On the last day of November 1985, a 34-year-old man fell from the window of a Moscow high-rise building. It was difficult to recognize in him the basketball player Vladimir Arzamaskov, the star of the Leningrad “Spartak” and the USSR national team.
Immediately after the tragedy, rumors spread about the involvement of the all-powerful KGB in the incident. After all, Arzamaskov was in the development of units that fought against black marketeers and other violators of socialist legality and was listed in operational reports under the name Tsentrova. Although by his role he was an attacking defender.
In the apartment, investigators found a travel certificate from the Elektrosila sports club. The head of the basketball section, Alexander Severov, a friend of Arzamaskov, came from Leningrad to Moscow to identify the corpse.
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“We met and became friends at the Spartakiad of schoolchildren of the RSFSR, held in Ulyanovsk,” said Severov. “Arzamaskov, «who played for the Volgograd team, then became the best sniper of the tournament, and I, who played for the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic team, was included in the symbolic top five of the tournament. Volodya spoke about his plans to enter LETI, and I was going to the Lesgaft Institute. We agreed to meet in Leningrad.»
Arzamaskov ended up in Kondrashin Spartak together with two other electrical engineering students after the city championship match, in which the LETI team fought on equal terms with the professionals. The master of basketball immediately appreciated Vladimir’s sniper qualities. The star of “Spartak” in those years was Alexander Belov, but Arzamaskov, according to today’s terminology, could well be called the second star. In the 1974/1975 season, when the Leningraders broke the seemingly eternal hegemony of CSKA in the USSR championship, Arzamaskov played even more than Belov.
In the semi-finals of the Cup Winners' Cup in the spring of 1971 year in Zadar, Yugoslavia, Arzamaskov attacked the opponents' ring seven times from medium and long distances — and never missed. But there were no three-point shots then. Teammates joked that the secret to such a successful game was the squid eaten during lunch. Many Spartak players refused food that was quite exotic, by the standards of the 70s, and Vladimir gladly ate their portions.
Surprisingly, I heard the phrase from several people involved in St. Petersburg basketball: attributed to Kondrashin: “The biggest mistake in my coaching life was not removing Zyama from the team.” This nickname was given to Arzamsky for his adventurous character and penchant for cases that in Soviet times fell under articles of the criminal code.
In his free time from training and games, Zyama hung around in the company of currency traders, black marketeers and gamblers. It was the external surveillance services, which were responsible for maintaining order at the Beryozka store, where citizens admitted to important work sold their checks honestly earned abroad, who gave the basketball player the pseudonym Tsentrovoy.
Arzamaskov and his teammates taught them to live a beautiful life. At his instigation, many Spartacists began to dress fashionably and became addicted to gambling, as well as to a business that was very dangerous in Soviet times. During their trips abroad, they brought caviar, vodka, Zenit cameras and Cuban cigars from the USSR for sale, and in the opposite direction, jeans, Bologna raincoats, watches and other consumer goods, which were in short supply in the era of developed socialism.
< br>It was Zyama who took things from his teammates to sell in Leningrad. It is believed that he persuaded Alexander Belov to take a risky adventure and persuaded him to try to bring the icon across the border, which was the reason for the disqualification of the hero of the Munich final.
Topics However, Kondrashin did not expel the sniper from Spartak and even included him in the Montreal Olympic team. True, at the 1976 Olympics the Leningrad Spartak player never managed to show his best qualities. It was difficult for such three snipers as Arzamaskov, Muscovite Sergei Belov and Kiev resident Alexander Salnikov to get along on the site.
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“Arzamaskov was a born businessman,” said Severov. “In perestroika times, he could have quickly made a fortune, but today he would have become a member of the board of a large company or ended badly, like many of his business acquaintances in the 70s and 80s.”
In the early 70s, for some time, Arzamaskov was restricted from traveling abroad, but the restrictions were lifted after he married the daughter of a police general. With the help of Zhanna, he resolved many problems, but then fell in love with the fatal beauty Valentina. By this time, Zyama, who had gotten himself into yet another situation, was forced to leave Spartak. He, like Belov, was offered to move to CSKA, and Arzamaskov agreed. St. Petersburg fans, who idolized the hero of the Munich final, who refused the Muscovites, did not forgive Zyama for this.
Only Alexander Gomelsky, who headed the army club, unlike Kondrashin, did not stand on ceremony with his players. He almost immediately sent the no longer so valuable sniper to SKA Kiev. Zyama did not stay there either and returned to Leningrad as a flabby, but still adventurous Center. An old friend helped him get a job at Elektrosila so that, while playing in the Leningrad championship, Arzamaskov would not have problems with accusations of parasitism.
Friends from another world also did not leave Zyama unattended. This couldn't end well. And then there were rumors that Valentina was cheating on him with a more successful shop worker. The reaction was typical for a Russian person: Arzamaskov went on a drinking binge. In this state, he called Valentina and promised to stop drinking, but his beloved’s mother conveyed the conversation in a completely different way.
And the next day, one of the best players in Soviet basketball was found under the windows of a high-rise building. Of course, the KGB had nothing to do with this. Investigators immediately classified the incident as a suicide. They couldn’t even bury Arzamaskov properly. The urn was buried in his father’s grave in Volgograd.
This is how the life of a basketball player, who could have become a star and a millionaire in the NBA, ended sadly. Alas, he was not the only one who died this way. But the fate of the two women who played the main role in Arzamaskov’s life turned out quite well. Both married businessmen who lived to see better times in our country, and live in prestigious apartments in the central areas of St. Petersburg, on Vasilievsky Island and Petrogradskaya Side.
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Some of Zyama’s business partners are also alive today, mostly abroad, some are laid to rest in the graveyards of the northern capital. Many became the prototypes of the heroes of «Gangster Petersburg». And today, by the grace of God, even the new generation of basketball fans does not remember the sniper.
And I still can’t believe that Kondrashin regretted not kicking him out of Spartak. After all, for a long time Arzamaskov was one of those who determined the game of the Leningrad team. And Kondrashin invited only three players from his club to the 1976 Olympics, and one of them was an attacking defender, Center, or simply Zyama.
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