For Dear Old Alma Ata

The Russians reported last week, not without a touch of pride, that they, too, could have their sports scandals.

The Central Asiatic Spartakiad--a tournament, including soccer, among five Central Asiatic Soviet Socialist Republics --was in full swing. The Alma Ata soccer team (representing the Kazakh Republic) was playing the Ashkhabad eleven (representing Turkmenistan). Alma Ata was ahead in the game, but what counts in the Spartakiad is not the number of games won; it is the number of goals scored. In goals, the Tashkent team (representing Uzbekistan), which did not play that day, had a narrow lead. The game between Alma Ata and Ashkhabad reached a point where, if either of the teams scored two more goals, Tashkent would lose this edge. And this in turn would mean that in the overall tournament standings, Alma Ata would take the lead.

All this was clear to a man named Bekbayev, director of the Kazakhstan Institute of Physical Culture. He summoned the Alma Ata captain to his box by loudspeaker and ordered him to let the opposing team score two goals. Unlike fixers in acquisitive societies, such as people who rig games in Madison Square Garden, he did not offer the players money. Said Bekbayev, as Moscow's Pravda reported the incident last week: "Isn't it a clever combination I thought up?" Nevertheless, "the Kazakhstan athletes determinedly rejected Bekbayev's proposal. They continued to strive for first place honestly, without machinations, as Soviet athletes should." In fact, the outraged Alma Ata goalie kicked the ball into his own goal "in order to attract the attention of the stadium to the dishonest deal."

The incident also drew the attention of the authorities to Bekbayev, who, reported Pravda, turned out to be an "ignoramus, bluffer and suppressor of self-criticism." Among other crimes, he had only had a grade-school education and had issued himself two phony diplomas, one of them making him a "Master of Sports."

Last week, with Pravda's expose, Bekbayev's career was at an end and the honor of dear old Alma Ata vindicated. So far, no committee of the Supreme Soviet has grilled Bekbayev on television, but an up & coming commissar named Rudolf Tobeyevich Kefauversky is reportedly studying the U.S. record and getting ready to prove that anything the Americans can do, the Russians can do better.

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