The Stardom Sickness

With the possible exception of the men who make the Sputniks and a few favored fiddlers, pianists and composers, no one in the Soviet Union enjoys a more enviable lot than the men and women who break sports records. They are pampered and idolized, and, considering their perquisites, they are amateurs only by courtesy. How they behaved outside the stadiums hardly mattered so long as they continued to chalk up a satisfactory quota of victories inside. But last week, as the European championship track and field meet was about to start in Stockholm, Russia's favored athletes found themselves in an unfamiliar kind of trouble.

When Shotputters Galina Zybina and Tamara Tyshkevich, miffed at losing the U.S.S.R. championship to a comparative newcomer, refused to accept their second-and third-prize medals by her side, they were stripped of their right ever to receive the medals, and the elder Zybina was barred from the trip to Stockholm (TIME, Aug. 18). Also barred was Nina Ponoma-reva, the hefty discus thrower who was caught shoplifting in London two years ago. A sort of Maria Callas in a track suit, Nina had made her outbursts of temperament famous. She was accused of being "egotistical and uncomradely." All this was part of a stern new government campaign to eradicate a disease called "The Stardom Sickness."

"Don't Make a Fuss!" The most conspicuous case of stardom sickness recently befell Edouard Streltsov, darling of Moscow's soccer fans. When Edouard hit the big time in 1955 as center forward on the "Torpedo" team of the Moscow Likhachev (formerly Stalin) Auto Plant, he was a clear-eyed, husky youth of 17. But then his sporting instincts turned to women and wine.

After a few drinks, he liked to smash furniture and crockery. Once he invaded the apartment of a complete stranger and began breaking up everything in sight. When the police picked him up, his sponsors at the auto works telephoned in desperation: "Do you know whom you've arrested? Streltsov, our best footballer! For heaven's sake, don't make a fuss!" The plant even gave him a luxury apartment after he had tossed his wife and infant into the street, and the Moscow City Economic Council continued to shower him with bonuses. Edouard loved the high life. "I've tried everything, achieved everything, seen everything," he boasted. "I've even eaten salads that cost 87 rubles and 50 kopeks."

"You Worked Where?" His mother was no help. Once when he was in the hospital and forbidden to drink, he lowered a rope of bandages down to her, and she tied on two bottles of vodka for him. In the name of victory, his bosses put up with everything until last spring he raped a girl named Tamara. Tamara refused to be bribed into silence, and the case wound up in court. There, keeping his face turned away from the public, a ruined Edouard sobbed out his answers: "You worked where?" "In the committee of the Likhachev Auto Plant." "In what capacity?" "I played soccer." His sentence: twelve years at hard labor.

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