of them - arrogant and arrogant, who felt like a master in their land. This added courage to the people of Kiev, gave additional strength. And they tore and threw on the field! They didn’t just win against the invaders - they smashed them!
On June 22, 1941, a big sports festival "Masters of Sports for Children!" was held at the Central Dynamo Stadium in Moscow. In the midst of the competition, terrible news broke into the stadium - war! ..On June 22, 1941, the Great Patriotic War began - the bloodiest war in history, which lasted 1418 days and nights.
We, Dynamo Moscow, are proud that representatives of the Dynamo Society, together with athletes from other societies, contributed to the victory over Nazi Germany. They fought on the fronts and behind enemy lines, worked in the factories and factories of our Motherland in the name of the Great Victory, were engaged in the preparation of reserves for the Red Army, became the initiators of the “thousanders” movement, pledging to train a thousand soldiers for the needs of the front.
The country's main sports arena, the Dynamo stadium, has turned into a training center for young fighters, into a military training camp. Already on June 27, detachments of the OMSBON (Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade for Special Purpose) began to form there, from among the volunteer athletes of the Central State Institute of Physical Culture and the Dynamo Society, who were then sent behind enemy lines.
The Dynamo stadium itself was camouflaged from enemy air raids and carefully guarded. In the winter of 1942, young fir trees were planted on the football field for the purpose of camouflage, which clearly demonstrated the state's concern for preserving the main sports attraction of the capital.
During the battle for Moscow, OMSBON, as part of the 2nd motorized rifle division of the NKVD special forces, was used on the front line, but even at that time, battle groups were formed in it, intended to be thrown into the enemy rear. In the winter of 1941/1942, the OMSBON mobile detachments carried out many successful raids and raids behind German lines.
OMSBON terrified the Nazi invaders, conducting daring and decisive operations behind enemy lines. The functions of the OMSBON included: conducting intelligence operations, organizing a partisan war, creating an agent network in the territories under German occupation, directing special radio games with German intelligence in order to misinform the enemy.
The war brought grief to every family, to every home, disrupted the peaceful life of millions of people. The people defended their homeland at the cost of huge losses. Our courageous soldiers defended their native land, turned back the fascist hordes and defeated them.
Over the years, the greatness of the feat of our soldiers and officers, home front workers, women, children - all those who brought Victory Day closer does not fade. We are proud of the heroism, resilience and dedication of our compatriots. These days will never be forgotten. That is why the decree of June 8, 1996 established June 22 in Russia - the Day of Memory and Sorrow. In all cities of our country and many countries of the near abroad, mourning events are held on this day, we remember all those who died a heroic death on the battlefields, who died of wounds in hospitals, were martyred in concentration camps. Eternal memory and glory to them!
- In 2011, the project "Veterans of the Moscow Dynamo" was launched in the Moscow city organization of the VFSO "Dynamo". It is symbolic that the first of this series was an audio diary dedicated to Dynamo - veterans of the Great Patriotic War. Many of the interviews recorded then became, to our great chagrin, the last...
Photo: RIA Novosti, oldmos.ru, pastvu.com
There was no strength to leave the field ... Memories of the legendary match that took place in besieged Leningrad on May 31, 1942
BLOCKADE MATCH.
On May 31, St. Petersburg celebrates the 70th anniversary of an incredible event that has gone down in history forever. According to the official version, on May 31, 1942, in the midst of the blockade, a football match was held in Leningrad, in which the players of the local Dynamo met with the team of the Leningrad Metal Plant.
Text by Igor Borunov
Almost everyone in St. Petersburg knows this story in one form or another. Having survived the most terrible winter of 1941-1942, besieged Leningrad was just beginning to recover. The Road of Life was launched, besides, up to 200 wagons of food began to arrive in the city every day ... It was very important to support the belief of the Leningraders that everything would end well. And someone up there came up with an idea: in the besieged city, they should play football against all odds. And they played - at the Dynamo stadium, on Krestovsky Island.
