Soviet Top League

The league was established on the initiative of head of Spartak sport society, Nikolai Starostin.[2] Starostin proposed to create eight professional club teams in six Soviet cities and hold two championship tournaments per calendar year.[2] With minor corrections, the Soviet Council on Physical Culture accepted the Starostin's proposal creating a league of "demonstration teams of master" which were sponsored by sport societies and factories.[2] Nikolai Starostin de facto became a godfather of the Soviet championships.[3] Numerous mass events took place to promote the newly established competition, among which there was an introduction of football exhibition game as part of the Moscow Physical Culture Day parade, invitation of football team from Basque region which was on the side supported by Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War and others.

In 1936 the first secretary of Komsomol Kosarev came up with an idea of playing an actual football game at the Red Square as part of the Physical Culture Day parade.[4] Stalin never attended any sports events, but the Physical Culture Day was an exclusion to the rule.[4] The 1936 Physical Culture Day parade was directed by Russian theatre director Valentin Pluchek.[4] For the football game, a giant green felt carpet was sewn by Spartak athletes and laid down on the Red Square's cobblestones.[4] A night before the parade, the rug was stitched together in sections, rolled up and then stored in a vestibule of the GUM department store located at the square.[4] Following the 1936 Red Square game, it became a tradition before the World War II and part of the Physical Culture Day parade event.[4]

In the late 1930s Spartak was giving out thousands of tickets per game to members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).[2] Among serious football fans was Lavrentiy Beria who proposed to have one team from each of union republics in the league.[2] In July 1937 a conflict erupted following a successful tour to the Soviet Union of a football team from Basque region during which the main governing body of sports in the country, the All-Union Council of Physical Culture, was accused by the party and Komsomol for failing the sports policy.[2] Spartak's leadership and Starostin in particular were accused of corruption and implementing "bourgeoisie methods" in Soviet sport.[2]

The most prominent clubs of the league were FC Dynamo Kyiv, FC Spartak Moscow, and FC Dynamo Moscow. The most popular clubs besides the above-mentioned were PFC CSKA Moscow, FC Ararat Yerevan, and FC Dinamo Tbilisi. The first team that won 10 championships was Dynamo Moscow in 1963, followed by Spartak in 1979. Dinamo Tbilisi became famous for finishing third but never winning the title, the first title they won in 1964. Perceived as exclusively Russian by people from other countries, the league was truly multinational with other republics in the USSR being represented.

Eleven clubs spent over 30 seasons in the league with just under half (five) of them from Moscow. Dynamo Moscow and Dynamo Kyiv were the only clubs that participated in all seasons of the league. Among other prominent Russian clubs were SKA Rostov/Donu (Army team), Zenit Leningrad (Zenith), and Krylia Sovietov Kuibyshev (Wings of the Soviets). Ukraine was also often represented by Shakhtar Donetsk (Miners) and later by Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk who were strong in the 1980s.

After the league's reorganization number of Ukrainian-based clubs grew and in the last seasons before the breakup of the USSR, Ukraine was often equally represented with the Russian clubs. Among the Soviet sports societies most successful were Dynamo and Army clubs, both of which also were closely associated with state enforcing agencies.

Over the years the league changed, however from the 1970s its competition structure solidified with 16 participants, except from 1979 through 1985 when the number of participants was extended to 18. Because of the dissolution of the Soviet Union the structure of the league also became unstable as more and more clubs lost interest in continuing to participate in the league. Attempts to reorganize the league took place, however practically all of them were not successful.

Until the 1960s the main title contenders in the league were the Moscow clubs of Spartak and Dynamo whose dominance was disrupted for only a brief period after World War II by CSKA Moscow, nicknamed 'The team of lieutenants'.

The 1960s saw the emergence of a new Soviet football elite in Torpedo Moscow and Dynamo Kyiv. While Moscow's automakers did not manage to grow into perennial challengers, the team from the Ukrainian capital became an unofficial feeder for the Soviet national team, replacing Dynamo Moscow. Dynamo Kyiv's success as a Ukrainian club was supplemented in the 1980s with the appearance of Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk led by its striker Oleh Protasov who set a new record for goals scored in a season. In 1984, Zenit Leningrad became Soviet champions for the first time. The Peter's men having a rich history in Russian football but for a long were unable to break the dominance of the Moscow-based clubs, or that of Dynamo Tbilisi and Kyiv.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, it has been suggested that the competition be re-established along the lines of the Commonwealth of Independent States Cup, but due to a lack of interest on various levels the venture has never implemented. There were various other similar initiatives which ultimately found no support and were discontinued.

Documentation about the league is scarce. Among well-known researchers are Aksel Vartanyan for Sport Express, Andrei Moroz and Georgiy Ibragimov for KLISF Club, Alexandru G.Paloşanu, Eugene Berkovich, Mike Dryomin, Almantas Lauzadis, and Hans Schöggl for RSSSF Archives. Another extensive databases are composed at helmsoccer.narod.ru and FC Dynamo Moscow website.

Republic	Winners	Runners-Up	3rd Position	Appearances	Number of representing clubs	Winning Clubs
Russian SFSR	34	32	28	416	31	Spartak Moscow (12) Dynamo Moscow (11) CSKA Moscow (7) Torpedo Moscow (3) Zenit Leningrad (1)
Ukrainian SSR	16	15	8	191	14	Dynamo Kyiv (13) Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk (2) Zorya Voroshilovgrad (1)
Georgian SSR	2	5	13	68	5	Dinamo Tbilisi (2)
Armenian SSR	1	2		33	1	Ararat Yerevan (1)
Byelorussian SSR	1		3	39	1	Dinamo Minsk (1)
Azerbaijan SSR			1	29	3
Lithuanian SSR			1	11	1
Kazakh SSR				24	1
Uzbek SSR				22	1
Moldavian SSR				7	1
Latvian SSR				7	1
Tajik SSR				3	1
Estonian SSR				2	1

The republics that were never represented at the top level were the Turkmen SSR and the Kyrgyz SSR.

¹Two points for a win. In 1973, a point for a draw was awarded only to a team that won the subsequent penalty shootout. In 1978–1988, the number of draws for which points were awarded was limited.