In Win or Else, Larry E. Holmes shows us how Soviet football culture regularly disregarded official ideological and political imperatives and skirted the boundaries between socialism and capitalism. During the early 1920s the Soviet press denounced football as a bourgeois sport that was injurious to both and mind and body. Within that same decade, however, it became the most popular spectator sport in the USSR, growing into a fiercely competitive business with complex regional and national bureaucracies, a strong international presence, and a conviction that victory on the field was also a victory for Soviet supremacy. Writing as both historian and fan, Holmes focuses his study on the provincial Kirov team Dinamo from 1979 to 1985, when the club played at both its worst and its best. Spurred by a dismal 1979 season, the team's administrator and regional authorities had two options: obey Moscow's edict to reduce expenditures on professional sports, or seek out new-and often illicit-funding sources to fill out a team of champions. Drawing on rich archival materials as well as newspapers and interviews with former players, Win or Else reveals the foundations of Soviet sports culture-and the hazards that teams faced both in victory and in loss.