Until now, disputes have not subsided about which match should be considered the very first blockade. Versions are different. It is widely known that the real blockade match took place on May 6th. Football players of the Leningrad "Dynamo", they say, met with the team of the Baltic Navy crew and won with a score of 7:3. Perhaps it was, especially since the direct participants in the events insisted on this, in particular the goalkeeper, and later commentator Viktor Nabutov. But there is much more evidence that allows us to consider the first official match the game on May 31 between Dynamo and the team representing the Stalin Leningrad Metal Plant (LMZ), which included football players from the Leningrad clubs Zenit and Spartak, as well as several workers. For wartime reasons, the name of the rival team of the blue and white sounded like "team of the N-factory."
The meeting ended with a convincing victory for Dynamo, who were better prepared for it - 6:0, but a week later, in the replay, the N-sky plant almost took revenge, achieving a draw - 2:2. After these matches, sports competitions in the besieged city became almost regular.
WHO PLAYED
"Dynamo" - "N-sky plant" - 6:0
"Dynamo": Victor Nabutov, Mikhail Atyushin, Valentin Fedorov, Arkady Alov, Konstantin Sazonov, Viktor Ivanov, Boris Oreshkin, Evgeny Ulitin, Alexander Fedorov, Anatoly Viktorov, Georgy Moskovtsev.
"N-sky plant": Ivan Kurenkov, Alexander Fesenko, Georgy Medvedev, Anatoly Mishuk, Alexander Zyablikov, Alexei Lebedev, Nikolai Gorelkin, Nikolai Smirnov, Ivan Smirnov, Petr Gorbachev, V. Losev.
Judge Pavel Pavlov.
Honored coach of the USSR German Semenovich Zonin came to Leningrad from Kazan in 1949. On the Volga, he attended matches with the participation of Dynamo and Zenit players evacuated from Leningrad.
- The Dynamo team was the hallmark of the city. Everyone knew and loved them. The guys were good. Friendly team. Her soul was Valentin Fedorov, who played for Dynamo together with his brother Dmitry. Almost the entire Zenit team was evacuated, and only a few people from Dynamo left for Kazan. They worked at the factory there and played football on Saturdays. The people at the matches were packed! They played great football. I will never forget how Peka Dementyev (at that time a Zenit footballer. - Ed.) At the request of the public, began to do his tricks. It was simply impossible to take the ball away from him without a foul,” recalls Zonin.
Zonin met the participants in the blockade matches already in Leningrad, when he began to play for Dynamo.
- We met with goalkeeper Viktor Nabutov at the Dynamo stadium. Nabutov returned from his illness, and I trained him every day. I was on good terms with Arkady Alov, but when I arrived, he was already playing not at Dynamo, but at Zenit. I played in Dynamo together with Anatoly Viktorov. Then he left - Vsevolod Bobrov took over, and Viktorov became the champion of the Soviet Union in hockey three times as part of the Air Force. I remember Kostya Sazonov - a handsome guy! Played as a winger. Before matches, he always made a circle around the square by car. The girls were running after him! And then he returned to the stadium, - says Zonin.
I ask German Semenovich to tell about the prehistory of the blockade match.
- The war found Dynamo in Tbilisi. They returned to Leningrad and, as one, enlisted in the ranks of the Red Army. Since they represented the Dynamo society, many worked in the police and the NKVD - they neutralized spies who showed the Germans where to bomb. There was such a young player - Fedor Sychev, a central defender. In the autumn of 1941 he was on duty. The bombing started. Seeing an elderly woman crossing the road, Fyodor decided to help her go to the shelter. At the time of the explosion, he covered her with his body. She survived, but he died, - the veteran of national football sighs.
In addition to Sychev, the harsh wartime did not spare a few more players from that team. Under different circumstances, Nikolaev, Shapkovsky and Kuzminsky died.
– Valentin Fedorov was a good organizer. He and Alov were entrusted with gathering the players. They called in the city committee of the party. Why were they called? Goebbels' propaganda rang out to the whole world that the city of Lenin is the city of the dead, the inhabitants are already beginning to engage in cannibalism. Then the city committee decided to hold a football match. Fedorov and Alov were given the task of gathering the players. The other team was assembled by the trade unions. Of course, people were thin and hungry, but they came out to play, Zonin continues.
