TheSoviet Top League, known after 1970 as theHigher League (Russian:Чемпионат СССР по футболу: Высшая лига,romanized: Vyschaya Liga),^[1] served as thetop division (tier) ofSoviet Unionfootball from 1936 until 1991. The league's name was a conditional designation used for brevity since being completely owned and governed by theAll-Union Committee of Physical Culture (an institution of theCouncil of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union). The winner of the competition was awarded the All-Union Committee banner. Created in 1936 the tier was originally known as "Gruppa A" and was one of four tiers that were part of the Soviet football championship.

From the very start to its eclipse, the top tier ran in conjunction with the 2nd tier for most of time allowing for participantsexchange between tiers. In 1963 there was introduced a third tier. Starting from 1971 the full official name was theUSSR Championship in football: Top League. An attempt to create an independent league as an autonomously governed business entity or organization during "perestroika" period was denied by the Federation due to political culture in the Soviet Union.

Although the competition is considered professional, there were no professional (or commercial) sports in the Communist state due to its political stance on that issue. The teams that played in the league were composed of players who officially, in fiscal books, were employed and paid by the state enterprises or agencies (such as SKA or Dynamo) that the teams represented. Also, players from the state agencies' teams, SKA or Dynamo, held a rank, captain, lieutenant, major etc. Also, the naming of teams was strictly controlled and had to be approved by the central government. Only after thedeath of Stalin, teams were allowed to have names associated with their geographic location, due to the Soviet political stance on the national issue. Also, officially teams represented so called "voluntary" sports societies, which is a politicaloxymoron considering organization of business in theSoviet Union (Voluntary Sports Societies of the Soviet Union).

Originally the top tier was named Group A. After World War II it became known as the First Group. In 1950, after another reform of football in the Soviet Union, the First Group was replaced with Class A. By 1970, the Class A had expanded to three tiers with the top tier known as the Higher Group (Top Group) which in 1971 was renamed into the Higher League (Top League). The winner of the competition was honored with a title "USSR Champion".

After theWorld War II, along with the competition among the first teams also there were conducted official competitions among reserve squads. It carried the name of "Tournament of the Doubles" (Turnir doublyorov). The reserve squads' competitions were running parallel to the first teams' competitions normally scheduled a day prior with relegation rule completely depended on the league standing of their respective first team.

The Top League was one of the best football leagues in Europe, ranking second among theUEFA members in the 1988–89 season. Three of its representatives reached the finals of the European club tournaments on four occasions:FC Dynamo Kyiv,FC Dinamo Tbilisi, andFC Dynamo Moscow (all in theEuropean Cup Winners' Cup). In the same way Russiapolitically succeeded the Soviet Union, UEFA considers theRussian Premier League to have succeeded the Soviet Top League.^[2][3]

The league was established on the initiative of head ofSpartak sport society,Nikolai Starostin.^[4] Starostin proposed to create eight professional club teams in six Soviet cities and hold two championship tournaments per calendar year.^[4] With minor corrections, theSoviet Council on Physical Culture accepted the Starostin's proposal creating a league of "demonstration teams of master" which were sponsored by sport societies and factories.^[4] Nikolai Starostin de facto became a godfather of the Soviet championships.^[5] Numerous mass events took place to promote the newly established competition, among which there was an introduction of football exhibition game as part of the Moscow Physical Culture Day parade, and the invitation to theBasque Country national football team which was onthe side supported bySoviet Union in theSpanish Civil War and others.

In 1936 the first secretary of Komsomol Kosarev came up with an idea of playing an actual football game at theRed Square as part of the Physical Culture Day parade.^[6] Stalin never attended any sports events, but the Physical Culture Day was an exclusion to the rule.^[6] The 1936 Physical Culture Day parade was directed by Russian theatre directorValentin Pluchek.^[6] For the football game, a giant green felt carpet was sewn by Spartak athletes and laid down on the Red Square's cobblestones.^[6] A night before the parade, the rug was stitched together in sections, rolled up and then stored in a vestibule of theGUM department store located at the square.^[6] Following the 1936 Red Square game, it became a tradition before theWorld War II and part of the Physical Culture Day parade event.^[6]

In the late 1930s Spartak was giving out thousands of tickets per game to members of theCentral Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).^[4] Among serious football fans wasLavrentiy Beria who proposed to have one team from each ofunion republics in the league.^[4] In July 1937 a conflict erupted following a successful tour to the Soviet Union of the Basque national team during which the main governing body of sports in the country, theAll-Union Council of Physical Culture, was accused by the party and Komsomol for failing the sports policy.^[4] Spartak's leadership and Starostin in particular were accused of corruption and implementing "bourgeoisie methods" in Soviet sport.^[4]

The most prominent clubs of the league wereFC Dynamo Kyiv,FC Spartak Moscow, andFC Dynamo Moscow. The most popular clubs besides the above-mentioned werePFC CSKA Moscow,FC Ararat Yerevan, andFC Dinamo Tbilisi. Dinamo Tbilisi became famous for finishing third but never winning the title.They won their first title in 1964.

