[citation needed] The first professional football competitions in the Soviet Union started in 1936.
[citation needed] Officially professional sports in the Soviet Union was prohibited[1] as any other private form of business.
The best "teams of masters" were Dynamo controlled by Soviet secret police, Army and Armed Forces clubs, and Spartak which officially represented "industrial cooperation" but was actually directed by the young communists of Komsomol.
[2] Following the so-called "liberation of Europe by the Red Army" in 1944–45, numerous Dynamos, CSKA, and Spartaks were set up in countries of the Warsaw Pact.
Unlike professional athletes in the West who were becoming rich celebrities, in the Soviet Union notable sports athletes were transitioning to their new career as an "apparatchik", or Communist official, whether in coaching or administrative positions.