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The Death Match
The Death Match (Ukrainian: Матч смерті, Russian: Матч смерти) is a name given in postwar Soviet historiography to the football match played on 9 August 1942 in Kiev in Reichskommissariat Ukraine following the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The Kiev city team Start (Cyrillic: Старт), which represented the city's Bread Factory No. 1, played several football games in World War II. The team was composed mostly of former professional footballers of Dynamo Kiev and Lokomotiv Kiev, all of whom were forced to work at the factory under the Nazi occupation authority and were made to produce bread for German soldiers.
On 6 August 1942, FC Start played against the German team Flakelf, and won 5–1. A rematch (revanche) was played on 9 August 1942 in the Zenith Stadium, with an estimated 2,000 spectators in attendance, each paying five karbovanets, in which Start again beat Flakelf 5–3.
According to later Soviet myths used for war-time propaganda, some or all players of the Kiev city team were allegedly arrested and executed for humiliating the German players with a double defeat, while some surviving players were persecuted for alleged collaboration with the Germans. In the mid-1960s, the official Soviet narrative changed, formally recognising four deceased players and five surviving players as brave Soviet citizens resisting the German occupation. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, reconstructions were made of how the match and its aftermath went, which Start players had survived and how, and it was found that the deaths of the other Start players (who were arrested and executed or otherwise died during the war) were unrelated to the supposed "Death Match" of 9 August 1942.
A Kiev native, Georgiy Kuzmin, points out in his book Facts and fiction of our football (Были и небыли нашего футбола) that the first squads of Dynamo Kiev included a number of regular Cheka members, among whom was Kostiantyn Fomin. Kostiantyn Fomin is known to have participated in repressions against Kharkov sportsmen of Polish descent during 1935–1936. Prior to World War II, Fomin also played for Lokomotiv Kiev.[citation needed]
Because players were not getting paid regularly, the football team of Dynamo for some time had a shortage of playing staff (only eight players). The team's captain Konstantin Shchegotsky even tried to escape to Dnipropetrovsk, where he played for FC Dynamo Dnipropetrovsk, but was forced to come back. During the Holodomor in 1932–33, half of the team escaped to Ivanovo near Moscow. Two of Dynamo's players, Piontkovsky and Sviridovsky, were arrested by NKVD agents during an attempt to exchange several cuts of cloth for products and therefore had to work "for the good of the country" for two years in a penal colony. During the Great Purge in 1938, Piontkovsky, and one of the Dynamo's team creators, Barminsky were targeted, and eventually shot in 1941. The season was never completed, as Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Several Dynamo Kiev players joined the military and went off to fight. The initial success of the Wehrmacht allowed it to capture the city from the Red Army in September 1941. Several of the Dynamo Kiev players who had survived the onslaught found themselves in prisoner-of-war camps.[citation needed]
In taking Kiev, the Germans captured over 600,000 Soviet soldiers. The city was under a strict occupation regime; a curfew on civilians was enforced, and universities and schools were shut down. Ukrainian youth over 15 years and adults under 60 years old were submitted to labour obligations. Thousands of inhabitants were deported to Germany for forced labour.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, journalists and historians in the new state of Ukraine were able to make detailed historical research without being controlled by Glavlit, the Soviet censorship agency.
The 50th anniversary of the "Death Match" in 1992 marked the beginning of eyewitness reports in Ukrainian mass media:
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The Death Match
The Death Match (Ukrainian: Матч смерті, Russian: Матч смерти) is a name given in postwar Soviet historiography to the football match played on 9 August 1942 in Kiev in Reichskommissariat Ukraine following the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The Kiev city team Start (Cyrillic: Старт), which represented the city's Bread Factory No. 1, played several football games in World War II. The team was composed mostly of former professional footballers of Dynamo Kiev and Lokomotiv Kiev, all of whom were forced to work at the factory under the Nazi occupation authority and were made to produce bread for German soldiers.
On 6 August 1942, FC Start played against the German team Flakelf, and won 5–1. A rematch (revanche) was played on 9 August 1942 in the Zenith Stadium, with an estimated 2,000 spectators in attendance, each paying five karbovanets, in which Start again beat Flakelf 5–3.
According to later Soviet myths used for war-time propaganda, some or all players of the Kiev city team were allegedly arrested and executed for humiliating the German players with a double defeat, while some surviving players were persecuted for alleged collaboration with the Germans. In the mid-1960s, the official Soviet narrative changed, formally recognising four deceased players and five surviving players as brave Soviet citizens resisting the German occupation. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, reconstructions were made of how the match and its aftermath went, which Start players had survived and how, and it was found that the deaths of the other Start players (who were arrested and executed or otherwise died during the war) were unrelated to the supposed "Death Match" of 9 August 1942.
A Kiev native, Georgiy Kuzmin, points out in his book Facts and fiction of our football (Были и небыли нашего футбола) that the first squads of Dynamo Kiev included a number of regular Cheka members, among whom was Kostiantyn Fomin. Kostiantyn Fomin is known to have participated in repressions against Kharkov sportsmen of Polish descent during 1935–1936. Prior to World War II, Fomin also played for Lokomotiv Kiev.[citation needed]
Because players were not getting paid regularly, the football team of Dynamo for some time had a shortage of playing staff (only eight players). The team's captain Konstantin Shchegotsky even tried to escape to Dnipropetrovsk, where he played for FC Dynamo Dnipropetrovsk, but was forced to come back. During the Holodomor in 1932–33, half of the team escaped to Ivanovo near Moscow. Two of Dynamo's players, Piontkovsky and Sviridovsky, were arrested by NKVD agents during an attempt to exchange several cuts of cloth for products and therefore had to work "for the good of the country" for two years in a penal colony. During the Great Purge in 1938, Piontkovsky, and one of the Dynamo's team creators, Barminsky were targeted, and eventually shot in 1941. The season was never completed, as Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Several Dynamo Kiev players joined the military and went off to fight. The initial success of the Wehrmacht allowed it to capture the city from the Red Army in September 1941. Several of the Dynamo Kiev players who had survived the onslaught found themselves in prisoner-of-war camps.[citation needed]
In taking Kiev, the Germans captured over 600,000 Soviet soldiers. The city was under a strict occupation regime; a curfew on civilians was enforced, and universities and schools were shut down. Ukrainian youth over 15 years and adults under 60 years old were submitted to labour obligations. Thousands of inhabitants were deported to Germany for forced labour.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, journalists and historians in the new state of Ukraine were able to make detailed historical research without being controlled by Glavlit, the Soviet censorship agency.
The 50th anniversary of the "Death Match" in 1992 marked the beginning of eyewitness reports in Ukrainian mass media: