A young Nikolai Starostin
March 20, 1942: Nikolai Starostin, age 40, is arrested in Moscow. So is his brother, Aleksandr Starostin, 39. So is their brother, Andrey Starostin, 36. So is their brother, Pyotr Starostin, 33.
The charge was conspiracy to kill Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. All 4 of them were, of course, innocent. Eventually, the charge was changed to "lauding bourgeois sport and attempting to drag bourgeois mores into Soviet sport."
All 4 brothers were among the top soccer players in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. In 1934, Nikolai founded Football Club Spartak Moscow, named for Spartacus, leader of a slave revolt in ancient Rome. Compared to CSKA Moscow, the team of the Central Red Army, and Dynamo Moscow, run by the secret police, Spartak seemed to represent the common people of the Soviet capital. (In 2009, Robert Edelman, a history professor who had lived in the Soviet Union, teaching English for a few years, published a book titled Spartak Moscow: A History of the People's Team in the Worker's State.)
And, just as countries later falling under the Soviet sphere would name their army-sponsored teams CSKA and their secret police-based teams Dynamo, there would be teams named Spartak.
It should be noted that, being run by the secret police, Dynamo Moscow were run by Lavrenty Beria, and he didn't like that Spartak was beating Dynamo. So he set the Starostin brothers up. After being held for 2 years, the charge was changed to the nonsense about "bourgeois sport." Specifically, they were convicted of stealing sporting goods from the stores they were supposed to oversee in their "real jobs," and selling them at a profit: Nikolai for 28,000 rubles, Aleksandr for 12,000, and Andrey and Pyotr for 6,000 each.
Because of their celebrity, the brothers were treated comparatively well in the gulag. In 1948, after 6 years, Vasily Stalin, the dictator's son and commander-in-chief of the Soviet Air Forces, got them released, mainly so Nikolai could coach the newly-formed air force team, VVS Moscow.
In 1953, Joseph Stalin died, and, in the aftermath, Beria was executed. And VVS were dissolved. The new regime of Nikita Khrushchev appointed Nikolai manager of the Soviet national team. After 2 years, he was permitted to return to Spartak.
An old, restored Nikolai Starostin
Aleksnder Starostin died in 1981, at the age of 78. Andrey died in 1987, at 81. The other brothers lived to see the fall of the Soviet Union. Pyotr died in 1993, at 84. And Nikolai died in 1996, at 94.
Spartak won the Soviet Top League 11 times, and have won the Russian Premier League 11 times. The combined total of 22 titles is 1st among Russian teams. They won the Soviet Cup 9 times, and have won the Russian Cup 5 times, for a combined total of 14, also a record.
(There were teams from outside Russia that won the Soviet Top League. From Ukraine: Dynamo Kyiv in 1961, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1971, 1974, 1975, 1980, 1981, 1985, 1986 and 1990; Zorya Luhansk in 1971; Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk in 1983 and 1988. From Georgia: Dinamo Tbilisi in 1964, 1978. From Belarus: Dinamo Minsk in 1982.)
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March 20, 1942 was a Friday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL was between the end of its regular season and the start of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. So there were no scores on this historic day.
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