What was planted in 1942 at the stadium. Football match in the “city of the dead”: how besieged Leningrad proved that it is alive. What repairs does an old house need?

On June 22, 1941, the Great Patriotic War began - the bloodiest war in history, which lasted 1,418 days and nights.

We, Moscow Dynamo players, 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 of our Motherland in the name of Great Victory, were engaged in preparing reserves for the Red Army, and became the initiators of the “thousanders” movement, pledging to train a thousand soldiers for the needs of the front.

home sports arena countries - the Dynamo stadium has turned into a training center for young fighters, into a military training camp. Already on June 27, detachments of OMSBON (Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade for Special Purposes) began to be formed there, from among the volunteer athletes of the Central State Institute physical culture and the Dynamo Society, which were then sent behind enemy lines.

The Dynamo stadium itself was camouflaged from enemy air raids and was carefully guarded. In the winter of 1942, young spruce trees were planted on the football field for the purpose of camouflage, which clearly demonstrated the state’s concern for preserving the capital’s main sports attraction.

During the Battle of Moscow, OMSBON, as part of the 2nd Motorized Rifle Division of the NKVD Special Purpose Troops, was used on the front line, but even at that time, combat groups were formed within it, intended to be deployed to the enemy rear. In the winter of 1941/1942, OMSBON mobile units conducted many successful raids and raids behind German lines.

OMSBON terrified the Nazi invaders, conducting daring and decisive operations behind enemy lines. The functions of OMSBON included: conducting reconnaissance operations, organizing guerrilla warfare, creating an agent network in territories under German occupation, and managing special radio games with German intelligence in order to misinform the enemy.

The war brought grief to every family, to every home, and disrupted the peaceful life of millions of people. The people defended their homeland at the cost of huge losses. Our brave warriors defended 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 - everyone who brought Victory Day closer - has not faded. We are proud of the heroism, resilience, and dedication of our compatriots. These days will never be forgotten. That is why, by decree of June 8, 1996, June 22 was established in Russia as the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow. In all cities of our country and many neighboring countries, mourning events are held on this day; we remember everyone who died a brave death on the battlefields, who died from wounds in hospitals, and who were tortured in concentration camps. Eternal memory and glory to them!

• In 2011, the Moscow Dynamo VFSO Dynamo city organization launched the Moscow Dynamo Veterans project. It is symbolic that the first in this series was an audio diary dedicated to Dynamo veterans of the Great Patriotic War. Many of the interviews recorded then, to our great chagrin, became the last...

Photo: RIA Novosti, oldmos.ru, pastvu.com

There is a monument in St. Petersburg that not everyone knows about - a monument in memory of the football players of besieged Leningrad. The legendary football match, which took place 75 years ago, had a powerful ideological and psychological impact on the residents of the besieged city and on the enemy. Famous Leningrad football players of that time changed their tunics to T-shirts to prove that Leningrad was alive and would never surrender.

In August 1941, two months after the Great Patriotic War began, a powerful offensive of fascist troops against Leningrad began. The German command hoped as soon as possible capture the cradle of the revolution, and then move on Moscow. But Leningraders - both adults and children - stood shoulder to shoulder in defense of their native city.

But it was not possible to take Leningrad, and then the Nazis decided to strangle the city in a blockade. In August, the Germans managed to block the Moscow-Leningrad road and the land blockade ring was closed. There were 2.5 million people in the city, of which about 400 thousand were children. And even in the most difficult conditions of the city and bombings, Leningraders continued to work and fight. During the blockade, more than 640 thousand people died of hunger and more than 17 thousand died from shells and bombs.

In the spring of 1942, fascist planes periodically scattered leaflets over Red Army units: “Leningrad is the city of the dead. We are not taking it yet because we are afraid of a corpse epidemic. We wiped this city off the face of the earth." But it was not so easy to break the city's inhabitants.

Today it is difficult to say who first came up with the idea of ​​football, but on May 6, 1942, the Leningrad City Executive Committee decided to hold a football match at the Dynamo stadium. And on May 31, a football match took place between the team of the Leningrad Metal Plant and Dynamo. This match refuted all the arguments of fascist propaganda - the city not only lived, it also played football.

