Plot synopsis

The next series is dedicated to 1948 and Nikolai Petrovich Starostin (born February 26, 1902 - February 17, 1996) - Soviet football and hockey player, founder of Moscow "Spartak".

From the 1930s to 1948 in the USSR, football star Nikolai Starostin builds Spartak Moscow into a people’s club daring to defeat Dynamo, the NKVD’s proud team. On Red Square he stages a glittering match before Stalin, unaware that this triumph will earn him the jealousy of Beria and the security elite. Arrested on fabricated charges, he and his brothers are swallowed by the Gulag system. From Lubyanka cells to frozen logging camps and Far Eastern prisons, Starostin discovers that football can literally keep him alive: camp generals fight over him, criminals shield him, silenced by his match stories. Beyond the barbed wire, the country endures famine, monetary reform and mass deportations, while Moscow’s shop windows pretend to show prosperity. When Stalin’s son Vasily decides to “claim” him to form his own air force team, Starostin is smuggled back to Moscow, caught between a volatile protector and Beria’s vengeance. His guiding rule remains the law of the camp: survive – and outlive those who put you there.

commentaries

Сценарии телесериала «Исторические хроники с Николаем Сванидзе», с 1934го по 1953 год. [Scénarios de la série télévisée « Chroniques historiques avec Nikolaï Svanidzé », de 1934 à 1953], Marina ZHUKOVA, Амфора, 2014

- Screenplay

Selected in the following festivals or events :

- Historical Chronicles with Nikolay Svanidze, (kinoglaz.fr), 2026

Images

Nikolaï STAROSTINE (Николай Петрович СТАРОСТИН) 1902-1996