Yacov Zohn

Biography

I am a PhD candidate in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I focus on political, cultural, and European history through international sport. My dissertation examines the complex intersections of institutional, national, and regional power structures in the USSR through the lens of the Soviet National Soccer Team (Sbornaia), from the team’s official genesis in 1952 to the end of its “golden era” in 1968. In Soviet soccer, a wide array of governmental organizations, industrial leaders, politicians, and sport officials from all over the USSR actively intervened in sporting affairs, vying for power and influence. Within this landscape, I elucidate why and how Moscow, endowed with all of the USSR’s most important political, economic, and sport institutions, as well as the best clubs in the country, lost its monopoly on the national team as Tbilisi and Kyiv grew in importance. My research explains how a mix of patronage networks, a militarized sport ideology, and Nikita Khrushchev’s policies, which enabled a decentralization of soccer power, impacted the team’s significance, composition, and results. I demonstrate that despite republican officials’ important role in helping the Kremlin keep control in the Soviet republics, these republican leaders also worked to undermine Muscovite hegemony and redefine the periphery-center relationship through soccer. I argue that republican officials’ strong informal networks with Moscow and in their respective republics allowed soccer to become one of the few areas for the Soviet republics to assert their national interests and, in Ukraine’s case, surpass the political center. In fact, my research shows how soccer was the first battleground for Ukrainian independence post-World War II, a fight that continues to this day.

Education

M.A., Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia
B.A., Nazareth University

Field

• European History

Working Dissertation Title

•  Tactical Representation: Political Goals in the Soviet National Football Team (1952-1968)

Selected Publications

• “Sport” in The Oxford Handbook of Global Socialist Culture, forthcoming in Oxford University Press (tentatively 2027)
• “Identität und ein jüdischer Fußballspieler in der Sowjetunion,” forthcoming in Copernico Geschichte und kulturelles Erbe im östlichen Europa
• “Dynamo Kyiv Enters the Field: The Soviet National Soccer Team Calls Upon the Ukrainians (1957-1960),” review and resubmit stage at the Russian Review
• “Kyiv 1 Moscow 0: Player Transfers and Ukraine’s Rise to the Top of Soviet Soccer (1953-1963),” Journal of Sport History 51, no. 3 (Fall 2024), 18-34, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/948011
• “National and Local Identity in Soviet Football,” History with Jackson (blog), January 1, 2024, https://historywithjackson.co.uk/blog/f/national-and-local-identity-in-soviet-football
• Review of Carles Viñas, “Football in the Land of the Soviets,” Labour no. 92 (Fall 2023): 348-350, https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/151/article/910373/pdf
• “Unthawed: Post-Cold War Economic Ties between Kaliningrad and Europe,” Journal of Baltic Studies 50, no. 3 (2019): 327–349, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01629778.2019.1590434
• “Kaliningrad i Evropa: Ekonomika,” (Kaliningrad and Europe: Economy) Bulletin of Science and Practice, no. 10 (2017): 250-258

Selected Awards

• Title VIII Summer Research Laboratory Associateship, U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2025
• The Russia Program and the Bridge Research Network Fieldwork Scholarship, 2025
• Stephen F. Cohen-Robert C. Tucker Dissertation Completion Fellowship, The Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), 2024
• Visiting Fellowship, Leibniz Institute of European History, 2024
• Fellowship for Doctoral Students, Leibniz Institute of European History, 2024 (Declined)
• FIFA Research Scholarship, Centre International d’Étude du Sport (CIES), 2024 (Declined)
• The North American Society for Sport History (NASSH) Graduate Student Essay Award, 2024
• Early Career Scholar Award, European Committee for Sports History, 2024
• The Russia Program and the Bridge Research Network Fieldwork Scholarship, 2023
• Visiting Researcher at the Georgian Football Federation, 2023
• Visiting Researcher at the University of Lausanne, 2023
• Senn Award, UW-Madison, 2023
• Student Research Grants Competition-Combined, UW-Madison, 2023
• External Opportunities Fund, UW-Madison, 2023
• History Graduate Student Summer Funding, UW-Madison, 2023
• Stephen F. Cohen-Robert C. Tucker Dissertation Research Fellowship, ASEEES, 2022
• Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute Title VIII Summer Research Scholarship, 2022
• New York Public Library Short-Term Research Fellowship, 2022
• The NASSH Dissertation Research Award, 2022
• Title VIII Summer Research Laboratory Associateship, U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2022
• ASEEES Graduate Student Travel Grant, 2022
• History Graduate Student Summer Funding, UW-Madison, 2022
• External Opportunities Fund, UW-Madison, 2022
• Student Research Grants Competition-Research Travel Award, UW-Madison, 2022
• Co-captain, Isthmus City FC, 2021-2022
• History Graduate Student Summer Funding, UW-Madison, 2021
• Title VIII scholarship, Ukrainian language at Indiana University, 2021
• Foreign Language & Area Studies Fellowship, Polish (academic year), 2020
• Phi Kappa Phi, honor society, 2016
• Sigma Iota Rho, honor society, 2016
• Pi Delta Phi, National French Honor Society, 2016
• Diversity Scholarship, American Institute for Foreign Study, 2015

Professional Affiliations

•  Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES)
• European Committee for Sports History
• International Society for History of Physical Education and Sport
• North American Society for Sport History (NASSH)
• Réseaux d’Études des Relations Internationales Sportives (RERIS)
• Visiting Researcher at Leibniz Institute for European History, 2024-2025
• Visiting Researcher at the Georgian Football Federation, 2023
• Visiting Researcher at the University of Lausanne, 2023
• Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian
• Academy of Sciences (INION RAN), spring 2018

Courses Taught as TA

• History 101 – American History to the Civil War era
• History 136 – Sport, Recreation, & Society in the United States