It was not easy to recruit 22 people to participate in the match. Former football players were recalled from the front line to participate in the match. They understood that they would not only delight the residents of the city with their game, but would also demonstrate to the whole country that the city was alive.

The Dynamo team included players who had played for this club before the war, but the factory team turned out to be heterogeneous - those who were still strong enough to take the field and knew how to play football played for it.

Not all athletes were able to take to the field. Many were so exhausted that they could hardly walk. The very first ball that Zenit midfielder Mishuk took on his head knocked him down. After all, he had recently been discharged from the hospital after being treated for dystrophy.

We played on the reserve field of the Dynamo stadium, since the main field was simply “plowed open” by craters from bomb explosions. The fans were wounded from a nearby hospital. The match took place in two shortened halves of 30 minutes each, and the players had to spend the second half under bombing. It seems incredible that exhausted and exhausted football players could last so long on the field.

At first, the players moved so slowly that the action on the field hardly resembled sport competitions. If a football player fell, his comrades lifted him up; he couldn’t get up on his own. During breaks they didn’t sit on the lawn because they knew they wouldn’t be able to get up. The athletes left the field hugging each other - it was much easier to walk that way.

Needless to say, this match was a real feat! Ours, the Germans, and the residents of Leningrad learned about the fact of this match. This last match really lifted the spirit. Leningrad survived and won.

In 1991, a memorial plaque was installed at the Leningrad Dynamo stadium with the words “Here, at the Dynamo stadium, in the most difficult days of the siege on May 31, 1942, the Leningrad Dynamo team played a historic siege match with the Metal Plant team” and silhouettes of football players. And in 2012, in St. Petersburg, at the Dynamo stadium, a monument was unveiled to the participants of a football match, the author of the monument is People's Artist of Russia Salavat Shcherbakov.

Petrovsky Park has long been considered one of the most beautiful and charming corners of old Moscow. Back in 1828, a park was laid out here, planted with linden, ash and pine trees. Since it was located next to the Petrovsky Travel Palace, it became known as Petrovsky. The huge park was crossed by alleys, one of them was called “Moskovskaya” and gradually became especially loved by the townspeople as a place for quiet family walks.

It was here, at the intersection of the “Moscow” and “Teatralnaya” alleys, a little less than 100 years later, it was decided to build the first real stadium - a huge capital structure with tiers of stands encircling the field - such as neither in Moscow nor in the Soviet Union at that time. did not have! This construction was declared an honorable duty of young Muscovites and at first was supported mainly by the enthusiasm of the capital's sports youth and the investments of the Dynamo society, which then made money with the help of organized production cooperatives. The main construction tools for a long time were the pick and shovel, as the main vehicle Horse-drawn traction was used, but the project of architects Arkady Langman and Lazar Cherikover was confidently implemented.

It helped significantly that in August 1927 the construction project acquired national significance (Moscow was preparing to hold a mass sports festival dedicated to the first Soviet five-year labor plan) - the pace of work increased, and clear deadlines for completion of construction were set. By August 1928, three concrete stands were built, the stadium stretched out in the form of a giant horseshoe - with straight North and South stands and a semicircle Western stand closing them. On the site of the current Eastern Stand, centuries-old trees grew and there were small sports grounds and courts. Even in its original form, the structure became grandiose sports facility, in all sports departments which about two thousand athletes could train at the same time. This was a huge breakthrough, because the previous sports grounds could, at best, serve one hundred or two hundred people at the same time!

The opening of the Dynamo stadium took place on August 17, 1928, simultaneously with the opening of the All-Union Spartakiad; the first football match was a football match between the national teams of the Belarusian SSR and workers' clubs of Switzerland. The game was commentated by the famous Vadim Sinyavsky, Belarusian football players won with a score of 6:3.

Meanwhile, the popularity of sports competitions grew, football and Russian hockey attracted more and more spectators, and in the fall of 1934, reconstruction of the stadium and construction of the second stage of the project began. The work was completed by the beginning of 1936 - the Eastern Stand was built, which closed a horseshoe-shaped semicircle of elevations, and an additional lower tier was erected. By the first national football championship, the stadium began to accommodate more than fifty thousand spectators, and on the days of particularly interesting competitions it could accommodate up to eighty thousand people due to the upper platforms, which had standing places.

