Associated PhD project
of the Interdisciplinary Research Network Legacies of Communism? Post‐Communist Europe from Stagnation to Reform, between Autocracy and Revolution

In the history of Soviet football, "Dynamo" Kyiv is regarded as the most successful Soviet team, whose long-standing manager Valery Lobanovsky is considered as one of the best coaches in football history. During the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian football not only inherited its glorious sport accomplishments but also legacies of the Soviet football organization, which reflected on a small scale the entire image of post-communist Ukraine on the way to transformation. This research will examine the transformation process in Ukraine using football and its elites as an example.

This research focuses on the legacies of the communist system in the field of football and gives access to the bottom-up perspective of the political-economic transformation in post-communist Ukraine. The complexity of the football organization represents an accomplished research field to deal with the role of the old and new elites in this process. This project examines how and under which circumstances the transformation of football took place in post-communist Ukraine. It deals with three main problem areas: reorganization of football within the national sport system, the transition of clubs from a state-controlled sport system into a market-based competition, and personal dimension of transformation for Ukrainian football elites. As a result, the contradictions and various ideological imprints of post-communist Ukraine can be exemplified in this project.

Click here for the project website Legacies of Communism: https://legacies-of-communism.eu/