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Sections: Where the play begins
Veterans: Vasilyev Stepan Vasilyevich

Where the play begins. An era before Spartak

The basketball Spartak appeared in Leningrad in 1935. But we believe it necessary to highlight the history of basketball in the city Saint Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad before that date. What was basketball like, what was the atmosphere in which our team germinated?

Basketball fans know that this enticing sport originated in the USA. All began with the rules developed in 1891 by James Naismith, and two old peach baskets which Naismith nailed in the opposite ends of a hall at the height a little above three meters. American students began playing the new game actively and then disseminated it around the world with their inherent enthusiasm. Russia learned about basketball in the beginning of the XX century. In a number of books on sports games chapters appeared devoted to the overseas innovation. And it was in Saint Petersburg that basketball appeared, as also many other sports in the country.

In 1906 an American physical educator Erich Moraller arrived in our city and began working in the society for facilitating moral, mental, and physical development, called Mayak. Moraller included basketball into the physical education program, and soon in the Mayak society there appeared our own enthusiast: 20-year-old Stepan Vasilyev from a gymnastic team got himself acquainted with the rules of the game. Rather, Moraller who did not speak Russian showed him the basic elements of the game. Vasilyev infected the gymnasts with the “virus of the game”, and gradually basketball team began to form in Mayak. Naismith’s brainchild was spreading in the Northern capital. In less then ten years sports clubs appeared. Beside the mentioned and first one, Mayak, there appeared Kolomyagi, Uniks, Bogatyr, Merkur, Sport… The city’s board would build sports grounds. Basketball players of the sports grounds of the Aleksandrovsky, Mikhailovsky, Prutkovsky, Semyannikovsky Gardens, Vasilyevsky Island, Vyborgskaya Storona, May Gymnasium, Putilov Trade School participated in contests.

As Vasilyev (in the photo) reminisces, the first game in Mayak took place in December 1906. Then games were played either in the rented gym of the Annensky School in Kirochnaya Street, or in the Fencing and Gymnastic Officers’ Gym in Inzhenernaya Street 8. And it was in one of these institutions that the match took place.

By the end of 1907 the society had its own gym in Nadezhdinskaya Street 35 (in the photo), now it is Mayakovskogo Street. On the house-warming day basketball was played, and it was already in 1909 that ten teams competed for the prize established by Moraller, the Silver Cup. Its winner was Vasilyev’s team, the team of the purples, as it was called by the color of the players’ shirts. Afterwards, this brigade won, for the first time in the country’s history, basketball contests and several subsequent ones.

In the end of 1909 a group of members of the American Christian Association arrived in Petersburg. They formed a team that played with the mentioned purples, the best team in the city. This march, by the way, is called the first international match in the book published in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of FIBA. Then our sportsmen were the winners: 28:19. Pleasing, is it not? Though, by today’s measures, the score is weird. But when one considers that the fist match in the history of basketball ended with the score 2:0… By the way, the best team in the city soon after the victory over the Americans lost to juniors from the Aleksandrovsky Garden team, the winner of the contest of children’s sports grounds of Petersburg. Thus was the Russian basketball at the dawn of its age. Vasilyev, Vladimirov, Burykin, Nurdman, Machikhin – these are the names of those who were among the purples.

After the revolution the city again lived through the basketball boom. Physical education of working youth was one of the priorities of the new nation. Sports sections, societies opened, sports were propagandized throughout the country. Pictures and postcards helped call for active exercise. The known painter Aleksandr Deineko created a series of works devoted to sports including basketball. Its painting of 1930 bears the title Basketball (in the photo).

On the developing surge, the first basketball public control board, the Basketball Section of Petrograd, was set up 21-22 February 1921. One of its first resolutions was the conduct of the championship of Petrograd that took place the same year. In 2 years, in 1923, the first championship of the Soviet Union was held in Moscow. 6 male and 6 female teams participated in it. Among women Moscow won, in men the championship was not acknowledged, for in the match between the teams of Moscow and Petrograd the Neva dwellers protested against the result of the game. The collected male team of Leningrad won the championship twice, in 1934 and 1936. From 1937, instead of the championship of the USSR among cities, club championships were held. By that time the title Spartak (Leningrad) already appeared on the basketball map of the country. But let us put things in succession.

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