A 1942 football match in Nazi-occupied Kyiv, later mythologized by Soviet propaganda as an act of fatal resistance against German occupiers.
Key Facts
- Date of match
- 9 August 1942
- Final score
- Start 5–3 Flakelf
- First match score (6 Aug)
- Start 5–1 Flakelf
- Estimated spectators
- 2,000 people
- Admission price
- 5 karbovanets per person
- Venue
- Zenith Stadium, Kyiv
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Kyiv fell under Nazi occupation. Former professional footballers of Dynamo Kyiv and Lokomotiv Kyiv were compelled to work at Bread Factory No. 1, producing bread for German soldiers. They formed the FC Start team and were organized into matches against German and Axis-aligned sides under occupation authority.
On 9 August 1942, FC Start played a rematch against the German Luftwaffe team Flakelf at Zenith Stadium in occupied Kyiv, before approximately 2,000 paying spectators. Start had already defeated Flakelf 5–1 on 6 August. In the rematch, Start again defeated Flakelf, this time by a score of 5–3.
Several Start players were subsequently arrested and died during the war, though postwar research found their deaths were unrelated to the match itself. Soviet propaganda nonetheless framed the game as a heroic act of fatal resistance. In the 1960s, the Soviet state formally recognized four deceased and five surviving players as resisters; after the USSR's dissolution, historians largely debunked the myth.