Abstract des Autors

In this context, our contribution aims at exploring the political dimensions of football, guided by three main interrogations. First, we will examine the contentious potential of Russian football. We will show that it involves conformist dimensions, but that it is also able to supersede the official functions imposed by the authoritarian state. Second, we will look at the role of football as a mirror and a catalyst for social and political tensions. Here, we will see how football rivalries concurrently reflect the tensions specific to the Soviet period and the complex Russian federalism, as well as mirror the political and economic reconfigurations of post-Soviet Russia. Finally, we will explore how football can become a theatre of identitary predication, by crying to explain the presence of nationalism in Russian football fandom.
The material used in this chapter is part of a thesis research on the polit-ical dimensions of the football fandom in Russia. This particular entry is based on works by sports historians and specialists of Soviet football, as well as interviews conducted in Moscow with sports journalists and with supporters (of all ages) of several Muscovite clubs (Dynamo C SKA, Spartak and Torpedo).