Gradually, the stadium became an organic part of Petrovsky Park, Muscovites fell in love with the transformed place of leisure, and the park itself was enriched with many sports grounds For different types sports located around the complex. Not only sports spectacles, but also the place itself again became attractive to the townspeople - fans gathered near the stadium to gossip about their hobby, young people to kick a ball, go ice skating, do physical exercise, people far from sports - just walk along the green alleys, breathe air filled with the aroma of trees and flowers. Dynamo has become one of the main symbols of Moscow - both as a champion team, tracing its history back to the capital's first football team, and as a favorite place for a growing city.

On June 19, 1941, a match was held at the Dynamo stadium in which the hosts hosted the Stalingrad Traktor. The game ended in a draw, and the championship remained incomplete - three days later the Great Patriotic War began. In the winter of 1942, young spruce trees were planted on the football field for the purpose of camouflage. As soon as the war receded from the central regions of our country, the stadium resumed its activities in the service of sports and football. July 18, 1944 after long break The first official match finally took place - in the Moscow championship, Dynamo beat their fellow countrymen from Torpedo with a score of 3:2. Soon the national championships resumed, and the stadium again, as in previous times, witnessed Dynamo’s triumphs over and over again.

In 1977-1979, another major reconstruction took place. The stands and sub-tribune spaces were updated, four structures with powerful floodlights were installed, the bright light of which made it possible to broadcast television broadcasts from the stadium in color. By the same time, a football and track and field arena, a gymnasium, and an ice skating rink were put into operation on the territory of Petrovsky Park. artificial ice, outdoor swimming pools, sports and administrative building and hotel. For the 1980 Olympics, the Dynamo mecca began to live a new life!

However, the further history of one of the main symbols Soviet sports was no longer so bright and rosy - the country began to be shaken by crises, football players went to work abroad, immersed in everyday worries and political whirlwinds, Muscovites began to be less and less interested in sports. Applied sports almost completely lost their funding, football was in a fever, going from lack of money to senseless spending, the stadium survived as best it could, either by organizing a market or trying to make it self-sufficiency sports schools. The structures, which had not been updated for twenty years, deteriorated, leaving no way to do without a major overhaul of the entire facility. And so, on November 22, 2008, in the presence of 24 thousand spectators, the first stadium of the defunct country hosted last match. “Dynamo” defeated “Tom”, the final score of the match was set by Alexander Kerzhakov from the transmission of the current head coach of the blue and white Dmitry Khokhlov, the sky above the stadium blossomed with fireworks, after which the arena was closed for reconstruction.

Since then, projects have been created and reworked many times, developers and responsible persons have changed, deadlines have been announced and re-announced, the five-year anniversary has gradually turned into a decade, the youth Dynamo began to be replenished with guys who had never been to the famous stadium, who had not served balls to the masters, who had not sat on blue and white stands next to our fathers and older brothers, and only now, on the ninetieth anniversary of the great arena, can we seriously hope that this year the transformed giant will open its doors to the fans who have been waiting for this and will once again become the first and unique sports facility in our country , and again, as of old, all of Moscow will stubbornly go to Dynamo, and the townspeople will again begin to walk under the shade of linden trees near the Petrovsky Travel Palace, discussing the matches of the oldest football club capitals, breathe fresh air park and escape from the bustle of the growing metropolis...

Traditionally, on Saturdays, we publish for you the answers to the quiz in the “Question - Answer” format. We have a variety of questions, both simple and quite complex. The quiz is very interesting and quite popular, we are simply helping you test your knowledge and make sure that you have chosen the correct answer out of the four proposed. And we have another question in the quiz - What was planted in large quantities in 1942 on the football field of the Moscow Dynamo stadium?

• Tulips
• Potato
• Corn

The correct answer is C. POTATOES

The technique of blockade play was also special: the players did not run around the field, but played short passes in order to save energy and last until the end of the game, since there were no substitutions.

Another feature was that the Dynamo stadium, like any free plot of land in the city that spring, was used for vegetable gardens, and in May the first potato sprouts already appeared. To save them, the players agreed not to kick the ball out of the field.