"THE GAME IS A MISSION"
Unfortunately, none of the direct participants in those events survived to this day. The last one, Dynamo striker Yevgeny Ulitin, passed away in 2002. It was he who was captured in the only surviving reliable photograph of the blockade match, taken by TASS photojournalist Vasyutinskiy. Let us turn to the blockade memoirs of the organizers of the game, published in newspapers in the 1970s and 1980s.
Valentin FEDOROV, Dynamo midfielder:
- Once, Arkady Alov and I were summoned to the military department of the city party committee. The manager asked which of the players remained in the city, whose addresses or places of service we know. Seeing our bewilderment, he explained: “The military council of the front decided to hold a football match in the besieged city and attaches great importance to this game. Consider it your most important combat mission." The task was difficult. The Dynamo team did not actually exist then. Six players were in Kazan, four were killed, one was seriously injured and evacuated. But picking was not the most difficult. How to play when there was not enough strength even for walking? However, the players gradually gathered, and we started training. We trained twice a week.
Alexander ZYABLIKOV, midfielder and captain of the N-factory team:
- We, the players of the pre-war "Zenith", in the spring of 1942, there were not so few left in the city. Almost everyone worked in the shops of the Metal Plant. For example, I was the deputy head of the air defense department. Naturally, we did not even think about any football. At the beginning of May, I quite by chance ran into Dynamo player Dmitry Fedorov on the street and quite unexpectedly immediately received an offer from him to play with Dynamo. We had more problems with recruitment. I had to collect players from Spartak and other city teams. Some included in the squad never entered the field - they were so exhausted from hunger. Our opponents gave us the form. Dynamo players, who managed to practice a little, offered to play two halves of 45 minutes. The factory workers agreed only to two for 20. “Let's start with half an hour,” I said, going up to Judge Pavlov. “If we endure, then all 45 minutes.” We did not have a goalkeeper, so the defender Ivan Kurenkov got into the goal, but still one more player was missing. Then Dynamo gave us their player Ivan Smirnov. And yet we survived two halves, because we understood: the city must know that we played.
Before the second match on June 7, the N-factory team found the goalkeeper, Kurenkov took his usual place in defense, and the factory workers almost won.
The son of Dynamo goalkeeper Viktor Nabutov, commentator, journalist and producer Kirill Nabutov, admitted that his father did not like to talk about the blockade match. But he told the impressions of another white-and-blue player - Mikhail Atyushin, an operative of the Leningrad police, who before the war played football only at an amateur level.
“I spoke with Mikhail Atyushin, a football player and gymnast who participated in the match and whose name is also on the memorial plaque,” says Nabutov. - He once went to the Dynamo stadium in May to do gymnastics. In the winter months I did not train - blockade, hunger. Came and met the guys-footballers. They say to him: “Oh! Good thing we got you! Come on, let's play." We played, but he did not remember the details very well.
"DO NOT BEAT IN OUT - THERE IS A POTATO"
Beloved by many Leningraders, the Dynamo stadium has hardly changed over the past 70 years, except that buildings designed for other sports have appeared instead of large stands.
In 1942, only one of the three spare fields was suitable for playing football at Dynamo. A German shell fell on the main platform. On the other two, rutabaga and cabbage were grown. And only on the third field, to the left of the main entrance, it was possible to play football, although also not without restrictions.
- When they entered the field, they were told: try not to hit out of bounds, because potatoes are planted there. Blockade potatoes are life. When the first half ended, the players were offered to rest, but they replied that they would not rest, because if they sat down, they would no longer be able to get up, - says German Zonin.
The testimonies of the players allow you to understand how hard it was for them.
Anatoly MISHUK, Zenit player, midfielder of the N-factory team:
- In the spring I was placed in the factory hospital in the last stage of dystrophy. When I got out of there, Zyablikov found me, said that there would be a game. It seems that I was the weakest of ours. I remember such an episode: there is a slight long transmission. I, as I did hundreds of times in pre-war matches, take the ball with my head, and he ... knocks me down.
