Football, ressentiment and resistance in the break‐up of the former Soviet Union

The former Soviet Union, within its post-war boundaries and through its potent influence over nations around its borders, held together a commonwealth which contained all of the subjugated kingdoms of the old Russian Empire and most of the remnants of the Austro-Hungarian dominion.' The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe was, at least in part, precipitated by the reassertion of nationalism in some of these former republics and satellite countries and the creation of new forms of nationalism in others. Within a context of considerable conflict, without Moscow's enforced leviathan, nationalist sentiment in and around the former Soviet Union has been given free rein, with both geographical and ethnically based claims to sovereignty leading to a proliferation of 'new' nations and yet another redrawing of the map in eastern Europe. In this article we argue that, rather than being a passive follower of political trends, association football played an important, proactive role in the reformation of the former Soviet Union and the redrawing of eastern Europe's boundaries.