FC Spartak Moscow (, ) is a Russian professional football club based in Moscow. Having won 12 Soviet championships (second only to Dynamo Kyiv) and a record 10 Russian championships, it is the country's most successful club. They have also won a record 10 Soviet Cups, 4 Russian Cups and one Russian Super Cup. Spartak have also reached the semi-finals of all three European club competitions. History Foundation and early period (1883-1941) In the early days of Soviet football, government agencies such as the police, army, and railroads created their own clubs. Many statesmen saw in the wins of their teams the superiority over the opponents patronising other teams. Almost all the teams had such kind of patrons; Dynamo Moscow aligned with the Militsiya, CSKA Moscow with the Red Army, and Spartak, created by a trade union public organization, was considered to be "the people's team". The history of the football club and sports society "Spartak" originates from the Russian Gymnastics Society (RGO "Sokol"), which was founded on 16 May 1883. The society was founded under the influence of the Pan-Slavic "Sokol movement" with the aim of promoting the "Sokolsk gymnastics" and then sports including fencing, wrestling, figure skating, skating, football, hockey, lawn tennis, boxing, skis, athletics, and cycling. In the RGO Sokol began to play football in the summer of 1897; the professional football section was founded in the spring of 1909. On 1 August 1920, the football team began to officially act under the name MCS, or Moscow Sports Club. In 1923, the MCS, later named Krasnaya Presnya (Red Presnya), was formed by Ivan Artemyev and involved Nikolai Starostin, especially in its football team. Presnya is a district of Moscow renowned for the radical politics of its inhabitants; for example, it represented the centre of the Moscow uprising of 1905. The team grew, building a stadium, supporting itself from ticket sales and playing matches across the Russian SFSR. As part of a 1926 reorganization of football in the Soviet Union, Starostin arranged for the club to be sponsored by the food workers union and the club moved to the 13,000 seat Tomsky Stadium, known as Pishcheviki. The team changed sponsors repeatedly over the following years as it competed with Dinamo Moscow, whose 35,000 seat Dynamo Stadium lay close by. As a high-profile sportsman, Starostin came into close contact with Alexander Kosarev, secretary of the Komsomol (Communist Union of