E P Thompson to Roman Abramovich From Omsk to Tottenham High Rd
Omsk is a major city in Siberia. In the twentieth century it was the HQ of the reactionary to fascist White Army which fought the Bolsheviks after the 1917 revolution (Britain backed the White Army obviously) until the city came under Soviet rule in 1919. It would have been the HQ of the USSR had the Nazis captured Moscow during World War Two.
It has a reputation of being a rather cold and austere place. On his way out of the Communist Party in 1956 after the ‘Secret Speech’ detailing the crimes of the Stalin era, E P Thompson wrote an article ‘Winter Wheat in Omsk’ critical of Stalinism that was published, edited, in World News.
I mention all this because in Simon Kuper’s 30 year history of the Premier League published in the Financial Times on 19th February he notes that when Roman Abramovich was looking for an English football club to buy he thought of acquiring Spurs until he found that Tottenham High Rd was in his view similar to Omsk…
Omsk in 1919 obviously
Leave a Reply