“OUTSIDE THE WAR, AND HERE IS SOMETHING
SHANTRAPA IS RUNNING THE BALL!”
Information about how many fans there were at the game is different in different sources - from several dozen wounded from a nearby hospital to 350 graduates of command courses. Before the war, Dynamo players were the favorites of the city, they were known by sight, but the hardships of the blockade changed people beyond recognition. Leningraders, who were at the meeting place, were extremely surprised when they realized who was in front of them.
Evgeny ULITIN, Dynamo player:
- On the eve of the game, the unit where I served as a communications sergeant received a telephone message that it was necessary to arrive at the match. Early in the morning I drove to Leningrad in a passing car, got off the truck at Palace Square. Then I walked to the stadium. There he hugged with his comrades, picked up boots and a uniform. “There is a war in the yard, and here some kind of scammer is chasing the ball!” fans were outraged. They just didn't recognize their recent idols. In the first minutes, neither the legs nor the ball obeyed us. But the guys slowly wound up, and the game went on. “Bah! Yes, it's Oreshkin! Nabutov! Fedorovs! - was heard from the stands, which immediately thawed and began to ache to the fullest. Despite the warm day, it was difficult to play, at the end of the match my legs were cramping. However, most of the Dynamo players had much more strength than our rivals. In addition, a field player stood in their gates. This largely explains the large account. In the course of the game, I wanted to change, but with great difficulty we recruited people for two squads. The meeting participants left the field in an embrace. And not only because they were proud of each other - it was just easier to go that way. He returned to the unit near Shlisselburg and barely walked for two weeks.
The players were well aware of the importance of the mission entrusted to them. It was necessary to shame the fascist propaganda and give the city hope for a peaceful life.
Valentin FEDOROV:
- It was difficult. And the muscles ached terribly, and the ball seemed heavier than usual. And he didn't fly very far. But all this was nothing compared to the mood. We understood how important it is to just play…
Indeed, the radio report on the game, which appeared the next day, was met with extraordinary enthusiasm on the front lines. Former Dynamo striker Nikolai Svetlov wrote about this in a letter: “I will never forget the day when in the trenches in the Sinyavinsky swamps, 500 meters from the Germans, I heard a report from the Dynamo stadium. At first I didn't believe it. I ran into the dugout to the radio operators. They confirmed that they are broadcasting football. What happened to the soldiers! Everyone was excited."
MYTHS AND LEGENDS
Around the blockade match, or rather blockade matches - we know that there were several of them - there is a lot of dubious information, and sometimes outright speculation. But what is important is that in the difficult year of 1942 in besieged Leningrad they really played football, and more than once. At the same time, a number of photographs of the supposedly blockade match have nothing to do with it, since they depict a game at the dilapidated Lenin Stadium, and not at all at Dynamo. There was not and could not be a direct radio broadcast to the Soviet and German trenches. On the radio, they talked about the game in a recording.
“There was no report on the enemy trenches,” says Kirill Nabutov. - Intelligence work. In the case of a live report, the Germans would instantly determine where the match was taking place, and they could calmly fire at the crowded place. And so the shots were, but far away. A shell fell a few hundred meters away, and that was it. As always, reality is more modest than the legends that accompany it. I spoke with the Austrian communist Fritz Fuchs. During the blockade, he worked on the Leningrad radio - in German he conducted propaganda news releases that were broadcast to enemy troops. Someone on the radio told him: “Have you heard? They played football at Dynamo yesterday” – “What are you talking about? Of course I'll tell you about it!" And in the news release, he announced the match. There were many blockade matches.
“In 2018 TO THE MONUMENT TO FOOTBALL PLAYERS-
FLOWERS WILL BE PLACED TO BLOCKADERS"
On May 31, on the day of the 70th anniversary of the legendary match, a monument will be unveiled next to the field on which the game took place: two struggling football players, next to it is a bench with flowers and a military uniform. St. Petersburg TV commentator Gennady Orlov hopes that the matter will not be limited to the opening of the monument and the memorial plaque that appeared in 1991.