Even the artillery shelling that happened that day did not interfere with the match, during which 228 shells were fired at the city. At the alarm, the match participants and fans - soldiers from a nearby hospital - went to cover, but as soon as the shelling ended, the athletes returned to the field. After the game ended with Dynamo winning 7:3, the players left the field hugging each other.

Books, films, and numerous press publications are dedicated to this event, which took place in Kyiv on August 9, 1942. Previously, during the times of the USSR, everything was clear and understandable: on that day Soviet football players met with a team of German occupiers and won. Only the price of that victory was life...

Today, what happened then in the capital of Ukraine no longer looks so clear. 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, events at the front are conducive to optimism - German troops, as in 1941, are advancing. Hitler and his entourage are hovering in clouds of unbridled euphoria: the Bolshevik stronghold is about to collapse.

The occupation authorities decide that it is time to establish a peaceful life. They open an opera house, cinemas, and organize concerts in Kyiv. It also came to football, fortunately, at bakery No. 1 there are famous Russian and Ukrainian football players who work at bakery No. 1 - some as loaders, some as laborers - who in the fall of 1941 were unable to 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, an ethnic German, and was appointed director of the bakery. Kordik, by the way, hired several football players to work for his company. They began to receive wages and food rations.

The people of Kiev played in red T-shirts and white shorts - the colors of the USSR national team. In former times, this fact was considered symbolic - they say, the football players showed patriotism. However, the reasons were quite prosaic - the occupation city government allocated this uniform to the people of Kiev, seemingly without any ulterior motive...

Most famous team Kyiv had Dynamo, which participated in the championships Soviet Union, including in the 1941 championship, interrupted by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.

In his novel “Babi Yar,” Anatoly Kuznetsov argued that it was Dynamo who formed the basis of the bakery team. However, it later turned out that this was not so - besides Dynamo there were players from other teams.

In addition to Dynamo players Nikolai Trusevich, Alexey Klimenko, Ivan Kuzmenko and Pavel Komarov, they played against the Germans former football players Kyiv "Lokomotiv" Lev Gundarev, Vladimir Balakin, Mikhail Melnik and representatives of other clubs. For example, ex-Dynamo player Makar Goncharenko played for Spartak Odessa before the war.

The story “Anxious Clouds,” published in 1957, was also dedicated by writer Alexander Borshchagovsky to the event in Kyiv. Five years later, based on the writer’s script, the film “The Third Time” was released. Both the book and the film were very popular in the Soviet Union.

Borshchagovsky, like Kuznetsov, believed that Dynamo were the backbone of the team. But he, unlike Kuznetsov (who wrote about a series of matches), based his plot on one meeting - “Dynamo” with the Germans from the fictional team “Condor Legion”. It was this that Borshchagovsky 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.

In Borshchagovsky's story, the names of the main characters have been changed. The writer motivated this by the fact that “we do not know many of the important, essential details, without which it would be impossible to create a strictly documentary work.”

But even if such documents were at the writer’s fingertips, the plot could break down and lose its “correctness.” It might not have contained a clear division into “us” and “strangers,” as the ideology of that time required. Residents of occupied Kyiv were forced to submit to harsh circumstances and the cruel dictates of the conquerors. They had to not only accept power that was alien to them, but also work for the Germans in order not to die of hunger, and to provide - at least with crumbs - for their loved ones.

In short, Borshchagovsky needed characters without shades - “us” and “strangers”. So he had to introduce fictitious, smoothed-out types into the plot, to make up reality. This is not the writer’s fault - such was the time, such were its laws.

After the war, many of those who found themselves “under the Germans” were accused of aiding the enemy. You may recall that before the collapse of the USSR, people applying for work filled out a questionnaire with the following question: “Were you or your relatives in temporarily occupied territory?” If yes, then questions arose...

By the way, the football players were also in the occupied territory and played in matches organized by the Nazis. They could also be credited with “complicity”...

Another book was dedicated to the match in occupied Kyiv - “The Last Duel”, written by Pyotr Severov and Naum Halemsky. And this work was not documentary - the names of the characters in the story were changed. Probably for the same reason as Borshchagovsky...