Until the 1960s the main title contenders in the league were the Moscow clubs ofSpartak andDynamo whose dominance was disrupted for only a brief period afterWorld War II byCSKA Moscow, nicknamed 'The team of lieutenants'. The first team that won 10 championships was Dynamo Moscow in 1963, followed by Spartak in 1979.

Eleven clubs spent over 30 seasons in the league with five of them from Moscow. Dynamo Moscow and Dynamo Kyiv were the only clubs that participated in all seasons of the league. Among other prominent Russian clubs wereSKA Rostov/Donu (Army team),Zenit Leningrad (Zenith), andKrylia Sovietov Kuibyshev (Wings of the Soviets).

Over the years the league changed, however from the 1970s its competition structure solidified with 16 participants, except from 1979 through 1985 when the number of participants was extended to 18.

One uniquely Soviet innovation around this time was the "draw limit", whereby a team would receive zero points for any draws in excess of a fixed number, first 8, then 10. This rule had consequences for both the title race and relegation while it was in place. A 1973 experiment to resolve drawn games bypenalty shoot-out lasted only one season.

Dynamo Kyiv's success as a Ukrainian club was supplemented in the 1980s with the appearance ofDnipro Dnipropetrovsk led by its strikerOleh Protasov who set a new record for goals scored in a season. In 1984,Zenit Leningrad became Soviet champions for the first time.

With the unravelling of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, the structure of the league also became unstable as more and more clubs lost interest in continuing to participate in the league, prompting several rounds of reorganisation. The main effect of these was to boost the numbers of Ukrainian clubs to be on par with the Russians.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, it has been suggested that the competition be re-established along the lines of theCommonwealth of Independent States Cup, but due to a lack of interest on various levels the venture has never been implemented.

The uneven population of the Soviet Union meant that the participants in a typical Top League season fell into three blocs. This was particularly apparent at the lower tiers of the Soviet Football Championship such as the third tier (Vtoraya Liga), but sustained with less transparency upto the top/first tier.

• Russian clubs. Russian football was dominated by the "four-wheeled cart" ofMoscow clubs:Spartak (Komsomol),Dynamo (police),CSKA (army) andTorpedo (auto workers). These four were often joined in the Top League byLokomotiv (railroad workers),Zenit Leningrad (defense industry workers), or assorted clubs from smaller cities. Please, note that although officially theLokomotiv sports society represented "railroad workers", the Soviet Union also had an oversized number ofrailway troops unlike any other country in the world. Also, "the Russian clubs' bloc" was fragmented deeply into three separate conditional sub-blocs, per se, such as Muscovite clubs, Leningrad clubs, and the RSFSR clubs (or other clubs). At theSpartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR, the Russian SFSR was always represented by three teams with Muscovite and Leningrad teams participating along with the "main" team, although the main (or first) team was always the Muscovite.
• Ukrainian clubs. Ukraine's capitalKyiv, by contrast, was the exclusive province (or "realm") ofDynamo Kyiv who became an unofficial feeder for the Soviet national team beginning in the 1960s, replacing Dynamo Moscow. Several clubs vied to be Ukraine's "second" team over the years includingShakhtar Donetsk (coal miners),Metalist Kharkiv (defense industry workers - Dzerzhinets (armor)),Chernomorets Odesa (merchant fleet workers),Zorya Voroshilovgrad (now Zorya Luhansk, defense industry workers - Dzerzhinets (armor)) andDnipro Dnipropetrovsk (defense industry workers - Zenit (air defense)), the last two managing to win three titles combined. Many Ukrainian clubs also were associated with the Soviet Dynamo sports society. The Soviet football authorities tried to curb or even out the Ukrainian clubs with the other clubs from the "union republics", yet there consistently existed a "separate" (or unique) competition among the Ukrainian clubs among "teams of masters" (a Soviet euphemism for professional teams).
• Other republics clubs. Lavrentiy Beria's vision of one representative club per republic was partly realised from the 1950s onwards, as in every republic except for Russia and Ukraine, fan interest and government support became concentrated into a single club based in the republic's capital city, who became "the republic's team". Most of those clubs were originally created as Spartak or Dynamo, supported either by local party committee (Spartak) or local KGB office (Dynamo). ThusLithuania became represented byZalgiris Vilnius,Latvia byDaugava Riga,Estonia byKalev Tallinn,Byelorussia byDinamo Minsk,Moldavia byNistru Kishinev,Armenia byArarat Yerevan,Azerbaijan byNeftchi Baku,Georgia byDinamo Tbilisi,Kazakhstan byKairat Alma-Ata,Uzbekistan byPakhtakor Tashkent andTajikistan byPamir Dushanbe. A typical Top League season would feature 4-6 of these eleven, and Yerevan, Minsk and Tbilisi all managed to win the title at least once. Only Georgia, withTorpedo Kutaisi and laterGuria Lanchkhuti, was ever able to have a second representative survive in the Top League in addition to their capital city club. (Turkmenistan andKirghizia were represented in the Soviet football pyramid byKöpetdag Aşgabat andAlga Frunze respectively, but neither reached the top level.)

