#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. “Starostin in Russian means football player”, wrote the Belgian press after the working Olympics in Antwerp in 1937.
In these competitions, four Soviet team players at once bore this name. These were the four Starostin brothers.
In 1942, all four brothers were arrested, as were five more of their colleagues in the Spartak sports society.
They said that in this way Lavrenty Beria “recouped” on the team for its victory over Dynamo – the NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs which was kind of a Soviet secret police) team. The accused football players were recognized as “the anti-Soviet group participants ” and became various camps prisoners.
Andrey Starostin ended up in Norilsk. According to his memoirs, he became the defense and sports department head and, having “rolled up his quilted jacket’s sleeves”, took up the duties of a football and hockey coach.
He was not only a coach. For example, Starostin manually poured a skating rink at the first Dynamo stadium from a fire hose.
In the last issue of the photo project “History Spot” we told the legend of a crashed plane with a whole box of platinum.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