The Kiev residents played ten matches with the occupiers – German and Hungarian teams. According to other sources, there were fewer of them: eight. And they came out winners in all of them!

Some of the games took place at the Zenit stadium. In all meetings, the bakery team won confidently, and often by a huge margin, to the great joy of numerous spectators.

However, it was called that only during the debut game on June 7, 1942 with “Rukh” (2:0) - its players represented a Ukrainian sports society created with the assistance of the occupiers. Then the “USSR team” performed under the name “Start”.

Kuznetsov in his novel mentions a match on July 12, held in an arena built just before the war, which was named after Nikita Khrushchev, who was at that time 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. That day, the Germans organized a sports festival there with the participation of gymnasts, boxers, and track and field athletes. The highlight of the program was football: “Start” met with a team of German military railway workers. The Kiev team won an impressive victory with a score of 6:0.

This was already the fifth game of the bakery team and, accordingly, the fifth victory. Kuznetsov wrote that “the Germans did not like this, but no incidents occurred.”

A week later, on July 19, “Start” held another meeting - with the Hungarian team “Wal” and again easily won - 5:1. After that, the Kiev team won two more matches.

The Start players had no problems with their opponents, since they were clearly stronger. But they didn’t know how the occupiers would react to defeats, especially since they came in succession. However, 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.

The time came for the next match - July 9, 1942, in which Start met with the Flakelf team, representing anti-aircraft units. In that game, the Kiev team won again, albeit 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 to be real athletes.

In addition, they knew what enormous moral strength each victory gave to the residents of the city. In Podol, Khreshchatyk, Kurenevka and other corners of Kyiv they were only talking about how “ours are soaping the necks of the Krauts.”

It was the meeting between “Start” and “Flakelf” that was called the “death match”. But, contrary to the legend, the opponents played not only very correctly, but they did not injure each other. A German judge named Erwin was objective and did not help his compatriots. And yet, no one forced the people of Kiev to lose, as in Borshchagovsky’s story. And there was no episode, as in Kuznetsov’s novel: “The referee messed up the 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 photos with their opponents. The photograph has survived to this day, and is striking in its appearance: both Kiev residents and Germans are smiling at the camera.

That day, the townspeople, as usual, ardently supported their team. Emboldened, they even allowed themselves to shout insults at the Germans. They looked angrily at the people of Kiev, ordered them to shut up, but took no action.

On August 16, “Start” played one more, the last one in its short story meeting - 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 Syretsky camp, located next to the notorious Babi Yar .

At the beginning of September, another football player, Nikolai Korotkikh, was captured.

They were imprisoned for almost six months. During this time, the situation at the front changed dramatically - the Wehrmacht troops suffered heavy losses and ended up 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 flowed like a river: one mass execution followed another.

On February 24, 1943, three Start players were shot - Trusevich, Klimenko, Kuzmenko. For what? Maybe they remembered football? Or were they suspected of something—theft, or an attempt to escape? There are no answers to these questions.

Another football player, Korotkikh, was killed by the occupiers later. They found out that he once worked in the NKVD...

The fates of the other Start players turned out differently. But they all survived. Some of them shared their memories. True, during the Soviet era they said one thing, after the collapse of the Union they said something else. For example, Goncharenko claimed that the Germans behaved disgracefully, organizing a real hunt for goalkeeper Trusevich, and once 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, at the Kiev Dynamo stadium, where several matches of the “USSR national team” with the Germans took place, a monument was erected - a granite rock with high reliefs of four players. At that time, the football players’ feat was officially approved.

Two decades later, everything has changed. In Ukraine and Russia, publications began to appear in which matches with the Nazis were presented in a different light. There were also those who doubted: were there such meetings?

Of course, those games took place. After all, in Ukrainian museums there are match posters and there are eyewitness accounts. Perhaps some of them are still alive.

And it was a feat!

The players were eager to beat the Germans for many reasons. Firstly, they, the athletes, were eager to fight and wanted to prove their superiority. Secondly, before them was an unusual opponent - arrogant and impudent, who felt like the master of their land. This added courage to the people of Kiev and gave them additional strength. And they tore and threw on the field! They didn’t just win against the invaders – they crushed them!