USSR was 2nd in the UEFA ranking, but the place did not correspond to reality: too many problems were at hand. The Soviet Empire was reaching collapse and its football too. Growing nationalism and separatism, political and economic problems, the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabach (still a violent problem to this very day) marked the time and football added its own problems and tensions. They were many… the central one was the conversion to professional football with its political side – who and how should run it. Export of players was a big issue – the clubs preferred they to contract transfers instead of the state Sport Committee. The players were eager to go abroad, however, wanting better deals for themselves. The exodus was massive and in short time Soviet players went to play not just to the familiar top European leagues, but to lower divisions, smaller countries and exotic destinations from which the Europeans usually imported players, not exporting. Just to give and idea: apart from Germany, Italy, France, England, Soviet players went to Finland, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Cyprus, Greece, Bulgaria, Israel, South Korea, Morocco. Inside the USSR players also moved in larger numbers than ever, joining not stronger teams, but those which paid better. At the top of it the championship suffered and was on the verge of disintegration: the program of the First Division was made and published in January 1990, it included 16 teams. Then the Georgian Federation decided to run its own championship and Dinamo (Tbilisi) and Guria (Lanchkhuti) abandoned the Soviet league. The championship started with 14 teams, but Lithuania declared independence and thus after the first round Zalgiris (Vilnius) withdrew – the championship started with 14 teams and ended with 13. The Second Division was also reduced from 22 to 20 teams, because of the Georgian withdrawal – Torpedo (Kutaisi) and Dinamo (Batoumi) left, but to make things even more complicated Abkhazia rebelled against Georgia, it Federation separated from the the Georgian and decided to run its own championship as far as Georgia was concerned, but remain in the Soviet system. The result was that one technically Georgian team played in the Second Division: Dinamo (Sukhumi). They were just promoted to Second Division and the political turbulence put them in very difficult position: the club stayed in the Soviet championship, but most of its players were Georgians and left the club and just days before the beginning of the championship the club had to find players. At least the program of the Second Division was made late enough, so it was made for 20 teams, not 22 and unlike the top league there were no gaps in teams schedules because there was no longer opponent for the round.
The lower tier was entirely reorganized and here the new political situation somewhat helped calls for structural reforms. Third Division was a problem for some time already: about 160 teams played in it, divided into 9 Zones. In general, quality was the problem: for years Third Division contributed little to betterment of football on one hand and it was found very unequal in itself on the other hand. There were clubs considered strong enough to play Second Division, but they were mostly concentrated in Ukraine and European Russia, thus playing in same zone against each other without a chance for more than one to go up. In the same time Asiatic republics and Russian Far East was very weak. Vast distances were another problem. So, calls for reforms existed – reduce Third Division to make it more competitive and meaningful and reduce the costs for, generally, poor clubs. Now the reform was made, partly spurred by the political situation: in the Soviet system third level was called Second League (following the Premier League and First League – top and second levels) and the name was preserved, but effectively third and forth levels were created: the new third level was Buffer Zones – West, Center, East, each having 22 teams. Bellow the Buffer Zones was what was called Second League – 6 zones, named after the participating republics, although some were inevitably mixed: Zone I (Ukraine), Zone II (Armenia), Zone III (Azerbaijan), Zone IV (Russian Federation), Zone V (Russian Federation), Zone VI (Russian Federation). As the names suggest, politics played considerable role here… it is hard to imagine small Armenia and Azerbaijan having so many clubs for separate league, but Kazakhstan and Belarus not so, but… the war over Nagorno-Karabakh not only prohibited teams form both sides to be placed in one zone, as geography suggest, but also seemingly made both republics to show strength by claiming big football – and thus the Armenian zone had 22 teams and Azerbaijan ‘bested’ Armenia with 24 teams. Laughable, but these 2 zones were the largest in the third level. As for promotion and relegation, it was theoretically simple structure: the top 2 teams in the zones except the Armenian and Azerbaijani, where 1 team was promoted were moving up to the Buffer Zones – 10 teams in total. The last 4 teams in every Buffer Zone were relegated down. So far, so good… up the pyramid, however, numbers had to made up, because of sudden reductions for this season: Second Division had to go back to 22 teams and First Division – back to 16. Thus, there was no direct relegation for the top league this season – the last was going to promotion/relegation play-off against the 4th in the Second Division. The top 3 teams in the Second Division were directly promoted. So, Second Division starting with 20 teams, after promotion of 3 teams and none directly relegated was left to 17. To restore 22-team league only one team – the last in the final table – was to be relegated. 16 teams remained – plus 6 promoted from the Buffer Zones, to make 22 teams for 1991. That is, the top 2 teams in every Buffer Zone were directly promoted up this season.
