The Beautiful, Cursed Game: Examining the Tension between Soviet Nationalism and Patriotism Through the Lens of Football

Abstract

This thesis utilizes football as a lens into Soviet history, identifying how the sport provides us with a deeper understanding of the tension that existed within the Soviet Union’s concept of nationalism and patriotism. An unusual relationship existed between ethnicity and nationalism in the Soviet Union and was impacted by potentially contradictory nation-building policies, where the Soviet regime—namely, Joseph Stalin—simultaneously attempted to create a supranational Communist system by promoting the development of ethnically diverse republics, while also favoring the Russian people and their language.

In analyzing the results of the Sbornaya, the Soviet Union’s national football team, and its “Golden Age” of football—the period starting with their victory in the 1956 Olympic games and ending with the letdown of the 1966 World Cup—it is general consensus that the Soviet national football team underperformed. Yet the results of this decade went beyond the team’s inability to deliver a major international tournament victory to the Soviet people. Using England and Hungary as case studies for the benefits football can provide a nation via the solidification of national identity (specifically in the post-WW2 world) – with football’s unique ability to unite communities – the disappointment of the Golden Age for the Soviets becomes even more apparent.

This thesis also explores how Soviet policies that promoted the partial development of ethnic and local identities in the republics, in addition to different interpretations of the role of nationalism within the Soviet Union, led to the Sbornaya sometimes getting usurped by domestic football clubs—such as Ukraine’s Dinamo Kiev—in its attempt to unite a national community. In doing so, these “national teams” helped strengthen national identity in a manner similar to the Hungarian and English national teams, but only within their republic, as opposed to within the whole Soviet Union, which was the Soviet’s ultimate goal.