Football in Russia Football in Russia Association football is the most popular sport in Russia, beating ice hockey by a huge margin. When the USSR broke up into 15 different countries, the once renowned sports structure of the union collapsed. Football was the second most popular sport in the Soviet Union. While the national teams and the clubs used to be linked to state institutions or mass organizations, in 1991 some of them became private enterprises. Just like in many other spheres of business, corrupt and sometimes bloody division of power began. Furthermore, many teams of the erstwhile Soviet Top League, which was
Lviv Bus Factory called the LAZ 360 designed by Nami USSR. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, LAZ suffered a big meltdown economically due to the loss of funding. Production stopped due to no orders. After the economy started to pick up, LAZ started to produce buses again. The LAZ 52523 was created. In 2001, LAZ was sold to Russian business tycoon Igor Churkin. After the sale of the company, the whole line of production was re-engineered to produce new buses for a low price. LAZ used a system called "flexible assembly line" which means that many different models could be produced