– Can you imagine, football players and fans from various countries will come to the 2018 World Cup and lay flowers in memory of the victory of the spirit. The participants of the blockade match were dystrophics. They said: “You better not give us a break between halves, because if we stop, we will not be able to get up.” I had the honor to know many of the participants in the match. Amazing people - such inner beauty! This should be sung, and there should be a museum, - Orlov is convinced.
A football match was held at the Dynamo stadium. He had to show that the city not only fights, but also lives, despite.
In April 1942, the Germans dropped leaflets from aircraft. They claimed that “Leningrad is the city of the dead. We are not taking it yet because we are afraid of a deadly epidemic. We wiped this city off the face of the earth."
Leningraders did not agree with this formulation. To show the lies of Nazi propaganda, on May 6, 42, the Leningrad City Executive Committee decided to hold a football match at the Dynamo stadium. The first field was pitted with craters from shells, and a vegetable garden was planted on the second, so we had to use an alternate site.
In the "match of life" the teams of "Dynamo" and the Leningrad Metal Plant (LMZ) met. Moreover, because of the secrecy, the second team of football players was called the "Team of the N-factory." For the same reasons, only graduates of the commander's courses and wounded soldiers from a nearby hospital became fans at the match. It was deadly dangerous to announce the game - the information could fall into the hands of the enemy.
For the match, many Dynamo players had to be recalled from the front - the athletes defended their hometown with weapons in their hands.
The commander of the armored boat Viktor Nabutov was sent to Leningrad from the Oranienbaum bridgehead, chief foreman Boris Oreshkin commanded a patrol boat, Dmitry Fedorov was recalled from the Karelian Isthmus, deputy political instructor of the medical unit Anatoly Viktorov and infantryman Georgy Moskovtsev arrived from Krasnoye Selo, five more athletes served in the city police detectives.
In the team of rivals from LMZ, they gathered everyone who could play football and had the strength to do so. Of course, not all the starving workers of the plant were able to go to the field. Dynamo even lost their player Ivan Smirnov to the factory workers.
It was decided to play two short halves of 30 minutes. The players moved slowly across the field.
At the very beginning of the game, Zenit midfielder Anatoly Mishuk, who played for LMZ, took the risk of taking the ball on his head and collapsed on the field. He had just been discharged from the hospital, where he was diagnosed with severe dystrophy. During the break, the athletes did not sit on the grass, as they would hardly have stood up again.
In the second half, the Germans saluted in a peculiar way, starting bombing in the area. Football players and fans had to go down to the bomb shelter.
Newsreel fragment depicting the game on May 31, 1942
Of course, Dynamo won against LMZ with a big score - 6:0.
All the players left the field, embracing, without disassembling the teams. Those who were stronger helped their emaciated comrades. The city lived.
The next day at the front, repeaters broadcast a report from this match for the fighters on all radios. Dynamo forward Nikolai Svetlov, sitting in a trench, was surprised to hear: “Smirnov passes along the flank, crosses Fesenko into the penalty area - Dynamo goalkeeper Viktor Nabutov takes the ball in a brilliant jump!”
Goalkeeper of the Dynamo team, armored boat commander Viktor Nabutov (in the future - a well-known Soviet sports commentator, father of journalist Kirill Nabutov)“At first I didn’t believe it, I ran into the dugout to the radio operators, and they confirmed: it’s true, they are broadcasting football. What happened to the soldiers! It was such a military upsurge that if at that moment a signal was given to kick the Germans out of their trenches, they would have had a bad time! ”, Nikolai Svetlov recalled after the war.
The legendary Nikifor Kolyada, nicknamed Batya by the partisans, was an outstanding personality. Tales are told about people like him. At the zenith of military glory, already being a laureate of the Order of Lenin, Kolyada, treated kindly by journalists, fell under the relentless wheels of the repression machine.
