The best football is on Red Square

First Deputy Editor-in-Chief of MK Petr Spektor was awarded the National Prize

The Writers’ Union of Russia hosted the presentation of the National Award “Best Books, Publishing Houses, Projects of the Year 2022”, which has existed for more than two decades. Among the laureates is Petr Spektor, a well-known sports journalist, first deputy editor-in-chief of MK, whose book Football on Red Square was published last year.

Several dozen masters of the word gathered in the hall of the Writers’ Union, expressing their talent in various genres. In total, there are 17 nominations in the award list: from poetry and memoirs to an art book and a museum project. By the way, in the last of the mentioned nominations, Alexey Patshin, who created the Museum of the book “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” in Kemerovo, and specially came from there to present the National Prize, was awarded. According to the first deputy editor-in-chief of Literaturnaya Gazeta (the publication is one of the founders of the award) Leonid Kolpakov, a panoramic company gathered at the presentation. Here is Mikhail Golubkov, head of the Department of the History of Contemporary Russian Literature and the Modern Literary Process of the Philological Faculty of Moscow State University, who wrote the first modern textbook on the history of Russian literary criticism of the 20th century; and Yuri Polyakov, noted for “Pioneer Night” – the continuation of the sensational novel “Sovdetstvo”; and Alexander Zvyagintsev, author of a series of studies, books, plays and films about the Nuremberg trials, where his mother worked as a translator.

The presentation of diplomas and commemorative medals took place against the backdrop of a sculpture of Pushkin, frozen in thought over a new line, and on each letter there is a quote from his poem “To the Poet”: “You are the king: live alone; On the path of the free / Go where the free mind leads you…”. Each of the National Prize-winning authors wrote their work without expecting recognition and awards, as the poet bequeathed. But the task of the National Prize, as emphasized by its chairman, writer Svyatoslav Rybas, is to single out books that “tell us about time.” The main selection criteria are relevance, quality and relevance. Among the best publications published last year was the book “Football on Red Square” by Petr Spektor.

– This is an award to the entire Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, thank you very much! – said Spector, receiving the award from the hands of Leonid Kolpakov.

“Football on Red Square” is not just a collection of essays on the history of Russian football, hockey, gymnastics, chess and other sports. These are characteristic portraits of the legendary Eduard Streltsov and Valery Kharlamov, Lev Yashin and Vladislav Tretiak, Anatoly Karpov and Olga Korbut, Rinat Dasaev and Nikolai Starostin. By the way, the title of the book contains just the story connected with the founder of Spartak Nikolai Starostin, who told Petr Spektor in detail about the historic match on Red Square, which took place on July 6, 1936. After that famous meeting on the green carpet, which football players (both beginners and famous ones) sewed with their own hands, football began to rapidly turn into a truly popular game, and stadiums and bases were built everywhere. Easily and lively, achieving the effect of presence, Spector tells dozens of stories, writes about great people who have become part of the “cultural code”. Among them are not only athletes of the highest rank, like Pele or Maradona, but also Vladimir Vysotsky or Joseph Kobzon.

A portrait of the author himself, who grew up next to the legendary training base in Tarasovka and climbed into the neighbor’s garden for apples together with the future Olympic champion Viktor Shalimov, is formed from various sketches. Actually, personal motives prompted the creation of Peter Spector’s book. “I wrote for the anniversary of my mother – for her 90th birthday,” he admitted to the assembled literary fraternity. There are stories in the book about her, and about dad, who spent four years on the front lines during the war, starting with a lieutenant and ending with a colonel, and about the heroes of journalistic reports who became friends, and about colleagues – the editor-in-chief of MK Pavel Gusev and writer and playwright Andrei Yakhontov. “I am very pleased to see my friends Yuri Polyakov and Valery Steinbakh in the hall. I remember how Valery Lvovich and I came to the Olympics in Barcelona and my wallet with all the money was stolen from me, and then he helped me … “

Pyotr Markovich also remembered a few more stories, for example, about how a colleague of the Hero of the Soviet Union Boris Gromov (pages in the book are also devoted to him) Andrey Barkovsky and coach Alexander Yakushev held his newborn daughter in their arms in the hospital. And these short emotional sketches are perhaps the best annotation to the book, where the great and the great intertwined with the author’s purely personal.