Football match in the "city of the dead": how the besieged Leningrad proved that it is alive

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In St. Petersburg there is a monument that not everyone knows about - a monument in memory of the footballers of besieged Leningrad. The legendary football match, which took place 75 years ago, had a powerful ideological and psychological impact on the inhabitants of the besieged city and on the enemy. Famous Leningrad footballers of that time changed their tunics for T-shirts to prove that Leningrad is alive and will never surrender.

In August 1941, two months after the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, a powerful offensive of the fascist troops began on Leningrad. The German command hoped to seize the cradle of the revolution as soon as possible, and then move to Moscow. But Leningraders - both adults and children - stood shoulder to shoulder to defend their hometown.

But they failed to take Leningrad, and then the Nazis decided to strangle the city in a blockade. In August, the Germans managed to block the Moscow-Leningrad road and the blockade ring on land was closed. There were 2.5 million people in the city, of which about 400 thousand were children. And even in the harshest conditions of the city and the bombing, Leningraders continued to work and fight. During the blockade, more than 640 thousand people died of hunger and more than 17 thousand died from shells and bombs.

In the spring of 1942, Nazi planes periodically scattered leaflets over the units of the Red Army: “Leningrad is the city of the dead. We do not take it yet, because we are afraid of a cadaveric epidemic. We have wiped this city off the face of the earth. But it was not so easy to break the inhabitants of the city.

Today it is difficult to say who first came up with the idea of football, but on May 6, 1942, the Leningrad City Executive Committee decided to hold a football match at the Dynamo stadium. And on May 31, a football match took place between the team of the Leningrad Metal Plant and Dynamo. This match refuted all the arguments of fascist propaganda - the city did not just live, it also played football.

It was not easy to recruit 22 people to participate in the match. Former footballers were recalled to participate in the match from the front line. They understood that they would not only please the residents of the city with their game, but would demonstrate to the whole country that the city was alive.

The Dynamo team included players who played for this club even before the war, but the factory team turned out to be heterogeneous - those who were still strong enough to enter the field and knew how to play football played for it.

Not all athletes were able to enter the field. Many were so emaciated that they had difficulty walking. The very first ball that Zenit midfielder Mishuk took on his head knocked him down. After all, he had recently been discharged from the hospital after undergoing treatment for dystrophy.

We played on the reserve field of the Dynamo stadium, since the main field was simply “plowed up” by bomb craters. The fans were wounded from a nearby hospital. The masts were held in two shorter halves of 30 minutes each, and the second half had to be spent under bombing. It seems incredible that exhausted and exhausted footballers would have been able to hold out on the field for so long.

At first, the players moved so slowly that the action on the field looked a little like a sporting event. If a football player fell, then his comrades raised him - he couldn't get up himself. During the breaks, they did not sit on the lawn, because they knew that they would not be able to get up. The athletes left the field in an embrace - it was much easier to walk this way.

Needless to say - this match was a real feat! Ours, Germans and residents of Leningrad learned about the fact of this match. The last match really lifted the spirits. Leningrad survived and won.

In 1991, a memorial plaque was erected at the Leningrad Dynamo Stadium with the words “Here, at the Dynamo Stadium, in the most difficult days of the siege on May 31, 1942, the Leningrad Dynamo team played a historic blockade match with the team of the Metal Plant” and the silhouettes of football players. And in 2012 in St. Petersburg, at the Dynamo stadium, a monument to the participants of a football match was unveiled, the author of the monument is the People's Artist of Russia Salavat Shcherbakov.