Soviet Top League

The league's name was a conditional designation used for brevity since being completely owned and governed by the All-Union Committee of Physical Culture (an institution of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union).

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.

Also, players from the state agencies' teams, SKA or Dynamo, held a rank, captain, lieutenant, major etc.

Only after the death of Stalin, teams were allowed to have names associated with their geographic location, due to the Soviet political stance on the national issue.

[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, the Soviet 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.

[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 the Basque Country national football team which was on the side supported by Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War and others.

In 1936 the first secretary of Komsomol Kosarev came up with an idea of playing an actual football game at the Red Square as part of the Physical Culture Day parade.

[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] Following the 1936 Red Square game, it became a tradition before the World 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 the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

[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, the All-Union Council of Physical Culture, was accused by the party and Komsomol for failing the sports policy.

Among other prominent Russian clubs were SKA Rostov/Donu (Army team), Zenit Leningrad (Zenith), and Krylia Sovietov Kuibyshev (Wings of the Soviets).

Dynamo Kyiv's success as a Ukrainian club was supplemented in the 1980s with the appearance of Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk led by its striker Oleh Protasov who set a new record for goals scored in a season.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, it has been suggested that the competition be re-established along the lines of the Commonwealth 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.

Among well-known researchers are Aksel Vartanyan for Sport Express, Andrei Moroz and Georgiy Ibragimov for KLISF Club, Alexandru G.Paloşanu, Eugene Berkovich, Mike Dryomin, Almantas Lauzadis, and Hans Schöggl for RSSSF Archives.