Win or Else – Soviet Football in Moscow and Beyond, 1921-1985

During the early 1920s, the Soviet press denounced football as a bourgeois sport that was injurious to both mind and body. Within that same decade, however, it became the most popular spectator sport in the USSR, growing into a fiercely competitive business with complex regional and national bureaucracies and a conviction that victory on the field was also a victory for Soviet supremacy. The author looks at the history of football in the country as a whole and also examines the events at the provincial Kirov team Dinamo between 1979 to 1985. Published in 2024.

Size: 153mm x 229mm – 207 pages.