Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Supporting your high street Find out how »
Win or Else : Soviet Football in Moscow and Beyond, 1921–1985, Hardback Book

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

Hardback

Out of stock

Description

In Win or Else, Larry E. Holmes shows us how Soviet football culture regularly disregarded official ideological and political imperatives and skirted the boundaries between socialism and capitalism.

In 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 blew up, becoming the most popular spectator sport in the USSR and growing into a fiercely competitive business with complex regional and national bureaucracies, a strong international presence, and a conviction that victory on the field was also a victory of Soviet supremacy.

Writing as both historian and fan, Holmes focuses his study on the provincial Kirov team Dinamo from 1979 to 1985, when the club played at both its worst and its best.

Spurred by a dismal 1979 season, the team's administrators and regional authorities had two options: obey Moscow's edict to reduce expenditures on professional sports or seek out new—and often illicit—funding sources to fill out a team of champions.

Drawing on rich archival materials as well as newspapers and interviews with former players, Win or Else reveals the foundations of Soviet sports culture—and the hazards that teams faced both in victory and in loss.

Information

Save 5%

£76.00

£71.49

Out of stock
Add to Basket
Sign in to add to wishlist
 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information