Reinforcing Discipline in Football Teams

On Strengthening Political-Educational Work and Reinforcing Discipline in Football Teams. October 25, 1939

Order of the All-Union Committee on Physical Culture and Sports Affairs under the SNK USSR, 23 October 1939

The October 1939 order from Vasily Snegov's All-Union Sports Committee shows what the previous year's denunciation of "bourgeois professionalism" had failed to forestall. In September the Moscow "Stalinets" team had played a series of unauthorized paid matches in Ukraine, splitting the takings; during one a player named Moskvin was beaten so badly that he died in hospital a month later. Snegov, whose predecessor Kharchenko had recently been arrested, responded with a sweeping clean-up. The text alternates remedial points with the narrative of the offense, leaving a vivid record of how the tension between mass ideology and elite practice now had a body to its name.

Original Source: Об усилении политико-воспитательной работы и укреплении дисциплины в футбольных командах. Приказ всесоюзного комитета по делам физкультуры и спорта при СНК СССР 23 октября 1939 г. Красный спорт, №76, 25 октября 1939

With a view to bringing order to instructional-training and educational work in football, to strengthening discipline, and to eradicating the shameful phenomena that distort the tasks and essence of Soviet sport, I ORDER:

But alongside the growth of mass participation and the rise in athletic technique, there have of late taken place phenomena impermissible among Soviet physical culturalists which inhibit the further development of football.

1. To convene in December of this year an All-Union conference on the questions of restructuring organizational, educational, and instructional work in football and refereeing.

The neglect of political-educational work in physical culture collectives, the absence of resolute struggle against mores alien to our physical culture movement, has led to numerous instances of the malicious violation of athletic rules, indiscipline, deliberately dangerous play, rudeness, hooliganism on athletic fields and in everyday life, the insulting of referees, and so forth.

2. Comrade M. I. Gavrilov, Chief Inspector for Football, who failed to provide leadership of football, is to be dismissed from his post.

3. The Disciplinary-Conflict Commission for Football (Comrades Blinkov, Khalkiopov, Kanunnikov, Vasilyev, and Oganesov) is to be dissolved.

The Educational-Sport Directorate is to review the decisions taken by the DKK in regard to players who manifested rudeness and hooliganism during football competitions.

The 1939 season has revealed the extreme ill-state of educational-instructional work in football teams, including the teams of masters.

4. The director of the masters' team of the Voluntary Sports Society "Stalinets" (Moscow), Comrade Kryuchkov, and the team captain, Comrade Bushuev, are to be removed from the leadership of the team.

Dozens of players on teams participating in the USSR championship and Cup competition were sent off the field for deliberate rudeness and hooliganism, and the greater part of these penalties fall on the same individual players, against whom no decisive measures of influence had been taken: Al. Sokolov ("Spartak," Moscow), Solovyov ("Dinamo," Leningrad), Heyson ("Dinamo," Odessa), Leventsov ("Traktor," Stalingrad), Ponomarev ("Spartak," Leningrad), Eremin ("Osnova," Ivanovo), Shumov ("Stalinets," Moscow), and others.

5. The trainer of the same team, Comrade Stolyarov, is to be removed from work, with a prohibition on his conducting coaching work in football for the period of one year.

6. The question is to be raised before the secretariat of the VTsSPS of holding to account the chairman of the Central Council of the Voluntary Sports Society "Stalinets," Comrade Chernobai, and the responsible secretary of the Central Council, Comrade Penyazeva.

In certain teams, drinking bouts and unauthorized paid games with the division of proceeds among the players took root ("Selmash" of Rostov, "Pishchevik" of Makhach-Kala, and others).

7. The Committee on Physical Culture and Sports Affairs under the SNK of the Ukrainian SSR is to determine the guilt of the chairmen of the physical culture and sports committees of the cities of Zaporozhye and Dneprodzerzhinsk (Ukrainian SSR) in the conducting of off-schedule matches with the "Stalinets" team.

The leaders of certain physical culture organizations not only failed to combat such anti-social phenomena but in a number of cases concealed these facts, which contributed to the further decay of the athletes.

8. The composition of the All-Union category judges is to be reviewed, and the republican and city committees of physical culture and sport are to review the composition of their corresponding refereeing collegia for football (and hockey) and reinforce them through the promotion of new judges tested in public athletic work.

Only by the absence of educational work with refereeing cadres and players, and the absence of firm discipline, can one explain the unceasing instances of injury and even of fatal cases during football matches.

9. The leaders of all physical culture organizations are to review the instructor-coaching staff and the directors and captains of the football (and hockey) teams participating in the scheduled championships of cities, republics, and the USSR.

A vivid manifestation of irresponsibility and dissoluteness is offered by the case that took place in September of this year in the masters' team of the Voluntary Sports Society "Stalinets" (Moscow). This team, in pursuit of high earnings and with the knowledge and permission of the Central Council of the society, conducted a series of paid games in the cities of Zaporozhye and Dneprodzerzhinsk (Ukrainian SSR), the greater part of the takings being divided among the players. The team director Comrade Kryuchkov, the team captain and political officer Comrade Bushuev, and the trainer Comrade Stolyarov not only did not oppose the distribution of the money but themselves took part in this division.

10. The physical culture aktiv (in football and in other sports) is to be widely acquainted with the decision of the bureau of the Central Committee of the VLKSM regarding the "Stalinets" team, with the lead article "Toward the Further Growth of Soviet Football" (Komsomolskaya Pravda, no. 242, 21 October 1939), and with the present order.

During the match in the city of Zaporozhye on September 3 of this year, the "Stalinets" player Comrade Moskvin received a heavy blow and was taken to the local hospital, where after a month he died.

The investigation of this affair laid bare the irresponsibility of the leaders of the Central Council of the VSS "Stalinets" (Comrades Chernobai and Penyazeva), who tolerated hooliganism, rudeness, drinking, and paid off-schedule games in the masters' team, and who manifested impermissible indifference to the fate of Comrade Moskvin, abandoned by his team in grave condition in the hospital of Zaporozhye.

The All-Union Committee on Physical Culture and Sports Affairs under the SNK USSR warns that it will most strictly cut short all attempts by individual leaders of organizations, teams, and referees to continue their connivance at the hustlers' "combinations," the poaching, and the dissoluteness in the football milieu, and obliges them to bring to account without slackening those players who manifest rudeness and indiscipline at athletic competitions.

Chairman of the All-Union Committee on Physical Culture and Sports Affairs under the SNK USSR

V. SNEGOV