Blockade football

There’s a memorial board on Dinamo stadium, related to the blockade of Leningrad. It was placed here 20 years ago in 1991 (by the architect A. Chernov, and a sculptor V. Sidorenko, made of bronze and granite).

There’s a sign on the board “Here, on Dinamo stadium, during the roughest blockade time, was held a historical blockade match on May, 31 in 1942 between ‘Dinamo’ from Leningrad and the Metal factory team.

The city didn’t yet recover after the first hard blockade winter indeed. Leningrad used to be constantly bombed and shell attacked. In April 1942 there were the leaflets distributed by the German aircrafts having the following content: “Leningrad is a city of dead. We don’t capture it just because are scared of the cadaverous epidemic. We’ve wiped this city off the face of the earth.” And there was the great surprise and excitement for the soldiers on the frontier to hear before the battle a live broadcast of the game from “Dinamo” stadium. It was carried in two languages, and it was proving everyone that the city’s still alive.

The Leningrad “Dinamo”s forward Nickolay Svetlov was there in the trenches not far from Sinyavinsky marshes. Later on he was writing in a letter to his friend, “First I didn’t believe. I rushed to the radio operators’ dugout, and they’ve confirmed that it was football broadcast. What happened to the soldiers! That was an incredible excitement, and if the order to get the Germans out of their trenches had been given, they would have suffered a lot!”

But even earlier on May, 6th in 1942 there was held a little-known match between two Leningrad teams: “Dinamo” and the select team of the garrison (to be correct – of the Baltic navy crew of A. Lobanov). It was this match that was considered to be The First Blockade match during long time. Later on it was renamed into the “practice game”, and the name of official first game got the match held on May, 31th in 1942. And even the memorial board notices this later date. Probably it’s because of a broadcast from this match.