Amir Khuslyutdinov, aka “The Professor”, has been involved in Spartak fan support and hooligan culture since 1977, only a few years after the first organized fan movements in the USSR took root. Still active in the Spartak community, Amir’s 35 years of football fanaticism span several generations, from the twilight years of the Soviet Union to economic ruin in the early 90s to the more and more Westernized society of the 21st century.
Khuslyutdinov talked with me about football hooligans’ values, classic confrontations outside the stadium, conflict with the police and the government and his thoughts on where Russian football is headed today.
We spoke following last week’s Spartak – Dynamo Kiev friendly in Moscow. Unfortunately, the conversation was not recorded, so I have reconstructed his words based solely on my notes from the evening.
When did Spartak fans first organize?
The first wave began in 1972. Some say it started even earlier, but they’re lying.
Did fans have any political motives?
No, we have never been political. We’re against politics. People can do what they want outside of the stadium, but we’re united inside the stadium.
When did you begin going to Spartak matches?
I went with my father a few times, then started attending matches by myself when I was 12, in 1977.
What were the early years of the Spartak fan movement like?
The team’s popularity boomed in 1977. Spartak had dropped to the 2nd division the year before, but people kept coming. Old Lokomotiv Stadium, which seated 30,000, would sell out. Spartak was so popular that their 2nd division games were shown on national TV.
There was just a buzz about the team around town. People would sew their own flags and bring them to the stadium. Hardly anyone in the media talked about it, but there was one article published in Yunost’ (A cultural magazine for Soviet youth) that gave a fair look at what was happening. It was titled “Passions around Spartak” and came out at the end of 1977.
Anyway, we were promoted at the end of that season and won the league in 1979.
Since dismantled Lokomotiv Stadium where Spartak used to play.
What was your relationship with Ukrainian fans like, especially Dynamo? Did you always have a conflict with them?
First of all, we didn’t call all of the Ukrainian fans “khokhly” (A derogatory term for Ukrainians), just the fans in Kiev. People from Kharkov were “kharki”. In Odessa they were “odessity”. And, originally, we were friends with Dynamo. We would meet them at the train station in Moscow and protect them from CSKA fans.
But in 1982 they beat up some of our younger fans in Kiev and we never forgave them for that.
Amir then continued to share about Dynamo and their team in those years.
Dynamo was a detestable team. The other Ukrainian teams knew that they couldn’t take points in Kiev. And if Dynamo needed it, they were supposed to help them secure a draw on the road, too. As a result, the league even introduced a limit on draws…The first eight counted, but after that neither side would earn a point (The limit remained in effect until 1988, increasing to 10 draws in 1980).
The Ukrainian party boss, Vladimir Shcherbitsky, would always help Dynamo out. They didn’t play fair and they didn’t play exciting football.
How did the Soviet government respond to the fan movements?
Pressure started to increase. People would be questioned and threats were made that they would lose their jobs or fail to graduate from university. The golden age of the Spartak fan movement is considered to be from 1977-1981. But starting on November 15, 1981, a wave of terror began which lasted until 1986. In 1982, as you probably know, the tragedy at Luzhniki took place (At least 66 Spartak fans died in a massive crush following a UEFA Cup match on October 20, 1982. The Soviet press barely mentioned the incident). For several years, the police would regularly come into the stands for no reason at all, just for singing or for displaying fan club symbols.
Road trips in those years were small, nothing like they are today. Usually 200-300 people would attend away matches, sometimes as few as 30 people would be there. The biggest crowds would travel to St. Petersburg, up to 1,500.
It was difficult for me, too, especially once I was working a job. Once in 1987 (Amir was 22 at the time) I asked my boss for time off to attend a match in Kharkov. He wouldn’t give it to me, saying I needed to come in that day and the next. Well, I arranged for a taxi to pick me up after work and take me straight to the airport with a few friends. We just made it to the match in time, then returned on an overnight train to Moscow. When I dropped the match program on my boss’s desk the next day, he told me that if I cared about it that much, he wasn’t going to stop me in the future.
The younger kids had it a lot worse. If you were under 16 and traveling without parents, the police could simply pick you up and hold you until someone from home came to get you. Some kids were kept in orphanages like that for up to three months.
Spartak fans on tour in 1978.
What was it like traveling to matches in the Caucasus in those years?
I’ve always said that if you conduct yourself well in the Caucasus, everything will be fine.
