Introduction and popularization

Poster for a Basque Country-Lokomotiv match on 24 June 1937

The league was established on the initiative of head of Spartak sport society, Nikolai Starostin.^[2] Starostin proposed to create eight professional club teams in six Soviet cities and hold two championship tournaments per calendar year.^[2] With minor corrections, the Soviet Council on Physical Culture accepted the Starostin's proposal creating a league of "demonstration teams of master" which were sponsored by sport societies and factories.^[2] Nikolai Starostin de facto became a godfather of the Soviet championships.^[3] Numerous mass events took place to promote the newly established competition, among which there was an introduction of football exhibition game as part of the Moscow Physical Culture Day parade, and the invitation to the Basque Country national football team which was on the side supported by Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War and others.

In 1936 the first secretary of Komsomol Kosarev came up with an idea of playing an actual football game at the Red Square as part of the Physical Culture Day parade.^[4] Stalin never attended any sports events, but the Physical Culture Day was an exclusion to the rule.^[4] The 1936 Physical Culture Day parade was directed by Russian theatre director Valentin Pluchek.^[4] For the football game, a giant green felt carpet was sewn by Spartak athletes and laid down on the Red Square's cobblestones.^[4] A night before the parade, the rug was stitched together in sections, rolled up and then stored in a vestibule of the GUM department store located at the square.^[4] Following the 1936 Red Square game, it became a tradition before the World War II and part of the Physical Culture Day parade event.^[4]

In the late 1930s Spartak was giving out thousands of tickets per game to members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).^[2] Among serious football fans was Lavrentiy Beria who proposed to have one team from each of union republics in the league.^[2] In July 1937 a conflict erupted following a successful tour to the Soviet Union of the Basque national team during which the main governing body of sports in the country, the All-Union Council of Physical Culture, was accused by the party and Komsomol for failing the sports policy.^[2] Spartak's leadership and Starostin in particular were accused of corruption and implementing "bourgeoisie methods" in Soviet sport.^[2]

The most prominent clubs of the league were FC Dynamo Kyiv, FC Spartak Moscow, and FC Dynamo Moscow. The most popular clubs besides the above-mentioned were PFC CSKA Moscow, FC Ararat Yerevan, and FC Dinamo Tbilisi. Dinamo Tbilisi became famous for finishing third but never winning the title. They won their first title in 1964.

Development

Until the 1960s the main title contenders in the league were the Moscow clubs of Spartak and Dynamo whose dominance was disrupted for only a brief period after World War II by CSKA Moscow, nicknamed 'The team of lieutenants'. The first team that won 10 championships was Dynamo Moscow in 1963, followed by Spartak in 1979.

Eleven clubs spent over 30 seasons in the league with five of them from Moscow. Dynamo Moscow and Dynamo Kyiv were the only clubs that participated in all seasons of the league. Among other prominent Russian clubs were SKA Rostov/Donu (Army team), Zenit Leningrad (Zenith), and Krylia Sovietov Kuibyshev (Wings of the Soviets).

Over the years the league changed, however from the 1970s its competition structure solidified with 16 participants, except from 1979 through 1985 when the number of participants was extended to 18.

One uniquely Soviet innovation around this time was the "draw limit", whereby a team would receive zero points for any draws in excess of a fixed number, first 8, then 10. This rule had consequences for both the title race and relegation while it was in place. A 1973 experiment to resolve drawn games by penalty shoot-out lasted only one season.

Dynamo Kyiv's success as a Ukrainian club was supplemented in the 1980s with the appearance of Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk led by its striker Oleh Protasov who set a new record for goals scored in a season. In 1984, Zenit Leningrad became Soviet champions for the first time.

With the unravelling of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, the structure of the league also became unstable as more and more clubs lost interest in continuing to participate in the league, prompting several rounds of reorganisation. The main effect of these was to boost the numbers of Ukrainian clubs to be on par with the Russians.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, it has been suggested that the competition be re-established along the lines of the Commonwealth of Independent States Cup, but due to a lack of interest on various levels the venture has never been implemented.

Participants

Contrary to popular belief, Russian clubs were never a majority in the Top League, nor did they enjoy any special status. However, the uneven population of the Soviet Union meant that the participants in a typical Top League season fell into three blocs:

