“Death match” legend alive for 70 years

Ukrainian history calendars have reminded us of one of the many myths: August 9 marks the 70th anniversary of what is popularly known as Kyiv “death match.” But very few know that the events, which the Russian director Andrei Maliukov so brilliantly depicted, with a touch of fantasy, in his film Match, did not occur in reality.

Yes, of course, Dynamo Kyiv did play several, not one, matches against the Nazis. To be more exact, there were 11 games, and Start, a bread factory team that mostly consisted of Dynamo players, won all of them. Yet nobody paid with their life for the victory. Besides, the players defended not so much the Soviet fatherland as their sporting honor.

Naturally, all this may sound somewhat groundless to the reader. But we are not setting ourselves a goal to debunk a years-long legend in a few lines – let us leave it to historians. And there has been a lot of historical research on this topic. One of the studies is the book The Facts and Fictions of our Soccer by journalist Heorhii Kuzmin, in which he describes in detail the events on August 1942, particularly, on the basis of the reminiscences of participants and eyewitnesses. In general, it would be interesting for all Ukrainian soccer buffs, who proved to be so many after Euro-2012, to read this documentary study.

The Day spoke to Mr. Kuzmin on the so-called “death match” in continuation of the topic of why present-day Ukrainians are still clinging to Soviet myths.

In my view, the true history of the events, known as “death match,” that you described in your book is much more captivating than the legend. Just fancy that: there were 11 matches and as many victories. It is a nice story to strengthen the belief in Ukrainian soccer. Why then nobody needs it today?

“Some do not need it because they keep sticking to the old legend which was considered official in the Soviet era. In the late 1990s I even suggested to some young oligarchs that they publish my book, but they refused to do so. Let the existing myth remain, they said. Dynamo is a club that has a lot of traditions, and none of them should be destroyed. By contrast, the jingoists, who do not accept the pre-1991 history at all, are trying to erase everything and are concocting God knows what. For example, there is a version that the Kyiv soccer players were clandestine resistance fighters, had been trained at a specialized NKVD school, and acted in conjunction with other fighters who burnt down Kyiv in the fall of 1941 on NKVD orders. That’s overkill. It could not be so because most of the Kyiv soccer players were undereducated – many of them had not even done seven years in school. So it is nonsense to say that they had been trained at a specialized school. I spoke to Honcharenko, a participant in those events, and a few players who knew the situation very well because they were part of an ad hoc commission that inquired into this matter – they all said that, for example, Trusevych could barely write a letter on his own. As you see, people have almost diametrically opposed views: some don’t want to change anything, while others want everything to be changed down to the last detail. But I think the truth is somewhere in between.”

Why then did the Germans shoot four Kyiv team players?

“By mere chance. There are a lot of versions in fact. One of them says that they would commit thefts at the bread factory they worked at. It is wrong because they were not allowed onto the shop floor. The soccer players, who had been defending Kyiv on the battlefield, were considered prisoners of war. But the bread factory was a strategic enterprise, so they were only allowed to work as janitors. Another version is that the goalkeeper Trusevych outplayed the POW camp chief Radomski in billiards. This is also a lie because once he was put inside the camp he could never be allowed to go outside. One more version is that a dog pounced on Trusevych as he was working, so he was shot dead soon after. This is also wrong: they were shot after guerrillas and underground resistance fighters had begun to commit acts of sabotage in the winter of 1943 and orders were issued to shoot every 10th prisoner. And these four soccer players were accidentally among those condemned to death. They were executed on February 24, 1943, almost six months after the so-called death match. This period of time saw several rotations of the Nazi garrison in Kyiv. There were also changes in the German administration, so the version that it was done in revenge for those matches looks too far-fetched.”

And how many of those involved in these events were later liquidated by the NKVD?

“I have no information on this. I know that Shvetsov, who is portrayed in the film Match as a Ukrainian nationalist, served a prison term. It is very funny because Shvetsov, an ethnic Russian, did not speak Ukrainian either before or after the war. He just adapted to the new regime when he saw that he could benefit from this. A few more soccer players were convicted for having collaborated with the Gestapo.”

Why did you take interest in this topic?

“I grew up amidst the connoisseurs of Kyiv soccer. My uncle Mykola Kryvchenia was a top-division soccer referee. He kept a chronological account of the Ukrainian soccer. As my mother had worked as laboratory assistant at the bread factory before the war, she knew Kordik, one of the protagonists of this story. Under the Nazis, he was appointed bread factory manager because he was a Moravian Czech and posed as a German. Kordik loved soccer, was bringing up a daughter, and quietly hated Soviet power. When the Nazis came, he became more active and became the bread factory manager. As a soccer buff, he made a great effort to form a factory team. When I was a sport journalist, our editorial office often saw Shchegotsky who used to come to talk about soccer. He hinted that there had been nothing that resembled a death match in the occupied Kyiv. This aroused my interest. Since then, when I was 19, I have done my best to learn the truth about this story. I spoke to the players themselves – I have an audio recording of the conversation with Honcharenko, participant in the death match, made in May-June 1991. This subject is still gripping me because I can see that the myth about those events lives on.”

You write in your book that the myth began to actively form in the 1960s. One of the reasons is that the Soviet colossus with feet of clay needed a proper interior. But what is the reason why some Russian propagandists have drawn this story from archives again by making the film Match?

“I can only do some guessing. The first and easiest version is that they just decided to make money on the eve of Euro-2012 in Kyiv and the 70th anniversary of the so-called death match. But I would not say that only the Russians are involved in these speculations. Whatever the case, this is a very sore point for us, for the Ukrainians are portrayed [in the film] as traitors, although it is clear that there were representatives of all ethnicities among this kind of people. It is therefore a speculation – a very mediocre one at that. I am not hinting about myself, but the film authors did not invite even one Kyiv historian who has seriously dealt with this subject. At least, if you say that the film was made on the basis of some documented events, you should stick to the official version which the Germans themselves confirmed in 2005. Even the Security Service of Ukraine leadership in the person of Lieutenant General Volodymur Prystaiko has published a book which says that there was no death match at all, that people were just doing what they could and what they were allowed to do, defending their sporting honor. In other words, there was no political background to this.”

Obviously, the identity of every nation forms on, among other things, certain cult figures and events. And, clearly, the image of these figures or events may be slightly hyperbolized or excessively smoothed over. But still where is the line beyond which a myth ceases to be nation-creative and becomes destructive? And what helps some nations feel this line?

“I think it is the sense of proportion as well as pride for and knowledge of one’s history. At present, history is rewritten every four or five years. So it is, of course, difficult for a young person to draw a right conclusion if he or she wants to do so at all. Unfortunately, today’s young people know very badly the history of the country in which they were born, even though they are living in a different – independent – Ukraine. A New York Times journalist, Gerry Longman, interviewed me a few months ago. It was about the so-called death match. It was not unexpected that he distorted quite a lot of what I said. But he was accompanied by an interpreter, a young Ukrainian girl who had graduated from Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University, – so she did not know at all what the Nuremberg Trial was. You cannot know your past if you don’t know the history of the state in which if not you then your parents and grandparents were born. Today’s young people are not much interested in history, and I believe the blame also lies with the filmmakers who produce such movies as Match.”