Dynamo

But this is no glamourised, Escape To Victory-style account of sporting pluck and stiff upper-lips. As in any chronicle of an occupation, the moral certainties of peacetime sit uneasily with the necessities of survival, and Dougan is an unflinching observer of the reality behind the legend. The result is a moving, challenging book, which will put the importance of your team's next match into perspective. --Alex Hankin

Reader Reviews:

Football, Soviet history - a perfect combination (0/0 people found this helpful)

I really enjoyed this book. It's a great combination of Ukrainian and Football history. I've never read much about the Russia and the ex-Soviet bloc, but this not only part-filled a gap but opened up a desire to find out more. More of a gap-creator than a gap-filler!

This book tells the history of Ukraine up to and during the 2nd World War. Whilst the main focus of the book is on football, a large part of the book also deals with pre-WWII history and how Ukraine fared during the German occupation. That Ukraine is an incredibly resource rich country has meant that it has been invaded many times and was one of the first countries entered when Hitler went into USSR.

The football side of the book recounts the establishment of the game in Ukraine and Russia and the forming of the Soviet league. It tells the story of Dynamo Kiev, who were one of the first teams to be established in USSR. They were one of the top pre-war teams, but after the abandonment of the league following Hitler's invasion, the team, like most other teams, were broken up.

Then during occupation, a bakery owner and sports-lover employs a number of ex-sports stars at his bakery to keep them in employment and away from trouble. Working at this bakery are the remnants of the Kiev team and players from other teams. To increase morale in Kiev, the occupying German forces allow a league to be formed and this is where the joy of the book comes out. As expected, the bakery team demolish all other other teams, culminating in a game against the Germans which they can't afford to win....

If you love football or Soviet history, or if you want a different type of book to read, this book is worth looking at.

Football against the enemy (0/0 people found this helpful)

Dougan's clear, well-written account delves behind the myth to present the truth about FC Start's brief expression of defiance and solidarity under the yoke of Nazi oppression.

It is a story about the bravery of individuals set against a historical backdrop of great suffering, where cruelty & death were commonplace and every day a battle to survive.

During the early chapters, 'Dynamo' gives a potted history of the Ukraine (a long bloody one of numerous invasions), of Ukrainian football, and the development of Dynamo Kiev and its personalities including the charming Konstantin Shchegotsky. Shchegotsky's prominence in the early chapters - he managed to escape the Nazi encirclement of Kiev - prefigures the bond that would unite the Dynamo players under Nazi occupation. Falsely accused during the Great Terror, none of Shchegotsky's team-mates informed against him including his polar opposite, and fellow striker, Makhinya, a committed Stalinist.

It was a team spirit shown again after the Nazi invasion and subsequent brutal occupation of Kiev with Dynamo players under particular threat as their team had been linked to the secret police.

In an cynical effort to win the hearts and minds of the Kievan people, the Germans policy of "pacification through normalisation" saw the Ukrainians allowed to field football teams but, as Dougan depicts, it became a policy that backfired dramatically on the Germans with FC Start becoming an expression of national solidarity and defiance for the Ukrainian people against the invader.

Dougan details the tension of FC Start's rematch (August 1942)against Flakelf, the German side, such as the sinister message delivered to the FC Start team by the SS referee before the match and their defiant refusal to perform the Nazi salute. As a consequence, the team did not celebrate their victory as they only knew too well its likely outcome.

Dougan separates truth from legend - he reveals that one of the team incarcerated in Siretz, the notorious death camp, informed against his colleagues - to present a fascinating story of men defying brutal occupiers and expressing themselves as footballers.

My main criticism of the book echoes a previous review. Too little information is given about the fates of too many of the personalities in the story like the vicious Siretz commandant, Paul Radomsky, or of Nikolai Trusevich's Jewish wife and child. We never learn if they survived and in this sense, the account of FC Start ends rather too abruptly. There are also a lack of photographs such of as the granite monument outside the Dynamo stadium dedicated to the four players murdered by the Nazis .

Fine football book (1/1 people found this helpful)

I think that many people have heard part of this tale, at least the more popular version: the Ukranian footballers who in Nazi-occupied Kiev defied the Wehrmacht in what was to be a friendly football match they were supposed to lose, and died for it. Much of the myth around the legendary side Dynamo Kiev is built up on this. Andy Dougan largely follows the story; he tries to demystify the myth of the heroic players who defied all odds for their love of the game; most were men trying to survive a war, and had been working at a bakery managed by a sports-crazed Ukranian, who decided to make a football team from all the former stars to play in a football tournament set up by the German occupiers.
The team outperformed all, even humiliating a German side. But that is where the story somehow questions whether the team actually was torn apart because of that victory: many of the players continued in Kiev, some survived the war, and some were sent to Siretz, a prisoner camp known for its barbarism on the outskirts of Kiev. Three of the great players of Dynamo Kiev were executed at Siretz, a part so well described in the book that one feels the grueling suffering the prisoners went through. The ones shot were Ivan Kuzmenko, Alexei Klimenko and the great Nikolai Trusevich, who had been one of the best goalkeepers in the world at the time. And here, Mr. Dougan adds to the legend telling how Trusevich last words were "red sport will never die" and wearing his goalkeeper jersey!
The book is excellent, as it puts the dilemmas of the war into the trivial world of football; how football was seen both as a means to motivate people, and as an outlet for political protest in an environment where life was worthless (this book is interesting to read in conjunction with Simon Kuper's "Ajax, the War and the Dutch", also about the world of football during WWII).
If one is interested in sports, football and history, this is well-worth a read!

Frustrating (2/2 people found this helpful)

For the first 200 of the 250 pages this is a great book, giving a real human dimension to the harshness of life in both pre-war and occupied Kiev. Although I appreciate that research must have been difficult, it is still deeply frustrating that the story of FC Start's players builds up layer upon layer of detail, only to suddenly run out of steam and out of facts in the final very rushed 50 pages.

I've never finished a book with so many unanswered questions - about people and events initially described in fine detail, then set aside and dropped. How did half of the team manage to survive the death camp at Sirets? (According to Wikipedia there was a revolt at the end of its days in which 15 prisoners escaped, and the remaining 300 were executed). Was the kommandant ever caught? Did all those players and relatives who escaped the occupation survive the war? (for example Trusevich's wife and child, who are periodically mentioned throughout, or Konstantin Shchegotsky, who is the main character in the first 90 pages) Even writing that he doesn't know would be something, instead of making it feel like a chapter or two is simply missing.

So, for the most part an excellent read, but a shame that it doesn't feel finished...

Best football book ever (1/1 people found this helpful)

This is probably the best historical football book ever!!!

My wife is Ukrainian, and I am intrested to learn about her history and culture, and most History books on Ukraine I have seem to repeat the same stuff over and over agian, but this book I can get a short straight-forward history of Ukraine and about a football match!

It does read like a Hollywood script (Nazi's come in and a bunch a footballers beat them over and over again in a football match) but is really gripping and shows a great deal of the suffering of the people of Ukraine and Kyiv before and during the war!

Andy Dougan

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