At the beginning of life
The history of Kolyada is full of exciting twists and turns. The future hero was born in 1891 in the Kharkov province, on the Kostev farm, in the family of a poor peasant. The help of the sisters allowed him to finish a three-year city school, which was a great achievement for a peasant child. Having begun the path of a military man even before the revolution, Kolyada, with the rank of ensign, went through the First World War, and then decisively supported the Bolsheviks, became a member of the city Council of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies. For Bolshevik agitation, the Petliurists threw him in prison, but Kolyada escaped and created one of the first partisan detachments in the Smolensk region. He successfully defended Vinnitsa from the troops of Ataman Shepel, smashed Petlyura, and in 1920 was appointed military commissar of the 57th Infantry Division. The young hero of the revolution, who had not yet grown a full beard and had not received the nickname Batya, even then showed himself to be an outstanding person with excellent abilities for organization, command and bold tactical decisions. In his free time, Kolyada was constantly studying. When the country calmed down a little, he entered the Chinese department of the Far Eastern University and left there knowing two languages - English and Chinese.
"No Activity Data"
The testimonial issued to Kolyada's relatives after his arrest says: "During the time he was in the partisan detachments (July - September 1942), the former commander of the partisan detachments, Kolyada, showed himself exclusively from the negative side." Every letter of this reply breathes lies.
On June 22, 1941, Nikifor Kolyada was already 50 years old. He held a good position and was not subject to conscription because of his age, but he immediately wrote a statement to the Central Committee with a request to send him to the front. Taking into account Bati's partisan experience, he was sent to the Smolensk region in the German rear, where in a year, under the most difficult conditions, he gathered tens of thousands of people around him and created a strong, combat-ready partisan movement. By July 1942, he was already leading the activities of 20 detachments in six districts. Bati's fighters blocked roads and destroyed enemy communications, blew up railway tracks. At the height of the war, they liberated more than 230 settlements in which they restored Soviet power, and also removed more than a thousand children from the occupation. The operation of the Nazis to destroy the partisans "The Last Harvest" and an attempt to knock them out of their stronghold - Sloboda - failed.
Arrest
At the end of September, Batya was urgently summoned to Moscow. He attended a reception with the secretary of the Central Committee Andreev and the commander of the partisan movement Voroshilov, and immediately after he was arrested. Having avoided falling under the comb of repression in the 30s, Kolyada still did not escape his fate. Formally, he was accused of treacherous work in favor of the German occupiers and the fight against the local population, turning a blind eye to the fact that policemen acted as the local population, and also that “cattle, food, fodder were confiscated from the population, which led to discredit Soviet power", in an unstable moral character (despite the fact that Kolyada was married, he started relationships with partisan girls).
In fact, the reason for the arrest, most likely, was the conflict with the head of the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement P. Ponomarenko, who opposed large partisan formations, as well as disagreements with the secretary of the Smolensk Regional Committee D. Popov. According to Ponomarenko, Batya criticized the leadership in his presence: “The leaflets scattered by the regional committee do not matter. Party organs have discredited themselves. Retreat, evacuation, etc. undermined the people's faith in the party organ. We must scatter leaflets on behalf of persons who have won the respect of the people by their struggle. My leaflets signed by me in the Smolensk region could play a big role. I am known everywhere."
During interrogations, Batya did not admit the charge of betrayal, and the report of the NKVD officer who conducted the search in the apartment speaks well of the facts of looting. "The arrest was not imposed, since the defendant has no valuable personal property," the report said.
Nevertheless, the wheels began to spin, and Nikifor Kolyada was sentenced to labor camps for a period of 20 years. He was released ahead of schedule immediately after the death of Stalin, fully rehabilitated and found not guilty. But the health of the hero of the Smolensk region was already severely undermined - the legendary Batya died of a heart attack in March 1955.
Didn't have time to convert
Repression and constant rotation of personnel is one of the essential features of a totalitarian system. The story of Bati is a textbook example of how a bright, charismatic person, accustomed to proving patriotism not with words, but with deeds, fell into her millstone. Having concentrated several thousand armed fighters under his command, having wide popularity and the disposition of the masses, as well as a certain popularity in the West (the Queen of England even awarded him with a personalized dagger), Nikifor Kolyada could not help but cause fear at the top, especially since he was not restrained in his language and allowed himself to sharply criticize the authorities. In the era of screw-downs, such an outcome, unfortunately, is not uncommon.