Good game

Football match of hope of 1942 reconstructed in Samara - and people liked it

"Boys-aviators, forward!" shouts a beautiful blonde with a corporate flag, jumping up and down. "Aviator! Aviator!" - chants a group of brave pensioners with a blue banner, they are more permanently located in the stands, and a thin old man in a spacious cap shouts: “Artyom, don’t let him in! Artyom, pass to the middle!”, aviator Artem at number fourteen passes to the middle; “Why is no one rooting for the railroad workers?” - a thin man in worn jeans worries and begins to tease the railroad workers in order to get more justice.

The recipe for a successful new tradition: a good idea, enthusiasm for its implementation, and public loyalty, last but not least. Acceptance of society will give a good idea. In Samara, for the third year in a row, at the beginning of May, a special football match is held, a reconstruction of a historical, seventy-year-old, and although three years is not the time for the formation of a tradition, but so far everything is going well, the public is loyal and happy. It is called: football of the spare capital. I'll tell you the details.

On May 3, 1942, Kuibyshev bristled with poplar buds and slowly came to life from a difficult cold winter. In the summer of 1941, more than thirty thousand factories were under the threat of occupation, the factories had to be evacuated within an unthinkable two or three days, so twenty defense factories turned out to be in Kuibyshev: aircraft building plant No. 1 transported from Moscow (now TsSKB JSC "RCC" Progress ") ), Voronezh Aviation Plant No. 18 (now JSC Aviakor) and Engine Plant No. 24 (later MPO named after Frunze, now PJSC Kuznetsov).

They didn’t have time to build the buildings, they outlined the walls, the machines were installed and put into operation practically under the open sky and in the steppe, a poster with a quote from Stalin “We need IL-2 like bread, like air” fluttered in the wind. I know very well about this, because my 15-year-old grandmother served as a riveter in one of the workshops, her working day was at least eleven hours, and it often made no sense to return home on an icy train; they slept right there, immediately received a meager lunch on a work card (800 g of bread a day), and bonuses were given out in jars of jam, grandmother loved to remember this jam. Hard. It was cold - “chuni” were made on the feet, the soles were cut out of the carpets.

It took only 35 days to transport the Voronezh aircraft plant thousands of kilometers, install equipment and start production of Il-2 attack aircraft. The winter was difficult, but every spring, even if it is the spring of 1942, I want to believe that all the bad things are behind us and now a new happy life will certainly begin. The sun shines and even warms. The grass grows, and you can plant something somewhere, so that later you can harvest it and eat it. And front-line reports seem to be nothing. This is what humanity calls hope. And a football team is being created, because not only to fight and collect combat aircraft! You also need to play football!

On May 3, a friendly football match between the team of the Kuibyshev Railway and the joint team of aviation enterprises was scheduled (later turned by "Wings of the Soviets", that's where the name comes from, that's where the team's birthday came from, "Wings" turned 75 this year, an anniversary, God willing, will not be relegated from the Premier League), and the match took place at the Lokomotiv stadium. By the way, the “Ivanov railway team”, by the way, then won against the “Karelin aircraft builders team”, Ivanov and Karelin - the names of the team captains, and only in the forty-fifth year the aviation team was declassified, finally naming the “Wings of the Soviets”.

Two years ago, in Samara, the historical match of the forty-second year was planned to be reconstructed. Forces of enthusiasts. There is a Lokomotiv stadium. RZD please. Aviation enterprises are working, some are more successful in terms of government orders (Progress, Kuznetsov), others less so (Aviakor). Collected teams. They began to train. The townspeople were informed that this is the case, come and cheer. The townspeople came and brought the children. The teams came out in quick-composed forms and with company flags. The first cup was won by the railroad workers, as then, in the forty-second.

And that's what it means - a good idea! A year later, the “railroad aviators” repeated the May game (the score was in favor of the aviators). And now, here too - the sun, children, aviators in blue, railway workers in bright yellow, children with balloons, beautiful girls with flags.

Two halves of thirty minutes each, the commentator gives details of the players' work biography: a toolmaker, a mechanical assembly worker, a process engineer, an employee of the planning department - this is for aviators; an operator of a flaw detection trolley, an electric locomotive driver, an engineer-economist and an electric locomotive driver - this, of course, is among railway workers.

Cheerleader girls dance cool (pipidastras in their hands): lifts, rearrangements, pyramids, jumps, acrobatic support, bright costumes. Group stunt - the collective construction of a gymnastic pyramid. The girls at the very top are called flyers.

Fine. Of course, the ceremonial speeches of municipal officials and regional officials are beaten a little, but the Victory Day is exactly the case when even officials cannot be fully despised for poor service and hypocrisy. After all, the official also has a dad, and there was a grandfather who died in the War, and his grandmother, perhaps, riveted the neighboring wing of the IL-2 with my grandmother, so right now it is pointless to divide us into ourselves and them.

We have a common holiday, and a common Victory, and football too.

My grandfather, a war hero, order bearer and mechanic of an aviation regiment, after the end of the war, trained as an officer and served in the army. In 1957 he returned to Kuibyshev from Kharkov. He began to work at the military department of the Aviation Institute (KuAI, now - SSAU). With my daughter (my mother) I did not miss a single home match of the Wings of the Soviets, then they were held at the Dynamo stadium in the city center. Whatever one may say, you live in Samara - you support Wings, and you can’t do without aviation.