• Russian clubs. Russian football was dominated by the "four-wheeled cart" of Moscow clubs: Spartak (Komsomol), Dynamo (police), CSKA (army) and Torpedo (auto workers). These four were often joined in the Top League by Lokomotiv (railroad workers), Zenit Leningrad (defense industry workers), or assorted clubs from smaller cities.
• Ukrainian clubs. Ukraine's capital Kyiv, by contrast, was the exclusive province of FC Dynamo Kyiv who became an unofficial feeder for the Soviet national team beginning in the 1960s, replacing Dynamo Moscow. Several clubs vied to be Ukraine's "second" team over the years including Shakhtar Donetsk, Metalist Kharkiv, Chernomorets Odesa, Zorya Voroshilovgrad (now Zorya Luhansk) and Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk, the last two managing to win three titles combined. Many Ukrainian clubs also were associated with the Soviet Dynamo sports society.
• Other republics clubs. Lavrentiy Beria's vision of one representative club per republic was partly realised from the 1950s onwards, as in every republic except for Russia and Ukraine, fan interest and government support became concentrated into a single club based in the republic's capital city, who became "the republic's team". Most of those clubs were originally created as Spartak or Dynamo, supported either by local party committee (Spartak) or local KGB office (Dynamo). Thus Lithuania became represented by Zalgiris Vilnius, Latvia by Daugava Riga, Estonia by Kalev Tallinn, Byelorussia by Dinamo Minsk, Moldavia by Nistru Kishinev, Armenia by Ararat Yerevan, Azerbaijan by Neftchi Baku, Georgia by Dinamo Tbilisi, Kazakhstan by Kairat Alma-Ata, Uzbekistan by Pakhtakor Tashkent and Tajikistan by Pamir Dushanbe. A typical Top League season would feature 4-6 of these eleven, and Yerevan, Minsk and Tbilisi all managed to win the title at least once. Only Georgia, with Torpedo Kutaisi and later Guria Lanchkhuti, was ever able to have a second representative survive in the Top League in addition to their capital city club. (Turkmenistan and Kirghizia were represented in the Soviet football pyramid by Köpetdag Aşgabat and Alga Frunze respectively, but neither reached the top level.)

Documentation

Documentation about the league is scarce. Among well-known researchers are Aksel Vartanyan for Sport Express, Andrei Moroz and Georgiy Ibragimov for KLISF Club, Alexandru G.Paloşanu, Eugene Berkovich, Mike Dryomin, Almantas Lauzadis, and Hans Schöggl for RSSSF Archives. Another extensive databases are composed at helmsoccer.narod.ru and FC Dynamo Moscow website.

Group A

Performance by club

First group

Performance by club

Class A

Performance by club

Class A (1st Group)

Class A (Top Group)

Top League

Performance by club's first teams

Club	Winners	Runners-up	Third places	Years won
Dynamo Kyiv	13	11	3	1961, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1971, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1980, 1981, 1985, 1986, 1990
Spartak Moscow	12	12	9	1936 (a), 1938, 1939, 1952, 1953, 1956, 1958, 1962, 1969, 1979, 1987, 1989
Dynamo Moscow	11	11	5	1936 (s), 1937, 1940, 1945, 1949, 1954, 1955, 1957, 1959, 1963, 1976 (s)
CSKA Moscow	7	4	6	1946, 1947, 1948, 1950, 1951, 1970, 1991
Torpedo Moscow	3	3	6	1960, 1965, 1976 (a)
Dinamo Tbilisi	2	5	13	1964, 1978
Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk	2	2	2	1983, 1988
Ararat Yerevan	1	2	–	1973
Dinamo Minsk	1	–	3	1982
Zenit Leningrad	1	–	1	1984
Zorya Voroshilovgrad	1	–	–	1972
Shakhtar Donetsk	–	2	2	–
Lokomotiv Moscow	–	1	–	–
SKA Rostov-on-Don	–	1	–	–
Serp i Molot Moscow	–	–	1	–
Neftchi Baku	–	–	1
Chornomorets Odesa	–	–	1	–
Žalgiris Vilnius	–	–	1	–
Total	54	54	54

Performance by republic

Republic	Winners	Runners-up	Third places	Appearances	Number of representing clubs	Winning clubs
Russian SFSR	34	32	28	416	31	Spartak Moscow (12) Dynamo Moscow (11) CSKA Moscow (7) Torpedo Moscow (3) Zenit Leningrad (1)
Ukrainian SSR	16	15	8	191	15	Dynamo Kyiv (13) Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk (2) Zorya Voroshilovgrad (1)
Georgian SSR	2	5	13	68	5	Dinamo Tbilisi (2)
Armenian SSR	1	2	–	33	1	Ararat Yerevan (1)
Byelorussian SSR	1	–	3	39	1	Dinamo Minsk (1)
Azerbaijan SSR	–	–	1	29	3
Lithuanian SSR	–	–	1	11	1
Kazakh SSR	–	–	–	24	1
Uzbek SSR	–	–	–	22	1
Moldavian SSR	–	–	–	7	1
Latvian SSR	–	–	–	7	1
Tajik SSR	–	–	–	3	1
Estonian SSR	–	–	–	2	1
Total	54	54	54

The republics that were never represented at the top level were the Turkmen SSR and the Kyrgyz SSR. Also, in Soviet football Russian SFSR teams were represented by three different entities with Moscow and Leningrad as the Union federal cities teams considered separately from rest of Russian teams. Thus, the all-time best performing team from Russian SFSR was SKA Rostov-na-Donu.

All-time table

¹Two points for a win. In 1973, a point for a draw was awarded only to a team that won the subsequent penalty shootout. In 1978–1988, the number of draws for which points were awarded was limited.