Since the complete disintegration USSR was on its way, the 1990 structure was not going to last , especially the third and forth tier, but the 1990 season was like that, with additional changes of city and club names, of which perhaps most important were two: the move and renaming of locally hated in Lvov amalgamation SKA-Karpaty to the city of Drogobych under the name Galichina. In the same time ‘original’ Karpaty was restored in Lvov. The second was the renaming of tiny and insignificant Moscow club Krasnaya Presnya to Asmaral. Asmaral became the first foreign-owned club in Russia and played a prominent role in Russian football in the next few years. For the moment, though, former Galichina (former SKA-Karpaty) and the restored Karpaty were in Buffer Zones, third level, and Asmaral – in the Second League, forth level. Complicated all that, but such were the times.
Second League – forth level. 116 teams in 6 zones – naturally, most teams were Russian, but that is in total, for 3 zones were nominally Russian zone. They had 17 teams each, so, just as leagues, those 3 zones were the smallest. Ukraine had 19-team zone, Armenia – 22, and Azerbaijan was the largest with 24 teams. The Russian and the Ukrainian zones run normal league championships, but the size of the largest zones demanded different formula and both were run the same way: in the first stage the league was divided in 2 groups, then the top 6 in each group went to the second stage to play for 1-12 places and the rest played for the bottom half of the final table. In the so-called Russian zones were included also the few clubs from republics other than Russia, Ukraine, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Naturally, most 4th level clubs do not ring a bell, so only few bits of information will be given here:
Perhaps Kolos (Nikopol) was the best known name among all teams in the 4th level – now they were 10th in Zone I (Ukraine). Very likely this zone was the strongest and included most clubs with Second Division experience.
SKA (Kiev) was 11th in the same zone,
Chaika (Sevastopol) was 13th.
But those ended in lower part of the table. Sudostroitel (Nikolaev) was 2nd, besting Avangard (Rovno) on goal-difference, and Torpedo (Zaporozhye) won the championship.
Zone II – the Armernian zone had 1 promotional spot. The winner of their clearly unreasonably large zone was the second team of Ararat (Erevan) – and Ararat-2 was promoted to third level. If one compares the bloated Armenian zone of 1990 to contemporary Armenian top league will see no resemblance – neither in the number of clubs, nor in the names. Most clubs of 1990 simply do not exist today.
Zone III was similar – few of the 1990 Azerbaijani clubs exist today and almost none under the old. Karabagh (Agdam) won the championship and was was promoted – and it is also practically the only club which still exists under its 1990 name today.
Zone IV – the only entirely Russian zone, consisting mostly of Southern and Caucasian clubs. Later two clubs will become quite strong and even playing top league Russian football, but in 1990 they were hardly heard of lowly 4th level clubs – Uralan (Elista) and Dinamo (Makhachkala). Others remained anonymous, like
Shaktyor (Shakhty), which finished 14th.
APK (Azov) – just renamed from Luch – finished 2nd with 50 points, bested by Torpedo (Taganrog) with 51. Both teams were promoted to the Buffer Zones.
Zone V – two non-Russian clubs played here: GomSelMash (Gomel, Belarus) and Tigina (Bender, Moldova). The Belarussians finished 7th, but the Moldovans ended 2nd and earned promotion up. The champion here was Asmaral (Moscow), naturally, promoted. Eventually, few other clubs became well-known – like Saturn (Ramenskoe) – but that will be in Russian, not Soviet football.
Zone VI – again, few non-Russian clubs played here: two Latvian and one from Belarus.
Olimpia (Liepaja, Latvia) ended 7th.
RAF (Jelgava, Latvia) did better than their countrymen – they finished 4th. Did not matter much anyway – Latvia declared independence and RAF and Olimpia were not going to play in Soviet-Russian championship after 1990, but unlike the Lithuanians, the Latvian teams at least started and finished this season.
The team from Belarus – KIM (Vitebsk) finished 2nd and was promoted. Volga (Tver) won the championship and was promoted. Tver was known until this year as Kalinin, but restored its original name. The team from Liepaja changed its name from Zvejnieks to Olimpia, but this matters little – with time, Latvian clubs changed names often.
Well, at the end of the 1990 season 10 teams were promoted from forth level, but that’s just for the record. Further political changes rendered promotions quite meaningless.