The Presidential Library spotlights the legendary football match of 1942

The Presidential Library’s electronic collections feature unique materials related to the siege and heroic defence of Leningrad, including those, which spotlight the legendary football match in the besieged city.

Many sporting events in Leningrad were scheduled for June 22, 1941: two football matches of the USSR championship, athletics competitions, a cycle race and rowing races. But they were all cancelled...

In September 1941 the State Defence Committee of the USSR took a decision to organize the Universal Military Training of Workers (known as ‘vsevobuch’). The ‘one thousand’ (‘tysyachniki’) movement emerged among the coaches – each of them had to teach at least one thousand people the basic fighting techniques, hand grenade throwing and an obstacle course.

Meanwhile, yachtsmen joined the Baltic Fleet and proved to be indispensable in landing operations. Those who practiced bullet shooting set up sniper schools. Climbers disguised buildings. And what about football players?

After a roughly one-year break caused by the war, on May 31, 1942 two football teams of the city - Dynamo and the team of the N-plant (the Stalin Leningrad Metal Plant, which had supported Zenit before the war, was known as ‘N-plant’ during wartime) - played on the Dynamo stadium field.

Unlike the Dynamo team, which was almost entirely made up of its own players, the team of the N-plant, which played on May 31, 1942 was a mixed one. Zenit players were the backbone: Georgy Medvedev, Pyotr Gorbachyov, Nikolai and Ivan Smirnovs, the pre-war Zenit trio of halfbacks - Alexander Zyablikov, Anatoly Mishchuk and Alexey Lebedev. However the remaining “vacancies” had to be filled with football players, who had not played in the teams of masters before: Alexander Fesenko, Nikolai Gorelkin, V. Losev. The goalkeeper was Ivan Kurenkov, former player of Leningrad Spartak.

Viktor Nabutov, Mikhail Atyushin, Valentin Fyodorov, Arkady Alov, Konstantin Sazonov, Viktor Ivanov, Boris Oreshkin, Yevgeny Ulitin, Alexander Fyodorov, Anatoly Viktorov, Georgiy Moskovtsev, including many players from the front (Nabutov fought at the Nevsky Pyatachok), were in the Dynamo team.

The historic match is described in the book “Football of Victors” authored by L. Grigolovich and V. Rautian, which is available on the Presidential Library’s portal.

“The game was exciting and dynamic and ended with the score 6 to 0 in favour of Dynamo”, the newspapers of that time read in part.

A report about the game was recorded on tape, and then played on the frontline through megaphones. The Germans were mad...

By the way, on June 7 there was a rematch that ended in a draw – 2:2.

Those matches showed that football could  be an effective psychological tool in the fight against the enemy.

After that sports competitions in the besieged city were held regularly. An athletics competition took place on June 7. The All-Union Athlete Day was held on July 21. The first athletics championship in besieged Leningrad took place on September 6. 17 sports societies and 211 sports teams resumed work in Leningrad by early 1943.

A monument in memory of the first football match in the besieged city was erected at the Dynamo stadium in 2012.

Last November the Presidential Library together with Peterburgsky Dnevnik newspaper and Radio Rossii - St. Petersburg, launched a large-scale project aimed at preserving the historical memory of the Siege of Leningrad. More than 250 people have responded to the call to share memories of that time and provided about 3,000 documents for digitization.

On the Presidential Library’s portal you can also go on a virtual tour around the exhibition halls of the temporarily closed State Museum of Defence and Siege of Leningrad, study the electronic collection “The Defence and Siege of Leningrad”, which includes official documents, periodicals, first-hand accounts of Leningrad residents, ration cards, photo- and newsreels.