Documentation about the league is scarce. Among well-known researchers areAksel Vartanyan forSport Express, Andrei Moroz and Georgiy Ibragimov forKLISF Club, Alexandru G.Paloşanu,Eugene Berkovich, Mike Dryomin, Almantas Lauzadis, and Hans Schöggl forRSSSF Archives. Another extensive databases are composed athelmsoccer.narod.ru andFC Dynamo Moscow website.

Since its creation, the Soviet Top League's name changed a quite few times:

1936 – 1941 Group A (Группа А)

Prior toWorld War II the championship was split into several groups usually of eight teams and named by the letters of theCyrillic script.

1945 – 1949 The First Group of USSR (Первая группа СССР)

Upon the reestablishment of the league after the war for several years it was numbered sequentially with the top league being the First.

1950 – 1962 Class "A" of USSR (Класс "А" СССР)

Since 1950, the alphabetical classification of the Soviet league hierarchy has resumed. In 1960 through 1962 the league consisted of two groups with the better clubs qualified for the championship pool and less fortunate – the relegation pool.

1963 – 1969 The First Group "A" of USSR (Первая группа "А" СССР)

The first time the Soviet League was represented in Europe in the1965–66 European Cup Winners' Cup byDynamo Kyiv. In its first year the club reached the quarterfinals, eliminating on its wayColeraine andRosenborg and winning all four matches with those clubs. The Ukrainians also knocked out reigning championsCeltic in the first round in the1967–68 European Cup. In the 1968–69 season the Soviet clubs withdrew from continental competitions after theSoviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. From 1974 (except for the 1982–83 season) to 1984 the league was among the best 10 national competitions in the UEFA rankings (based on continental competitions performance) reaching the 4th place in 1976 and 1977. From 1985 the Soviet Top League was among the best four in Europe, until thecollapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In 1987 and 1988 the Soviet Top League was the second best league in Europe, however by the end of the Soviet Union the results of its representatives worsened as top players could now leave and play for foreign leagues in the West. The very last coefficient position that the Soviet League placed was No. 9 in 1992. The 1992/93 season all the results of the Soviet League were transferred to theRussian Premier League. Throughout its history the representatives of the league on four occasions made to the finals of the three primary European competitions being victorious in three. Once a Soviet club was able to win theUEFA Super Cup.

Before establishment of professional competitions among clubs, in the Soviet Union existed another competition that was conducted among collective teams of various cities or republics.

Bold text in the "Champion" column denotes that the club also won theSoviet Cup during the same season. The italicized text in the table indicates the other cup champions that made it the Soviet top-3.

Performance by club

Performance by club

Performance by club

The republics that were never represented at the top level were theTurkmen SSR and theKyrgyz SSR. Also, in Soviet football Russian SFSR teams were technically represented by three different entities with Moscow and Leningrad as the Union federal cities teams considered separately from the rest of Russian teams.

¹Two points for a win. In 1973, a point for a draw was awarded only to a team that won the subsequent penalty shootout. In 1978–1988, the number of draws for which points were awarded was limited.

Notes:

• Clubs are shown those with which the listed coaches made the top-3, i.e. Beskov won two Top league titles and all with Spartak, but he also managed Dynamo with which he was a league runner-up.

Starting since 1958 beside medals of the regular Soviet championship, participants were awarded number of prizes (~ 18 regular prizes) that were established by various sports and public organizations, editorial offices of newspapers and magazines.

• USSR (Soviet Union) – Final Tables, rsssf.com. Retrieved 9 June 2006.
• Russian Portal about Soviet Football, sovfootball.ru.
• USSR&Russian soccers tables
• An extensive database of game protocols and statistics(in Russian)
• Media Biblioteca of the Soviets Football
• Media Biblioteca of the Soviets Football in VK