Nikolai Starostin - Early Life and Spartak Moscow

Early Life and Spartak Moscow

The eldest of four brothers, Starostin was born in Presnensky District, Moscow where he enjoyed a comfortable upbringing courtesy of his father's reasonably well paid job as a hunting guide for the Imperial Hunting Society. Nikolai studied at a commercial academy where he first began playing football. Football was a minor concern in the Russia in this period, but it was growing. A Moscow league had been founded in 1910 but this died away in the years following the revolution of 1917. Starostin is said to have welcomed the revolution, though he played no active role in it. Following the death of his father from typhoid in 1920, Starostin supported his family by playing football in the summer and ice hockey in the winter.

In 1921 the Moscow Sport Circle (later Krasnaia Presnia) was formed by Ivan Artemev and involved Starostin, especially in its football team. The team grew, building a stadium, supporting itself from ticket sales and playing matches across Russia. As part of a 1926 reorganisation of football in the USSR, Starostin arranged for the club to be sponsored by the food workers union and the club moved to the 13,000 seat Tomskii Stadium. The team changed sponsors repeatedly over the following years as it competed with Dinamo Moscow, whose 35,000 seat Dinamo Stadium lay close by.

As a high-profile sportsman, Starostin came into close contact with Alexander Kosarev, secretary of the Komsomol (Communist Union of Youth) who already had a strong influence on sport and wanted to extend it. In November 1934, with funding from Promkooperatsiia, Kosarev employed Starostin and his brothers to develop his team to make it more powerful. Again the team changed its name, this time to Spartak Moscow. It took its name from the Roman slave rebel and athlete Spartacus. Like Spartacus, the club seemed to represent the exploited, as opposed to their rivals Dynamo Moscow (run by the secret police) and CSKA Moscow (run by the army.) Starostin played for and managed Spartak, and his three brothers also played for the team.

In 1936 new league and cup competitions were introduced in Russia. In the first year Dinamo won the league and Spartak the cup. In 1937 the positions were reversed but Spartak won both league and cup in 1938 and 1939, much to the annoyance of Lavrenty Beria, the head of the secret police, who was also the president of Dynamo. A keen footballer in his youth, Beria had played against Starostin in the 1920s, suffering humiliating defeat. The Dinamo-Spartak rivalry became the bitterest in Soviet sport.