Background
Football had become very popular in the Soviet Union, and particularly in Ukraine in the 1930s. Ukraine's strongest team of this time was Dynamo Kyiv, part of the Dynamo sports societythat was funded by the trade unions, the police and the Red Army. In Soviet Russia, football was a state-sponsored activity. In 1938, Dynamo Kyiv came fourth in the national league, scoring seventy-six goals, but then came a dip in their fortunes as they performed poorly in 1939 and 1940.
The 1941 season was never completed, as Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Several Dynamo Kyiv players joined the military and went off to fight. As the Germans approached Kiev, the others who had stayed behind helped out with civil defence in the city. The initial success of the Wehrmacht allowed it to capture Kiev, one of the Soviet Union's major cities, from the Red Army. Several of the Dynamo Kyiv players who had survived the onslaught found themselves prisoners of war in concentration camps.
FC Start
It was at Kiev's Bakery Number 3 that the players eventually gathered to look for work in occupied Kiev. It all started when Mykola Trusevych, Dynamo's goalkeeper returned to the city. Trusevych was given a job as a sweeper in the bakery by Iosif Kordik, a Dynamo fan. Kordik was the bakery's new manager, who held his privileged position there because of his German origins. Kordik, a sports enthusiast, then hit on the idea of setting up a bakery football team and, in the spring of 1942, Trusevych began a search over Kiev, looking for former team mates. His first find was the tricky winger Makar Goncharenko. Goncharenko remembers the invitation:
Kolya came to me at Kreschatick Street where I was living illegally at my former mother-in-law's house. He came to me to have a chat about this idea and to find some of the other boys. We got in touch with Kuzmenko and Svyridovskiy and they contacted some of the others.[citation needed]
Over the next few weeks, FC Start (Football Club Start) was formed comprising eight players from Dynamo (Mykola Trusevych, Mikhail Svyridovskiy, Mykola Korotkykh, Oleksiy Klimenko, Fedir Tyutchev, Mikhail Putistin, Ivan Kuzmenko, Makar Goncharenko) and three players from Lokomotiv Kiev (Vladimir Balakin, Vasil Sukharev and Mikhail Melnyk). On 7 June 1942, FC Start played its first game in the local league. The league was run by a Quisling Georgi Shvetsov, a former footballer and sports instructor, and Start's first opponents were Rukh, Shvetsov's pet team. FC Start won 7-2, despite being poorly fed and equipped.[citation needed]
During 1942, FC Start played several matches with teams of soldiers of occupying garrisons, and won them all:
| Date | Opponent | Score (FC Start bolded) |
|---|---|---|
| June 21 | Hungarian garrison | 6-2 |
| July 5 | Romanian garrison | 11-0 |
| July 12 | Military railroad workers team | 9-1 |
| July 17 | PGS (Germany) | 6-0 |
| July 19 | MSG.Wal (Hungary) | 5-1 |
| July 21 | MSG.Wal (Hungary) | 3-2 |
| August 6 | Flakelf (Germany) | 5-1 |
The German administration grew aware that FC Start victories might inspire Ukrainian inhabitants and decrease the morale of Axis troops.
The match
The German Luftwaffe team Flakelf asked for a re-match, which was planned on 9 August at Zenit stadium. An SS officer was appointed as referee, and FC Start were aware that he would be biased against them. Some anonymous sources warned FC Start of possible punishment if they did not lose the game to the Germans. [citation needed] Despite this, the team decided to play as always. They also refused to give a Nazi salute to their opponents before the match.
As anticipated by FC Start, the Nazi referee ignored Flakelf fouls. The German team quickly pressured the goalkeeper, Trusevych who, after a repeated physical challenges, was kicked in the head by a Flakelf forward and left groggy. While Trusevych was recovering, Flakelf went one goal up.
The referee continued to ignore FC Start appeals against their opponents' violence. The Flakelf team reputedly continued to attempt to intimidate FC Start, allegedly going for the man not the ball, shirt-holding, and tackling from behind, as well as going over the ball. Despite this FC Start scored with a long shot from a free kick by Kuzmenko. FC Start's Goncharenko, against the run of play, is said to have dribbled the ball around almost the entire Flakelf defense finishing by placing the ball into in the German net to make the score 2-1. At half-time, FC Start were yet another goal up.
The second half was almost an anti-climax. Each side scored twice. Towards the end of the match, with FC Start in an almost unbeatable position at 5-3, Klimenko, a defender, got the ball, beat the entire German rearguard and walked around the German goalkeeper. Then, instead of letting it cross the goal line, he turned around and kicked the ball back towards the centre circle. The SS referee blew the final whistle before the ninety minutes were up.
Aftermath
A week later on 16 August, Start defeated Rukh again, this time 8-0. Soon after that, a number of the FC Start players were arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, allegedly for beingNKVD members (as Dynamo was a police-funded club). One of the arrested players Mykola Korotkykh died under torture. The rest were sent to the Syrets labour camp, where Ivan Kuzmenko, Oleksey Klimenko, and the goalkeeper Mykola Trusevich were later killed in February 1943. The few survivors included Fedir Tyutchev, Mikhail Sviridovskiy and Makar Goncharenko who are responsible for the popularisation of this story in Soviet popular culture.