I do remember traveling to Tashkent for a match around the end of the Soviet period. There was a Russian lieutenant there who said it would be fine if we marched to the stadium and waved our flags. But then a Uzbek sergeant came up to him and started cussing him out for that. That was a shock for us.
We don’t mind fighting, though. The best times were with Kiev. They sucked at fighting. After they beat up some of our young fans in 1982, we had to fight back. The most legendary encounter came in 1987. About 300 of us attended a match in Kiev. After the game, about 3,000 Dynamo fans surrounded us at the train station. We ended up fighting for about 30-40 minutes and just cleaned them out. We were fighting for our lives, you know, whereas they were just there to have fun.
Their hooligans even had trouble with Lokomotiv and they’re like the 5th division in the hooligan world, when Spartak is the Premier League.
What happened to the movement in the early 90s?
People had money, but inflation was so bad, you couldn’t buy anything with it. People couldn’t travel to matches as much. Plus, the teams that we were playing were from cities that didn’t have any infrastructure. I remember one trip to Voronezh in 1998 where we walked around for a long time just trying to find a decent restaurant to eat in. There wasn’t anything.
Amir then shared more about what it means to be a Spartak hooligan and fanatic.
We don’t believe in the government’s rule. We don’t trust them. The Soviet period killed the idea of doing “charity”, but we tried to help each other out and we still do. We do projects at orphanages; we help kids come to football matches. I work with the club to get free season tickets for fans that can’t afford it.
Hooligans are people that can stand up for themselves. We’re people that can build something because we think for ourselves. Even alcohol and drugs can’t give you the type of rush you get from fighting together. When you’re lined up with your friends, shoulder to shoulder, you forget everything and just go.
We’re honest people. We accept everyone – fascists, pacifists… We don’t try to educate people and we don’t try to justify who we are. We have people from every part of society, too, it’s just that we’re more alive.
When I run into someone on the metro that used to be one of us, but’s burdened now by his job, kids, a nagging wife, I can see his eyes light up when he recognizes me. He tells me how the years he spent in the movement were the best time of his life. But then we part and his eyes dim and he hunches over again.
At the game today, the police grabbed something from one of our fans. I told them that they need to do something about it. Complain to the authorities, write a protest. But people today are afraid to get involved with the police. I tell them that if they don’t stand up for themselves, they’ll always be treated that way.
You know, at the protest at Manezh (Spartak fans organized a protest in a downtown Moscow square in December 2010 after one of their members was shot and killed in a fight with natives of the North Caucasus that were in Moscow illegally) we tried to demand that everyone needs to follow the law and that people can’t live here illegally and carry weapons without permits.
Hooligans help to protect regular people, too, at football matches. In Poland during Euro 2012 – here Amir used napkins and utensils to diagram what happened – we marched together to one of the games and had to cross a bridge. The police were there, but the Poles kept trying to get to us. If hooligans hadn’t surrounded our entire group, innocent people would have been beaten up.
Russian fans march to the Euro 2012 match vs Poland in Warsaw.
What are the differences between fans in the early days and today?
In the 1970s and 80s we were more earnest. We may have made mistakes, but they were honest. In the 90s, more militant groups formed – Flint’s Crew, which also had a youth division called Young Crew, and Gladiators. Gladiators emphasized a healthy lifestyle – no alcohol, etc., while Flint’s Crew didn’t care. Both trained and prepared for fights. The early 2000s were “tolerastnye” (excessively tolerant, permissive) years. Now people are trying to revive things.
How do you feel about the future of Russian football?
Football for us is an “element of life” and it’s losing its soul. Perhaps the new developments are good from a financial standpoint, but I believe money is the curse of this world. Everything is becoming Americanized, in the worst sense of the word. Perhaps it’s normal for you Americans for sport to be so commercial, but it’s not for us.
I’m never going to be a passive consumer of sports. And you can’t just get rid of the fanatics artificially and replace them with regular people. It’s going to be very difficult to get rid of the football fanatics. Russians, as a nation, are not submissive. They remember their empire and demonstrate their heritage with their fists. They want to show that they are in charge.
Do you know what “Russian style” means? It means that you fight someone with clean fists and nothing else. That’s how we fight, hooligans vs hooligans. And I don’t think that anyone is the equal of Spartak hooligans. Maybe some Serbian clubs, but that’s it.