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
Treaty on the Creation of the USSR Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the RSFSR ceased to exist, and its territory was divided between the new Kazakh and Kirghiz SSRs. In a prelude to World War II, several new republics were created prior to the German invasion of USSR in 1941. The first was the Karelo-Finnish SSR, which on 31 March 1940 was elevated to a union republic from the Karelian ASSR, previously part of the RSFSR. After the annexation of Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were transformed into the Lithuanian SSR (July 13), Latvian SSR (July 21) and Estonian SSR (also July 21), and were formally