to mark the seventieth anniversary of his birth
His choice
Voronin was a victim. But of what? The system, or his own stupidity? Our current outlook on life inclines us towards the latter, in solidarity with the system of power which asserts that narrative. But is that really the case? Who’s to say? I can’t help but recall the prophetic words once spoken by Voronin about football: “It's not that simple”. But might they not apply to more than just football? Now, in the context of his tragic fate, they take on a completely different, broader meaning.
The system took everything from him. It robbed him of the ability to be himself and to live his own life, rather than the life devised for him by the people at the top. It robbed him of the chance to be the best footballer he could be. It robbed him of his health, his good looks and, finally, his life, after disfiguring his face, distorting his fate, and discrediting his name. And what did it give him in return? Fleeting fame, which it then turned to notoriety. How much can one man endure? A man who spared nothing, not even his own life, to uphold his principles of kindness and beauty as he saw fit?
And what to do with Vladimir Vysotsky’s assertion that “No, no one dies in vain!”? Can it be that people do die, and in vain, too? After all, another of Vysotsky’s sayings has hardly been borne out in practice: “Others will come, replacing comfort for risk and toil, and take the road you have not travelled." Voronin found no followers. And today, no one wants to follow in his footsteps. Why would they? To be vilified and forgotten? Does everything, as somebody once said, “have its own profound meaning?” Hardly. Could it be that Voronin lived his life for nothing? That all of his sacrifices were in vain? Of course not. He gave us a glimmer of hope that, someday, things would surely change for the better. Future generations will undoubtedly be grateful, and will remember him and pay tribute to him. How infinitely sad that we will have no part in this. I would do anything to be in their place.
Voronin wanted to strike a balance so as to stay true both to the system and to himself. But he failed, just like the other idealists who came before him. This was not his fault. A similar misfortune befell everyone with a heightened sense of both their duty and their personal dignity, who found themselves torn between the two, unable to find the middle ground. No wonder: there is no middle ground. No one can reconcile the irreconcilable. Despite his failure, and even after losing his battle, Voronin remained invincible in the memory of those who came after him, because his spirit was never broken.
He drank like it was his job
According to Alexander Nilin, Voronin always strived to live an unusual life – and that was precisely the life the system offered him, in exchange for playing the role of the Westerner in Soviet football. And Voronin, beguiled by the tempting prospect of standing out from the crowd, went on to cooperate with the authorities, most likely with no sense back then of how this would end for him. Voronin’s only consolation was not the memory of his remarkable former life, which no longer stoked his ego, but his sense of duty, not to the system, but to his fans. Of course, there was also the alcohol, which the authorities couldn’t take away from him, and which, in his situation, was his one means of relieving his loneliness and forgetting, if only for a while. The system was no longer keeping him in vodka, so the fans, who remembered and appreciated Voronin as a valuable player, did it instead. He was grateful to them, seeing their attitude to him as the greatest expression of kinship between those united by their undying love for football.
Voronin became a regular at several pubs. People also started coming to see him after matches, just as they came to see Streltsov during his glory days, except instead of going to the stadium, they went to the pub. Like spectators in a zoo, they went to gawk at Voronin in his unenviable state. Quite literally before their eyes, Voronin was turning into a living relic of what would soon be a distant era. He was dead to everyone who had idolized him in his glory days. Now, he was alive only for the lowest rungs of society, who were his sole company. Nevertheless, he apprehended this bitter reality with perfect calm, and never lost his dignity or his sense of humour. He lived modestly on the meagre means that he had. He never complained about his bleak circumstances, and never blamed anyone else for his problems. Voronin wanted to strike a balance so as to stay true both to the system and to himself. But he failed, just like the other idealists who came before him. This was not his fault. A similar misfortune befell everyone with a heightened sense of both their duty and their personal dignity, who found themselves torn between the two, unable to find the middle ground. No wonder: there is no middle ground. No one can reconcile the irreconcilable. Despite his failure, and even after losing his battle, Voronin remained invincible in the memory of those who came after him, because his spirit was never broken.
In the crosshairs of fate
Valery Voronin’s life was split in two, both by the nature of his professional activity, and by its temporal collisions. The result was a cross through his good name. Voronin maintained two separate personas, politician and athlete, and walked a tightrope between them. He tried to live his life as correctly as possible, yet this endeavor was doomed from the start. The thin line separating his favoured activities as a footballer from his suspicious politics not only made it impossible to form an unambiguous opinion of him, but also stopped him from combining these two aspects of his life without serious detriment to his sporting career. This meant he could not count on society understanding the motivation behind his actions. His precarious position threatened to topple him into the yawning void of oblivion at any moment, should the unseen force leading him through life decide for some reason to sabotage his perilous balancing act – which ultimately happened when the system stamped out his aspirations.
The thin line between Voronin and the void was by no means hypothetical. He crossed it in the early morning of 30 May 1968, on a highway near Moscow, when he crashed into a mobile crane driving on the wrong side of the road. As in the Greek myths, this line was a fateful one, cutting his life in two. The better half was behind him now, while the worse lay ahead, to be survived without football and in complete isolation.
Black and white
Torpedo’s black-and-white kit suited Voronin perfectly. It served as an excellent metaphor for his conflicted nature, which never dealt in half-measures. A model of propriety on the pitch, once off it, Voronin was transformed beyond recognition, as if possessed. He would drink the entire night away, painting the town red.
It was alright for Streltsov, who on the pitch could give as good as he got if the defenders really “got his back up”, and pulled no punches off the pitch either. In other words, he was always himself, no matter the situation. But Valery Voronin?! He was a football connoisseur, an intellectual to the core, with “impeccable upbringing and excellent taste”! Where did his obsession with carousing, which never let him slow down and rest for a moment, come from? And what were the authorities thinking, allowing a role model like him to lead such a depraved lifestyle, which cast a shadow on the whole of Soviet football? To this day, no one has been able to give a clear answer to these questions. Could this be because they were meant to remain a mystery?
Voronin is said to have changed. Even Lev Yashin was surprised: “What modest young men Anichkin and Voronin were at first. Who would have thought that they would change so much!” But Nilin, who defends this narrative, claims that Voronin was “never an ardent supporter of the regime.” What are we to make of this? Was Voronin forced to live a double life in order to successfully complete the mission entrusted to him by the powers that be? And did he try to cooperate with them as much as he could? Voronin always tried to emulate his Western peers’ habits, down to the tiniest detail. For example, he would only shave with a straight razor. But remember that the famous sculptor Ernst Neizvestny created a black-and-white monument to Khrushchev. Was it a coincidence that the leader’s character was projected onto the fate of Voronin, the man who personified his era?
Konstantin Zubkov,
July 2009.